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I have always felt that roads should exclusively be for motorized vehicles. And sidewalks should exclusively be for human powered means of locomotion (including cycles).
The benefits are:
The common complaints I hear and my rejoinders:
I think if the political will of cyclists had been spent on just making sidewalks legal for them then everyone would be much better off.
Why limit ourselves to roads or sidewalks, nothing in-between? Bike lanes/cycle tracks are that in-between, suitable for bicycles or low powered electric vehicles (scooters, e-bikes, etc). Sure, sometimes they're not suitable or worth the expense, but in many situations, like dense urban cores where motorized vehicular traffic already moves very slowly, and sidewalks are congested, having some space dedicated for bicycles works out great.
I think having something in between would be good. There are still some determinations that need to be made.
Are you gonna take street space or sidewalk space to make the in-between area?
What kind of general rules are they going to follow when they cross or interact with the streets or sidewalks?
I think they should generally be place in the sidewalk side of things, because the capabilities of these light vehicles is closer to pedestrians than it is to cars and trucks.
It is certainly going to be slower for the cyclists, scooters, e-bikes etc. But in a crowded city I don't see why anyone gets the right to complain they can't go as fast as they'd like. If they are currently getting in a lot of collisions at speeds that cause injuries to them, then that suggests slowing them down would have safety benefits.
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This only really has a chance of working if sidewalks are set up like roads, where you have dedicated directional lanes of traffic and no arbitrary stopping. Sidewalks aren't like this; people walk where they want to, stop to chat with friends, loiter, look at restaurant menus, etc. Plus they can be filled with lots of other obstacles like garbage cans, mailboxes, outdoor seating, benches, grocer's displays, etc. There's also the problem that the traffic imbalance is reversed. On roads there's a lot of high speed traffic (cars) and a small amount of low speed traffic (bicycles). High speed operators may have to occasionally accommodate bikes, but it's a relatively small amount of time. On sidewalks you have little high speed traffic (bikes) but a lot of low speed traffic (pedestrians). Every cyclist would be constantly swerving or slowing to accommodate pedestrians. Riding on the sidewalk isn't bad in areas with low pedestrian traffic, but in business districts it's a nightmare.
I think the solution for most (nearly all?) of these scenarios is for the cyclists to go slower.
If you are a car in a crowded city you should not expect to be able to travel very fast, and certainly no where near the maximum capabilities of your vehicle and personal reaction times. Some cyclists seems to have this expectation.
I rode a bicycle on a university campus for 3 semesters until it got stolen. Its basically nothing but super crowded sidewalks constantly, with occasional glimpses of open space where you can go a little faster. I never hit anyone during this time. I also wasn't trying to go ~18mph.
If cyclists want safety they should go slower and stay on sidewalks. Safety is what I want when I'm on a bicycle so that is what I do.
If cyclists want speed they can go on the road, but they need to accept that what they are doing is incredibly dangerous and they are risking life and limb every time.
It probably won't be their fault if they get hurt. But the world sucks, and you sometimes need to treat it like its out to get you.
That's because the speeds that cyclists expect to go are still not as fast as drivers expect to go in the city. Cars do not have the right to go faster in the city just because they are completely overbuilt for that environment.
Having mixed use like this is a way in which infrastructure can be designed, as can prevent accidents due to a sense of entitlement. But it only really works in certain situations, mainly involving 'last mile' traffic close to people's destination. Long haul routes cannot be designed this way.
Resurrecting an old discussion?
I think I said all that is necessary at the time.
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"Honey, the car is making that weird screeching noise again; I told you not to take the route with all the crosswalks!"
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Cyclist-pedestrian accidents might not be as bad as cyclist/car, but they'd be a lot more frequent. Frequent enough that biking just wouldn't be worth it, and if bicyclists persisted would just get banned (as they are in NYC). Cyclists (especially individual cyclists, or small groups in single file) are not a major problem for drivers if they don't want to be, and one of my problems with bike activists is they often want to be (e.g. they object to cars passing them without giving them a full lane. My ass isn't 8 feet wide, you don't need to give me a full lane, just don't pass so close the breeze threatens to knock me over)
Do you think the total damage to life and limb would go up or down? I strongly believe it would go down.
In areas where the slowest transport method has enough political power they can just ban all other transport methods in their space. And they are likely to want to ban faster transport methods first. Imagine if cyclists outnumbered cars ten to one. They'd probably just lobby to ban cars.
If some space must be carved out of somewhere for the sake of cyclists, I think sidewalk space should be carved out before street space. And that cyclists should be held to sidewalk rules rather than street rules, since they can more easily follow sidewalk rules.
In the Netherlands, there are a lot of non-urban bicycle paths which are also used by pedestrians, runners, etc. This is generally fine (although pedestrians behave more poorly than cyclists), since the paths are suitable for cycling speeds and nicely flat.
I think that sidewalk rules are worse to cyclists than a 10-20 mph zone is to drivers. At least the drivers get decent roads in that case.
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Bicycles are far more efficient than cars
By moving people from cars to bikes saves a tonne of space. One of the main problems in cities is that too much space is taken by cars which makes the city spread out and hostile to walking and cycling. This also makes public transit hard as people don't want to walk to it. When everything is spread out walking, cycling and public transit doesn't work well.
I'm fine with motorcycles being on the road. They would share most of the efficiency gains of size with bicycles, without as much of the discrepancy in capabilities.
I've also been to cities in India. As insane as they are about safety I still didn't really see human powered bicycles on the road all that much.
They were generally far denser than western cities. And the cities were not originally created with cars in mind. They still had plenty of cars.
The reason is pretty straightforward: cars are a clearly superior product in terms of travel comfort and safety.
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It would go down (if enforced) because there wouldn't be any significant amount of biking any more. Which makes it a really dumb idea from the viewpoint of a bicyclist.
I just don't believe that cyclists are such huge divas that they will take a slightly worse experience for a significant improvement in personal safety. If they feel that way why do any of them wear helmets? That is also a comfort vs safety tradeoff, and everyone has seemingly been fine with that mandated tradeoff. Why not this one?
Riding on the sidewalk is not a "slightly worse experience". It's a plain awful experience.
Where I live it is an objectively better experience than being on the roads if you care at all about personal safety.
What are your specific objections to sidewalks? And could either of those objections be solved by:
Until someone else pointed it out I had no idea just how fast cyclists expected to be able to go on their preferred pathway. I'll admit I have little tolerance for this complaint since they would happily have all drivers significantly slow down to accommodate them.
Unless your roads are unpaved, I do not believe that.
Yes, one of the whole points of a bicycle is to go significantly faster than walking. Last week I was out on my bicycle (on the roads) and averaged 16mph, with a top speed of over 40mph (downhill). Even 16mph is considerably faster than is practical on a sidewalk. When I was going slow, cars mostly passed me with no issues ("mostly" because there's often someone timid who will hang back when there's plenty of room to pass safely). When I was going down that hill, the cars were hung up behind a slow truck so I was actually going faster.
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, I would not, and I object to the bicyclist-activists when they make these demands. If you want to go out on the road and have your bicycle be a vehicle, you have to accept the ordinary risks of doing so.
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At least where I live, sidewalks are designed to move people at a walking pace. Even running is sometimes a bit hard! They have sharp corners, frequent low hanging branches, sometimes steps, and nobody bothers to fix discontinuities of a few inches. It works on a bike if you're going real slowly, but part of the general complaint here is that "bike speed" is pretty varied between kids with training wheels and spandex-clad roadies that are closer to car speeds.
Yes, speed is exactly the problem.
If the posted speed limit is higher than a vehicle's maximum speed than it is dangerous for that vehicle to be there. Most vehicles in most circumstances travel much slower than their maximum speed.
I think bicycles should be expected to slow down on dangerous areas of a sidewalk, just like cars are expected to slow down in dangerous areas or when the speed limit is reduced.
Speed limit signs on sidewalks would be much cheaper to implement than bike lanes.
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According to the AASHTO Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities: A bicyclist has actual width of 2.5 feet, minimum operating width of 4 feet, and preferred operating width of 5 feet. A shoulderless lane needs to be at least 14 feet wide for a motor vehicle to pass a cyclist with an "adequate and comfortable clearance" of 3 feet, without encroaching into the next lane.
According to the AASHTO Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets: Passenger cars are 7 feet wide, and trucks are 8 to 8.5 feet wide. The standard lane width is 12 feet, going down to a minimum of 9 feet on lower-volume roads.
There just isn't enough room.
There's plenty of room. First of all, AASHTO is overly conservative; one must deal in reality, not ideals. Second of all, encroaching into the next lane is usually acceptable too.
The danger is stupid drivers who think that there is room when there isn't, and when they have a choice between hitting a car (low chance of injury) or the cyclist, they plow into the cyclist.
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Sidewalks are legal to ride on in most municipalities. They're terrible to ride on. I don't know why you believe relegating cyclists to sidewalks would prevent accidents with vehicles - sidewalks cross intersections with less visibility than roadways and most accidents are at intersections.
If you just want cyclists to stop their stupid hobby, you should say that rather than proposing a solution that's obviously unworkable and that you've apparently been told is unworkable by cyclists.
It’s not a stupid hobby, however it’s stupid to think that you can ride a vehicle that goes 15 mph on public roads without being at risk. At least with a sidewalk or a separate path, you’re not blocking cars.
Why would a cyclist care about that? This is like trying to convince a Democrat to emigrate, so Republicans can govern the US as they want.
And cars block other cars quite a lot, so by your reasoning, people should stop driving and walk instead (which has the minimum amount of blockage).
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I don't find sidewalks to be that terrible to ride on. It is certainly far less scary than riding on the road worrying about cars that might come kill me. And intersections are currently very dangerous because cyclist are on the road, not on the sidewalks.
This is bad discussion.
No, they're dangerous because you're not easily visible when cars are turning. This is true even at running speeds and would be dramatically worse at cycling speed.
It's just very difficult to believe that you have any meaningful cycling experience to draw from here.
They are far more visible than pedestrians that can effectively disappear behind street light poles.
The world is not gonna be perfectly safe in any circumstances, I don't believe I claimed that anywhere. I'll repeat what I asked Nybler: do you think the total cost to life and limb would be lower or higher? I strongly believe it would be lower.
Again, bad discussion. What exactly do you think happens if we go down this dick measuring contest path?
I say I have X experience. You say "I don't believe it". I say what experience do you have. You say XYZ experience. I say "I don't believe it". One of us doxes ourselves to provide evidence and win an internet argument?
And is this a general principle you support or are you just pulling it out to win this specific argument? Do you think white people shouldn't say much on this forum when some black person complains about racism?
Experience is a form of appeal to authority. Authority requires identity. There is little real life identity on this forum. Calling for someone to have some specific experience and then questioning it when they say they have the experience is either you having terrible debate hygiene and low awareness of how this forum works. Or its trolling, since it seems perfectly designed to antagonize.
I say that it's hard to believe you have meaningful cycling experience not to "win" but because I simply cannot imagine that someone that has that has put in significant mileage at any reasonably decent pace could come to the belief that being on the sidewalk is a good idea for cyclists. If I'm wrong, OK, it is what it is, I guess, that is a bit of a showstopper.
Drawing from personal experience is relevant in this context because the suggestion is something that anyone could easily go try out for themselves. Try it out! Go out, head over to the sidewalk, crank it up to ~18 MPH, and see if it doesn't seem like absolutely deranged behavior that's going to end with a broken wrist or collarbone in short order. Sidewalks aren't smooth, they aren't wide, pedestrians are frequent and not attentive, road-crossing have low visibility for turning vehicles, and so on. On surface streets in cities, the speed of a bike is closer to cars than pedestrians by a pretty significant margin.
I'm going to abandon this one because the topic is genuinely infuriating to me for whatever reason. I find it hard to not be insulting and that's just not great.
Well, obviously biking at high speeds is deranged behavior for the sidewalk. Biking at those same speeds is also deranged behavior on a road where cars are easily doubling your speed.
Unless you are just banning cars and making the streets for bikes (ive been to a Greek Island that does this) they just exist as an oddity that is discordant with the rest of traffic around them. They are a menace for the same reason your mother in law that insists on going 55 in the left lane on the highway because its the limit is a menace, just orders of magnitude more, particularly to themselves.
Different speeds of vehicles should not be on the same road, whether it is called a road or a sidewalk or a grocery store aisle (slow walkers should have to finish before 9AM).
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I don't live in a dense urban area. There are dedicated bike and pedestrian paths in my area. When traveling between the pedestrian paths I'm generally taking it slow on sidewalks that are mostly unused by pedestrians, because the area is otherwise dominated by cars. The few pedestrians around are often the homeless.
My other main experience with cycling is on a university campus. Which is full of people and obstacles.
I'm not a super cyclist, and I've never done it as a commute, but my experience is not zero.
Complaining that you can't go over 15mph is like people complaining they can't drive 40mph in a neighborhood. The solution is to drive slower and more cautiously.
In general there are going to be tradeoffs with various solutions. I have a personal strong preference for safety in all parts of my life. If I was forced to ride a bicycle everywhere I'd generally choose to ride slowly on the sidewalk.
Since I'm not forced to do that I instead drive in a car, and I will never ride a motorcycle.
Two wheeled vehicles are just inherently dangerous, and I sometimes think it's insane that any of them are allowed on roadways with how much the government and culture profess to value safety over peoples personal preferences.
I used to cycle on a university campus too. I cycled on the campus roads, mostly, taking to the paths (much slower, obviously, or walking it in many cases because pedestrian traffic was heavy) only when the roads didn't go to the building entrance (often there was no road path to an entrance open for students). If I'd had to stick to the paths the whole time, there would have been no point in cycling, because it would have been too slow (and it was a big campus).
People in cars do 40mph in neighborhoods all the time. Including neighborhood residents who whine about others doing it.
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I’ll put myself out there, I think somewhere around on this forum I’m on record for having been a bike commuter for five years. I only stopped because it was no longer feasible due to a job change.
My typical route was always a mixture of road / bike lane / sidewalk. The last 30% of my commute was sidewalk, I could have rode on the roads but it was much more efficient in terms of time / energy to go sidewalk because of the specific circumstances of my commute.
I rode to work rain or shine, even in the snow and ice. Where I live is all four seasons, so inclement weather took all forms for me. I sometimes worked odd hours so I’d often be riding home in the dead of night.
Riding on the sidewalk was perfectly fine, to me it was not any less pleasant than riding on the road.
A few caveats;
1.) I rode a mountain bike. An entry level one from a good company, so not expensive but not super cheap either.
2.) The area I lived in was technically urban due to density but you would like conceive it as a “dense suburb”.
3.) The sidewalks were mostly well maintained. Some were wide, some we’re narrow.
4.) Pedestrian traffic was modest.
I think these caveats boost rather than detract the pro-sidewalk argument, however; wide, well maintained sidewalks are perfectly fine to ride on as long as you don’t have a bike literally only designed to ride on motorways.
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It takes great patience and forbearance in trying to be a pro-cycling activist because my natural urge is to call everyone who opposes me fat. In my experience of real-life community meetings about bike lanes it is almost always the case that the concerned party is some flavour of overweight if not obese.
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I think the main argument against this is that it transfers the risk from the cyclists to the pedestrians. Bikes on the road have to be careful to avoid being hit by cars. Put the bikes on sidewalks, and it's mostly pedestrians who have to be careful to avoid being hit by bikes. (Collisions with pedestrians can also hurt the cyclist, but the main danger is to the pedestrians.) And pedestrians would include children, old people, handicapped people, etc.
Realistically, cyclists on sidewalks would probably be at least as, if not more, contemptuous of pedestrian safety as drivers are of cyclist safety.
Entities travelling at variable speeds is going to cause someone some risk somewhere.
I don't pretend that the risk goes away.
Still, I think the best way to split up travelling entities is based on the existence of a motor.
Motors generally behave the same. They are good for constant speed. They can quickly and repeatedly reach their maximum speed. They perform at the same level until they are out fuel.
Human powered transport generally behaves the same. Momentum is important, so stopping is bad. They cannot quickly and repeatedly reach a maximum speed from a stopped position (unless they are world class athletes). They are not good at maintaining a constant speed, except very very low speed.
I don't think it is hard for bikes and pedestrians to share space. There is a paved nature trail near my house it's commonly just bikes and people walking/running. They get along fine. I've been both a walker and bike rider on the trail. Neither have been a problem. Even when it gets pretty crowded.
My experience with Bikers on hiking trails hasn't been pleasant. The bikers "claimed" a hiking route in a park near me (ie they put up a handmade sign indiciating that one of the parallel paths were for bikers only). This was in spite of signage placed at the entrance to the park indicating the paths were shared and that bikers had to yield to hikers.
I ran into one on the "bikers" path and I thought we were going to have a fist fight when he got uppity about me being in his way. He was threatening and stated it was for my own good that I stay off this route.
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New law: A bicyclist is permitted to ride on sidewalks, but must dismount whenever a pedestrian is within a certain distance in front of him. (I don't know what a good distance would be. Maybe twenty feet (six meters).)
At least under current Austin law, "Riding a bicycle or micromobility device on a sidewalk is allowed, in a reasonable and prudent manner", so long as it does "not impede or obstruct pedestrian traffic on sidewalk paths."
This is fairly critical in a city with some nice bike paths that can in some cases be only accessed via 45mph roads, because too many car drivers can't be trusted with safety.
This sounds like it would be a great law, except that too many bicycle riders can't be trusted with safety (particularly the ones who you'd need to follow the law), and enforcement wouldn't fix that because too many police departments can't be trusted with safety.
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