07-13-2016, 04:10 PM
(07-13-2016, 03:49 PM)zanate Wrote:(07-13-2016, 12:50 PM)Canard Wrote: I just don't even want to deal with the anxiety of dealing with confrontation if someone were to come up and say "Why are you riding on this" and have to explain it's a MUT. I'll ride for 20 minutes extra just to avoid it.
Oh man, I understand this anxiety.
This year I decided to start biking the sidewalk on Lexington for about 500m, to get across the expressway. It bugs me and I feel bad every time I come across a pedestrian, and inside my own head I've had a lot of conversations with people about what I'm doing.
But then I remember that I've biked across that overpass in traffic over 1000 times since 2008. I think of all the close calls, the blow-by's, the squeeze outs, the close tailings, the surprise crosswinds and of course the Death Threat of 2014. I remember Lexington as the barrier to friends' cycling, and how it stops me cycling later in the season because now it's dark, too. I think about just how ridiculous it is to share arterial road space when traffic is routinely speeding 20+ above the limit and no accommodation has been made for a person on a bike.
And so I bike on the sidewalk.
Irony: I have to share the sidewalk with more people on bike than on foot.
This is an example where fear of pedestrian-cyclist collision is more important to the region than fear of cyclist-car collisions.
By the way, in many jurisdictions cyclists are sent to the sidewalk on bridges, since bridges tend to have narrower lanes.