It would be nice if the Valley was more pedestrian friendly - all too often cars ignore the rules. One example is near the Palo Alto Caltrain station tunnel between Stanford and downtown Palo Alto, and too many times pedestrians come close to getting hit by their recklessness :( .
[Eh, pick any time you've seen a car shoot through a crosswalk and narrowly miss pedestrians... I observe this at least weekly]
It is frustrating how often drivers don't care about co-existing with the other modes of transportation & following the rules - I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes car friendly.
I love this comment because it illustrates perfectly the cognitive dissonance going on. People everywhere talk about how drivers in their area are like, so, so bad, but nobody ever suggests that we halt investing in car infrastructure until they get better.
And that's a good thing: you don't stop investing in a vital public good just because it's sometimes abused. That applies to bikes as much as cars.
I have far more problems with bikers in the area than cars - the close encounter rate is quite high, largely because a lot of bikers don't have good control over their bikes or because they don't care at all about pedestrians and are willing to run them over to force them out of the way. I'm quite amazed I haven't been hit by a biker yet to be honest, some even talking on their cellphones held in one hand while driving pedestrians running out of the way.
I'd be more sympathetic towards bikers if they didn't decrease the quality of getting from one place to another for pedestrians & harass when they decided to not follow laws & rules there for good reason.
You act like being pedestrian friendly isn't a vital public good - I'd argue it is more important than being bike friendly, and if being bike friendly has a logical result in making it much more perilous for a pedestrian (and I'd fear for those with babies in baby carriages), one needs to consider that the current system does not work, and this problem needs to be solved either before or alongside the bike friendly problem.
I know you're speaking more of bike/pedestrian conflicts, but that's not an issue on my commute, so I can't speak to it.
Every single law I break as a cyclist benefits drivers as well as myself. It's the lack of infrastructure that makes it safer for me to hop from bike lane to sidewalk rather than follow the bike lane which magically reappears on the OTHER SIDE OF A LANE OF TRAFFIC on a 40mph arterial. It's the lack of infrastructure that makes me prefer to go from road to crosswalk (or cut across an entire road when it looks safe) instead of forcing all of the motorists and their precious steeds to have to accordion up and slow for me as I try to make my way across the 3 lanes of traffic to the left turn lane when I need to turn.
Additionally, every single law I break exposes me to 100% of the legal risk, and anything a driver might consider "unsafe" is putting 100% of the risk of bodily harm on myself, not on the observer in the car.
I say all of this as a car and motorcycle enthusiast with an avowed need for speed. But the reality is that the car-centric view of the roads has to change.
> I'd be more sympathetic towards bikers if they didn't decrease the quality of getting from one place to another for pedestrians & harass when they decided to not follow laws & rules there for good reason.
Fine, but do you know how you get nice, polite cyclists like in Denmark or the Netherlands? You give them good infrastructure so it doesn't feel like they have to break the rules!
If there were no pedestrian signals and no sidewalks, do you think pedestrians would be as well-behaved as they are today?
> You act like being pedestrian friendly isn't a vital public good - I'd argue it is more important than being bike friendly, and if being bike friendly has a logical result in making it much more perilous for a pedestrian (and I'd fear for those with babies in baby carriages), one needs to consider that the current system does not work, and this problem needs to be solved either before or alongside the bike friendly problem.
Again, you have it backwards: Most people on bikes will gladly stay off the sidewalk if there is equivalently safe-feeling infrastructure available. But a painted bike lane does not feel safe, not unless it's a traffic-calmed street. Making better bike lanes means fewer collisions between pedestrians and cyclists, not more.
[Eh, pick any time you've seen a car shoot through a crosswalk and narrowly miss pedestrians... I observe this at least weekly]
It is frustrating how often drivers don't care about co-existing with the other modes of transportation & following the rules - I feel like this needs to change first before the area becomes car friendly.