Streetsblog.net

A separated bike path in Tucson, Arizona. (Photo: limulus via Flickr)

I’ve never shied away from riding on city streets. I prefer a road with a striped bike lane to one without, and I like the 3rd Street bikeway, but it is not often between where I am and where I want to be. And I won’t go that far out of my way to ride an official bike route. I use my bike to actually get places, not to exercise, so I tend to take the easiest way to get where I am going.

But I recently moved and my commute now includes a significant stretch of the Santa Cruz River Path. I noticed the other day that after my meandering route through quiet residential streets (I often get on the River Path at 19th Street), the instant I get on the bike path it is as if a giant load is lifted from my shoulders. I suddenly feel much more relaxed and at ease, and . . . happy.

It’s because I don’t have to worry about cars. I can ride along and look at the lizards and roadrunners and rabbits and groundsquirrels and I don’t have to think a bit about getting doored, left-hooked, hit from behind, yelled at, honked at, pushed over, made fun of, turned into, and run over.

Until I started crossing this boundary-line from street to bike-path on a daily basis, I didn’t realize how my own brain responds to riding a bike on the street with traffic. Judging from the sigh of relief that comes out of me every time I get on that bike path, it’s a pretty heavy kind of a deal. It stresses me out. I guess I just got used to it.

So you can mark me down as a convert to separated bike infrastructure. But of course I’d rather see separated car infrastructure. Separate those infernal things out to the edges of town where they belong.