Lancaster City Council members next week will begin consideration of a measure that would ban the riding of bicycles and skateboards on downtown sidewalks.
A ban already exists within a one-block area centered on Penn Square, at Queen and King streets. The proposal would expand the ban to sidewalks throughout the Downtown Investment District at the center of Lancaster City. Lancaster City police bike patrol officers and the red-shirted James Street Improvement District security officers would be exempt from the ban.
Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray said the ban on riding on sidewalks is intended to protect pedestrian safety. He has gotten many complaints from pedestrians who felt their safety was threatened by faster-moving bicycle and skateboard riders, he said.
“We feel that the two just don’t mix,” Gray said of pedestrians and skateboarders or cyclists on sidewalks.
The proposed law is scheduled for City Council vote Nov. 25. If approved, any bicyclist or skateboarder cited would be subject to a $50 fine and possible confiscation of their bike or board.
The prosposal likely will not meet objection from local bicycle organizations.
The Lancaster Bicycle Club doesn’t have a formal position on riding on sidewalks, spokesman William Hoffman said, and he noted that bicycling on sidewalks is already illegal in business districts under the state motor vehicle code.
The state law classifies bicycles as vehicles and requires them to be used on the streets.
The recreational cycling club, with more than 500 members, doesn’t do any of its organized riding on sidewalks and generally frowns on it except in the case of young children, Hoffman wrote in response to a question posed by electronic mail.
“Cycling on the sidewalk has a crash rate several times higher than cycling on the street, in addition to being a hazard to pedestrians, the primary users for whom sidewalks are intended,” he continued.
Bicycling advocate Mike Ridgeway, who teaches Cycle Smart bicycling safety classes, agreed that bicyclists should not be riding on the sidewalk. But Ridgeway called for greater education so bicyclists will be safer riding on the street.
“How are we going to make them feel safer on the road?” Ridgeway asked. “Because the reason that they’re riding on the sidewalk is because they don’t feel safe on the road.”
And, Ridgeway believes, the bicyclists riding on sidewalks are those who do not have cars. Taking away their ability to ride on sidewalks may be taking away their means of transportation.
The bicyclists’ reaction is in sharp contract to that of skateboarders. Eric Kerns, owner of the Revival skate shop, at 20 N. Queen St., said the passage of the law won’t stop people from riding skateboards. It will just make them angry, said Kerns.
“Skateboarding and snowboarding are the fastest growing sports in America — and that’s not going to change,” Kerns said. “Skateboarding is not going to go away.”
Kerns said he urges his customers not to ride their skateboards within the four-block area where it is already off-limits. With a ban across the whole downtown, he predicted that all cooperation from skateboarders will go out the window.
“It’s like telling a 12-year-old kid to clean their room. They’re just not going to do it,” he said.
Kerns also faulted the city proposal for exempting city police bike patrol officers and the red-shirted security officers of the James Street Improvement District from the sidewalk ban. “When a cop says get off your bike and he’s on a bike, there’s something wrong with that,” Kerns said.
Gray said the police exemption is already in place and would simply be expanded as the area is expanded. “They ride them responsibly and they use them for a different reason than transportation,” the mayor said of the police officers. “They use them for enforcement.”
