By Rick Price
First published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan May 14, 2012
Last week a passenger in a car on College Avenue shouted at
me to get off the street. When the car
stopped at a red light at College and Laporte Avenue I pulled up beside it and
asked the occupants if they had spoken to me.
The young male passenger said, “yeah, get the [expletive] out of the
road or at least keep to the right.”
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| Photo compliments of Preston Tyree. |
There is still plenty of confusion about where we can ride
our bicycles in Old Town Fort Collins. Maybe
it is time the City and the Downtown Business Association took steps to clear this
up, especially for those who work in Old Town and who are in a position to help
educate others.
When I mention the dismount zone to cyclists on the sidewalk
in Old Town I’ve often had reasonable people ask me if I want them to “ride on
College Avenue?” When I say “yes,” they
are incredulous and explain to me that it is illegal to ride on College. We need to bust this myth once and for
all: it is illegal to ride on College
Avenue only between Harmony Road and Laurel Street. North of Laurel it is perfectly legal to ride
on College and between Magnolia and Maple Streets it is actually safe since the
speed limit is 25 miles per hour and College is, for all practical purposes, a
parking lot. You are safer pedaling College
Avenue here than you are bicycling across the parking lot at Foothills Fashion
Mall. Admittedly you need to practice
basic principles of vehicular cycling but you can learn these at
www.BikeEd.org.
The City could help this situation in two ways: 1) publish a
single panel flyer to explain where and how to bicycle in Old Town; 2) pass an
ordinance, similar to ordinances in Los Angeles and Independence, Missouri,
where it is illegal to harass “any person riding a bicycle, walking, running,
or operating a wheelchair” by shouting or otherwise directing “loud or unusual
sounds toward such person.”
Yes, it would be difficult to enforce such an
ordinance. But the publicity alone would
go far to make Old Town a safer place to ride a bicycle.
