A policy of wheels in roadways only and pedestrian primacy will keep cities alive. Force cars, bikes, skateboards and scooters to contend for space (dedicated non-motorized lanes helps) but preserve the pavement for foot traffic.
It's important to express the underlying reasoning for the policy: things with similar size and speed can be together, dissimilar things should be separated. Cars and bikes/scooters are not the same, and streets need to separate them via dedicated lanes. If not, those users are going to choose sidewalks as the lesser of two dangers.
Agree with keeping the “walk” in sidewalk,
excepting wheelchairs & similar mobility
solutions for differently-abled folks,
but with everything with wheels that can
travel faster than a walking pace (say, 5 mph)
having the opportunity to use a space that is
normally devoid of pedestrians: the roadway.
The roadway is devoid of pedestrians, sure, but it's full of far more deadly predators.
A bike going 10mph is going to be able to stop faster, maneuver quicker, and do a lot less damage to a pedestrian if they hit them than a car going 55mph would to a biker going 10mph.
I never understand why people get so upset at bikers, people who just don't want to be killed by a vehicle going 3x as fast as they are weighing 200x as much. Or skateboarders, who hardly travel faster than an average pedestrian anyway.
Do you really just want to see more bikers and skaters killed? Because that's the primary outcome of "wheels belong on the road". What you're arguing for is unprotected human beings getting ground into the pavement by a machine that may not even feel the impact.
The fact that most of the US forces bikes to behave like cars is one of the worst urban policies we've ever come up with, and is responsible for untold numbers of deaths and serious injuries. A bicycle is not a car and should not share road space with cars unless pedestrians would also be forced to share road space with a car. Compared to 3000lb machines capable of maintaining speeds over 100mph, there is absolutely no difference between a bicycle and a pedestrian. They all bounce off the windshield exactly the same.
"Get these bikes and scooters off my sidewalk" translates directly to "I don't care if these bikers or scooter riders get killed as long as it doesn't inconvenience me".
I'm a pedestrian, a cyclist and a car driver. I walk on sidewalks, pedal on bike lanes or roads (usually roads because they are faster) and obviously drive on roads.
I strongly hate cyclists on sidewalks. If they dread pedalling on a road and there are no bike lanes, they (we) have the option of walking, using public transport or drive a car. And campaigning for more bike lanes: this is how they did it in the Netherlands https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
