JAPANESE SNAPSHOTS – #11 – SIDEWALKS FOR BICYCLES

In American cities, bike riding is at best, a frivolous afterthought, and at worst, often quite dangerous. I say this as someone who has used a bicycle as my primary form of transportation most of my adult life and still do. America worships cars. And bikes and transit are looked down upon as being for kids and losers.

I worked as a bike planner and advocate for over twenty-five years in Maryland and the cycling community was always bitterly complaining that there weren’t enough bike trails and lanes. My response was, “Trails are prohibitively expensive and there’s limited funding to construct them. And we aren’t going to take away road width or on-street parking to accommodate bicycles.”

Consequently, I argued for years that we already had a perfectly good bike trail system in every city. They are called SIDEWALKS. Sidewalks should function as bikeways. And we could implement this new transportation approach today with no additional funding other than signs and public service announcements.

This proposal has been categorically rejected by the powers that be, from state to local government (and even by the bicycle advocates), as unsafe. “Cyclists will constantly crash into the walkers and it will be total mayhem,” is still the official refrain. It is an absolute given in the United States that bicycles and pedestrians can not peacefully coexist and share the sidewalk. And sidewalks are for pedestrians. You can carve that in stone.

In Japan, the pedestrians and bicyclists are given priority. And in every city, large and small, the sidewalks are for walkers and riders. The cyclists carefully and respectfully weave in and out of the congested pedestrian traffic and everyone understands that it is a matter of sharing.

What makes this whole give and take doubly amazing is the fact that most Japanese cyclists are carrying small children and animals on handlebar and rear bike seats and baskets, or hauling boxes piled high on racks. You see older folks, businessmen and women, small children, families, and deliverymen using the sidewalks day and night. Hell, I even saw handicap people on big tricycles. Riding a bicycle in Japan is not primarily an act of leisure; it’s how you go to school, work, shop, or just get to where you need to go.

And even more remarkable, in the month I was in Japan — and it was the same scenario wherever I went — I never saw a cyclist wearing a helmet, and I never saw an accident. Cyclists in Japans are pros. They are always alert and their hands are on the brakes, ready to stop at a moment’s notice.

There are also narrow sharrow strips (white, share the road bicycle logos) painted along the edges of the streets for those cyclists who are in a hurry. And when a car has to wait for a bicyclist, riding in their lane, they wait patiently until it’s safe to pass. There is no honking the horn, yelling, or swerving dangerously to get around the impediment.

And everywhere we went, the streets were really well maintained (no potholes and patches) and they often use red and green asphalt to delineate on-road bike lanes and to make for a colorful ride.

There are bike parking lots on every street and bike parking garages — just for bikes — in the city centers. And you can’t chain your bike to a pole or to anything else that would block the sidewalk. You must park your bike in a designated lot. They have clamp ramps where you insert your bike, ticket machines, polite attendants, and it all works like clockwork.

Hardly anyone locks their bikes and I never saw a bike chain or a Kryptonite lock. Some bikes come with a handy lock that wraps around the rear wheel and which is opened with a key. But that would not prevent a thief from picking up the bike and carting it away. I was astonished to see so many nice, expensive bikes unlocked on the streets.

When I rented a bike in Kyoto, I asked the owner why no one steals the bikes, and she responded, “There is very little crime in Japan. And if a bike were to be stolen, the police would investigate the theft until they found the thief. Someone who knows the thief will immediately tell the police their friend or neighbor did it, if asked. Not ratting on others is an alien concept here in Japan. The thief will then be thrown in jail for at least five years, maybe more. And our jails are not nice like the ones you have in America. They are very bad places. So, what bike is worth five years of hard labor in jail?”

So, let’s try and put this all in perspective. I live in Annapolis, Maryland, a city of 38,000 people. And it would be patently unsafe to allow bicycles and pedestrians to share the sidewalks there. But in Tokyo, a city of fourteen million people, it works just fine and without mishaps.