I've heard a lot of praise for New York's bike lanes, but am I the only one who thinks all this looks horrendously complicated and confusing?

I might look confusing at first but these are all simple and easy to understand concepts. Painted green, with buffer, shared lanes... Nothing to be confused about and you probably would be comfortable with them in a matter of days.

Not sure what class our lanes are in the UK, but most of them increase the hazard experienced by cyclists. What class would a lane be when it's just a white stripe painted down the road that simply serves to increase the speed and decrease the distance of passing traffic? What class would a cycle lane be that runs along the pavement across house driveways where the residents have almost no ability to see passing cyclists before pulling out?

I think the NY concept looks excellent. Especially the idea that parking gets shoved out into the road. Also note that all their lanes are solid white line and not dashed. In shared usage sections bikes have clear authority to take up primary road position - imagine the abuse you'd get in the UK doing that.

I'm sure people will complain that British streets aren't generally wide enough to lay even 'class 3' routes. Then maybe we should note that the majority of NY streets wouldn't be either if traffic were 2-way. Of course it's a lot easier to do one-way traffic with a nice grid road layout rather than what we have here in the UK, but that shouldn't stop what would clearly be progress and better cities for everyone.

I imagine there are more New Yorkers that would respect bike lanes compared to the British. How many times have we had to dodge around a car parked half on the pavement, half in the road, atop of a bike lane?

Do Americans do roundabouts, either? That'll confuse 'em!

Best idea was the parked cars to protect the cyclist

Rare is the 'roundabout' here. And not all cities are laid out on a grid basis, either. Great video though -