Speed on this pathway is radar enforced
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
By Jake Nichols
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Hey, I like the pathways. I just don’t want to be caught dead on one.
I use the pathway system in Jackson quite often. During the winter months, they offer an easy-access outdoor jaunt when hills are under winter closure rules. During the shoulder season, I find they provide a useful alternative travel route to wherever I’m going. But in the summer, well, I’m afraid I have to leave the bike paths to the Lance Armstrong wannabes.
These 10-speed maniacs raid Vixen’s wardrobe closet of spandex in a color pallet politely described as NASCAR-chic and pedal their way, back-and-forth, on some imaginary Tour de Jackson. They travel fast and angry. Who wouldn’t be, balancing a full-grown prostate on a sleek racing seat the size of an Intel microprocessor? They bark orders at dog owners as they approach silently at light speed, “On your left!”
This brings up another point. Dogs are getting the shaft when it comes to needless self-gratifying legislature. Here is the cockamamie reasoning lawmakers follow: Cyclists go so fast on the bike path that they may injure a dog or themselves. So, naturally, they enact a leash law on the pathways.
Leash laws don’t work on a bike path. All they do is essentially create a mortal clothesline circumstance for speeding bikers. Now, I’m all for one of these high speed hooligans ‘yard sale-ing’ his Trek TTX into Flat Creek, but it would simply mean another ordinance passed against dogs.
I know I can’t complain because a stone cast in the direction of one of these Syton Supercomp brain-bucket wearers will just bounce off and hurl toward a dog walker or baby stroller or other user group. Still, don’t we have to whoa down these hopped up crankers or drug test them at the very least? I’ve seen toddlers, horses and even cats use the bike path.
How much farther does it have to go? To my knowledge, while some misbehaving dogs have probably jumped up on people with their filthy paws or maybe even bitten someone, nobody has been killed. The same can’t be said for cyclist collisions.
On July 25, 2006, Ed Henry was rollerblading on the pathways heading to Teton Village when he was killed in a fatal collision with a biker.
The incident spurred yet more proposed legislation allowing bicyclists to use the road, which by law they then were banned from. But shouldn’t the real issue here be courteous, if not sensible and non-life-threatening, use of the pathways? The downhill skier ALWAYS has the right-of-way. Approaching traffic MUST yield at a reasonable speed. If this crash had happened at a ski resort there would be hellacious consequences.
They say the world’s finest example of a pathway system is in Quebec, Canada. Users in Austin, Texas, Corvallis, Ore., Ft. Collins, Colo., and Albuquerque, N.M., are sure proud of their bike paths as well. And I applaud the hard work Friends of Pathways and Executive Director Tim Young have put into making our pathways one of the finest in the nation. A place like Jackson should set the standard in promoting alternative transportation and exercise.
But we all gotta get along, and slowly, before it’s “everybody out of the pool.”
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Speed on this pathway is radar enforced | Planet JH News Article: Editorial
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