If you’re a cyclist, you may be getting a link to this article by Robert Sullivan in the New York Times:
Says Sullivan:
For biking to make it to the next level, for bikes to be completely accepted as the viable form of city transportation that they are, bikers must switch sides. They must act like people and stop acting like cars.
Which brings me to four sure-to-be-scoffed-at suggestions for better bike P.R.:
NO. 1: How about we stop at major intersections? …
NO. 2: How about we ride with traffic as opposed to the wrong way on a one-way street? …
NO. 3: How about we stay off the sidewalks? …
NO. 4: How about we signal? …
Sullivan is speaking as a cyclist, an advocate and a visionary:
Maybe I have been hit too hard by cars while biking, but I foresee a time when my street will be filled with bicycles, when streets will have car lanes and when bike lanes will be transformed into bike-only streets …
If you want an even larger perspective, then you have to go to (of course) Portland, and pick up this recent book by Jeff Mapes, a senior political reporter for The Oregonian:
Pedalling Revolution is a book on the bike advocacy movement and how it’s changing American cities. (Available here.)
“A growing number of Americans, mounted on their bicycles like some new kind of urban cowboy, are mixing it up with swift, two-ton motor vehicles as they create a new society on the streets. They’re finding physical fitness, low-cost transportation, environmental purity—and, still all too often, Wild West risks of sudden death or injury.”
That’s what the Burrard Bridge debate will be about in part: cycling for cowboys (or as Gil Penalosa said, kamikazes), or cycling for (as Mary Sherlock said) the Kitsilano mother who wants to cycle safely, slowly to the Aquatic Centre with her two kids.
I find this debate hits me quite close to home. I like riding with the cars. My girlfriend hates it, and likes riding on the canal paths (in Ottawa) where there is no traffic.
I think there are more people like her than like me, and that is why we need dedicated cycling routes to get past the 2 or 3% who use bikes for everyday needs (just look at Copenhagen or Amsterdam)
I have often complained to cyclists travelling on sidewalks crowded with pedestrians, pushing their bikes aggressively through crowded transit stations, or roaring at full throttle through a crosswalk while people are walking there, missing them by a foot or two. They don’t react positively at all. Most swear or give finger. One even pursued me and threatened violence, and he wasn’t kidding! They very plainly feel they are entitled to do whatever they do in exchange for cycling rather than driving.
When I mention this to leaders of local cycling organizations, they all just brush it off as such a tiny minority as not to be worth mentioning. Quit your whining is the response. Another sense of entitlement, perhaps explaining why so many cyclists could care less what risk they pose to pedestrians.
Complaining to cycling organizations about rogue cyclists is akin to complaining to the BCAA about rogue drivers. What do you want them to do about it?
What do I want them to do, Sungsu? Several things, as you would expect.
First, and most important, stop defending these people with a mixture of silence and lame excuses. Secondly, actively educate their members about safety around and courtesy towards pedestrians. Finally, they should have the courage to publicly advocate for active policing of cyclists in areas where pedestrians are about in large numbers. No need to ticket a cyclist riding on a deserted sidewalk, but one riding up a crowded sidewalk should be facing at least a one hundred dollar fine.
You mentioned BCAA. Does BCAA make excuses for people with bad driving records? Does it publicly take the position that most drivers going 50km over the speed limit, or cruising through crowded cross walks, are just understandably frustrated people and we just have to give them a break?
No bike organization I know defends rogue cyclists. The bike organizations I know offer cycling safety courses for adults and children, and want better enforcement of ALL road users. Check out http://www.vacc.bc.ca/who_we_are/