A good read.

A few years ago, I took Portland's Director of Transportation Planning on a bicycle tour of Dallas utilizing the on-street bike route system. He remarked how much better it functioned than Portland's bike lane system. I then visited Portland and saw the problem.

As usual, the bike lanes were placed along busy thoroughfares, while the cyclists were on local streets (for the most part). Cycling advocates (especially those who don't ride in a utilitarian mode, i.e. the "Lycra-enabled cyclists" you see on the weekends crowding the hike'n bike paths) clamor for bike lanes, and opportunistic politicians latch onto the demand.

Rant and ramble. Here's a good story in the New York Times about Portland's cycling environment (with a nice video).