First published in the Coloradoan October 17, 2011
By Rick
Price, Ph.D.
I began
writing my Smart Cycling column in January of 2010 after several people advised
me that College Avenue in Old Town “isn’t a bike lane.” One City employee actually explained to me
two years ago that it was illegal for me to ride my bike on College Avenue even
though, in reality, College is open to bicyclists except from Laurel to
Harmony. Other bicycling “dos and
don’ts” need clarifying as well, for both motorists and cyclists. This column is an attempt to help clear up
some of the ongoing confusion.
Two weeks
ago Bike Co-op volunteers took three hundred thirty seven Lincoln Middle School
students on bicycle rides through Old Town in groups ranging in size from ten
to twenty-five. Our ride included the
roundabout at Vine Drive and Taft Hill Road, a ride through City Park and the
shared lane arrows on Mountain Avenue. The only real problem we had was when
one student lost a shoe in the middle of the roundabout and was advised by a
motorist the he “should be on the sidewalk!”
The student had every right to be in the roundabout, although I advised
him to keep his shoes on next time.
Many people
believe that bikes should be on the sidewalk or at least as far to the right as
possible on the roadway. This is actually
wrong, since bicyclists have a responsibility to be visible and to ride on the
road where they feel “safe.” Many people
still think it is ok to bicycle against traffic so they can see cars coming
toward them. This practice is both
dangerous and illegal. The erroneous ideas
about where cyclists should ride come from our rural roots where we learned
that cyclists were merely “pedestrians on wheels.”
Several
people have commented to me that they see bicyclists signaling right turns
incorrectly with their right hand extended.
This is actually legal for cyclists as an alternative to raising their
left hand.
Another
behavior that you might see that is illegal or inappropriate is bicycles “splitting
the lane” by sneaking up along the right hand curb along a line of cars at an
intersection. This is both illegal and
dangerous since cyclists can be cut off by a right turning vehicle in this
position. Boulder allows cyclists to do
this as long as they stop just behind the front-most vehicle, in full view of
the second vehicle. We should think
about adopting this rule in Fort Collins.
There is
still a lot of confusion out there as we mature as a bicycle friendly
community. What about those bicyclists
not stopping at stop signs or lights?
Many of us wish we had the “Idaho stop law” which, since 1982 has
permitted cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs and since 2006 has
allowed cyclists to treat red lights as stop signs. But that will be a while in the coming to
Fort Collins and is a topic for another time.
