BIKE: Cycle commuting race

[Patrick Goetz]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, Mike Dahmus wrote:
> At 12:10 PM 2/19/2004 -0600, Jeff Thorne wrote:
> >I'm not faster riding to work in downtown Austin that driving there, but:=
> >
> >
> >CYCLISTS FASTER THAN CARS IN AUCKLAND
>
> I have yet to see one of these contests where they explained _how_ the
> cyclist was faster than the cars. Did they use prioritized queueing at
> intersections? Did they use a bike trail which avoided lights? Did they run
> red lights and ride on the sidewalk? That would be critical information to
> evaluate the race, yet they never say.
>


When the traffic is really backed up, say during rush hour, it's
frequently not possible for a car to make it through an intersection in a
single traffic signal cycle.  A bicyclist, on the other hand, can almost
always scoot to the front of the line due to the fact that there is rarely
another bike at the intersection.  Given even 5 busy intersections, this
alone is sufficient to explain the difference in the commute time.

In particular, it is not necessarily the case that a bicyclist must break
traffic laws in order to beat a motor vehicle in an urban environment.