Bicycle Austin forum

The engineers are good at diverting. When City Council asks them, they say they're all for bike lanes but they don't have budget, and they quote the cost of widening a street by 16 ft and adding an 8 ft bike lane in each direction as the cost of bike lanes, so they say bike lanes cost $300K/mile. That pretty well shuts up City Council in a deficit year.

When citizens ask, they generally change wording. They say that the code requires 'bike accommodations', and the sidewalk qualifies. When the code is quoted back to them, they get indignant and start talking about TxDOT and AASHTO standards, and how they have to have minimum 12 ft traffic lanes and 8 ft bike lanes. The strawman generally works and moves the argument to other things, and the legal requirement for bike lanes passed up. 

City Council also doesn't pay attention to details like the recommended street profile. Engineering just reworked those last year, and they have sidewalks instead of bike lanes so all new development that builds to the recommended standard won't have bike lanes.

I don't know how binding municipal code is, or if an engineer can override it with their professional opinion, or alternate definitions of bike lanes under TX law, hence the question.