The Dumb Cyclists and Pedestrians thread...

[g-boaf]

Soon supposedly there will be a separate walking track, so she will be obliged to use that.

I suppose “soon” means 25 years away in the case of my council.

[jasonc]

Soon supposedly there will be a separate walking track, so she will be obliged to use that.

I suppose “soon” means 25 years away in the case of my council.

the $60 would provide so much satisfaction. of course your alternative is a bluetooth speaker that played loud revving 2 stroke motorbikes. maybe she'll move then

[Cyclophiliac]

Soon supposedly there will be a separate walking track, so she will be obliged to use that.

I suppose “soon” means 25 years away in the case of my council.

If it's anything like Melbourne, having separate paths will make absolutely no difference. Melbourne has some parallel walking and cycling paths along the shore between Port Melbourne and Brighton, and the pedestrians never stay off the cycling path. Naturally, if any cyclist (a) politely asks pedestrians to stay off the cycling path or (b) cycles on the pedestrian path, then there's hell to pay. But that's life for a cyclist in this country.

[Mr Purple]

Speaking of which, ran into one of the bigger park runs on Kedron Brook Bikeway on Saturday.

Pretty much this section:



Somehow despite it having separate bikeways and pathways, they'd managed in places to occupy the entire width of both going one direction. Kudos to the organisers who were doing their best to keep people on the grass and the walking path, but you do wonder what people are thinking sometimes.

Having said that I'm enjoying these sorts of situations more on my gravel bike than my road bike. Because 'giving up and taking to the grass' is always an option.

[jasonc]

Speaking of which, ran into one of the bigger park runs on Kedron Brook Bikeway on Saturday.

Pretty much this section:



Somehow despite it having separate bikeways and pathways, they'd managed in places to occupy the entire width of both going one direction. Kudos to the organisers who were doing their best to keep people on the grass and the walking path, but you do wonder what people are thinking sometimes.

Having said that I'm enjoying these sorts of situations more on my gravel bike than my road bike. Because 'giving up and taking to the grass' is always an option.

at my local it's mentioned every week that it's a shared path. you do have to wonder about the sense for the same rider to go back and forth a few times though. if I saw the signs, knowing the width of the path, i would be going elsewhere, very quickly

[Mr Purple]

Yep. As a rider you sort of have to accept fate at some point.

I met a friend at the hockey fields, and both of us had already decided 'we're not going back that way'. Given it's only a 5km event you'd have to mess up pretty seriously to run into it twice.

[g-boaf]

Soon supposedly there will be a separate walking track, so she will be obliged to use that.

I suppose “soon” means 25 years away in the case of my council.

the $60 would provide so much satisfaction. of course your alternative is a bluetooth speaker that played loud revving 2 stroke motorbikes. maybe she'll move then

Don’t need a speaker for motorbikes, those (and quad bikes) are already regular users of the shared path.

[jasonc]

Soon supposedly there will be a separate walking track, so she will be obliged to use that.

I suppose “soon” means 25 years away in the case of my council.

the $60 would provide so much satisfaction. of course your alternative is a bluetooth speaker that played loud revving 2 stroke motorbikes. maybe she'll move then

Don’t need a speaker for motorbikes, those (and quad bikes) are already regular users of the shared path.

wonder how old mate handles them

[Anrai]

Still trying very hard not to be the Dumb Cyclist myself, recently had..

A very small child out on a Saturday family ride, dismounted (with mother) to cross and stand on the opposite lane (can't go further, bordered by railway fence) to look at the ocean. I slowed right down just in case and sure enough the tyke turns around to no-look run straight back across in front of me, with the mother apologising. I'll dub that one Schrödinger's Toddler; treat as simultaneously occupying every positional state across the path until you're close enough to really know where they're gonna be.

I'm 25th(!)/85th respectively on the two variants of a gravel descent down a very shared path, but there's always about a 40% chance if I go for it there's going to be one or more groups fully blocking a section, and you can't really do much but slow down and accept it's not the day. Visibility is quite good so there's no close calls, but it might still be nice if people were aware it's a path bikes come down at 35+km/h before they go three-wide with their backs to the hill. (I still somehow managed 3s/1s from PRs yesterday after slowing to walking speed.)

Oh, and I think I've given up going for the uphill on the cycleway out of Hobart CBD. There's an alternate route that doesn't involve mutually assured destruction with cyclists cutting off across the path on a blind corner.

[Retrobyte]

I know he's a big bloke, but doesn't need to take up the whole width of the path

[Retrobyte]

I spotted this dog early and knew it looked like trouble based on how the owner was trying to wrangle it. I was correct.

[Mr Purple]

I'm 25th(!)/85th respectively on the two variants of a gravel descent down a very shared path, but there's always about a 40% chance if I go for it there's going to be one or more groups fully blocking a section, and you can't really do much but slow down and accept it's not the day. Visibility is quite good so there's no close calls, but it might still be nice if people were aware it's a path bikes come down at 35+km/h before they go three-wide with their backs to the hill. (I still somehow managed 3s/1s from PRs yesterday after slowing to walking speed.

I avoid any bikeway/shared path KOMs these days. Occasionally I see one on Strava and wonder 'hey, that's easy, I wonder why that's so slow?' only to ride the segment casually and realise 'ah, yeah. That's why'.

There's a certain subtype of Strava KOM hunter who only holds KOMs because they're prepared to be way more antisocial than anyone else. Either that or they're heading out at 4AM to get them.

[g-boaf]

I'm 25th(!)/85th respectively on the two variants of a gravel descent down a very shared path, but there's always about a 40% chance if I go for it there's going to be one or more groups fully blocking a section, and you can't really do much but slow down and accept it's not the day. Visibility is quite good so there's no close calls, but it might still be nice if people were aware it's a path bikes come down at 35+km/h before they go three-wide with their backs to the hill. (I still somehow managed 3s/1s from PRs yesterday after slowing to walking speed.

I avoid any bikeway/shared path KOMs these days. Occasionally I see one on Strava and wonder 'hey, that's easy, I wonder why that's so slow?' only to ride the segment casually and realise 'ah, yeah. That's why'.

There's a certain subtype of Strava KOM hunter who only holds KOMs because they're prepared to be way more antisocial than anyone else. Either that or they're heading out at 4AM to get them.

The only ones I've had on cycleways have been on very wide cycleways and long uphill sections so the speeds are not really high, maybe 35km/h, so it's safe - and there are hardly any people about.

Downhill I don't bother.

[bychosis]

There's a certain subtype of Strava KOM hunter who only holds KOMs because they're prepared to be way more antisocial than anyone else. Either that or they're heading out at 4AM to get them.

I picked up a couple of KOMs on sharepath sections on my commutes. Largely becasue of the frequency of riding them. Statistically, you're bound to get a good run at some point. In my case, usually terrible weather when not many others are around (and as a result of a tailwind).

I recall having a good battle with a local rider. Taking turns on a nearby segment at Taking the KOM off each other, until a strong rider came and picked off all the segments in the area and put us both out of contention.

I treat them as a bit of fun though and aren't too concerned at trying to get one, or if one gets taken away.

[Mr Purple]

All of the major bikeway ones around here are held by idiots on e-scooters or people who forgot to turn their bike computers off for the 100km/hr drive home.

I do hold a few bikeway ones, but all were achieved on a rainy day with no-one else about. There is a time and place where you'll get away with it!

[Anrai]

I'm 25th(!)/85th respectively on the two variants of a gravel descent down a very shared path, but there's always about a 40% chance if I go for it there's going to be one or more groups fully blocking a section, and you can't really do much but slow down and accept it's not the day. Visibility is quite good so there's no close calls, but it might still be nice if people were aware it's a path bikes come down at 35+km/h before they go three-wide with their backs to the hill. (I still somehow managed 3s/1s from PRs yesterday after slowing to walking speed.

I avoid any bikeway/shared path KOMs these days. Occasionally I see one on Strava and wonder 'hey, that's easy, I wonder why that's so slow?' only to ride the segment casually and realise 'ah, yeah. That's why'.

More realistically at this point I'm just crawling my PRs upward, which mostly happens organically through incremental progress in fitness and bike handling experience. Also where I ride at the moment, to completely avoid pedestrians I'd have to stick to the roughest singletrack segments that are a concentrated population of the more hardcore MTBers, where at this point I'm definitively still bottom-fifth.
I may have overblown how busy it is, that other 60% of the time it's all clear and honestly I'd call it a safer segment than say, the cycleway ones where pushing for a serious time involves cyclists cutting lane on blind corners and blowing through road crossings.

All of the major bikeway ones around here are held by idiots on e-scooters or people who forgot to turn their bike computers off for the 100km/hr drive home.

There's an unfortunate trail segment here which runs alongside the highway. Should never have been entered because it's close enough that the top 30 are roadies who intentionally leave Strava running for the drive home (if you look at the rides, almost all of them end immediately after the segment) and the top legitimate rider is a roadie on the highway.

[Myrtone]

I just found this document which note the requirement to give way to pedestrians (not that give way means don't get in the way) even on a red pedestrian signal. I understand that this is because they are required to give way to pedestrians on a green light and because vehicles are not to base decisions on pedestrian lights. But if the New Zealand road code only requires giving way to pedestrians *lawfully* on the crossing (this is not the same as having other duties under road laws) why should'nt ours.
Pedestrian lights, first of all, should go green with the vehicle lights if the length of the green vehicle phase is not to be any shorter than minimum length of the pedestrian phase.

Apparently it is not an offence to sound the horn at a pedestrian when going straight through on a green light but it is when turning on a green arrow.

[g-boaf]

There's a certain subtype of Strava KOM hunter who only holds KOMs because they're prepared to be way more antisocial than anyone else. Either that or they're heading out at 4AM to get them.

I picked up a couple of KOMs on sharepath sections on my commutes. Largely becasue of the frequency of riding them. Statistically, you're bound to get a good run at some point. In my case, usually terrible weather when not many others are around (and as a result of a tailwind).

I recall having a good battle with a local rider. Taking turns on a nearby segment at Taking the KOM off each other, until a strong rider came and picked off all the segments in the area and put us both out of contention.

I treat them as a bit of fun though and aren't too concerned at trying to get one, or if one gets taken away.

In my area we have a track sprinter (multiple times world champion) so anything flat is no chance. He seems to go out at crazy early times of the day.

I don’t bother with those ones, they are too dangerous to get when there is potential of other people about. I don’t like taking some of those gradual curves at 40km/h - it just feels too fast.

Even if you go out crazy early when it is dark, you might encounter people hiding under bridges all dressed in black doing drugs… going 50km/h in those conditions is not good.

I’m very cautious and careful these days. I can ride fairly quickly with a high average speed but I don’t take risks to do it.

[Retrobyte]

In my area we have a track sprinter (multiple times world champion) so anything flat is no chance. He seems to go out at crazy early times of the day.

He sniffed out a couple of KOMs I held on my commute that have light traffic and took a group there to recce the segments, rode them a few times for practice and then did a real run and destroyed my KOM by over 20 seconds. He was nice enough to message me to let me know though