My way? The wrong way!
It’s easy to say bikes shouldn’t bike the wrong way down one-way streets, but what’s the guy going short distances supposed to do?
You want your egg rolls hot and crunchy, right? Well the guy delivering on the bike has to get to your place. Let’s say he’s at 57 and 10th and you’re just two blocks away at 55th St. That’s just 0.1 miles, if you’re going the wrong way. If you walk you can’t make other deliveries and your egg rolls get steamed and mushy.
To bike legally you need to go over to 9th or 11th Ave, the 0.1 mile distance increases to 0.44 miles. It’s not just going to happen.
My own dilemma? Thanks to one-way streets, I can’t bike from my house to the stores on 30th Ave without biking the wrong way down a one-way street or biking on the sidewalk. So that’s what I do. If I didn’t, a short 1.5 block trip triples in length (and is more dangerous, to boot). I could walk, but I want my bike to carry things back. And if I have my bike, damn tooting I’m going to ride it.
Bike need to be able to go both ways. Since it’s what bikes do anyway, why not make it both safe and legal?
One Response
Here's the problem scenario that happened 15 minutes ago – I'm making a right hand turn (in a car) in Greenpoint (all two lane roads mind you) and suddenly I am about to run over a cyclist going the wrong way on said two lane road (at night, when it's raining). That kind of crap isn't worth a hot sandwich or the gratification of getting somewhere 5 minutes faster. I do bike often and i believe going the wrong way is purely a function of laziness and delusion.