John S. Allen's Bicycle Blog

The cyclists in the photo below are riding through piles of leaves where they can’t see the road surface. The man has a shopping bag hanging from the handlebar where it can swing into the spokes of the front wheel. The shopping bag and possible hazards under the leaves carry the risk of a front-wheel-stopping crash, with the cyclist pivoting forward and landing on his head.

The photo appeared in Momentum Magazine, and was provided by the Green Lane Project, an organization funded by bicycle manufacturers and which promotes the construction of barrier-separated on-street bikeways. I commented on the photo in an earlier post, and said that I’d return to the topic, because I recognized the location. So, here I am.

It is 15th Street and T street in Washington, DC, USA. Here’s a Google Street View from a couple of years ago. Some different traffic signs have been installed since then, and yellow flex posts have replaced white ones, but the tree with white bark is unmistakable. The pinkish building in the background of both images is three blocks away, at W street.

The cyclists’ riding side by side gives the impression that the bikeway is one-way, but actually it is two-way, as the Street View photo shows. Leaves and trash cover the lane lines in the Green Lane photo.

What is it really like to ride this bikeway? In the video embedded below, my friend Keri Caffrey rides in the same direction as the cyclists in the Green Lane photo, also at a time of light traffic. Keri reaches T street at 1:11 in the video. She rides all the way down to H street, and obeys the traffic signals.

About half the time, she is waiting for the signals, and so her average travel speed is 4.5 miles per hour. Most of this street is one-way, the traffic lights are timed for traffic in the other direction, and cyclists have only a short interval to cross legally, because turning traffic has a dedicated signal phase. Nonetheless, Keri encounters some turning and crossing conflicts. Other cyclists in the video can’t be bothered to wait for the signals.

15th street southbound from Keri Caffrey on Vimeo.

Why are the leaves in the street? Washington, DC has information on leaf collection, instructing residents to place leaves in treeboxes (between sidewalk and curb) rather than in the street, and acknowledging problems with leaf pickup due to weather conditions. As the trees are at the curb, nearly half the leaves fall directly into the street. The sidewalk extends all the way to the curb and there is very little space around trees to store the leaves they drop. Without a barrier-separated bikeway, nobody would have to use space next to the curb as travel space.

The message of the Momentum Magazine article is “better biking,” and by implication, safe cycling even for children and novice cyclists, thanks to barrier-separated bikeways. One of the cyclists in the Green Lane Project photo is a young child, who, to be sure, wouldn’t be safe riding on streets with fast or heavy motor traffic. The other cyclist is an adult, but his choice to hang a bag over the handlebar speaks volumes about his skill level.

Or was that his own choice? Did the cyclists show up by chance — at such a low-traffic time, and near the end of the bikeway where traffic is lightest? Did the photographer lurk, waiting and waiting, holding a camera with a long telephoto lens, standing in the middle of the bikeway? A photographer could wait for hours before suitable subjects showed up.

I suspect strongly that the photo was staged, and the cyclists were recruited for the photo shoot. The Green Lane Project would then carry some responsibility for their actions, and not only for the choice of the photo.

As is typical of Green Lane Project work, the photo is carefully framed to, well, create an impression. It is said that the camera doesn’t lie, but on the other hand, perspective can play tricks. What looks like a continuous wall at the right side of the photo is actually a line of widely spaced flexible barrier posts, as is clear in the Street View image below, which also shows a treebox on the sidewalk. It is filled to the brim, though the photo was taken in midsummer.

The video of one of my own rides on this street is posted below. I am riding northbound — in the opposite direction of Keri’s ride in the earlier video — and Keri is behind me, shooting video with her helmet camera. At 3:37, a pedestrian walks out between flex posts into my path.  At 4:40, there’s a conflict with oncoming bicycle traffic. Both these situations required me to slow abruptly. There are several left-hook conflicts and a couple of oncoming right-cross threats.

We cross T street at 11:47 in the video. Total time from H street to V street was 14 minutes, 31 seconds for an average speed of 5.1 miles per hour. Waiting time was 5 minutes 21 seconds. The traffic light timing was more favorable, but this direction is slightly uphill.

15th Street Cycletrack at Rush Hour from Keri Caffrey on Vimeo.

While young children and novice cyclists aren’t safe on a busy street, it’s certainly fair to ask whether they are safe on this bikeway, considering that it wasn’t safe for me.

During rush hour, major intersections on the bikeway descend into chaos, as shown in another of Keri Caffrey’s videos.

Are there better alternatives? Yes, in education and in infrastructure choices, among other things, but they require a bolder, broader, more knowledgeable and more flexible approach than we see here.

One more comment about the cyclists in the video: as I’ve made clear elsewhere, I strongly advocate helmet use, but I don’t promote mandatory helmet laws. Lacking near-universal acceptance of helmet use, such laws can do more harm than good, in my opinion. I give my reasons for that in another article.

On the other hand, as my good friend Sheldon Brown liked to say, a parent who puts a helmet on his child but doesn’t wear one himself is offering the example “do as I say, not as I do,” and unnecessarily risks leaving the child an orphan.

Finally: As I noted in my previous post, someone at Momentum Magazine deleted comments I left on its blog. The comments were as polite as these, but much shorter. The author of the Momentum Magazine article, Managing Editor Duncan Hurd, commented on my previous post, suggesting a dialog by e-mail. I  responded saying that I welcomed a dialog. The only more recent communication I have had from him is a second comment describing my observations as “concern trolling.”

My friend Khalil Spencer posted comments on the Momentum Magazine article later, and those too were deleted.  Khalil has posted on his own blog about that. His post makes good reading.

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The online blog of Momentum Magazine posted the photo below to illustrate an article titled “Support for Better Biking is Strong.”

Warm and fuzzy is clearly the intention — father and young child riding on a magic carpet, car-free and carefree. We should all transport ourselves to better biking and a better future, on such magic carpets.

Momentum Magazine posted this photo provided by the Green Lane Project. Warm and fuzzy?

Hello, hello, reality check: the carpet  is of leaves — much of it deep enough to hide a pothole or debris which would launch a cyclist over the handlebars.

Sorry to have to say this about this but a few years ago, a well-liked, recently retired colleague of my wife’s put his front wheel into a hole hidden under leaves and landed on his head. He died.

Nobody can tell us why he was riding there, but most people who have spent much time on a bicycle have learned one way or another to avoid riding through a carpet of leaves — or anywhere they can’t see what is about to be supporting the bicycle’s tires.

Doesn’t anybody at Momentum Magazine have the good sense, or experience, or authority, to nix a photo like this, or do they just not care?

Actually, I know that they don’t care. I submitted comments — much more gentle than these — on the magazine’s blog post. My comments were quickly removed.

Let’s dig a bit deeper into this situation.  The article is a puff piece reflecting the bicycle industry’s astroturf polling campaign. The magazine credits the Green Lane Project with the photo. The bicycle industry funds the Green Lane project to promote bikeways separate from motor traffic, with the goal of getting more people to buy bicycles.

How could this photo advance that agenda? Or, scarier to think, what if it actually does? What if  most readers of Momentum Magazine  don’t know any better? What if they are so caught up in a magic carpet agenda that they can mentally sweep the carpet of leaves aside?

Does the Green Lane crew think that leaves add a nice homey touch — and look, people also ride outside the peak summer season! Or maybe Green Lane doesn’t care either, in which case, just how low can these people stoop to portray bicycling as completely mindless and carefree,  as long as it is also car-free?

The shopping bag next to the spokes of the man’s front wheel doesn’t make me feel any better. I could also say something about a parent’s setting an example, but then I don’t want to start a helmet war.

Enough for now. I’m going to deconstruct the photo shoot,  in a separate blog post. I know where that photo was taken. I’ve been there.

I’m also going to look into just why anyone thought that the USA needs another bicycle magazine, especially one which publishes material like this. Stay tuned.

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I have submitted the comments below to Forbes Magazine, whose blog posted an article titled “Spotted Those New Protected Bike Lanes? Get Ready for More.”

I expected better of Forbes, a generally conservative publication. The term “protected bike lane” is used only to describe an on-street bikeway behind a barrier, but Forbes illustrated the article with a photo of a buffered bike lane. There is no barrier in the photo, only paint.

Forbes thinks this is a “protected bike lane”. It is a buffered bike lane.

My comments follow.

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A few clarifications:

* The bike lane shown in the photo is not a “protected bike lane”. A “protected bike lane” (see below for why I use the quotes) is separated from the rest of the travelway by a barrier, which could be a curbed median island, a row of parked cars, or a row of delineator posts. What is shown is a buffered bike lane, separated from another lane by a painted strip which is wider than the standard lane stripe.

* This buffered bike lane is separated from the adjacent travel lane, but adjacent to a parking lane, and directs bicyclists to ride within the range of opening car doors. A bicyclist who strikes an opening car door is flung to the left, potentially going under the wheels of an overtaking motor vehicle.

* A buffer may on the other hand separate the bike lane from the parking lane. This is safer.

* The inaccurate term “protected bike lane” is used with the goal of promoting increased bicycle use, pandering to widespread misconceptions about safety, and in particular, the belief that the most important type of bicycle crash is for a bicyclist to be rear-ended by a motor vehicle. This type of crash is rare in urban areas.

* The term “protected bike lane” is incorrect and misleading. Being separated by a barrier, this is not a lane, it is a bicycle path. Also, it is protected everywhere except where that matters most: at intersections and driveways, where most motor-vehicle-bicycle collisions occur, and conflicting movements forced by the barrier (car turning right from left lane, bicyclist in right rear blindspot of motor vehicle, or concealed by parked vehicles) increase the risk.

* Typical safe average speeds on “protected bike lanes” are 5 miles per hour, increasing the temptation to take risks and disobey the law.

* In some cases it is possible to have a separate bikeway in a street corridor which avoids the problems, but this is unusual and requires careful designs. One example is with 9th Avenue in New York City; please see comments linked at http://john-s-allen.com/galleries/NYC (and for a counterexample, see the comments on the Grand Street bikeway linked from the same page.)

* Other options such as conventional bike lanes of adequate design, paths separate from roads, bicycle routes on lightly-traveled streets paralleling main streets, traffic speed reduction measures, enforcement and education avoid the problems with barrier-separated bikeways. However, barrier-separated bikeways are being heavily promoted and widely installed, because of the public misconceptions about safety and the clamor of bicycle mode share advocacy.

I am a long-time bicycling advocate and it pains me to see the state of bicycling advocacy today; also, the shallowness of media coverage, and yes, this article is an example. If Forbes can’t even get terminology right and call out inaccuracies and distortions, it is only contributing to the problem.

The journal Injury Prevention published two responses (eLetters) by M. Kary, Montreal mathematician and cyclist, to the Harris et al. study of Vancouver and Toronto bicycle facilities. These letters promised an eventual third letter. Instead, following discussion with the Editor, the third was transformed into a longer Commentary now under consideration at the journal, while the original two letters were consolidated into a single shorter one, intended to replace them. These steps are still underway, but were done under the understanding that once removed, the original first two letters would be published in full elsewhere. They are here:

M.Kary’s first letter to Injury Prevention, unedited

M. Kary’s second letter to Injury Prevention, unedited

The edited version of these replies is available online.

Kary is also the author of a comprehensive review of the Lusk et al. study of Montreal cycle tracks — or as he says, what the authors describe as cycle tracks, because some are, in fact, paths through parks.

A related post on this blog examines a PDF presentation about the Vancouver/Toronto research.

Here’s a little article which appeared in the November 1, 2013 issue of the bicycle trade journal, Bicycle Industry and Retailer News.

Can you say “Astroturf”?

Article from November 1, 2013 Bicycle Retailer and industry News

I wouldn’t claim to represent the interests of the bicycle industry — but PeopleforBikes, a bicycle industry lobby — claims to represent my interests and those of other individual citizens, er, “consumers”.

For a while last summer it wasn’t possible to go to major bicycle or parts manufacturers’ Web sites without having a PeopleforBikes sign-up-and support popup blot out the start screen. Or as the article puts it,

[s]tarting in 2010 as a Bikes Belong campaign to gain 1 million pledges in support of bicycling, PeopleforBikes will now be the brand that represents all cycling interests — those of the industry as well as consumers.

— not that interests are even the same across the industry. There’s another article in the same issue of Bicycle Industry and Retailer News describing retail bicycle shops’ long-drawn-out problems with one brake manufacturer’s products. I might have concerns too if I bought a bicycle with those brakes, and not to speak of the thrust and scope of industry lobbying which, as you might imagine, is targeted almost entirely at getting government to spend your and my tax dollars on infrastructure projects which PeopleforBikes has decided will get more people to buy bicycles and related products. This has a very decided slant toward separated paths and barrier-separated bikeways on streets, because that is what non-bicyclists and infrequent bicyclists — the great majority of the American population — think they need.

I spend much more than the average person does on bicycle stuff, but I hold to my own opinions about what I buy, and about how to improve bicycling, thank you very much. You may read my opinions on bicycling politics on this blog, and about reliability, safety and good purchasing choices on sheldonbrown.com.

This isn’t the first post on this blog about these issues. It’s just that the one-big-happy-family claim has become more blatant with the rebranding.

An article in the Detroit News describes advances in robo-car technology.

And this raises the question: what kinds of car-bike crashes could this technology prevent?

As suggested in the article: rear-end collisions and drift-out-of-lane collisions. Also perhaps right hooks, if a vehicle has sensors and robo-control to inhibit turning across the path of an overtaking vehicle. In all of these collisions, the bicycle or other vehicle to whom a robo-car might yield is, if not in full view of the driver — so robotics would mitigate driver distraction — in full view from a sensor somewhere on the vehicle.

Dooring collisions and drive-outs from parking? Yes, if a sensor in the side-view mirror prevents the door from opening. But this doesn’t prevent the cyclist from striking a pedestrian who walks out to get into the vehicle, and also prevents a person from getting into or out of the car, also potentially presenting a hazard. The real world is inhabited by real people, not only robotic cars.

Could robotics prevent head-on and ride-out collisions? Only unreliably, because of larger distances and greater closing speeds, and because the cyclist, or a pedestrian, or another car, or a deer leaping across the road — may have been hidden around a curve, or may suddenly appear from concealment. The robo-protection might prevent a vehicle from crossing the center of the roadway, or rounding a curve too fast to yield to traffic ahead — but this only works without drastically lowering travel speed if the vehicle, person or animal to be avoided  is operating properly (e.g. oncoming cyclist is on the correct side of the roadway, pedestrian does not dart out into the street).

Left cross collisions? NOT, if the cyclist is overtaking other vehicles, or parked vehicles, close to the curb, where concealed by them.

All in all, then, the technology could:

* greatly reduce the risk collisions for cyclists and others  traveling according to the  rules of the road;

* Significantly reduce the risk of car-bike collisions for cyclists edge riding or riding in a bike lane to the right of other traffic;

* be of little or no help when cyclists are riding in a bikeway concealed behind a barrier, or crossing in a crosswalk.

The potential for robotic control to prevent collisions is, then, very similar to that of an alert driver — though with additional ability to look in more than one direction at once, and into blindspots. Why? Because the rules for efficient and safe interaction — the rules of movement — aren’t any different when robotics are in control.

And I’ll also draw a more sweeping conclusion: robotic technology, once universally and correctly implemented on motor vehicles, would very significantly improve the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, and make rumble strips, a real problem for cyclists, pointless. Many other facilities-based solutions also would become white elephants.

This is assuming that the technology reflects a real traffic mix on streets, including non-motorized travelers, rather than some fantasy vision of a motorist’s utopia.

I’m only discussing technology here which can be implemented independently on each vehicle, without its communicating with others. There have been utopian schemes described in which all vehicles would communicate and negotiate with one another, avoiding the need for traffic signals, but except on limited-access highways, those pose a very daunting challenge due to the need for instant wireless communication with wide bandwidth, and that not all moving objects can be instrumented, nor would people tolerate this on their bodies — also, that a monkey wrench could be thrown into such systems, bringing traffic to a stop, simply by pedestrians’ walking out into the street. The Atlantic magazine has an article describing such a scheme — as usual in its articles about transportation, short in attention to unintended consequences.

Now, am I guilty of the same, in my optimism?

Build it wrong, and you may have to spend as much money tearing it out as you did putting it in. This is not a new problem — it is the story of public housing developments of the 1950s, now being torn down; of a number of urban Interstate highways, and of recent road reconstruction as well — see the “money quote” at the end of a post I wrote earlier today, on another blog.

Some people are going to say this won’t happen with today’s cycletracks, but I predict that it will, for three fundamental reasons: most of them are poorly designed; robotic safety equipment in motor vehicles will make the only kind of crashes which they prevent, hit-from-behind crashes,  a non-issue within 30 years; and mode shares will change, in some ways which are predictable, others not, so the paradigm of cars vs. bikes will then be not only unfair, but also obsolete, like a black/white segregated school system in a community which has experienced a wave of Hispanic and East Asian immigrants. The ascendancy of electrically assisted bicycles, already underway, is a step in that particular direction. Motor motor scooters, cargo tricycles, pedicabs…just ain’t gonna fit.

Patricia Kovacs, of Columbus, Ohio, has diligently recovered documents about a cycletrack failure in that city in the 1980s, from the archive of the Lantern, the University of Ohio’s student newspaper,. She explains them as follows:

A cycletrack was built on High Street for 11 blocks along the east side (business side of the street) of Ohio State University. This was a 4′ bike lane at street level, with a 3′ service island on the left of the bike lane. One of the articles of the day called it an 11 block bowling alley.On the west side of the street (campus side), a yellow line was painted in the middle of the sidewalk to separate the pedestrians from the “bike path” (this side at sidewalk level).

The cycletracks were a failure. The 3′ service island did not prevent the cycletrack from being used as a loading zone. The cycletrack collected trash because the university, the city streets department and the city parks department pointed fingers at each other regarding who was responsible for maintenance. Nobody had a sweeper that would fit in the 4′ gutter. This area of campus has/had at least 3 bars on each block, and you can imagine the broken bottles on the weekends, especially during football season. The only good thing about this cycletrack is that it brought the local bike shops a lot of business patching flat tires.

The cycletrack on the west side was a hazard to pedestrians and cyclists. There might have been signage or pavement markings to indicate the “bike path”, but everyone ignored it. How is a pedestrian supposed to yield to a cyclist when crossing the street? This is one of the major issues I see with the new cycletrack designs.I was a graduate student when this cycletrack existed, and I recall riding in it once and then avoided it like the plague.The city spent $1M to build the cycletrack in 1980, and spent another $1M to remove the cycletrack in 1986. I’m surprised it lasted that long.

I have attached several articles from the Lantern, the OSU student newspaper, about these cycletracks. The articles include more details on the problems with the cycletracks for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and business owners. The article titled “Bike paths cause more harm than good”, has a photo of the gutter cycletrack. The article titled “Renovation nearly finished” shows a cyclist riding the wrong way in the gutter cycletrack (I guess he figured that was safer than negotiating the pedestrians on the other side). The article titled “Street renovation improves safety” cited a 29% decrease in crashes. Well, since they stubbed off 4 out of 11 streets, you would expect crashes to decrease by 36%. And who knows if the crashes included bike/ped crashes?

The articles: September 24, 1980: “Renovation nearly finished”

October 13, 1981: “City cannot clean up bike path”

October 27, 1981: “Street renovation improves safety”

July 9, 1982: “Bike paths cause more harm than good”

January 27, 1986: “Bike path victim of bad planning”

November 28, 1986: “Building a New Look”

I get buzzed by another cyclist on the Minuteman path.

This is a high-definition video. You get the full experience if click on “YouTube” under the image, expand it to full screen and click on the little gear wheel under the image to get 720 or 1080 resolution.

I’m responding to Adam Auster’s comment on my previous post:

On the other hand the route would cross the sidewalk, which can be quite busy, 3 times. (To say nothing of the crosswalk because you already mention it.)

Let’s compare the actual conflicts:

Eastbound traffic, in the town’s plan:

(I also discussed this in my previous message.)

Eastbound cyclists headed from the path mix with sidewalk traffic on the northwest corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Mystic Street. There are 16 different movements on the corner: from each of the five entrances: the path, the two sidewalk directions and the two crosswalk directions to each of the other four. Only two of those movements are unlikely: those between the path and the Mystic Street sidewalk, which both go in nearly the same direction. In addition, this corner is where crowds wait to cross the street. This is a very complicated and confusing situation, where bicyclists, pedestrians and vehicles in the street are concealed by one another.

The eastbound cyclists then cross Massachusetts Avenue on a protected signal phase (though with some risk from illegal right turns from Mystic Street) and are directed to wait in a two-way left-turn area in the middle of the busy intersection until the traffic signal changes. Cyclists are protected by traffic-signal timing as long as they leave the two-way left-turn area promptly, and this is not obvious. The two-way left-turn area is too small to accommodate the likely volume of traffic.

The cyclists are expected to continue from eastwards in the bike lane on the south side of Massachusetts Avenue, which crosses three driveways, and then turn right either at a meandering path before Swan Place, or into Swan Place (It isn’t clear which, from the town’s drawing). From Swan Place, they enter he continuation of the path.

Eastbound bicycle traffic, in my proposal:

Eastbound cyclists turn left to cross across the west-side Mystic Street sidewalk where there are only two conflicting movements: sidewalk traffic in either direction. It isn’t quite clear in the drawing I revised, but I would have cyclists cross on the side of the crosswalk which is away from Massachusetts Avenue.

Eastbound cyclists then cross Mystic Street on the same signal phase as pedestrians. This crossing from west to east is the most troublesome for me, because of the potential for motorists turning right from Mystic Street not to yield to the cyclists. On the other hand, the crossing is signal-protected with a no turn on red sign and/or separate right-turn signal. For this reason and because of the width of the crosswalk and path, a right-turning motorist will be looking for sidewalk and path traffic rather than looking left for Massachusetts Avenue traffic. Most bicyclist left-to-right in crosswalk collisions occur where the motorist is looking left for traffic.

The other likely potential conflict here is with right-turning traffic from Massachusetts Avenue, but here, bicyclists are in full view of the motorists and the bikeway is far enough from the corner that motorists have time to yield.

Eastbound cyclists then cross the sidewalk on the far side of Mystic Street, but again where there are only two movements with which they must negotiate: sidewalk traffic in either direction on Mystic Street.

Bicycle traffic and sidewalk traffic cross over each other in front of Whittemore Park, as shown in the drawing, but again there are only two conflicting movements with which bicyclists must contend. One hardly even counts as a conflicting movement, as the bicyclists are traveling in the same direction as the pedestrians and pass them either on the left or on the right, depending on timing.

Cyclists then cross Massachusetts at the signal-protected crossing to Swan Place. There are no potential conflicts except with bicycle and motor traffic turning left from Swan Place onto Massachusetts Avenue. Cyclists continue on Swan Place, turning left into the continuation of the path. There is a potential conflict with oncoming traffic, as with any left turn on a two-way roadway, but this traffic is very light.

Westbound bicycle traffic, in the town’s plan:

(I also discussed this in my previous post.)

Cyclists turn right from the path onto Swan Place and jog to the right into a bike lane, creating potential confusion for motorists who think the cyclists are turning right onto Massachusetts Avenue. . They then cross at the newly signalized intersection and turn sharply left into a bike lane.
The bike lane is hidden behind vehicles waiting to turn right, until it bears right to be on the right side of the right-turn lane.
Cyclists turning the corner are is in theory protected by a no turn on red signal and separate signal phase, but as noted by several commenters at the public hearing, right turns on red still occur. There is a risk of right-hook collisions and long-vehicle off-tracking crashes.
The bike lane jogs over to the right around the corner, and then cyclists swerve left into a bike lane. Again there is the risk of confusion because the bicyclists appear to be going straight, however, they are on a protected signal phase.
Bicyclists cross in the bike lane or “crossbike” and then must beat their way through the crowd of people waiting on the corner, making one of the 16 possible movements here.

Westbound bicycle traffic, in my proposal:

Cyclists turn right from the path onto Swan Place and continue to Massachusetts Avenue. They then cross at the newly signalized intersection and turn left to continue past Whittemore Park.
The first potential conflict cyclists encounter is with pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk. They are crossing from left to right, so they must yield to oncoming pedestrians and merge either in front of or behind pedestrians traveling in the same direction.
Cyclists then cross the Mystic Street sidewalk, with only two conflicting movements, same as for westbound cyclists.
At Mystic Street, the cyclists cross on a protected signal phase along with pedestrians. There is risk of collision with motorists who turn right, both at the start and end of the crosswalk, but again, these motorists would be turning right on red illegally, and the bikeway is away from the corner, reducing the risks in the same way as described for eastbound cyclists.
Cyclists then cross the Mystic Street sidewalk, where there are two conflicts, and cross the very unlikely conflict with traffic turning sharply left onto the Mystic Street sidewalk from the extension of the path.
Pedestrians are expected to take entirely different routes using the sidewalks. I predict that many cyclists will continue to use the sidewalks.