Oh my, you people are never happy. first it's cars now it's runners and rollerbladers. Good points overall though, solid IA.

As a lifelong cyclist, I would advise you to get a bell or call out to anyone in the lane, use your breaks, be courteous (not self-righteous), and/or git gud, check your six, and go around them when safe to do so.

You can afford to decrease your momentum more than you can afford an accident. It's nice to have bike lanes at all.

Brakes*
Derp

Dear I, Anonymous:
Sidewalks are for pedestrians. Send that news out to the cyclists.
You stay in your bike lanes and off the sidewalks, and in return, I'll yell on your behalf at any runners I see in a bike lane.
Thanks!

Dear people riding scooters: don't worry, everything is for you! Sidewalks, streets, bike lanes, escalators, traffic circles, opposing lanes of traffic -- just keep doing your thing! Everybody is just as enchanted with your scooter-ing as you are.

I don't so much mind runners in the bike lane so long as they are running in more or less a straight line, so they are predictable. Far better than those goddamned rental scooters. Which are driven by idiots at least half of the time.

BUT - when you are running against traffic, please please please don't hug the curb and force us further out into the road. Look - I understand why you want to run against traffic. You want to see the cars coming rather than having them come up behind you. But when you do that and hug the curb, you force ME out INTO that same traffic. And I can't see behind me any more than you can. It's not safe and it's kinda irritating.

And did I mention that the rental scooters are a plague upon the Earth? Anyone caught abandoning one in the middle of a trail or walkway ought to be chained to said scooter and tossed into Green Lake.

A few years back, at 3 in the morning one of our strung out unhoused neighbors drove a city scooter into the back of our truck (which was parked in our driveway, minding its own business). She then opened the canopy and started throwing stuff that was in the bed out into the alley. Then she hid out in the construction zone across the alley, where she was made a bunch of weird noises until sunrise.

SPD was of course no help at all, and when I asked the 911 operator what to do with the scooter, she just said to “move it”. I told her it was city property and she said “We don’t care. People do all sorts of stupid things with them. Just don’t leave it in the street”.

(A few nights later that same unhoused neighbor knocked on the door and told me she was moving in with us. I told her “Oh no you’re not. Run along” and she proceeded to do the same thing with the townhomes across the alley. Haven’t see her since.

Whenever possible I walk in the bike lane because it's completely empty most of the time and the bikes are on the other streets in car lanes, splitting lanes, andrunning red lights. What is the complaint really? That someone is in your lane of traffic moving slower than you'd like to move or behaving unpredictably. Bicyclists having to deal with the same behaviors they demonstrate on both the streets and sidewalks .... bless your heart.

While I generally think pedestrians should stay on sidewalks (why do you want to be closer to the death machines often piloted by morons?), I don't have much of a dog in this fight overall.

But I'm glad a general consensus has been reached that scooter'ers suck and/or are the worst.

@7 What's a "city scooter" and how is it "city property"?

Who knows, Dough dear? It had a City of Seattle ID tag on it. Maybe it was some vendor thing. That's probably why the SPD didn't care. I can't imagine how that person got ahold of it in the first place.

In Amsterdam, bike lanes are respected or else it's outta the way, peck! Folks would clip a frail old lady with a walker without remorse.

@11: "It had a City of Seattle ID tag on it."

Seattle licenses scooter rental companies. Probably has scooter license tags as well.

You've got sidewalks AND bike lanes in your neighborhood? Must be nice. Keep complaining tho, it looks good on you.