This year, it’s even more difficult to get to school on time than in years past. And for once it’s not solely because of issues with buses. The main problem this year is that a new bike line takes up one of the lanes on 10th Street.

The lane’s construction began in mid-July and was finished before the school year started. It has eliminated a lane of car traffic on one of the busiest streets in Grady’s students’ commutes to school.

I’m all for Atlanta becoming a more biker-friendly city. I even support the creation of bike lanes on streets that would otherwise be dangerous for bikers. But I don’t support the bike lane on 10th Street for several reasons.

The section of 10th Street where the lane exists currently does not fall into the category of dangerous for bikers. I understand that there is a lot of bike traffic at the intersection of Monroe Drive and 10th Street due to the newly constructed BeltLine, but this section of the street is directly adjacent to Piedmont Park.

By creating the bike lane, we encourage bikers to ride directly next to the cars whizzing by on the street instead of encouraging them to ride on the paths in the park that run parallel to the street. These paths are safer because they are buffered from the dangerous cars next to the sidewalk.

The bikers’ safety, however, is not the only question at hand. There is also the issue of traffic. Now that there is no right lane, drivers who do not wish to turn into Grady in the morning must wait in the left-hand lane behind those who do. This causes the line of cars to back up through the intersection and onto Monroe. Since the cars back up so much farther, it takes three or four lights to get through the intersection instead of one or two. This results in students arriving late for school and it presumably delays people getting to work as well.

The Program for Appropriate Technology in Health Foundation said that the reason for constructing the lane was to create “a traffic-free connection between the BeltLine and bike/ped facilities within the park.” If this were the real reason, they could have constructed the lane up until the point on the street where there is an entrance to the park and then ended it so that cars would be able to get around the students turning into Grady. But no matter what the initial reason for constructing the lane was, the city of Atlanta needs to rethink its decision and remove this problem.