Bicycle oposition

The roll out of improved facilities for cycling receives its fair share of negative press. Retrofitting bicycle facilities in our busy cities will result in pain because, for the most part, it means you have to take space from one mode and give it to the other.

Is it inevitable that improving safe cycle routes will result in articles like these against cycling?

• Daily Telegraph bemoaning cycle lanes as an Orwellian plot
  
• Daily Telegraph again bemoaning lawless cyclists
• Daily Telegraph once again against the roll out of cycleways in Sydney
• Daily Telegraph about bike lanes and bus stops
• Sydney Morning Herald on a class action against cycle lanes in the inner city
• The Age on the Melbourne Bike Hire scheme

There are many articles in support of cycling but this clearly illustrates the conflict caused by reallocating space to cyclists. Or is it just the line of a particular editor?

It does raise the question as to how we communicate with the public and how we deal with the pain that reallocating space will result in. Brisbane has largely taken the easy path in the inner city by largely using Bicycle Awareness Zones instead of Sydney's network of separated cycle paths. Brisbane may have avoided the negative backlash but will the BAZ signs make life better for cyclists in the CBD?