Location: a commuter city, sidewalks rarely used in AM, not much usage in PM.
My commute is 80% private paths, and 20% on a road in the city. I've seen a lot of cars crossing the bike lane and I've only been biking for 2 weeks.
If it's a sidewalk along, say, fenced-in land with no driveways, risks are much lower. But cross intersections at pedestrian speed.
This is a pretty decent website: http://bicyclesafe.com/#crosswalk
That said, investigate what off-road trails and even parking lot/park cutoffs you can find to keep off suburban arterials for as much of the commute as you can.
i've experienced hundreds of dangerous near collisions with high speed bicyclists as a pedestrian in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities.
it's possible to do serious damage by colliding with a pedestrian, particularly if that person is elderly. for such a person, a fall can result in a major bone fracture -- not something easy to recover from.
please keep in mind that pedestrians have no other option but sidewalks. if bicyclists use sidewalks heavily enough, they will take away everyone's ability to engage in a very low-pollution form of transportation.
also, some people have no other choice but to be pedestrians, so bicyclists on sidewalks literally eliminate the primary transportation option for some members of society.
finally, i'll point out that most mass transit riders are pedestrians for part of their journey. so bicyclists on sidewalks make mass transit participation more risky and thus raise its economic cost.
Bikes are in an unenviable position where they're not quite pedestrians but not quite vehicles, and there are few specific protections for them. They're often forced to ride on the road with the flow of traffic, while pedestrians are either off the side of the road facing towards traffic where they can see oncoming cars, or better yet are separated from vehicle traffic by a curb, a greenway, and have several feet of concrete to stick to. Bikes don't have any of that protection 99% of the time.
Riding on the sidewalks is a very attractive proposition when the alternative is riding 15mph on a road with no shoulder surrounded by cars going 45mph. I'm not saying cyclists should ride on sidewalks as is, but I fully support making sidewalks into multi-purpose trails where they can accommodate both pedestrians and cyclists. Cyclists should not be forced onto dangerous roads.
Mixed use paths are only safe if the cyclists are leisurely riding. Cyclists at speed sharing a path with pedestrians are quite dangerous. Pedestrians are rarely paying attention and will wander directly in front of cyclists. Being on a "sidewalk" is also quite dangerous to cyclists if the trail ever intersects car traffic, and it will if useful for commuting.
The solution is not to put cyclists on pedestrian paths but to make bike paths in the road safer. Part of this is infrastructure. Part of this is building slower roads. Much of it is culture as drivers need to do a better job of being safe with cyclists.
Again cyclists take the blame for all of the problems, while still not being provided with any solutions. Pedestrians often have headphones in and can't hear bikes, but if bikers are wearing headphones they're told how dangerous it is for them. Pedestrians weave side to side making it hard to pass, but bikes are expected to keep a perfectly straight line when riding on often rough roads. Pedestrians often have almost perfect maneuverability due to their low speed and ability to step sideways out of danger, but bikes are to blame if they can't stop or jump sideways at a moment's notice. Pedestrians can often step to the grass to get our of danger, while many road bikes could suffer damage to their wheels (or rider) if they left the paved surface.
The problem with putting in separate bike paths is now we have three different road systems sharing the space, which in cities is often limited and in rural areas is economically unfeasible to maintain. And it still doesn't solve the problem of cross streets, which both pedestrians and cyclists suffer from at the hands of motorists.
Maybe the answer is to draw a line down the sidewalk to indicate to pedestrians and cyclists that they need to stay to the right (or left depending on country) so faster modes of transport can safely pass. Maybe we should enforce a speed limit on bikes in certain areas. But all of the problems pedestrians face at the hands of cyclists, cyclists face against motor vehicles, but the danger is far greater. Getting hit at 45mph while you're riding at 10mph is a lot different than being hit while walking by a bike going 10mph.
Drivers hate bike. Pedestrians hate bikes. Competitive cyclists hate recreational bikers. Recreational bikers hate speed demon bikers. I don't know, maybe the solution is banning bicycles. Seems that would make everyone else happy, wouldn't it?
Unfortunately, "everyone just do a better job" is generally a failing strategy. This is also the problem with getting drivers to do a better job. They just won't, at least not without a lot of effort.
> Again cyclists take the blame for all of the problems, while still not being provided with any solutions....
That's because cyclists are the problem. All the things you describe about pedestrians apply only because bikes showed up on sidewalks. Pedestrians weaving side to side and wearing headphones are only safety issues if fast-moving vehicles are sharing the path. It's not that pedestrians are immune from fault. Pedestrians who wander into traffic randomly are considered at fault. But they aren't at fault for acting like pedestrians on a pedestrian path. We don't put cars and pedestrians onto shared paths and then expect pedestrians to walk in perfectly straight lines to allow cars zip past them at 20mph.
And there is a solution for cycling, which is to make roads safer for cyclists. There are lots of ways to do that. There isn't a lack of ability, but a lack of will and funding.
> The problem with putting in separate bike paths is now we have three different road systems sharing the space, which in cities is often limited and in rural areas is economically unfeasible to maintain. And it still doesn't solve the problem of cross streets, which both pedestrians and cyclists suffer from at the hands of motorists.
Yeah, it's tough to share the space efficiently. Dumping the problem on pedestrians doesn't fix it, though.
Pedestrians also don't have as much of a cross-street problem as cyclists. This is a place where pedestrians tend to pay attention and cars tend to look for them. Cyclists have a much bigger problem because 1) cars aren't looking for fast-moving vehicles on the sidewalk half a block away, 2) cyclists can't stop at a moment's notice when they realize the car isn't going to stop.
> Maybe the answer is to draw a line down the sidewalk to indicate to pedestrians and cyclists that they need to stay to the right (or left depending on country) so faster modes of transport can safely pass.
This doesn't generally work. Pedestrians will cross the line whenever it's convenient to do so, or if they're not paying attention, or whatever. You could maybe make it work by making it extremely wide, but then you might as well have separate paths and physical barrier between them.
> Maybe we should enforce a speed limit on bikes in certain areas.
Good luck with that. Most bikes don't have speedometers and in any event, the safe speed on a shared path is far slower than most cyclists want to travel, namely jogging speed.
> But all of the problems pedestrians face at the hands of cyclists, cyclists face against motor vehicles, but the danger is far greater. Getting hit at 45mph while you're riding at 10mph is a lot different than being hit while walking by a bike going 10mph.
That doesn't mean that dumping the problem on pedestrians is a good tradeoff. Not only do mixed-use paths put pedestrians at higher risk, they still put cyclists at risk (possibly worse risk, due to the intersection problem), and they frustrate both cyclists and pedestrians. It's not a good solution for anyone except leisurely cyclists who can frankly cycle on sidewalks today and it's fine.
Also, bikes are often going faster than 10mph.
Again I'm not saying that bikes on sidewalks is a good idea. But it's a hell of a lot better of an idea than bikes on roads. You can make up a million reasons why it won't work, but all of them are overshadowed by the huge amounts of cyclists who get killed or seriously injured by motorists every year.
How many cyclists need to be killed because pedestrians don't want to have to walk in a straight line?
If your only solution to the problem is to blame pedestrians for not walking in straight lines then you have no practical suggestions and you're no better than the people you say just blame cyclists. Pedestrians will not suddenly become vigilant as they walk, nor should they. Sidewalks exist specifically so that pedestrians have a safe place to walk.
Edit: Just for fun...
> Again I'm not saying that bikes on sidewalks is a good idea. But it's a hell of a lot better of an idea than bikes on roads. You can make up a million reasons why it won't work, but all of them are overshadowed by the huge amounts of motorcyclists who get killed or seriously injured by motorists every year.
On a road, you have room to intuitively swing out and away when approaching a "blind corner": a situation where a car might emerge, where visibility is bad (tall fence, bushes, whatever). You glance over your shoulder or into your rear-view mirror, then pull out into the road more to be seen sooner if a car pops up.
Cycling on a sidewalks with the same safety as on the road requires you to slow down to an almost complete stop at any driveway, alley, or street where visibility is bad; you're taking a big hit in your travel time.
The surface of sidewalks is often not of the same quality as that of the road; sidewalks are not suitable for cycling at 30 km/h and above, even when you have a decent stretch of side walk to be able to do that safely. Sidewalks are often concrete slabs with gaps between them and misaligned.
Maybe we have this disagreement because I live in a rural/suburban area and not in a major city, so I see recreational bicycles on sidewalks all the time and there is no infrastructure for bikes other than a single straight-line MUP. And on long uphill sections where my speed dips down to 5mph, fuck yeah I'm getting on the sidewalk. I'd be insane not to. 90% of the car/bike accidents in my area are on normal stretches of road, not at intersections. The driver just doesn't see the bike, or thinks he's given the biker enough room but hasn't.
Pedestrians won't become vigilant. Neither will cars. Neither will bikers. So the answer is just let cyclists die so one of the more important groups of people don't have to be slightly inconvenienced.
I appreciate the conversation we've had today, and I'm glad the task of solving this problem isn't left to the two of us.
Your speed limit suggestion isn't bad, it's just not really actionable. Making bikes travel at or close to pedestrian speed would make cycling useless to most serious cyclists. And if you set the speed limit far higher than pedestrians, it does nothing for safety. Then of course there's the problem of enforcement. Given the general ineffectiveness of speed limit enforcement for cars, I'm doubtful. And as you noted, bikes already legally have to follow the posted speed limit, and when it's inconvenient (i.e. long downhill stretches with 30mph limits), they don't, and it's generally unenforced.
But yes, if you live in a rural area, the calculation is probably different for you. Sparsely-used sidewalks/MUPs are in general safer than heavily-used MUPs. A MUP with good visibility and few users can be shared with relative safety, especially if there is a safe "shoulder" to veer onto and no blind intersections. My sidewalks are crowded with pedestrians and littered with intersections for streets, alleys, and driveways, all of which make cyclists on the sidewalks less safe than the roads where cars are driving 30mph (ish). And yeah, if your speed drops to 5mph, I have no problem with you chugging along on the sidewalk, even in the city (though you still need to watch out for pedestrians, and you'd probably find it's not worth the hassle). At that point you're pedestrian speed. I am surprised that most of the accidents in your area are on straight sections of road, though. I'm pretty sure the majority of accidents involving cyclists in Seattle are at intersections of some sort.
I appreciate the conversation, too.
That said, the missing component in this discussion is that there are some cities - like Tampa - that are so horrible for biking and walking that the risk of riding on the sidewalk is lower, and there aren't any pedestrians anyway.
Biker wasnt in sight.