Josh the Aspie’s Blog

It’s worth looking at using bicycles in place of cars for short trips for many reasons.

1. the obesity rate in America
2. our dependence on foreign oil
3. increases in gas prices
4. all of the pushes for people to be more energy efficient

When people ride their bikes, there are be notable benefits.

1. we burn calories
2. we use less oil and other fuel
3. savings on fuel costs
4. production of less greenhouse gas

Unfortunately there are a lot of problems involved in biking. One of the biggest of these problems is… where do you do the biking in the first place?

Some cities have areas that are specifically called bike paths or bike lanes. When they do, that’s obviously where you’re supposed to be biking. But what happens when the bike path runs out, or there isn’t any bike path in the first place? You really only have two options.

1. Ride your bike in the street.
2. Ride your bike on the sidewalk.

To be clear, there usually are laws for any given area which tell you where to ride your bike. You should follow those. The problem here is what those laws should say, and what to do if there is no law concerning where to ride your bike? Let’s take a look at the two options.

Bicycling in the Street

Most cities say you should ride your bike in the street, and a lot of pedestrians agree with them. But when I’ve tried that in the past everyone that knows and loves me expresses concern for my safety. One reason for that is that the various car, truck, SUV, ect, drivers tend to get a bit cheesed off at me as I can’t go more than 1 or 2 MPH up some of the steep hills. In some areas the drivers don’t pay attention to bikers, and if they do, it’s only to swerve around them, often in an irritated manner that doesn’t give the biker much room.

And what about when you want to get someplace in the busier areas of town where there’s no shoulder, just parking? It’s dangerous to bike in rush hour traffic. Can you imagine doing so with already stressed and hurried drivers blaring their horns, and swerving around you at the first opportunity? What happens if you get in an accident in that kind of traffic? Yet from what most of my friends who have experience with bicyclers in downtown areas tell me, that’s how you’re supposed to bike.

The reason that most drivers of motor vehicles get annoyed at bicyclists in the street is because they slow traffic down, and no one really wants to slow traffic down to the speed of a cyclist, but sometimes that’s the only option if a cyclist is biking in the street.

On the upside of biking in the street, you at least have a more or less unobstructed path open in front of you.

Bicycling on the Sidewalk

If you bike on the sidewalk you’re safe from motor vehicle traffic, but in the milling of sidewalk traffic in busy areas you suddenly begin to pose a threat to pedestrian traffic. Anyone who’s ever been clipped by a bike messenger can attest to that.

What’s more, at the same time that the rush hour traffic poses such a threat to bicyclists on downtown streets, the milling of pedestrians clogs the side walks to the point that biking on them would wind up being slower than walking, and not nearly as safe for the cyclist.

Side walk bicycling in the far reaches of suburban areas brings up the problem that in many places there aren’t any sidewalks to cycle on. In those places where there are sidewalks outside of neighborhoods they often have pieces that have shifted since they were laid down, or sections that have been completely covered with a wash of mud that has since dried. They aren’t kept in good repair because very few people walk the distance that it takes to go to the nearest store, or the next neighborhood over. Besides, unless you’re able to carry your entire purchase home, walking to the store is rarely a sensible option even if you can make it there on foot.

Give me a path that’s just for cyclists and I use it. Heck if I’m biking on the road and there’s a shoulder to it that’s usually where you’ll find me. But the thing is, cyclists have just as much right to that mode of transportation as people have to walk or use a car. And often in suburban sprawl there are areas close enough to bike, but to far to reasonably walk. In most areas, though, you have to use one of two choices.

About the only time I actually take up a lane is when the road is multi-lane, and I have to use a turning lane to get safely to the other side of a large multi-lane road I will be crossing which has no pedestrian crossing for me to walk my bike across. Then, as is legal for me to do, I treat myself as a car for the rules of the road.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 11:23 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.