Here in Minnesota it's common that suburban "subdivision" neighborhoods don't even have pedestrian sidewalks. And the inhabitants think that's a good thing. I cannot even.
Heck, you couldn't even get from the hotel to the adjacent office block without walking on the road, or cutting across scrub.
Santa Clara is only marginally better. However retrofitting cycle lanes is a much easier prospect than retrofitting sidewalks, and crossings.
Several people driving by stopped to ask: "Do you need help? Did your car break down?".
That's actually a known phenomenon. When drivers experience unusual situations (like roads without stripes down the middle), they're forced to pay much more attention to the actual act of driving.
For more, see here: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/to-make-ro...
Where I live (Finland), we have plenty of separate bike/pedestrian paths, so biking is overall nice, but not like Copenhagen which is a) completely flat and b) in a milder climate.
Drivers in Palo Alto kill pedestrians http://abc7news.com/news/driver-arrested-on-suspicion-of-fat...
Cyclists killed 1 pedestrian (in 2013) and injured 560 pedestrians for a mortality rate of .1%.
Drivers killed 326 pedestrians and injured 24411, a mortality rate of 1.3%.
Clearly bikers are killing pedestrians and are very dangerous.
See page 2 for source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2013-bicycle-crash...
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2012-bicycle-crash...
Bikes and pedestrians are harder to separate. Pedestrians can go everywhere, and especially tourists have a tendency to not watch out when they're crossing a bike path, or even stay on the bike path for no good reason.
The worst place is behind Central Station, where a heavy flow of pedestrians from the ferries and the station has to cross a continuous flow of bikes on the bike path, while bikes from the ferries try to merge into the already chaotic traffic. We really need a bridge or tunnel to keep bikes and pedestrians separate there.
And the inhabitants think that's a good thing.
The builder and the township planners made such a blunder with the neighborhood and no one seems to understand that things could have been done differently, or could even be fixed.
They also are miles from the nearest store and have no buses or transit options of any sort, so when a resident can no longer drive a car, they're simply stranded in their house. If a single widow for instance needs groceries and can't drive they're more or less screwed if someone doesn't stop by and help them out.
As someone who lives in the heart of the city I'm just baffled by how people are comfortable with this situation. It's infuriating how everyone just accepts it
Depending on where and when, sidewalks are optional for new subdivisions, and face a couple of dis-incentives: 1) You pay if the sidewalk in front of your house has to be repaired. 2) You have to shovel it.
So, there are seemingly new and nice subdivisions with no sidewalks. In addition, a lot of those neighborhoods are laid out with lots of twisty streets and cul-du-sacs that make it hard to get through by bike or on foot, so that bike commuters have to ride on the busy main roads.
Over here (Finland), it is very common that a road is cul-de-sac for motor vehicles but you can get through riding bike or on foot.
There is also a common traffic sign to indicate this, for instance here in my neighbourhood:
https://www.google.fi/maps/@60.2285087,24.7129127,3a,15y,347...
The top sign indicates "no parking zone", i.e. you cannot park at curb unless it is marked as a parking space. The next sign is 30 km/h area (maximum speed limit in the area, no need to put a separate speed limit sign on each street) The bottom one indicates that the road splits to cul-de-sacs for motor vehicles on left and right, but you can get through by bike. (Here it is misleading, you can get through also to the left, not just to the right).
This is common in USA if the cul-de-sac is a retrofit to a previously-through road. (If not by design, then in the breach, because someone has knocked a hole in the fence and it hasn't been fixed.) However, in the sorts of housing-only developments that have culs-de-sac designed in, the typical cul-de-sac is completely surrounded by houses with yards backed by other houses with yards, so there's nowhere to go.
Personally, I've never lived in such an environment, and when I've visited those who do it has driven me to distraction. You can't get anywhere directly! My impression is that this sort of development design is growing less popular, although maybe it's just that I more rarely visit people who live in such places.
But then that also stops e.g. children from moving about on their own in the neighbourhood.
Cyclists really benefit from a "network" of alternative routes that have low traffic, and what you describe in Finland is a great idea.
On the plus side nobody slips on the sidewalk!
We share a snowblower with our neighbor, but it takes a pretty good snowfall for the machine to be quicker than my shovel. The city plows the streets.
We don't ask people to shovel the roads.