Hope all are enjoying the traffic mess on LOVR and Madonna in SLO. When construction's finished, you'll have narrower driving lanes and more gridlock because the city is building wider bike lanes on both streets—what's called a "road diet."

"Road diets" were all the rage a few years ago, but drivers are fed up with them—justifiably.

Our "progressive" city is jumping onto this failed bandwagon. After LOVR and Madonna, Laurel Lane will go from four lanes of traffic to two. Downtown on Higuera and Marsh, parking will be ripped out for bike-only lanes. The city's starting to destroy the livability of its neighborhoods by taking away much needed street parking to make dedicated bike lanes—where are residents to park?

Our mayor says cars are a thing of the past, so we'll be happy to have our residential parking taken away and our commutes bollixed up by congestion, so then we can ride our bikes. Oh, and toward that end, only half the funds that used to go to road improvements now go for that—the other half, you guessed it, for bikes and such.

This city is on the way to building a massive "bikelash" from the motoring majority. Does that really help the cause of bicycling?

SLO