Road Cycling in Philadelphia

[Bruce_Willis_97]

I often wonder what makes a "safe" or "friendly" cycling city. Is it the availability of cycling lanes, motorists who yield to riders based on the number of road cyclist in the area? Or is it the mentality of the people overall?

I've lived in philly for almost 15 years and I've come to know it as one of the most naturally miserable cities I know. People here literally will go out of their way at times to f*ck with you! I can testify to this because I catch myself being one of those people at times. Sometimes I think as much as I wanna give a driver an earful for pulling some dangerous move, should I expect anyone to cater to my safety as a road cyclists? I'm out here taking a risk for my personal enjoyment right?

I sometimes wonder if theres a more automatic feeling of safeness as a rider in cities known to be "bike friendly" instead of every second fingers are on the triggers and peeking over the shoulder to make sure what coming from behind.

I know what it means to be a safe rider and I never intend to become laxed about that, but sometimes I feel downright paranoid!!

I must say my heart dropped seeing the incident at the critical mass in brazil this weekend, just makes you think, whos around you at any given time could do something like that?

 

[nvpacchi]

I always thought Philly was sort of a leader for major cities in promoting a cycling culture. Compared to the larger cities (NYC, LA, etc.) Philly has done a whole lot more to welcome cycling in the city.

But I guess statistics on paper and living through it everyday are two different things.

I actually did a project on this past semester where I assessed the feasibility of high school students cycling to class. I chose 28 schools to look at, spread out across all parts of the city. Philadelphia has almost 300 miles of bike lanes, and every single school was either on a bike lane or within a quarter mile of one. Besides proximity to bike lanes, I also investigated the proximity of schools to cycling related accidents (majority in the downtown area), and the safety of each school.

By simply looking at maps and GIS overlays it was evident that areas like Manayunk and University city (among others) would be prime areas to try and promote cycling to class to its students, but then again statistics on paper only mean so much.

I guess the only way to truly make a city safer for cyclists is by having more people participate in the activity. As the frequency of cyclists on the road increases, motorists will eventually come to grips with it and hopefully after awhile simply accept it.

This is an idealistic mentality, but at least with more people biking on the road it will help to assuage the us vs. them attitude that currently exists on the roads.

 

[rhubroma]

When I began cycling in Philly and Jersey back in 80's we just road and didn't think too much about the dangers. There were even less cyclists back then. The dangers were probably the same, but we didn't worry about them and just told hostile drivers to f-off and hope that they didn't pull over and take out a baseball bat or, worse, a shotgun.

You learned to live with it or give up riding.

I have since moved to Italy and the dangers are probably no less, but thankfully you don't have to worry about the baseball bats or shotguns.