: Sydney bike commuters: What the hell?

By: g | No Comments » |

I wrote about this a while back, the dreaded ‘commuter rider’. Well, not dreaded, it’s a great thing to see people on bikes and the more people on bikes means greater demand for better infrastructure, and that can only be a good thing. Alas, I am writing about it again…

Over the past weeks I have had to abandon my mid afternoon rides, the mind bending heat melted my brain one afternoon, so I decided if this heat was going to keep on, early mornings were now the place to be. Of course that meant hitting ‘peak hour’ on the return ride, but hey, small price to pay.

While I have seemed to just skirt by the brunt of the commuter traffic, as the rides are now hitting 2 hours, I am catching the peak hour commuter rush at full flow, and the angst is more than ever it seems. On Monday crossing the Pyrmont shared bridge, there was an ‘incident’, looked like some riders collided with walkers. Not surprising considering what a mess the traffic flow on this pedestrian/cycle bridge is, despite its size. Today, there were traffic controllers on the bridge, and not too soon. I happily acknowledged one of them as I passed – they are now (sadly) essential for everyone’s safety.

But today the previous article (or was that a rant?) I wrote came to my mind. Heading out from Centennial Park after my two mid point laps it was peak hour, around 7.45 or so. Right off the bat I am confronted with a healthy dose of pre-work testosterone. It was not a corporate team, lycra clad guy on his 10k mid life crisis road bike, it was the dude in shorts, sand shoes on his $500 special. Mr ‘I have to be first’ was just hell bent on proving a point to me after I pulled up next to him at a crossing. He had to be faster, more daring, more risk taking. I watched this guy dart with traffic with little regard for anyone else, including himself, just to keep ahead of me and the others around me. He was not the only one either.

More often than not, the guys on the expensive bikes, be they long timers (who know better) or the new comers (it’s easy to tell who’s who), generally tend to ‘respect the flow’ of traffic, be it on bike paths or the roads. These cyclists seem know the place and time to try and prove a point (Centennial Park mostly) and the places not to. It’s the, as I term them, ‘commuter riders’, the short distance rider, that always have to prove something to everyone. Maybe it’s a pre-work thing, maybe work makes them angry, maybe they didn’t get laid the night before, who knows, but they are just bloody dangerous and only becoming more so.

Sadly the bike paths are the most dicey places to be at this time of the day and it’s getting to the point that I may just head back into the traffic; honestly I feel safer. It’s not so much the amount of riders on the path, it’s the manner in which these riders conduct themselves. Overtaking into oncoming traffic, riding your wheel (none of them have enough experience to pull this off safely) and just being pushy, racy and overall downright loose. It’s almost as if all the aggro drivers Sydney’s cyclists have complained about for so long, are now riding bikes to work.

Today, on the lead onto Pyrmont bridge from Sussex St (a double duty footpath too narrow for double duty), I nearly had two people collide into me from the opposite direction as they were determined not to wait the 5 seconds needed for a safe passing zone to appear in the foot traffic. On Pyrmont Bridge, I had one of those safety vest loons aim straight for me and then move at the last minute. But it was on the Anzac Bridge path that I came the closest to being collected, not once but three times, including around one blind corner; all by commuters that needed to be faster than everyone else and give ‘no quarter’ or regard to anyone in their line of sight, regardless which side of the bike path.

Ultimately, the irony of all this will be if I end up being collected by a testosterone laden, and/or uneducated bike commuter while on a bike path trying to avoid being on the road.

So what’s the point of this little bit?

What I want to say to those building all this great infrastructure is that while it’s fantastic you are pushing to make it, if you don’t start educating those who are being encouraged to use it, you’ll be finding yourselves dealing with ‘bike on bike/pedestrian on bike rage’, as well as an increasing rate of pretty nasty accidents- it’s already starting to happen. Both on the bike and in the car, the increasing amount of un-helmeted stupidity being undertaken by Sydney’s fresh crop of commuter riders is truly outstanding and while I have been riding for 26 years without incident… I doubt most of those I see will make it to a year without hitting someone or being hit.

To those who are using it, who I now unfortunately have to now ‘put up with’, and that fit into the descriptions I have given here, please learn that I, others like me, those that just want a peaceful ride to work and pedestrians, are not there for you to prove how much testosterone you have, or how great a risk taker you may be; really, no one cares and just so you know, you’re not that fast. Therefore, colliding into me or anyone else in your quest to be a pre-work hero, is not an acceptable start to the day.

Peace.

g

 

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