[durovo]

My knowledge about biking infrastructure is lacking but doesn't it make sense to allow/promote biking on the sidewalks as a start? Once biking gains more acceptance, allocating more budget for proper biking lanes would become much easier.

[analog31]

I get around a lot by bike. Riding bikes on sidewalks is dangerous. You're not visible to cars when you're crossing driveways or going through intersections. Likewise, mixing with pedestrians is pretty unpleasant for everybody. You won't make a lot of friends that way. Sidewalks are safe when you're moving at the speed of walking.

When I'm on a sidewalk with my bike and there are pedestrians around, I hop off and walk.

My city has some master plan for bike infra, but really it's a matter of waiting until a road or intersection has to be rebuilt (frequently due to hard winters) and thinking about bike traffic at that point. There's also a network of sleepy neighborhood streets that are used by cyclists including myself.

[acdha]

This is allowed in many areas but it's a bad compromise: in much of the country, there aren't many sidewalks and they're not safe — e.g. you'll have a sidewalk in front of a strip mall but then it just ends on a busy road, driveways are often blocked by cars and are high risk zones with people flooring it as they leave or pulling in without slowing down much, there are random barriers and obstacles between properties, it's not cleared of trash effectively, etc. — and they're often _much_ longer trips. The last time I went to PyCon I was disappointed to see that the path from my hotel to the conference was like 0.7 miles in car and almost 2 on foot because there was a gnarly freeway bridge which forced pedestrians to walk around some unsafe roads.

Maintenance is also a big problem: a sidewalk which is cracked or full of snow / puddles is unpleasant even if it's relatively safe to ride through. One indicator you can use are the number of people riding motorized wheelchairs on the road shoulders — we generally have decent sidewalks here in DC but a lot of the neighboring suburbs added bike lanes during the pandemic and every time that happens you'll notice a ton of people using wheelchairs and strollers there because it's so much better than bumping around over broken concrete and dealing with random poles in the middle of the sidewalk.

The single most important thing which needs to happen is thinking about connectivity: what a lot of places do is make a couple of bike lanes which don't connect places people live/work/shop and then say nobody's using them without recognizing that the miles of unsafe streets on either end are probably the explanation.

[alamortsubite]

Unfortunately, no. Sidewalks are for pedestrians. Mixing in bikes makes them unsafe for foot traffic. It's also dangerous for a cyclist to ride across an intersection in a crosswalk because drivers turning through it may not be able to see them before they're able to stop. Furthermore, sidewalks are irregular and not conducive to biking.

[rossdavidh]

In, for example, Austin (my home), most sidewalks allow biking. There's a city code that lists which sidewalks are NOT allowed for biking, and it mostly amounts to "any sidewalk that people actually use for walking" (which is a small minority).

I think one issue is that motorists notice bikes on the road or bike lane more than they notice bikes on sidewalks, hence more likely to hit them when turning. But I agree it's a way to bootstrap up.

[Someone]

Even ignoring the fact that sidewalks end at every intersection and the potholes others mention, the relative speed difference is too large. Pedestrian: 5km/hour, cyclist (conservative) 15km/hour. For cars inside big cities 30km/hour seems reasonable (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/cities-where... claims 19km/hour in inner London).

[convolvatron]

you've clearly never approached a corner on foot and and a had bike shoot past at 30kph inches from your face