...when I go to America I tend to see some very well planned facilities - Roads which have a parking lane by the pavement, then a cycle lane about 3/4 the size of a cars lane (motorized vehicles are not allowed to enter this lane) and next to that the roadway for motorized vehicles.
I assume you mean a door zone bike lane, like this one:
That's the bike lane that killed Tufts University graduate student Dana Laird in 2002. It is a lovely width - 4-6 whole feet. Just wide enough to fit a fully open car door, which is the last thing Dana saw before she was run over by a bus. Door zone bike lanes are death traps. People who design them need to be stopped. Dana would still be alive today if she had been riding in the traffic lane.
I live in Silver Spring, Maryland: home to what was described by Slate.com as "The Stupidest Bike Lane in America" (
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid271557392?bctid=1504447505 ) - and under Maryland law, cyclists were required to use it.They actually re-striped it a couple of years ago. Now it's much better:
You might notice that when it turns that 'dog-leg' corner (which I defy any cyclist to take at anything over 6mph), it becomes a door zone bike lane. So they changed it from a bike lane that was so stupid that no one would ever use it, to a door zone bike lane that could actually get someone killed.
Generally speaking, bike lanes here are better than most English ones, in that they are more likely to be the regulation width. Other than that, there's not much difference. I prefer the road - at least if that's stupid, 90+% of the population complains about it, so it's likely to get fixed faster.