Pittsburgh cycling

Pittsburgh finally hired a city-paid person to handle bike transportation issues. Go Pittsburgh! Reaction is all over the board. Both automotive drivers and cyclists need to learn a lot, especially how to get along. Lots on both sides are conscientious, safe, and relatively patient. However, jerks abound in both camps.

As a cyclist, trained to ride in other, bike-friendly, cities with and without hills, I really don't feel that Pittsburgh is all that bad. There are roads that feel like deathtraps. However, usually, there is a reasonable workaround that doesn't take one all that far out of the way of the shortest path. Given the topography and legacy roads, there is rarely a "shortest" path in Pittsburgh.

Mike Madison of Pittsblog has a very nice post about the bicycle tzar position and some great insight into the insipid reactions on both sides. Here is an excerpt that I found really interesting:

As a least one commenter at The Burgh -- Agent Ska, I think -- captures the real source of conflict here: Pittsburgh drivers are scared of bicyclists. To engage in a generalization that is simultaneously radical and entirely ordinary: Pittsburghers are scared of the unfamiliar. People on two wheels in Pittsburgh are strangers in this strange motorized land. Because Pittsburgh has lots of hills and few shoulders, historically there haven't been many cyclists out in traffic throughout the region. That much is clear. But those numbers are growing.

It continues after a bit with this:

Second, people who are adopting bicycles as their preferred forms of urban transportation in Pittsburgh similarly fall into one of two groups: There is a group that learned to cycle in a city -- not Pittsburgh -- where vehicle/cycle relations are comparatively harmonious, and who therefore expect that drivers in Pittsburgh will be as comparatively respectful as they are back "home." And there is a group that is mostly native to Pittsburgh, and that no more understands how to cycle respectfully with traffic in an urban environment than Pittsburgh drivers understand how to get along with cyclists.

I find this true and somewhat comical, but it is a static blanket statement. Exceptions to this abound. I think it's true that there are more and more cyclists on the roads. Perhaps I am seeing more cyclists as rider are realizing how nice the bike lane on Liberty Ave makes the Liberty corridor for biking. It's bound to draw riders that had previously chosen other routes. In any case, the more riders there are, the more adaptation we're bound to see. Cyclists will learn how to coexist with the automobile traffic patterns. The drivers will also start recognize that bikes are traffic as well.

At least we can hope.