For years, it has been illegal to ride a bicycle on the busy sidewalks of West Hollywood, but with a recent increase in the number of cyclists on the roads, the city may lift the ban. This puts cyclists in a tough spot - many motorists see cyclists on roadways as a nuisance and would prefer them on the sidewalk, while pedestrians largely feel that bicycles on the sidewalk would pose a risk to their own safety.
Since I don’t live in the Los Angeles area, I won’t comment specifically on the local issue, but this seems to illustrate a recurring issue relating to the proper place for bicycles in urban life. While many states give bicyclists the same rights and responsibilities as motorists on most roadways, motorists often don’t know, or respect, this law.
Relegating bicycles to sidewalks, however, increases the risk of injury or death to both cyclists and pedestrians. Motorists need to pull out far enough from side streets and driveways to be able to properly observe traffic, and generally aren’t expecting anything moving as fast as a bicycle coming in from either side. Pedestrians leaving businesses, or stopping to talk or window shop can often create a hazardous obstacle course for a cyclist, even at slow speeds, in which the wrong move can ultimately end in injury.
Unfortunately, the injury is usually to the pedestrian, considering the weight and speed of a bicycle, and it is unreasonable, in my view, to expect pedestrians to navigate sidewalks - often unofficial centers of urban social and cultural life - as if they were roadways, looking out for bicycles that, at a relaxed pace, could be traveling 8-12 miles per hour. Certainly, a bicycle can go more slowly, but what about those for whom a bicycle is a primary mode of transportation?
The questions raised by the West Hollywood proposal seem endless, some unanswerable, and any possible answer tends to raise more questions. This is an issue which cannot be simply legislated away. Pedestrians rightly see sidewalk as the safe place to walk. Motorists frequently view the roadways as theirs alone. Cyclists are often caught in between, with no place to ride that is both safe and convenient for all parties. On both the road and the sidewalk cyclists are often seen as an annoyance or a hazard. Many motorists - most often the sole occupant of their vehicle - perceive cyclists as a traffic obstruction, rather part of the traffic itself, albeit in another form, and pedestrians shouldn’t be required to look out for bikes on those public ways designed specifically for walking.
It will take more than laws to solve this problem. It will take an improvements to the design of our cities so that we can all safely get from place to place on our chosen mode of transportation without risking our own or others’ safety, but more importantly it will take a fundamental shift in thinking about local transportation to a mindset that is willing to accept that a city should enable it citizens to be mobile and productive without relying on automobiles.
