Roads do this all the time "for no reason." Plenty of neighborhoods have very sharp curves to get drivers to slow down. This is one of many "traffic calming" techniques.
Also, I'm not sure where you got the idea that engineers don't care about the speeds of bikes (especially around pedestrians).
> You think putting unsafe sharp curves at the bottom of hills for cars is acceptable?
Yes, it is absolutely acceptable and it happens all the time in road design. It happens specifically because people (apparently in all vehicle types) will speed on the long straightaway down the hill into whatever comes next. Many, many suburban areas with hills will have sharp curves or T-intersections at the bottom of hills as a matter of course and it does work at slowing down the traffic going down the hill.
If you look at street view on the actual road, that is exactly this situation: a very straight road with a lot of visibility, leading toward a very long and complicated intersection where everyone needs to pay attention and go slowly. Nobody traveling a reasonable speed on a bike will be surprised by that turn since they can all see it coming for literally a mile.
I assume the alternatives to this specific merge are either:
* Merge the bikes into the car traffic and pray to god that they obey traffic signals at the upcoming intersection (we all know this isn't happening), while also accepting that they accelerate very slowly compared to cars.
* Set up a dedicated bike lane with dedicated signals (which is very expensive).
The engineers here clearly opted to instead merge the bike traffic with the pedestrian traffic through that intersection so that the existing pedestrian signals apply to them. You can see that the bike lane continues after this intersection, so they literally just did this to handle the intersection.
TFA on this point reads like "cyclist (or illegal moped user) doesn't want to be slowed down and doesn't care about anyone else."
> Yes, it is absolutely acceptable and it happens all the time in road design.
Aren't there usually signs indicating the maximum safe speed when that sort of thing happens? We don't have context here but I doubt there is a sign telling bikers that they should slow down. And aren't roads in general much larger and easier to see from far away, vs this tiny little ramp? You also haven't explained why the big curb is vertical instead of sloped, or why the street sign needs to be where it is. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this thing is designed as a fuck you to bikers who don't obey the rules. We simply don't design roads that way, where it's designed to make you crash if you deviate from the standard even a bit.
We absolutely do design roads for all kinds of people to make you crash if you do not follow them. In fact, on pretty much all roads, you will crash if you decide not to follow the road, and frequently you will crash into a tree or a building. Drivers generally see this kind of design and complain about it but slow the hell down. Cyclists seem to be the same.
There is a sign ahead of this ramp saying in very big letters "BIKE LANE ENDS." It's up to the bikers to decide how they want to use that information. The sign, the ramp, and the end of the bollards marking the bike lane are visible at quite a long distance.
As for the street sign, it's a street sign. It's where the street is. It also tells you exactly where to use Google street view to get full context.
The example by the author is an unsafe one. You think putting unsafe sharp curves at the bottom of hills for cars is acceptable?
Your example is good, and the matching example of a bike lane is the opposite of what was shown in the article.