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I have a very different experience than you. I ride or walk everywhere I go. Bikes may be slower than cars, but -- when they're being used for commuting, not t

I have a very different experience than you. I ride or walk everywhere I go. Bikes may be slower than cars, but -- when they're being used for commuting, not toodling around on a Sunday afternoon -- they are much, much faster than pedestrians. When I'm walking, I don't want bikes whizzing by me at three times my speed. When I'm biking, I don't want to be constantly worrying about people on foot -- or their kids, or their dogs -- suddenly stopping or changing direction without looking.

lkbm 6y ago
There's one bike-and-ped bridge I used to cross for work, and as a cyclist I did find pedestrians very annoying--they take 90 degree turns across the trail without looking at all -- but that's only one very crowded section. (and as a pedestrian, the cyclists were never a problem for me there.) But that's one crowded bridge. On most roads, people walking in the roads instead of the sidewalk wouldn't matter to me. You could 10x the number of pedestrians and it'd be fine in most of my city (Austin TX). Maybe that'd change if it were pedestrian-friendly and we ended up with 50x the number of people walking, but this is a problem I dream of.
egypturnash 6y ago
"having a bell, ringing it when you overtake pedestrians, and waving and saying thanks" helps from both sides of this, IMHO. Bonus points if you maybe holler "cute dog!", "great hat!", or some other compliment instead of "thanks!". I, too, ride or walk everywhere I go, and have several shared cyclist/pedestrian paths that I use a lot. My least favorite thing to encounter on the path, walking or riding, is that asshole with the multi-thousand-dollar racing bike and no bell who just blazes past me with no warning. Fuck that guy, "share the road" works both ways.
- wool_gather 6y ago
  Yeah, I will go out of my way to avoid shared paths, so I guess we just have different tolerances for these things. :) I do have a bell and a voice and I'm ready to use them if needed, but I'm happier when they're irrelevant. I take pedestrian priority and safety seriously when I'm riding (as I hope others do for me when I'm walking), so if I can ride in an area where I have less of that worry, I will.
sudosysgen 6y ago
I think you might underestimate how large streets are and overestimate the number of bikes and pedestrians.
- wool_gather 6y ago
  We're in the context of "no sidewalks" that the first post in this thread opened up.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Sure. Getting rid of sidewalks means that the entire street becomes a sidewalk. This means that traffic becomes much more distributed amongst parallel streets, and that pedestrian density drastically falls as a result by an order of magnitude or more. The result is that cohabitation between pedestrians and cyclists becomes much easier, as I have noticed when my city did exactly this as a result of the pandemic.

lkbm 6y ago

There's one bike-and-ped bridge I used to cross for work, and as a cyclist I did find pedestrians very annoying--they take 90 degree turns across the trail without looking at all -- but that's only one very crowded section. (and as a pedestrian, the cyclists were never a problem for me there.) But that's one crowded bridge. On most roads, people walking in the roads instead of the sidewalk wouldn't matter to me. You could 10x the number of pedestrians and it'd be fine in most of my city (Austin TX). Maybe that'd change if it were pedestrian-friendly and we ended up with 50x the number of people walking, but this is a problem I dream of.

egypturnash 6y ago

"having a bell, ringing it when you overtake pedestrians, and waving and saying thanks" helps from both sides of this, IMHO. Bonus points if you maybe holler "cute dog!", "great hat!", or some other compliment instead of "thanks!". I, too, ride or walk everywhere I go, and have several shared cyclist/pedestrian paths that I use a lot. My least favorite thing to encounter on the path, walking or riding, is that asshole with the multi-thousand-dollar racing bike and no bell who just blazes past me with no warning. Fuck that guy, "share the road" works both ways.

wool_gather 6y ago
Yeah, I will go out of my way to avoid shared paths, so I guess we just have different tolerances for these things. :) I do have a bell and a voice and I'm ready to use them if needed, but I'm happier when they're irrelevant. I take pedestrian priority and safety seriously when I'm riding (as I hope others do for me when I'm walking), so if I can ride in an area where I have less of that worry, I will.

sudosysgen 6y ago

I think you might underestimate how large streets are and overestimate the number of bikes and pedestrians.

wool_gather 6y ago
We're in the context of "no sidewalks" that the first post in this thread opened up.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Sure. Getting rid of sidewalks means that the entire street becomes a sidewalk. This means that traffic becomes much more distributed amongst parallel streets, and that pedestrian density drastically falls as a result by an order of magnitude or more. The result is that cohabitation between pedestrians and cyclists becomes much easier, as I have noticed when my city did exactly this as a result of the pandemic.