cyclezone I ride a bicycle to work, although not nearly every day, in the city that calls itself the most-bicycle-friendly city in America, although it isn’t close, yet. Showing up for work with disheveled hair and light sheen of sweat still is not widely accepted and the downtown office building where I work doesn’t permit bikes. So most days during the past seven years I’ve gotten from my east Long Beach home to my downtown Long Beach job by car.

By now, I feel a twinge of pride about the way I have learned to work Long Beach; the one-way streets, the mysteries of finding cheap parking and the techniques of parking parallel long ago stopped intimidating me. I can zip across town in 15 minutes. Usually. But recently, getting through downtown has been increasingly difficult, confusing and time-consuming.

It started a few weeks ago when I noticed the installation of traffic lights in the far left lane of Third Street—traffic lights … for a bike lane? I hadn’t heard about that, but if it makes cyclists actually follow traffic laws, bring it! Over the next few days, however, the traffic cones and delineators multiplied, construction expanded and confusion predominated. Then, the mess spread down to Broadway.

All the rules seem to have changed, some for the construction, some forever. For example, the turn into my office parking lot has always been awkward, but now the angle is even stranger. It’s unsettling to cross a bike lane as I turn in and even more so when I exit the lot. With all the new curbs, strange paint lines, blocked alleys and lots and lots of orange, the streets look like abstract art. So does the traffic.

What’s the effect of all this? I love the idea of a bike-friendly city. But I wonder whether a transition like this is making the people friendlier toward cyclists. To me, a lot of folks seem angry. I’ve heard cyclists called “bike Nazis,” and listened to people rail on and on about how ridiculous it is to spend taxpayer dollars on something that only a small segment of the population will use.

As both a motorist and a cyclist, I have tried all the bike improvements to date.

Riding the sharrows on Second Street in Belmont Shore is actually pretty scary. I use these green lanes—meant to be shared by cyclists and motorists—more to make a statement than anything else. But I have been cursed and honked at and closely tailgated by angry drivers when I’ve used the sharrows. And I see other cyclists still using them incorrectly—for example, riding too close to parked cars or not stopping at the lights, and still riding on the sidewalk. It seems everyone is confused.

On Vista, where intersections have been fitted with roundabouts, drivers are confused, too. I have seen them go clockwise instead of counter-clockwise and fail to properly yield the right-of-way. I have seen busses struggle to make the turnaround on Ximeno.

So I ask, is it just me? Is it just the construction? Is “bike friendly” too far outside the box for most drivers? Or are these newfangled bike lanes really going to work?