Quote from goatstick on Oct 23^rd, 2009, 9:22am:

 
If that's so, it's the only shoulder I know of that's free of debris. The stretch of the SH360 shoulder that I rode regularly in Arlington still stands as the place where I've gotten more flats than all of the other places I've ridden, combined. Glass was bad, but steel tire bits were the worst culprit, and you only get a lot of that in places with a lot of traffic from trucks that have enough wheels to keep on going after one tire is dead and shredding steel bits onto the road. That describes a typical highway shoulder.
 
I do agree that a wide shoulder is better than a bike lane next to a curb. But either one needs to be swept every so often, to clear debris.  
 
Quote from evblazer on Oct 23^rd, 2009, 10:42am:

 
The bike lane on Calender Road in Arlington is just as full of debris as the SH360 shoulder, but it's missing the steel tire bits, so you don't flat on it as much. Bike lane, or shoulder, either one will fill with debris if it's not swept. Bike paths usually don't have the concentration of debris that shoulders or bike lanes do. It's the cars running over all the debris that eventually knocks all of it onto the shoulder or bike lane.
 
The biggest problem that I have with just more lanes, as opposed to a shoulder, is that you always have high speed drivers in the middle lane, changing to the right lane blindly from behind another car, and if there's a slow bike in that right lane at that instant, he's a goner. Observing those kind of lane changes is what made me decide to only use Crowley Road on my commute for as far as it has shoulders, and turn onto something else where it just becomes all lanes with no shoulders.

And shoulders become marked right turn lanes at intersections on some roads. The most hazardous spot on my commute route seems to be on Crowley Road and Risinger Road where the shoulder becomes a right turn lane. Through traffic is traveling at 50+ mph in the dark, so I don't like moving out of the shoulder/turn lane into the next lane, but there are always right turners, and a bothersome number of them try to pass me before getting in the turn lane, misjudge how fast I'm going, and end up beside me on my left at the intersection, trying to decide what to do.
 
Looking at the route before I rode it, I would not have thought that to be the most hazardous spot on it.  I had a couple of places just like that on the SH360 stretches I rode, but they were never as big a problem as this spot.

You gotta be thankful for whatcha got right? No plan is better then say Copper Canyon's which appears to be put the bike on the back of your car and drive it to white rock lake or something. Thankfully they have no police to enforce whatever silly laws their town council passes and the locals who stop you in the road just want to vent a bit about the really poorly mannered cyclists.