| Re: Multiuse trail rules: Left or Right side walking?
kab <kab2000@comcast.net.invalid> wrote in message news:<kab2000-066A4D.18131205102003@news.comcast.giganews.com>.. .
> I'm sure this has been addressed ad nauseum, and I searched the Google
> Usenet archives, but I have yet to find a definitive, sensible answer.
>
> I am a bike rider, walker/hiker, and dog walker. My position is that all
> pedestrians, including dog walkers, walk on the LEFT on multiuse trails
> so that they can see oncoming bike riders ...
> Is this sensible or am I tilting at windmills?
Both, I think.
It's occurred to me, also, that it makes much sense for walkers to
keep left on such trails. One of the reasons I avoid biking on such
trails is that I've often been stopped by four-across peds who don't
realize I'm behind them - and when they do realize it, they don't know
which way to move!
The problem is, in a drive-on-the-right country, people tend to walk
on the right when on a sidewalk or in a mall. And they "think" of the
bike path as a sidewalk, not as a road or shared facility. (That's to
the extent they actually think, which is not much. In reality, they
just operate by habit.)
Thus, I think what you propose is very logical, and very unlikely to
be implemented.
Worse: when bicycling in North Dakota recently (a state that has a
mandatory sidepath law) we actually saw bike paths with signs telling
cyclists to keep _left_! As if there aren't enough problems with
wrong-way riders...
I think there must be _many_ incompetent bike facility designers out
there!
- Frank Krygowski
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