Quote from aikigreg on Oct 21^st, 2009, 8:09pm:

 
Yeah, it's been completely ridiculous with both my new neighborhood and my old one. Google doesn't show most of the streets in my new neighborhood (they're too new), but you have to ride almost 2 miles to get 1/4 mile east of my house. My old neighborhood was just as bad if you wanted to ride north. You had to do a big circle around, south first, then east or west.  
 
Have you ridden Lakeside Drive and Dirks Road on your bikely route? They're awful. Two lane with lots of traffic, and it's a curving monstrous hill on Lakeside Drive with no shoulder and traffic trying to get around you. You can get to Bellaire Drive via Trinity Trail, can't you? I think that would be better.
 
Hey, I forgot to tell you, I did a 100 mile loop Saturday that took me through Godley. The route I took was pretty good, if you ever want to drive to my house, then commute to work from here. The only iffy part was a low water crossing on Godley Ave that would NOT work on a day like today. You can see the route here.

Quote from aikigreg on Oct 21^st, 2009, 10:12pm:

 
Sure, you're welcome to park at my place.

Can you give the titles, departments and names of the two responible.

Opus,
I lived in north Garland for a year and a half and comuted by bike almost every day.  There are a couple of roads I rode daily that are about 1 1/2 lanes wide on each side and could be marked with bike lanes with little impact to the car traffic.  Colins is a good east-west road from Shiloh into Richardson.  In the north-south direction there is Galaxy.  These aren't much, but they would be a start.

Quote from goatstick on Oct 23^rd, 2009, 12:21am:

Well my wife did tell me to be super safe when I left the house this morning so welcome to the club  

The easiest thing to do is to simply have wide, ride-able shoulders on roads with a shoulder stripe. This benefits pretty much everyone, not just motor vehicles and bicycles, is ****far**** easier to sell to an anti-bike crowd and is quite safe, compared to alternatives. If you mark them as bike lanes, they just get more dangerous. No special 'bike facilities'. No huge 'bike budget'. This handles anything from 30mph traffic to 70+mph traffic. Make sure the shoulders are unobstructed, don't have markers or curbs that bulb-out and right-turn lanes are wide enough for cars to pass you on the right if you want to stop on the far left side of the right-turn lane at intersections.  
 
This works in town, in traffic, rural roads and highways. You will have less trouble with traffic doing this that any other alternative.

Widening the roadway is an issue, but as I mentioned, it benefits pretty much everyone. As to 'get in the bike lane', here's what my daughter learned on the trip:
 
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Leaving the gas station, we had to negotiate traffic, which in this area at this time of day was over 70% SUVs, trucks, vans or minivans (Suburbia, go figure).  Almost our entire route along the north side of Gainesville had marked, labeled bike lanes.  Of course, this proved to be more dangerous and labor-intensive than riding a regular shoulder would have been.
 
Drivers shut off part of their brain around bike lanes for some reason.  It’s as if they imagine a wall between their lane and the bike lane – as long as they don’t cross the line, they can get as close to that wall (and your bike) as they like, going as fast as they want.  In their mind, they set you in the bike lane and never expect that you would have to leave that lane for any reason.  It’s the “Bike Lane”; why would your bike need to be anywhere else?  They don’t consider that you might need to cross their lane to make a left turn, or move into their lane to avoid the all-to-common debris that accumulates in bike lanes or even to dodge potholes or manhole covers.  When a vehicle encounters a big tree branch or a giant pothole in their lane, it’s common to change lanes to avoid the obstruction, but drivers find it unacceptable that bikes might need to do something similar.
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What was the difference between Gainsville's bike lanes and a wide shoulder?  Signs and markings stating it was a bike lane. Oh, and debris. Where there were no bike lane markings, the shoulder was free of debris and obstructions.