I use it, almost had a bad time once as my phone was at 1%. IIRC, the smart-trip app kinda sucks, i have the card in google pay. It auto-reloads and all i need to do is unlock the phone. Its convenient because I lose cards all the time (throwing them into my pocket as opposed to back into my wallet, which proceeds to get thrown in the wash or lost to the ether). I do wish the card in the google pay app was actually linked to a physical card so that the physical card could be used if your phone is dead.

I noticed some people mentioning they have to open the google wallet app, I don't have to do this, the phone just needs to be unlocked, but I'm using a Pixel 6 so I'm not sure if its different on other manufacturers like Samsung.

Haha, I kinda just started typing and reasons why it is bad just kept popping into my head. it could be formatted better but I think it highlights some big problems with the design.

I'm not a fan of this design, it disregards how aggressive drivers in this area truly can become. Cars are going anywhere from 10-30 mph on this road. Consider an average cyclist riding for fitness who can maintain about 20mph average around the loop. This cyclist is going too fast for the multi-use path, so will have to use the sharrow lane. What will probably happen is that either this cyclist will:

1. Be relentlessly tailgated by an aggressive driver. This could cause one of two things to happen:
   1. The cyclist is forced to move into oncoming pedestrian/bike traffic to let the aggressive car go by
   2. The car will just pass on the right endangering everyone in the shared use path
2. Be stuck behind a slow car which causes:
   1. The cyclist will need to pass on the right, into oncoming pedestrian traffic

Other cases will happen where:

1. An aggressive driver wants to go around a slow car, or there is a car looking to park in a space, or is just idling next to the parking area. This causes:
   1. If the aggressive car is very closely tailgating the car in front, they will be unable to see oncoming bikes/pedestrians in the counter-flow left lane of the shared use path
      1. Aggressive car guns it around the car in front, causing head on collisions with pedestrians/bikes

I would venture to say, the current design with two car lanes is actually safer than the proposed design. Hains point terrorists (who want to go 30 mph in their suburbans) will simply ignore the paint on the road, and since there is a counter flow, in the shared use path creates more encounters where people could actually legitimately get killed.

I would say this is far from an "interesting" design. It's straight up terrible and lazy and actively worse than doing nothing.

Adding another thought, if they truly wanted to actually do something (short of banning cars lol), they should make the pedestrian path a pedestrian only path on the far right. This can be contraflow and actually protected by bollards the whole way. Then, get rid of the side parking, at least on the east side of the park. I've noticed that those who park in these side areas, especially if they park near the start, will just speed around the loop to get out of the park when they are trying to leave. Then, a nice wide bike lane, with a sharrow next to it all going the same direction. This way, faster cyclists can go around slower bikes, and at the same time allow tailgaters to go by without conflict.