I spent this past weekend in Oceanside or Oside if you are a short Hispanic guy that wants it tattooed on your chest or a local. I went to Oceanside. KB grew up inland and many of her high school friends are still in the area. Meaning that we spent the weekend on the beach and hanging out with people who I don’t really know. One thing is for sure, I did not ride a bike or my bike or any bikes the entire time I was there.
I did, however, see many people doing just that. On the beach, I saw every iteration of cyclists except the mountain variety. There were cruisers galore, Bike Shaped Objects hobbled together with bailing wire, TT bikes complete with aero helmets, regular road bikes and anything else in between that I may have forgotten. All of these cyclists were on the road trying to dodge parked cars and pedestrians on roads that were lined on both sides with cars. These streets were also being constantly trafficked by automobiles. I saw close calls. I saw some anger at the situation.
The situation as it exists in most places within the US is that cars that are huge, way bigger than they need to be to carry their payload that travel at speeds up to 80 mph are required to use and share the same space that pedestrians and cyclists use. This has been the main stay of transportation development since the automobile took over the fight for paved roads that cyclists had started well over a century ago.
There is an obvious dominant user, the four-wheel pollution spewing coffin known as an automobile. Cars require a lot of space, fairly smooth surfaces that allow them to travel as quickly as possible. Anything that gets in the way of those two things causes traffic, frustration and anger. This anger is so prevalent we created a term to describe the phenomena, Road Rage. Think about that, we made up a phrase for the fact that when people get in their cars they turn into ass holes. (For sake of my argument, cars includes all motor vehicles)
Then there’s cyclists. We are small. Our vehicle weighs somewhere between 15 and 35 pounds. We take up no more space than a person standing. And the big one, we don’t tend to travel at more than 20 mph. Of course, there are also pedestrians which are even more problematic for the mix of traffic as they take up the same space as a cyclist but never move faster than 5 mph.
Now take all those vastly different user groups, all entitled by law to use the road way and tell them to share.
And just to make this as real life as possible, don’t forget that the dominant user group also has to have a place to park their monstrosities which, in most cases means that they will be taking up a good chunk of the roadway for the vehicles even when they aren’t being used. Yup, there’s a big piece of the use pie going to vehicles that aren’t even moving. Think about it. Unless the city street is highly trafficked, there will be a line of cars on both sides sitting, doing nothing more than waiting to be used and yet are given the right to take up that public space.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel confident in the general population having any semblance of the concept of sharing. Not to bring up even heavier things, but just take a look at world politics right now. We tell our kids to share and then in real life whoever is the biggest, meanest and wealthiest just takes what they want any way. Sharing is a dead idea. The time used trying to engrain the concept in children is mostly wasted.
This is all too clear partly in thanks to social media. It’s pretty easy for some jack ass behind the wheel to spout off in Louis CK fashion about a cyclist being in “their” lane and send it out to thousands of other jack asses that “follow” that person.
I won’t bore you with the redundancy of those words that can be easily found everywhere. The point is that sharing the road isn’t a real solution. It’s one of those things that sounds good when we talk about how people should interact or how we would hope people would interact. Unfortunately, day to day use of the same roadway by all user groups just doesn’t make sense.
For cyclists, it puts our lives at danger. We have zero protection against automobiles and we see it every day that somewhere someone got smashed and killed because someone in a car wasn’t paying attention, got too close or happened to be typing out an email to a coworker.
And for motor vehicles, it’s just frustrating. Let’s be honest. I drive a car on occasion. I’ve owned one since I was 16. I know what it is like out there. When you are going 50 mph and there are cars lined up behind you on a two lane road with no shoulder and then there’s a cyclist. You have two options, hit the brakes and hope the guy behind you who is following too close doesn’t ram into you or you swerve into the other lane. The latter is only an option if there isn’t another car barreling toward you.
It just isn’t working.
The one thing I don’t understand, being both a motorist and a cyclist, is why anyone would be opposed to separate cycling infrastructure. Instead of expecting two completely different types of vehicles to interact on the same roadway, there should be two. Instead of bitching and moaning about cyclists being on the road why wouldn’t you work toward a solution that makes it so we aren’t expected to share? I do not understand why there isn’t a league of motorists advocating for additional infrastructure for bicycles because cyclists aren’t going away. In fact, our numbers are swelling.
P. L. and R.
