This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
What a bicycle lane is may seem obvious, but disagreements forced a lawmaker Tuesday to temporarily abandon an effort trying to standardize it.
Rep. Johnny Anderson, R-Taylorsville, stripped HB299 down after what he hoped would clarify what bike lanes must look like and when other vehicles may use it drew opposition from organizations like Salt Lake City and Utah Transit Authority (UTA).
"If you go from municipality to municipality, they're different," Anderson said when asked about bike lane regulations. "Some of them are striped, some of them just have a sign up of a cyclist. We're trying to standardize that so in the future as Utah Department of Transportation plans or counties plan, they can do it according to standardized state law."
Legislators also disagreed when other vehicles could cross into the bike lane for things like buses parking while ahead of schedule or operators taking bathroom breaks.
Anderson plans to revisit the bill in the future.
"It's going to take a lot more work to tackle the bicycle-lane issue," he said.
After Anderson stripped the bill of how and when a bike lane should be used — leaving only a definition of what a bike is — the House Transportation Committee approved it unanimously.