I sympathize with Anna Turkett’s desire to make our campus more bike-friendly. Bicycles offer an affordable, low-impact way of quickly navigating an area, weather permitting. They run off fat and save money, unlike cars, which run off money and make you fat. What bothers me, however, is Turkett’s assumption that the Ferg is a legitimate byway for bicycle traffic.

I suspect the Ferg was intentionally designed to be “incredibly inconvenient” to traverse via bike because it is a large gathering place for pedestrians and tour groups, not cyclists, who are categorized as vehicles and are expected to abide by the same traffic rules as automobiles. While cyclists are often omitted from some rules of the road in practice (you’ll find that rule 13 of UA’s Parking and Traffic Regulations is almost never enforced), they need to understand that they aren’t allowed on sidewalks—they are only tolerated on them.

Too often I find myself walking around campus only to be clipped by some kid hazardously weaving his bike through the crowd. While I am lucky I have never collided with a cyclist (or rather, had him collide with me), my friends and I have had several close calls.

I love to ride bikes, so I understand how tempting it is to cycle alongside pedestrians, especially when you’re pressed for time. It’s unreasonable of me to expect anyone to strictly follow the rules of the road given how convenient it is to ride from class to class on our university’s widespread and well-connected network of walkways. But while there’s nothing wrong with using sidewalks when pedestrian traffic is scarce or when an alternative route is far removed, cyclists should not trick themselves into thinking they’re somehow entitled to them.

Bicycles are an intelligent mode of transportation and we should do more as a community to promote their use. But cyclists, be courteous to pedestrians on campus. Stick to the roads during rush hour, not the sidewalks.

Kyle Davis is a sophomore majoring in geography.