Originally Posted by turbo1889

I think part of the differences between how we ride are due to the different environments we ride in.

For me in MT riding VC in-town in stop and go square grid traffic (sometimes bumper to bumper) is a series of hard sprints between red lights where I have to go as fast as I can and pedal as hard as I can to hold my place in traffic and waiting at red lights or slowing and stopping for stop signs is a welcome quick breather break before the next sprint. I understand that in other areas namely in the big cities traffic can slow down and back up so that its only moving at about 10-15 mph but in the smaller towns up here in my state in-town traffic moves at about 20-30 mph in-between the lights and I try to consistently break through the 20-mph speed barrier going that fast or slightly more in-between the lights. There is usually no shoulder edge for in-town roads and if there is a bike lane its a door zone lane that I ain't using and usually the lanes are narrow. So in-town riding for me in my area is usually VC riding as a series of sprints with little breather breaks at the lights and stop signs.

In contrast up her in MT raveling in-between towns is almost all on high speed highways with automobile traffic usually moving at 65-mph or more so I very much prefer to use either roads with a ride-able shoulder edge where I can ride OUT of the main traffic lanes or alternately a road with very little automobile traffic preferably a narrow two lane without any shoulder edge. The worst possibility is a narrow two lane with little or no ride-able shoulder edge and lots of high speed traffic. On those high speed roadways in-between towns riding OUT on the shoulder edge of a road with a lot of high speed automobile traffic works great and trying to take the lane when you don't need to looks like a really dumb idea. On the flip side a road with very little automobile traffic that is a narrow two lane with no shoulder edge works nearly as well because automobile traffic can almost always pass you right away with oncoming traffic rarely interfering and without any shoulder edge and narrow lanes its obvious that the only place to safely ride is in the main lane "taking the lane" so one rarely gets harassed by motorists for doing so. The worst is a two lane with a lot of high speed automobile traffic and medium width lanes that are wider then some other lanes but still not wide enough to safely share with automobiles side-by-side and a narrow foot wide shoulder edge. On those roads motorists can't easily pass and they see lanes that to their mind are wide enough to just barely share side-by-side and if you would just get over a little more they think they could just squeeze by and in their minds there is a shoulder edge that although its way too narrow and/or torn up they think you should be riding on instead of being in the main lane.

Where you are in RI it sounds to me like your in-town riding is automobiles backed up and crammed up such that riding VC in the lane slows you down rather then being a series of sprints between the welcome little breather breaks of red-lights and stop signs. It also sounds like some of your higher speed roads aren't as bad for riding in the main traffic lanes as what we have up in my area. So obviously with different riding conditions are styles are going to be different.

I'm glad though that I'm not the only one on this forum who realizes that neither the militant hard line VCers or the militant hard line anti-VCers have it right and that both riding styles are appropriate or in-appropriate in different situations and which should be used depends on the conditions.