• 7 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • In my area, bikes are allowed on all sidewalks except for a street-bounded square around the downtown core where we must ride in the street. When on the sidewalk, we are expected to yield to pedestrians. This works in practice, mostly due to low volume of bikes and pedestrians, and in some places 12 food wide sidewalks specifically designated as class 1 urban trails that even allow some ebikes. In practice, this works okay but you are definitely forced to have little micro interactions with people to negotiate sidewalk space or signal your intentions. Cyclists go to the sidewalk as a last resort because it’s often not a comfortable place for us to ride, just less likely to get us killed. I will never understand cyclists who don’t ring. It’s a bad look for our ability to share space. Unlike cars, bicycles and pedestrians are close enough in speed to occasionally mix.

    I do agree that in city centers and high traffic areas, riders should dismount.


  • I also thought it was a bit of a wild request for bikes to only cross where bike infra exists. If we can’t make progress in driver behavior, we should build more mode separation to contain the thousand pound death machines in their own physically isolated section of the street. At no point should we be compromising bicycle or pedestrian mobility. We have a right to the street also, and it’s the cars who have trouble co-existing with the other modes of transportation without murdering a bunch of people.








  • The funding gives them visibility though. Without third parties that people know and might vote for, there would be no additional challengers to point to when arguing for ranked choice voting or anything else. If there are no Green, Libertarian, Constitution voters, then FPTP loses a good portion of its luster.

    Additionally, if enough people vote 3rd party, the big two may shift to win those voters back. We saw an interesting situation with the Libertarians and the Republicans this time around where the Libertarians weren’t going to primary a candidate against the Republican if the Republican met certain qualifications. If the Democrats lose even a percentage point to the greens in a tight race, they can possibly get that voter back by representing their interests to show that they are also green.

    Having said all that, I agree that FPTP is a big problem and is strongly contributing to the toilet bowl death spiral American politics is experiencing.