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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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