Originally Posted by
sknhgy
Just wondering. The reason I ask is I live in a rural area in relatively close proximity to a large urban area.
When I stay home and ride, nearly all my riding is on rural roads except for the short periods when I'm in town. The only other type of riding I do around home is on gravel mainenance paths along the river or in the nearby wildlife refuges. By far most of my local riding is on 2 lane country roads.
When I go to the city, which is fairly often, almost all my riding is on some type of bike path or mup.
This is kind of a dumb question/post, but do they make paths in urban areas in order to try and segregate bike traffic from vehicular traffic?
If you live in a highly populated area, is most of your riding on paths?
Personally, I avoid riding in traffic as much as possible.
Yes. Plus the cost-benefit ratio improves when multiple users are entitled to get on the pathway, rather than just dedicating it to cyclists.
When I was in full-time professional cycing advocacy, I tried to push the concept that local authorities could better spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) on teaching people to ride their bikes properly on the road rather than spending it on off-road facilities that were sub-standard and often more dangerous that the alternative. But it was to no avail.
There are some good facilities. One of I am most familar with runs as a spine parallel with a railway track for more than 20km in Hobart, Tasmania. It is concrete, and dual lane.
But Machka and I did a 100km ride through Melbourne the other weekend mainly on shared pathways, and there were way too many compromises to make the trip entirely enjoyable and safe. We did it in the Australian winter when the number of users was limited, and even then it was a task to try to anticipate what might happen.
We did another ride in Adelaide on MUPs a few months ago, and that highlighted why I much, much prefer to ride on the road where the behaviour and actions of drivers generally is much more predictable and hence safer.
To answer your other question, we ride on rural roads, and often on what are quite busy highways servicing holiday towns... because that it where we live.
However, I quite look forward to getting to urban and city environments and in traffic because I don't find it that intimidating. I still pick my routes if need be and and there are restrictions on riding on some freeways. I even don't mind riding on the main arterial (interstate) highway between Melbourne and Sydney despite the faster traffic -- the wide shoulders and gentler inclines are quite enjoyable.