Do you ever find yourself wondering, like me, if anyone ever considers the real needs of bicyclists?
I remember not too long ago reading an article which described how a lot of money was spent by researchers to discover that cross-walk lights don't stay on long enough for the average pedestrian to cross, let alone the much slower senior citizens. They should have saved that money to build a bike path, I could have given them the same information for free. From personal experience I know that I am barely able to step into the road, when the "DON'T WALK" sign lights up. In my mind I wonder if that warning reflects the opposing signal that the driver in the car sees as he guns his engine for the race to whatever all-important destiny the wayward pedestrian dares impede. Why isn't the light biased in favor of the pedestrian? Why do the pedestrians receive six seconds of safety while the vehicles receive one minute of passage? This needs to be changed. Why are the "STOP" signs on the Gainesville-Hawthorne trail directed at the bicyclists and not the automobile drivers? Shouldn't there, at least, be a requirement for the cars to ALSO stop?
We live in what is arguably one of the most bike friendly towns in the United States and quite possibly the world. But there are some serious deficiencies in the treatment of cyclists that decreases the likelihood that people will ride for recreation or commute in our town. In many places the roads are simply too narrow and congested to safely ride in the road with the impatience that so marks the perpetually angry portion of the automotive crowd. On a decent mountain bike or a fat-tired hybrid it is possible to navigate to any point in Gainesville using a combination of lightly traveled residential roads, bike paths, bike lanes and sidewalks, but in some places in our bike-friendly-town impediments exist even to this. I will ride the sidewalk happily, only to find a point where the sidewalk does not have a slope to the pavement, where having to jump up or down a curb produces a dangerous jolt to my normal ride bliss. Or it does have a slope, but the slope does not have any sort of alignment with the direction of travel on the sidewalk, requiring some tricky maneuvering to enter the pavement. Some places have concrete poles and other obstacles right in the middle of the sidewalk. And the buttons placed on street light posts often point in no particular direction and have no sign to indicate what road they are for. Then the button itself provides no indication whatever that it recognizes your existence. It doesn't click or beep to tell you it has taken your request, so you push it twenty times hoping it has responded to you, only to find, when the light changes, that it has not. To Gainesville's credit it is, at least, legal to use bicycles on the sidewalks in most of our fair town. Other towns are not nearly so kind to the two-wheeler.
I wonder if things would be different if most people rode in Yugos speed limited to 35 miles an hour required by law to ride only on the edge of the road while huge double-trailered semis skimmed by them at 100 miles an hour angrily honking their disapproval at the Yugo's presence. What if the Yugos were required to bounce over foot high obstacles mindlessly left in the path because the obstacles offered no problem for huge semis? Would the driving public tolerate it?
Actually I love Gainesville, for a lot of reasons, but largely because it IS bike friendly and generally getting better, in that regard, all the time. And most of the motorists in Gainesville are very courteous to bicyclists. But sometimes I wonder why bikes and pedestrians always seem to be an after thought in the transportation scheme big-picture. I wonder why so much time is spent, for instance, listening to the detractors of the Hogtown Greenway, when one barely hears a whisper in opposition to a new highway, or to plans to shove a road through a wooded area or expand a shopping mall. Go figure.
Well, that's the end of my whine session, I think I'll go have a glass of wine and write my congress-person a long letter. Maybe you could write one too.
Following winds, my friends,
Rob Wilt