Re:When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
by dmm on Tuesday September 26, 2017 @01:18PM
(#15340674)
> they should absolutely walk their bikes.
In many places of the US you have sidewalks built because they were mandated by law but are rarely used.
A typical example will have a 4-lane 45+mph road next to big box retail stores. This type of road is unpleasant to bike on but the adjoining sidewalk is empty and, assuming it has sufficient visibility to allow the cyclist to avoid left and right hooks, is much safer than the road.
NYC is a fascinating and important place but for better or worse is very different from the typical US city.
Re:When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Taxis in New York City
by imgabe on Tuesday September 26, 2017 @03:46PM
(#15341936)
> It's what the law says
The law varies city by city. Where I live bikes are prohibited from the sidewalk only in the downtown area and it's legal elsewhere. Not that it stops anyone from biking on the sidewalk even downtown or that it ever gets enforced.
As both a biker and a pedestrian in NYC, this seems so glaringly obvious that it never fails to make me angry when I see a biker blithely biking down the sidewalk. In a city of impatient people riding your bike on the sidewalk is taking things to an anti-social extreme.
That said, I do find it frustrating (as both a biker and a pedestrian) when pedestrians fail to yield to bikers when the biker has the light -- New York pedestrians are opportunistic jaywalkers by nature, but so many people fail to look for bikes or yield to them, even when they have the light, if the street is clear of car traffic.