17th Street Bike Lanes: a good idea gone wrong

I had a chance to ride around Atlantic Station recently.  For those who don’t know Atlantic Station is Atlanta’s newest and largest mixed use development located on the site of the old Atlantic Steel mill.  As part of the development “bike lanes” were added to 17^th Street running through Atlantic Station and over the 17^th Street Bridge into midtown.  The problem is these bike lanes are horrendous.  They are way too narrow, I didn’t have a ruler but I would estimate them to be between 2 and 2.5 feet wide.  This puts them inline with the pseudo-bike lanes of Interstate North Parkway in northwest Fulton County which I’ve found to be more dangerous than taking the lane.  In fact because of the narrowness of the bike lanes I choose to ride in the bus lane much of the time.