Aussies, what do you expect? The fact that the
automobile has saturated
Australia almost as much as
America now shows the utter lack of need for
bicycles as a major method of
transportation, hence the lack of need for a "
bike lane".
Incidentally, in China where I live, the bicycle is the major mode of transportation, about 98% of the Chinese population (1.1 billion people) uses a bike, so in every city except the hilly ones there is a bike lane for the cyclists. Unfortunately, it is usually narrower than the main road. Pedestrians walk on the bike lane at their own risk, for the cyclists (believe me, I rode a bike in China) are perfectly willing to run over any person foolish enough to venture onto the bike path. Little kid? We don't care, get out of the way. Joggers? You better run really fast, because we're going to run you off our bike path. Fun stuff. On the bike lane, we have the right of way, no matter what happens.
And forget those wussy "race bikes" that Americans are so fond of, you know, the ones that weigh 5 pounds and have no inertia whatsoever. Chinese bikes are 70 pound behemoths made from old water pipes and a chain. They're so heavy you can knock people right over with them. If you get enough speed, you could probably kill someone. A grumpy farmer on one of these suckers is much more intimidating than say, a spandex clad Yank with a bike lighter than a feather and a pith helmet.
Even cars dare not venture onto the bike lane. If one does, we would slow our bikes down to a crawl, so the car behind us would honk its horn in a futile attempt to tell us to get out of the way, and then we would stop entirely and have a leisurely chit chat. The driver would get so pissed off he would try to reverse to get off the bike lane, but.... no, there are more cyclists coming up behind him, and he is stuck. Woe to the automobile user who tries to use the bike lane to beat rush hour traffic.
Or maybe you should just take a bus. Harmony joy bus rides are much more amusing than feuding with idiotic pedestrians and mindless drivers, don't you think?