My petty gripe: I just want one ding from speeding cyclists. How hard can it be? | Cycling | The Guardian

It’s called a shared path for a reason – but a peaceful walkway can turn into something more like a racetrack

My family has moved house (we’re still unpacking those last non-priority boxes) to a spot near a shared pedestrian/cyclist pathway and a few suburbs further from the city centre. We’re enjoying an easy hour’s walk most mornings. We pass wetland reserves full of bird calls and flowering trees and shrubs, eventually reaching the beach, and never needing to cross a road to get there.

But another wheeled threat can spoil the serenity – the subset of cyclists who fly past pedestrians as if the shared pathway is a velodrome. It’s especially alarming when a cycling group whoosh-whoosh-whooshes past with never a bell sounded beforehand, nor a slowing of speed. Now I appreciate that they are forced to pursue their hobby in a city that hates cyclists. And that many cyclists believe pedestrians will respond poorly if they sound their bell as they approach.

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But I appreciate even more those cyclists who demonstrably know that the space is not for their exclusive use and take shared pathway safety seriously (unlike the retiree cyclist who berated my retiree husband for walking on a “bike path”).

Many riders do recognise that pedestrians have right of way and use their legally required bells considerately and keep their speed appropriate to the shared environment. I just wish there were more of them.

My favourite group cyclists are the ones I’ve only lately encountered who have a particularly thoughtful system for sharing the path. As they approach and slow for overtaking, the lead rider loudly calls something like “bikes coming through, six of us” so pedestrians are alerted, and then as the first rider comes through they say “five more behind”, the next rider says “four more behind” and so on, until the final rider says “last one”. We’ve been passed by several groups doing this now, and you are all awesome.