Road hogs: Minneapolis cyclists don’t need to share

OK Cyclists these are the rules: you can only ride single file, no talking, no smiling and no joy riding. This is a bike path, oops, I mean a multi-use path not a playground for your personal amusement.
This seems to be the attitude on too many of our trails but no one seems to question the validity of building trails ONLY with minimum widths and no pavement markings. We can only imagine what it would be like to have room for cyclists to ride two abreast and be able to comfortable and consistently talk with their riding partner while walkers walk hand in hand on the same trail and here comes an oncoming cyclist and no one flinches. Elly Blue in Grist writes about such a trail:
"I’ve never been the biggest fan of riding on bike paths, especially ones shared with people walking, but Minneapolis is doing better than most with designing these trails: Most of the paths we rode were marked with lanes for bike travel in two directions, with a separate path for walking."
Imagine that, accommodating all users rather then cracking down on those fun loving "reckless" cyclists trying to navigate a trail that is as narrow as they can make it. Seriously, whenever you hear of police enforcing speed limits on a trail we should be saying "You know what, that trail needs to be wider with more lanes."

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https://www.grist.org/biking/2011-09-28-road-hogs-minneapolis-cyclists-dont-need-to-share-theyve-got-theoldId.20111001152609433

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