BikeLanes

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Bike lanes were supposedly parts of a road wherein only bicycles and scooters were allowed to ride. Along with bike paths, they would help accommodate cyclists and make them feel more at home on the stadium. As a TrackMania Nations Forever feature, they never existed, but some remnants ported from older code can still be found. There were allegedly two types of bike lanes in the stadium environment - a separated 1.5 metre bi-directional bike lane and an unprotected 1 metre single-way bike lane.

## History

The bicycle was invented in the first quarter of the 19th century by Baron Karl von Drais. Nicknamed the "dandy horse", the *Draisienne* and later the *Draisickel*, which was misheard the *Dreicycle* (a.k.a. *tricycle*) and finally "corrected" to the contemporary word bicycle, as per the lack of third wheel, became wildly popular in the late 19th century.

In 2005, during the development of TrackMania Nations ESWC edition - the first appearance of the stadium environment - an unknown programmer conceived that racing should not only take place in Formula 1-style cars but also ought to be doable on bicycles. This was, presumably, to celebrate the upcoming 2006 Tour de France, the first one after Lance Armstrong's retirement. Several unconfirmed rumours exist that Nadeo was in contact with the Amaury Sport Organisation, the organiser of the prestigious event, to create an e-sport Tour de France which would take place in TrackMania Nations ESWC, or even replace the race entirely with its new online counterpart. E-mails containing these information were leaked as part of the aftermath of the Nadeo Disaster, but they cannot be verified to have come from Nadeo.

Obviously, bicycles nor bike lanes were never released officially, but evidence exists that bike lanes, at the very least, existed at some point in the development of the game. They are a place-able modifier block in the track editor of the first beta of the game and can be applied to any road, creating a slightly extended ram with the exact same colour and bicycle symbols throughout. Two of the same block can be found next to each other without traditional icons, rather with a short description of the block in French, translating to 1.5m bi-directional and 1m single-way. As they both create a single-way bike lane on each side of the road, it is safe to assume that the bi-directional one was never implemented.

## Description

The 1 metre-wide bike lane is green and the exact colour of the start block's pavement. Many players assume it is because the start was meant to accommodate for many cyclists also beginning the race. The bike lane also has bicycle symbols every block as not to be confused with the ram.

Driving a car on the bike lane is very illegal and, in most countries of the world, will result in a fine. This law also applies to TrackMania. As coppers had not existed back then, the solution to stop players driving on bike lanes was to violently catapult them out in a spectacular fashion, ruining their run. Due to the interconnected history of the road ram and the bike lane, some of the code for this was mistakenly applied to the ram and resulted in the infamous RamBug sometimes manifesting and annoying players from all over the world.

Some references to the bike lane feature are made in the TMNF code. Unfortunately, there is nothing indicating its presence in the game.