City streets aren’t freeways. People are going to stop on them. It’s unreasonable to expect otherwise.
I’m going to go with the driver being the dick here. As a bike commuter I had to deal with cars in the bike lane constantly, and it’s unsafe (mainly for the biker) and incredibly annoying. If you are actively performing a pickup (the person is on the sidewalk and you drive up and they get in) or drop off, sure, use the bike lane for a minute. If you’re waiting for someone to show up, wait somewhere else and drive over when they’re ready to be picked up. It’s not the biker’s problem that you are inconvenienced.
The biker certainly didn’t cover himself in glory either, no call for reacting like that. Riding in traffic can be a frustrating time, no need to make it worse for yourself and others. But he wasn’t the cause of the incident.
The passenger should be informed that he needs to either be at the curb waiting or inform the drivers where to wait.
Then I’ll vote for the driver as the dickiest of them all. 
I hate it when cars pull this shit and block a turning lane or whatever to wait for someone, so were I a bike rider, I expect I’d be at least equally as pissed.
Riding out of the bike lane to get around someone has a lot of risks - you have to turn around to see if it’s clear, you get closer to cars than you’d like, and you have to deal with the occasional driver pissed off that you’re slowing him down.
Some drivers know the bike lane isn’t for stopping, but they have no other (relatively) simple option, they’ll be there briefly, and they feel a little bad about it while they’re stopped. I think the OP falls under this category. Cyclists should be understanding in this case and deal with it. Complaining to this kind of driver is a little dickish.
Other drivers consider the bike lane free parking and don’t give a shit if cyclists need to ride out into traffic. The problem is that a cyclist has no idea which kind of driver is blocking their way. And after swerving around the 10th car in your lane, every driver starts to seem like the latter.
So yeah, the cyclist was a bit of dick, but it’s understandable. The most dickish person is the passenger who chose a bad place for a pickup and wasn’t ready when the car arrived.
I expect stopped cars now and then. I also think it is also reasonable that a bike lane should not have 3-4 cars per block in it using the lane as a parking spot for their special snowflakeness.
Your response would be more reasonable if you hadn’t just pulled it out of your ass with no evidence whatsoever that’s what happened.
You have no evidence that it happened in this case or that it ever happened to “my” rider.
I’ll assume you were replying to me.
No, I don’t have such evidence. But I’ve been there and know how this stuff builds up. It is slightly within the realm of possibility that this cyclist woke up and said to himself “I am going to explode out of proprotion on some guy who is just waiting on a passenger”, but I doubt it. More likely he had dealt with a series of blockages that he needed to manuever around (and causing needless risk) and there you were all mopey-dopey in your vehicle looking no different from some drivers who think it is their god-given right to park right on the bike lane in front of the pizza place and go in an order a few pies.
Now, quite possibly his reaction was an overreaction. But it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day it was you who parked in the lane he was required to use, not the other way 'round.
I’ve ridden in the city, it happens all the time. Trust me, it’s annoyingly common in some streets. Whether it happened in the past 5 minutes or the past 5 days, it happened to this rider.
Other than the gratuitous comments about shorts I’ll go with this for $100 Alex.
Imagine for a minute **Boyo Jim **drove a trash truck. Or a city bus. Or a FedEx truck. Or was a mailman. Stopping briefly along the curb and blocking the rightmost lane would be part and parcel of the job. All day every day. Which would be true whether that rightmost lane was reserved for cars, bikes, slow men working, wheelchairs, or nuked gay whales.
In cities the rightmost lane gets blocked a lot by vehicles stopping briefly for a myriad of reasons. Get used to it.
The more I think about it, I revise my scoring.
The OP was a selfish dummy, **Boyo Jim **was unimaginative versus the standard of care for a pro driver, and the bike rider was the sole and massively throbbing dick. There is no need for civilized people to be angry. If you can’t speak and negotiate like an adult I fell free to treat you like the child you evidently are. Mr. Biker is a mere child, and a petulant spoiled one at that.
There are two possibilities, here: Either the biker came along as the OP was pulling in, or the OP was already pulled in by the time the biker came along. If the former, then the biker can’t just safely pass, because he has to assume that the driver is about to open the door into him. And if the latter, then the driver is not “just stopped to pick someone up”, because he’s been there for a while (a long while, to the best of the biker’s ability to determine).
In fact, the OP has already told us that he was not just stopped to pick someone up, because there was nobody waiting there to be picked up. He had no reason to pull over.
Both the OP and the passenger had means available at their disposal to make this a complete non-event. The biker had no such recourse. His options were to either stop and wait for an indeterminate amount of time for a reason he had no way of knowing, or to put himself into a more dangerous situation that he had every right to avoid.
Most streets don’t have bike lanes, so it doesn’t really apply to most of the day for those vehicles. A bus should pull into the bus stop, leaving the bike lane free. It doesn’t always happen but most of the time it isn’t an issue. Trash trucks have to do their job, it’s a part of life in the city. Most streets with bike lanes don’t have mailboxes on the curb. Around here the postal carriers park in legal spots and deliver mail on foot. The places with mailboxes near the curb don’t have bike lanes so it’s not an issue. Not sure that’s universal.
FedEx trucks are usually pretty quick but it’s pretty annoying and dangerous especially due to their size, near intersections, commercial driveways, and when there’s snowbanks to contend with. I would like it if they took more care to pick their double parking spots. Delivery trucks have limited options as well. Not sure if there’s a realistic way to eliminate those from city life.
But cars double parking to let people run into stores, or leaving a car blocking the bike lane for 15 minutes while doing errands, or cabs pulling in abruptly to pick up fares, or Ubers sitting in the bike lane for an indeterminate period of time are preventable. I would love it they would get ticketed. None of that justifies yelling at the OP but I understand the frustration. I’ve certainly yelled at my share of bad drivers who swooped into the bike lane without looking or nearly doored me and put me in danger but that wasn’t justified here. I would just have spoken to the driver if I was in the right mood.
Did exactly this today. With a wave and a smile to the waiting driver. In a Prius. Which may make me the biggest dick of all.
For me it comes down to the question: “why don’t the rules apply to you?”
Yes, you’re just bringing 20 items into he 15 items or fewer line, what’s the big deal? Yes you’re just cutting in front of me while I was waiting my turn, but you’ll just be a few minutes? Yes, you’re stopped in the bike lane when you know you’re not supposed to, but you’re waiting to pick someone up.
All of us have reasons why we should be able to ignore the rules, every single person on the planet, but if we all did it, it would really, really suck for everyone. For some reason, some people (and it seems to be growing) think that they’re special, that they shouldn’t have to follow the rule because it inconveniences them (the fact is, the rest of us are also inconvenienced by following the rules, but we do it anyway), they’re just going to be a minute, so why can’t you just wait, or go around? Because we shouldn’t have to, that’s why. You’re no more special than me, why do you think you are?
It doesn’t matter. As has been pointed out, the police aren’t going to respond in a timely fashion to a phoned-in complaint about a car blocking a bike lane. The whole system works, if it can be said to work, by balancing interests:
Every once in a while, a vehicle blocks a bike lane. This is sometimes excusable, but if there is no counter-balancing force, eventually the bike lane becomes a parking lane. However, as the tendency to park in bike lanes increases, bikers will become pissed off more frequently, and occasionally erupt in a burst of negative re-inforcement. As a result, the driver is less likely to unthinkingly park his ass in a bike lane in the future. Other people see the driver getting reamed out, and are less likely to park in bike lanes. The driver posts to message boards, where other people read about the incident, and think, “Hmm, maybe I should go move my car,” or, “I should be more prompt about meeting my Uber driver.” The bicyclist posts to bike-boards, and other bicyclists become just a little more riled up and likely to become enraged in the future.
Drivers, bicyclists, and law enforcement are all a part of a big system that never quite reaches equilibrium. It doesn’t matter what happened to your biker previously; he’s just playing his part in a system that has emerged to distribute and balance dickishness among all of its participants.
I’m curious as to why people say I was “parked” in the bike lane. I was in the drive’s seat, the engine was running and my flashers were on. No reasonable person should have the expectation that I would be there indefinitely.
Also, have you seen various street signs? Some say “No Parking”. Some say “No Standing”. Some say “No Stopping”. And some have a combination of some or all of the 3. Clearly the law distinguishes between all these states. The signs on my street said “No Parking.”
Well, the Wisconsin law says the following:
This is interesting, so I looked up Wisconsin state laws regarding parking, stopping and standing.
I am willing to be educated, but under these rules I don’t even see that I could be ticked for what I did. If I’m missing something, please cite me the rule I broke.
First, it is clear that I was not “parked” – which would mean leaving my vehicle unattended. I was “stopped”. I will also acknowledge that if I was indeed “parked” it would be a ticket-able offense, as there were “No Parking This Side of Street” signs at the curb.
346.53 & 346.53 **Stopping Prohibited in Certain Specified Areas **
346.50 Exceptions to Stopping and Parking Restrictions
Were you planning on moving your car if a biker came along? If not, then none of this matters.
You were obstructing the bike lane for a non-emergency reason. To a biker who is riding by your duration stopped there doesn’t really matter. To emergency vehicles or someone trying to move their legally parked car the distinction between parked and stopped is important. To a biker it’s just another car messing up the dedicated bike lane.