Why the barriers SHOULD be in place on West Old LaHonda


Nice ride this morning; myself, JR, George & Marcus. Kevin (the kid) wasn’t with us, as he was working through double-vision this morning, an after-affect of accidentally taking his night-time dose of epilepsy meds twice. The pace was so easy heading up Kings that even I was able to hold a conversation!

A bit cool at the start, but we emerged from the fog about halfway up Kings.

Now, about West Old LaHonda. The road is posted as being closed to all through traffic, including cars, motorcycles and bicycles. Clearly there is not much of a safety issue for cyclists heading across the remaining undamaged section of road (shown in the video), but obviously it’s dangerously narrow for cars and likely to suffer damage if a 4-wheeled 3000 pound vehicle rolls across it. Unfortunately, this morning was the second time I’ve seen one of the barriers turned sideways, allowing a car to drive through, not to mention cyclists.

OK, seriously, is it really that big a deal to have to get off your bike to walk around the edge of a barrier? And that’s the worst-possible scenario; I’ve always been able to carefully ride around it on the “safe” side (not where the roadway has been damaged) since the barrier isn’t quite as wide as the road.

Cyclists need more respect, not less. We’re already traveling on a road that’s officially closed to traffic, with the darned good excuse that it’s a far safer route than the parallel section of Highway 84. Far as I know, there have been no incidences of cyclists being ticketed for this. Let’s not push our luck. If you know of any cyclist who thinks it a cool idea to move the barrier to the side, so we can barrel through at speed, try to explain why that’s not such a good idea. And if you ride through and see the barrier’s been moved out of place, please consider moving it back where it belongs.

The worst of all possible things would be if cyclists had moved the barrier and allowed cars to drive through, doing such heavy damage to the road that it’s closed, in a very real way (as in, no way to get across the chasm on a bike), for a very long time.






One thought on “Why the barriers SHOULD be in place on West Old LaHonda

  1. Mike it’s highly unlikely it’s cyclists moving the barriers. Why would they bother? It’s drivers, and likely people who live there who are sick of driving around.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *