It's easy to separate motor vehicles from bicycles and pedestrians --
just use those spikes like in gated communities. *Cyclists can slip
between the spikes or stop and step over them as can pedestrians. *A
motor vehicle will get 4 damaged tires.

Separating cyclists from pedestrians is trickier. *The first obvious
solution would be to install parallel bars like on cattle stops on
sidewalks/pavements. *A good wheelman, however, will just hit these at
an angle like he does oblique railroad tracks. *Maybe some combination
of patches of ice and grates would work but that would be expensive to
install and maintain and dangerous to pedestrians as well.

People riding cycles are cyclists.

Pedestrians are not riding cycles.

I wouldn't try to do this with case law, i.e., arguing against that in
traffic court.

Moreover the weight of a cyclist + bicycle averages about that of a
pedestrian, both an order of magnitude less massive than a motor
vehicle. *Even more compelling a motor vehicle often represents 2
orders of magnitude more kinetic energy.

As a practical matter, is there really any reason not to reclassify
cyclists as pedestrians as far as cycling on the sidewalk/pavement is
concerned?

Yes, most pedestrians do not want to constantly dodge cyclists on the
pavement/footway.

In Palm Springs they have dual use paths: golf carts and cyclists.
Throw in various motorcycles and a categorization scheme could get
messy really fast.


Bret Cahill