>>1029067>I've never felt unsafe biking in PAthat's fair, but i would caution that any situation involving lots of cars quickly becomes a death trap waiting to happen. people in palo alto are scarily poor drivers, either unaware or uninterested in things like pedestrian right of way, requirements on keeping distance between themselves and bicyclists, etc...
it's just that palo alto is relatively sparse, so you can avoid el camino real, university ave, etc... pretty easily by taking parallel streets and you might not even see a car on the road, so you could just drift around for the full width of the road without anyone caring.
>>1029070>So take the lane.i do. it's just obnoxious and poorly planned for bicyclists. not that pedestrians or drivers have it that much better. god help you if you're driving and want to turn left. you spend the entire green light in the middle of the intersection waiting for a simultaneous break between the oncoming cars and pedestrians crossing. except a total solar eclipse is about as likely as that happening, so you wait until the light flips, continue to wait while pedestrians cross (even though they should be off the road by now), THEN finish your turn. by now you've been in the intersection while cross traffic has had the green light for like 10 or 20 seconds. since there's no space to give people protected left turn lanes (and the city won't make laws restricting turns), university is just a dumpster on fire.
anyway, i digress.
>I ride to work every day.then maybe you just don't have a great reference point. it's great to point out that we have it better than LA or something, but even on the west coast (let alone elsewhere in the US, let alone further away like western EU) we see much better solutions (like seattle).
don't conflate the fact that biking in palo alto is so nice *because of the weather, the roads are well maintained, etc...* with the notion that palo alto's roads are designed to be particularly bike-friendly.
