#ygkChallenge: Share the Road
Welcome to Kingstonist’s weekly challenge, dare, resolution or whatever you prefer to call it. Each week we establish a new and ambitious community goal, encouraging our readers, followers, friends and families to step out of their comfort zones and do something great, and hopefully a little out of the ordinary. Consider this your official and personal invitation to join us in completing a small but meaningful achievement. By taking part in this community-wide initiative, we hope to make Kingston a slightly better place to live, work and play. And of course, we also hope that you will feel proud of your contribution and achievement.
This week’s challenge encourages you to:
Share your bicycle/pedestrian-friendly ideas! Earlier this week, the City of Kingston, Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Public Health (KFL&A Public Health), and the Share the Road Cycling Coalition hosted the Kingston Bike Summit in an effort to generate ideas about increasing cycling participation in The Limestone City. Reflecting on the city’s 2012 bronze-level Bike Friendly Communities award, the Summit also served to rally support for achieving higher status in the not so distant future. Interestingly enough, the event was not entirely focused on cycling, rather it had a larger vision of making Kingston a better place for pedestrians and others who are sharing the road. With that expanded mandate in mind, how would you improve the conditions, infrastructure and attitudes to strengthen Kingston’s ability to share of the roads? Whether you’re a fan of more bike lanes, pedestrian-only parts of the city, scramble crosswalks or better bike sharing programs, we want to hear your great ideas for sharing the roads!
Sign up and commit to completing this week’s challenge by commenting below with an “I’m in“, “challenge accepted“, “en garde” or something along those lines. Further, help us spread the word via Twitter and Facebook by sharing the link and encouraging the participation of your friends and family. By joining together in our weekly challenge, we hope to accomplish big and positive things for our community.
Thanks to James D. Schwartz for today’s photo.
I think the city needs to start with improving road conditions. Parts of city streets have been serious neglected, and it's no surprise that multiple streets in Kingston consistently show up on CAA's worst 50 roads in Canada list. Both my car and my bike would appreciate filling potholes and so on.
I have been a pedestrian for many years, I take the city bus and walk mostly everywhere. Reicently I have started to learn to drive. I am noticing that yes sharing the road with cycleists is very important, but at the same time I am noticing that most cycleists don’t obay the rules of the road. Are cycleists supposed to obey the same rules as motorists?
While Kingston drivers are relatively polite compared to my long expereince in the UK, as a cyclist I notice that large numbers of drivers are using their mobile phones while driving, not signalling before turning, breaking red lights and more. What's particularly bad about this is that all of these activities are dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists (and also other drivers). If you are hauling a 1/2 ton (or more) hunk of metal about the place at speed, you have an equivalently weighty moral duty to look out for other more vulnerable road users because of the potential damage you can do, irrespective of the law. Cars are also getting bigger and heavier and I don't think many of the owners seem to realise (or perhaps they don't care) that whilst these vehicles may be safer for them, they are more dangerous to others.
Having said that, there are some very bad cyclists out there too, who don't signal, go through red lights or 4-way stops and don't use lights or reflective material after dark. Mostly these cyclists are a danger only to themselves, but they still have a responsibility to pedestrians and more vulnerable road users, and certainly if they did get hit whilst not doing what they are supposed to, then they wouldn't have much of a legal leg to stand on.
And then you get the suicide pedestrians who dash out across the road without notice…