An Apology to 11 Strangers
A short foreword:
To lend a little context in lieu of my first blog post: I’ve been finding myself a bit more involved with local government recently. Trying to advocate for public infrastructure - which, much to my surprise - has a lot of opposition. I’m not ignorant to the arguments against what I advocate for - I personally think it comes down to a lack of perspective and experience. (Something that I think we all will forever find ourselves in an eternal pursuit of) | I’m no stranger to the fallacy of only learning a set of limited facts and tuning out anything that argues against it - I’ve fallen for it in the past. But the opposition I’ve encountered for specifically this project (in this case, regarding bike lanes) - comes from a population that’s been arguing at points like policy, process, and real estate stakes. I’ve understood it to be a bad faith argument - because almost every opposing viewpoint fails to include the personal experiences and stakes of anyone who’s remotely walked or rode their bikes. These experiences (including my own) are what truly dismantles the opposing arguments - they are immutable, impossible to be invalidated. This was my experience, and my comment - submitted at the most recent Transportation Commission Meeting.
[This comment was originally written on December 14th, 2023 - It has been minorly edited to retain some privacy.]
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I apologized to 11 people yesterday.
I know that's a confusing statement. Allow me to contextualize - While I was leaving my workplace's Holiday party at [Generic Pizza Place] in the [Urban district], readying myself to ride my bike home, I noticed that my taillight had unexpectedly run out of battery. And as I'm sure you all have noticed - it's winter. Darkness sets in at about 4:30pm.
Over the past months, I've done the work to overcome my anxiety and ride on the road when I'm commuting to my job. But even in daylight - it's no less terrifying to have trucks that stand about 10 ft tall with extended mirrors pass you in the left lane - but I'm happy for it - we share the road. But I'm also not going to pretend that if its passenger window were any higher, I'd halfway expect the driver to not notice I was riding alongside it.
To return to my opening statement, the reason I apologized to 11 people yesterday is that the only safe way I could ride home was to ride my bike on the sidewalk. To avoid clipping or crashing into those 11 people, most of them had to step into bushes or off to the side, while others found themselves surprised by my shaky balancing acts on the curb to get past them. There is barely enough room for one person on these sidewalks, let alone two walking alongside each other, and especially not enough width for a person on a bike and a person walking.
Riding my bike at 5pm shouldn't be a problem. During the day, I *might* have felt I was visible enough without a tail light. But after dusk? I'm sure that despite my yellow safety vest, despite my bright orange wheel lights, despite my high powered headlight - there remained too high a chance that unless I was on the sidewalk, at least one driver wouldn't have been paying attention long enough to see and react to my presence on the road. This fear is one that is shared by most cyclists - a working knowledge of the terrifying ways people have been injured or killed, simply because they've had to share a lane with cars.
In an unfortunate reassurance of this anxiety - the very thing I was attempting to mitigate risk from unfolded when I was less than half a mile away from home. A driver in a Grey Mazda was moving too fast in the left lane and unexpectedly encountered a backup - swerving into the right lane to avoid crashing, and narrowly coming to a stop two feet behind the car ahead of it.
Thankfully, there was no crash. No one was injured, and what could have been a bad situation was avoided. But had a biker like myself been riding on the road in the right hand lane, I have no doubt the situation would have unfolded far differently.
All of this to say - had there been designated bike lanes along this corridor - I wouldn't have had any hesitation to ride home on it. While the worries of unsafe or negligent cars versus my bike is something I will have forever - I know the existence of a dedicated bike lane would greatly reduce the chance that I'd be hit - if only because it would segregate my movement from car traffic, inform drivers to expect my presence, and I could keep moving - further reducing the risk of being made a human and bicycle sandwich served between two car bumpers.
Installing these bike lanes is a win for everyone. From a health perspective - it gets people active. From a traffic perspective - less people use their cars. From an economic perspective - it makes the cities more attractive to future residents and businesses.
I understand that people will argue so many points to opposition - many of which professional studies, statistical analysis, and my contemporaries have done a service to disprove in full. I just don't think it's unreasonable to ask for infrastructure that means I don't have to feel like an ass when my neighbors are polite enough to step off the sidewalk into the mud, soil, and flora - just because I'm trying to avoid becoming an unintentional hood ornament.
Please, don’t be afraid to implement bike lanes.
Photo by Eduardo Fuentes Loya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-on-sidewalk-near-building-19471281/