What is with the amount of cyclists that use sidewalks as bike lanes? I just had to haul myself and my dog out of the way of a speeding bike when I realised the person that yelled “ON YOUR LEFT” was a cyclist gunning it down the middle of the sidewalk behind me and apparently unwilling to bike around. As a pedestrian, I’m already forced to use extra precaution due to Halifax drivers routinely plowing down pedestrians on crosswalks, but now I have to dodge bikes on the sidewalk? Really? – Confused
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2014.
Yes. Yes you do.
Carry a stick to poke into their spokes.
let one just nick you sometime, then frealk the fuck out at them. a pleasure for sure.
More critters are coming soon….skateboards, rollerblades, low flying objects, etc.
I will drive my bike on the sidewalk but only because I don’t go fast, get off if there is lots of people, don’t drive on usually busy sidewalks and don’t usually go very far on my bike. Personally for me driving on the road is scary and I use it for exercise rather than travel. The only time a person really should use the sidewalk is if they are on a bus route and being a person who uses the bus its great when they pull up on to the side walk to let the bus drive by as some roads the bus gets stuck behind a bike and can’t safely drive around them.
Then don’t complain if someone gives you a clothesline. Cyclists want to be vehicles, they want to be pedestrians and then they wonder why everyone gets pissed off with them.
cyclists scare the heck out of me because i share the road with them without proper cycling lanes and that makes it dangerous. I really don’t want to hit one. some are assholes, yes, but they still don’t deserve to be run off the road or smeared into jelly. bigger vehicle=bigger responsibility. more $$=more responsibility. better brain=more responsibility. doesn’t mean it happens, but it should.
yesterday I was driving into town and coming the other way on prospect road were dozens of cyclists. heading to peggys maybe – it looked like an organized outing. there were clumps of them, not one solid line. the behaviour I saw from drivers was absolutely disgusting. passing a clump of cyclists on blind curves, hills, going into oncoming traffic lane just because they couldn’t stand to wait for 30 seconds for a clear spot to get by them. fists pounding steering wheels, yelling, fuming – I saw this all the way up the road into town. and then an ambulance headed down the road with siren screaming.
I don’t know if it was for a cyclist that got hurt or someone falling off a ladder in their yard but if no cyclist got hurt that day i would be surprised. or a head on collision as one of these assholes passed on a blind curve.
what kind of person does that? what kind of person is so impatient, mean spirited, rage-filled, self absorbed and reckless? and so many of them. i am an impatient person, very much so, but i don’t think it gives me the ok to kill someone. my impatience is my shit to deal with.
Common courtesy is an oxymoron and “obeying the rules” has become the hallmark of the true subversive.
and then the driver who kills or maims will callously justify their actions by saying ‘you made me pass you- you forced me into doing a dangerous thing’
god. god. and they believe it, dear god, they believe it.
Cyclists who abuse sidewalks are dicks. Cyclists who don’t obey the rules of the road are also dicks.
cyclists who abuse sidewalks are like catholic priests from residential schools except with an ashphalt fetish.
Does anyone know if delivery vehicles and taxi drivers are allowed to park temporarily in the bike lanes on Windsor Street? The bike lanes in this section are marked by solid white lines and there is no signage indicating that taxis and couriers are allowed to park in the lane. However my passage has been obstructed on multiple occasions this month by vehicles in the bike lanes. I voiced by discontent with a courier over this issue. While he indicated that he was allowed to park there, I found this response to be very self serving.
SirM, generally no according to Section 143(1)(i) of the MVA. So it would appear to be a judgment call by the person issuing tickets.
No stopping, standing or parking
143 (1) It shall be an offence for the driver of a vehicle to stop, stand or park the vehicle, whether attended or unattended, except when necessary to avoid conflict with other traffic or in compliance with the directions of a peace officer or traffic control signal or sign,
in any of the following places:
(i) on a sidewalk;
While I fully recognize that bicycling conditions in Halifax are far from ideal, I find that most of the bicyclists in Halifax think that they are above any rules or laws. They are largely a bunch of douchebags. I could go on and on ranting about them, but I’ll leave it at that. I’ll also say that I was recently in a much larger city where many people use bicycles as their main means of transportation and I did not see anybody being so stupid like the bicyclists of Halifax.
Thanks BT. There was an article in the Coast (By H. Beaumont) citing the MVA section that covers bike lanes. Apparently it bans motorists from using them as parking spaces. It is still not entirely clear whether the MVA also includes exemptions for delivery vehicles or taxis as opposed to private passenger vehicles. The section that you’ve cited seems to be pretty general in its wording. It seems to cover all drivers of all vehicles. The courier who blocked the lane seemed adamant that he was entitled to park there. Unfortunately he cut me off abruptly, so I had to cut into the traffic lane in order to avoid collision and probable injury (fortunately the driver behind me noticed that I had been cut off and laid off the gas).
So, my response to this bitch is: I thought these were BIKE lanes.