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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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