When I ride that segment, I control the lane. Motorists have been generally corteous with a couple of exceptions. The street is generally busy, and I try to ride fast through that section and get out of there as soon as I can.

I don’t know if my speed (+/- 20 mph) plays a factor in the motorists perceptions, but it surely helps me to just get out of that predicament fast.

“Speaking of engineers – I butt heads with them all the time so imagine my surprise to feel like I’m butting heads with my fellow cyclists too!”

Kevin’s comment:

I think that this is an internet phenomenon. In Real Life, although there are disagreements about priorities, utility cyclists are more-or-less all in agreement about where we should be going in terms of infrastructure, laws and public policy.

The same can be said for car advocates, who fairly consistently advocate for fully-segregated car infrastructure.

There are a few fringe issues that get the fringe worked up, like helmet laws, but my strategy is to simply ignore that issue.

Yvonne Bambrick, leader of the Toronto Cyclists Union, gives the example here by providing a bicycle safety video in which the subject of helmets is studiously ignored by her. See:

http://www.thestar.com/videozone/638869

Amusingly enough, The Star’s editors felt the need to put in a final slide after the video. I can just imagine the discussion in the editorial room…

“Speaking of engineers – I butt heads with them all the time so imagine my surprise to feel like I’m butting heads with my fellow cyclists too!”

Welcome to cyclist advocacy

But this isn’t butting heads. Check out the Chainguard listserve or the LCI listserve (that’s LCIs only). If you really want to beat your head against the wall – go to Bikeforums.net A&S forum.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/16/nyregion/average-traffic-speed-2.7-miles-per-hour.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Makes bicycles look speedy, doesn’t it?

“…a cyclist could never be considered “fast” when compared with a motor vehicle.”

Kevin’s comment:

Urban motor vehicle speeds in major cities average from 10-15 km/hr depending upon the city. I’ve seen numbers for London, England that show 19th century horse-drawn traffic was faster than motor vehicle traffic today.

A recent study of The Gardiner Expressway, a fully-segregated “high-speed” car highway showed average speed during the PM rush to be a not-so-high 36 km/hr. Source:
http://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/dbdocs/451ad1fc5015e.pdf

Some of Toronto’s major urban streets, such as Wellesley, have peak hour average motor vehicle speeds less than 5 km/hr. Major Indian cities such as Bombay have similar average motor vehicle speeds.

I see from The New York Times that average motor vehicle speed on 37th Street in Manhattan is 2.7 miles per hour. I’ll post the link seperately to avoid the spam killer robot.

In short, a bicycle is the fastest private urban vehicle in existence.

This is a great question andrewp, and it should be answered often and loudly.

The notion that if you can’t keep up, you should stay out of the way is firmly ingrained in our psyche. The notion is codified in the slow-moving-vehicle statutes. It is evident in the emphasis in maximizing traffic volumes and high speed limits.

But a bicycle has a very limited motor, and a cyclist could never be considered “fast” when compared with a motor vehicle. Further, on a thirty MPH road, a motorist will not notice the difference between a cyclist going ten MPH and another going fifteen. In practical terms, any speed for a cyclist will be nearly the same for a motorist in how he has to interact with you.

It is not about your speed, it is about your position in the lane that is important. My average speed is 14 MPH, but I will be taking the lane at six MPH when going up a hill near me.

Here is my thought experiment that helped me: If a large inanimate object was placed in the center of the lane, say a couch or a grandfather’s clock, how long it be before it was hit? In my opinion, because the objects are instantly recognized as a fixed impediment, it would be avoided until nightfall.

All this to say, go as slow or as fast as you wish based on any factor except courtesy to motorists. Any efforts to go fast for their sake will not be noticed. It won’t be appreciated. It will increase your anxiety and stress for no practical purpose.

UNFORTUNATELY, two of my engineers were grilling me about cyclists on Monday, so the post smacked me right in the face. The key is that one complained about a cyclist riding straight down the middle of the MIDDLE Lane, going uphill, on a Beltline Road overpass in Dallas County. He assured me the cyclist was not moving over to get ready for a left turn – just going straight. Not having seen the event, all I could say was I couldn’t think of a reason to be riding there. It would also seem inappropriate, even if there were no FTR law, violating the “slower traffic keep right” principle.

If one of them were to look at the PICTURES on Keri’s post, they’d think I was misleading them as part of my membership in a secret, satanic, cycling suicide cult . They’d not notice the air vent reflection in the bottom two pictures…

In case it’s not obvious, traffic flow in the opposite direction was just as heavy, making passing impossible.

Lucky for me, I get fewer client calls on this roadway, probably due to the economy, but also the roadway is going four-lanes and is already so, in parts. It just changes the pinch points, though. Nice touch, they have zero striping for ersatz bike lanes or shoulder markings on the completed sections.