Originally Posted by
lil brown bat
There's a flaw in your basic premise, which appears to be that something makes a space crowded in exact proportion to the area that it occupies. This is simply not true.
A road with cars bumper to bumper for even a block is a crowded space. There is very little room on that road for anything else regardless of it's size. In the case of bumper to bumper traffic, the cars
do crowd the space in exact proportion to the area it occupies. Humans without the cars...whether walking or riding a bike will crowd a space far less because of social norms of keeping a distance from the next person.
Although I could not go that fast in on a bikeway due to the erratic nature of people's movement patterns, I couldn't really move much faster on a crowded street for the same reason. And the consequences are far worse on the road if I, or someone else, makes a mistake.
However, I don't ride in either of those situations. If a road is crowded with bumper to bumper traffic, I find another parallel route. If a MUP is crowded, I do the same. It's not an "all or nothing game". Just as I don't have one-bike-to-do-it-all, I don't have
one way of riding.
Adapt. We humans are really good at it.