Normally, I hate bicyclists. It seems like they’re always underfoot and an inch away from running into me. I hate them, that is, until I am one. Then, it’s the pedestrians who are infuriating: They’re always in the way, exclaiming as I go past, and if they’d only stop moving to avoid me, I wouldn’t have to worry about hitting them.

But whether I’m mounted or on foot, I can’t stand the new anti-bicycle barriers that have been installed on the overpass to the Loop. They’re horrible. In an effort to force bicyclists to dismount, they’re placed so close together that traffic can move only one way at a time, no small irritant to those of us already looking for the nearest window to dash around the dawdling couple ahead.

Not that they come anywhere close to achieving their goal. The barriers are close enough together to force bicyclists to slow down, but not dismount, and if the designers wanted to make the spaces hard to navigate for bicyclists, they would be doing the same for pedestrians, too. And at the part where it makes the most sense, the long downward slope that begs to be flown down, the barriers have been set so far apart—presumably to accommodate this very need—that they don’t do anything other than increase enjoyment of the downward journey.

Predictably, this makes the bridge unsafe—I leave out the “more” because it wasn’t unsafe for anyone until these barriers were installed. I’ll concede that it’s unsafe because bicyclists won’t dismount, but multiple students say they won’t, and as an old professor said to me, “I’ve pretty much been ignoring [the barriers].” That bicyclists will cheerfully ignore the signs and the barriers is inevitable, so the only two options to increase safety are to punish all the bicyclists or remove the obstructions.

The old system was completely acceptable. A bright yellow line ran, and still runs, down the middle of the bridge, neatly dividing it into two lanes. People would stay in the lane on the right except when passing, in accordance with common sense and traffic laws, and traffic was never so heavy that one could not bike around one group of people without putting another at risk. Casualties were nominal; a quick Google search reveals nothing on the subject, and in the past two years, I can’t recall so much as a complaint about bicyclists’ behavior on the overpass or elsewhere.

It also bears mentioning that, in the week or so since three of these barricades have been put up, two have been torn down. Someone, or a group of people, despises them so much that they’ve gone to the trouble of ripping metal gates, soldered and bolted in place, off their hinges. I wouldn’t go so far as to endorse such criminal behavior, though several of my classmates do, but it says volumes about how much people disliked the barriers.

The barriers are a terrible idea. They decrease traffic efficiency and safety, create a potentially never-ending money drain for replacement costs, and encourage crime. They need to be removed.