Columnist Susan Snyder: Bike Month had lessons for every day

Friday, May 28, 2004 | 2:36 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

May 29 - 30, 2004

National Bike Month wasn't what I expected.

When I replaced most of my car trips with bicycle trips this month, I expected to log scads of miles, lose 10 pounds and save a pile o' cash.

By the end of the first week I'd lost track of the miles. I distantly recall buying one tank of gas, and I weigh the same today as I did May 1.

What I expected to happen didn't, and what I learned I didn't expect.

In addition to riding my bike to the office, the store and interviews, I rode it to presentations about bicycling in traffic that I made to about 200 people spread among various Las Vegas Valley corporations.

And I learned that it doesn't matter whether we have two wheels or four. As drivers, most of us operate under completely unrealistic expectations.

When I stood in a roomful of people who mostly drove cars and asked what bugged them about bicycles in traffic, their answers were nearly identical to those given by bicyclists asked the same question about motorists.

And it became pretty clear that, as drivers, we are pretty intolerant of sharing the road with other people, no matter what those other people are driving.

Part of it stems from what most of us consider to be "traffic." The word conjures the image of cars lined up on the freeway with horns honking. But that's only part of a bigger picture.

Traffic is composed of people trying to get from one place to another. A person who designs amusement parks talks about creating the perfect traffic patterns, even though all of the "traffic" is walking. Not all traffic is motorized.

The moment we leave our homes and embark on a journey to somewhere else we become part of traffic. It doesn't matter whether we're walking or riding a bike or driving a car.

People are traffic, and some traffic moves slower.

That brings us to the other rub. We openly resent drivers who move slower than we do. We have a totally unrealistic expectation that we are entitled to drive as fast as we please, at any time of day and on whatever roads we please without other forms of traffic, red lights and other obstructions in our paths.

The driver cruising to work and yapping on the cell phone or the bicyclist training for his next race -- I don't support the rights of either when they blow a red light. And I don't believe the driving skills of either would improve if they traded vehicles. Bad drivers come in all vehicles.

But the ensuing hysteria leads to screaming for more bike lanes, leading traffic engineers to paint lines on the road that often put bicyclists in places they shouldn't be.

For example, look at the marked bike lane on the southbound side of Buffalo Drive between Alta Drive and Charleston Boulevard. It dumps bicyclists into right-turn-only lanes at intersections twice, which makes no sense for the rider going straight.

Motorists can scream, "Hey! There's a bike lane!" until their faces explode. But I will drive in the straight lane to go straight or in the left lane to turn left no matter where they paint a bike lane and no matter what I am driving.

We all follow the same rules. That's how it works, and how it works best.

We all own the road, even when it's not Bike Month.