Traffic Lab is a Seattle Times project that digs into the region’s transportation issues to explore the policies and politics that determine how we get around and how billions of dollars in public money are spent.

Cyclists have long helped out their motoring cousins. The nation’s earliest paved roads, including in Seattle, were done by and for bicyclists, and Henry Ford’s first car, the Quadricycle, was basically a four-wheeled Frankenstein bike with a two-cylinder engine.

Now cars are giving back, with a new type of bike lane barrier being tested in Seattle that’s made from recycled car tires. Each segment of the zipper-like barrier, which are a couple of feet long and 12 inches tall, is made from a full car’s worth of four recycled tires and weighs about 100 pounds.

“The vast majority

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