No Infrastructure for You!

If you peruse almost any online article dealing with cycling in any form, you will undoubtedly come across cries from bike-haters along the lines of, "cyclists don't deserve better infrastructure until they follow the rules", usually with more cursing and bad grammar and often wishes of bodily harm. It's hard to know where to start dissecting such arguments, so I'll just deal with one aspect here: if you want to make this argument, we should hold car drivers to the same standard. Therefore, I propose that nationwide we make absolutely no improvements to roads until all road users follow all the rules.

That I-5 bridge over the Skagit River that recently collapsed? Sorry, we can't fix it until no drivers in Washington are pulled over for speeding. If no drivers in Washington are pulled over for traffic violations for one month, then they can begin work to repair the bridge. That resurfacing taking place on the road down the street from you? Nope, can't finish it until no one in your city is seen double-parked or on their phones while driving. These are of course absurd suggestions, as are those that cyclists don't deserve better infrastructure because some cyclists don't follow all rules.

The worst part of this situation is that many cyclists don't meticulously follow the rules exactly because of bad infrastructure and out-dated laws. Many cities are finally investing in bike infrastructure and have seen fantastic gains in their cycling rates. This is great news for those cities, their cyclists, and their citizens in general for all the great reasons I won't detail here. However, much of this improvement is happening in a highly piece-meal fashion and because of this, what starts as a good or great bike facility can suddenly vanish before your eyes, dumping you into the middle of a street crowded with speeding traffic. For many people, this event is enough to even keep them from riding, but for many others, it just encourages them to hop up on the sidewalk where they feel relatively safer (though many studies show you're actually at a much higher accident risk while on the sidewalk, but that's another story).

I'm not advocating that this is alright, but I certainly understand this behavior from less-confident or fit cyclists. If you're new to cycling in an urban environment (and often even when you've been riding in one for some time) there are situations with speeding, impatient, inattentive drivers that can be downright terrifying. One particular spot where this occurs is on King St. in San Francisco, between 2nd and 3rd. In this spot, Diana Sullivan was killed earlier this year when the bike lane she was riding on vanished and she was then hit by a cement truck. As can be seen in the Google Maps screenshot below, this lane just ends (the dashed line is the last breath of it, move around Streetview to see more of the location) with a small sign and one sharrow on the roadway ahead to give any indication of what's going on. I've ridden through this spot many times myself and while pretty confident on my bike around cars, I always leave this spot with an adrenaline high and a deep breath, because you without fail are dealing with impatient, speeding cars - speaking of, it would be great if the SFPD actually enforced speed limits on the Embarcadero instead of pointlessly harassing cyclists!

Dangerous gaps in bike infrastructure like the one detailed above only serve to encourage "bad" behavior among cyclists while making conditions dangerous and frustrating for both cyclists and drivers. So to all the cycle-haters out there; no, "scofflaw" cyclists don't mean that there shouldn't be improvements made to cycling infrastructure - it means quite the opposite! If there were more continuous, protected cycletracks, people would be much less likely to ride on the sidewalk. If you reform laws that force cyclists to conform to car-centric rules, again, cyclists would be far less likely to break them (allow stopping and proceeding if safe at red lights and treating stop signs as yields, both of which most cyclists do very safely already). The more common and safe-feeling that cycling becomes, the less it will carry an "outlaw" feel to it and cyclists will encourage better behavior among each other as well!