John McGovern is bicycle enthusiast and activist who works for the Cleveland Earth Day Coalition. He explained to PDQ's Michael Heaton about the rules of the road when you have only two wheels.

What bike organization are you with?

I chair a group called the Sustainable Transportation Action Team. We assemble the brightest minds in Cleveland to work toward creating . . . an environment that makes the healthy choice, i.e. walking, bicycling and riding transit, the easy choice. Good for the waistline, good for the wallet, good for small, local businesses that give our city character! My day job is clean transportation coordinator/pollinator at the Earth Day Coalition, where our motto is to make Earth Day every day.

Do you ride your bike every day?

Do people drive a car every day? I ride my bicycle every day, if I can. Over the past 60 years, our 'leadership' has turned Cleveland from a city where you could get everywhere you needed via a streetcar, your own feet, or two wheels, into a city where the first and often only choice is to hop in your insulated, isolating metal-and-glass, four-wheeled, 2-ton machine that we drive as if the speed limit is the speed minimum, because that's what the extra-wide flat roads instruct our minds to do, no matter what the signs tell us.

How dangerous is commuting on a bike?

Traveling by bicycle is a healthy, enlightened, socially conscious mode of travel. The city is not designed to move bicycles even though there are remnants of infrastructure from a much more localized lifestyle from 60 years ago. For 75 years, streetcar travel ruled Cleveland. What's funny is we have pretty good (not great) infrastructure to move bicycles around our city via the much heralded Emerald Necklace, but the trails aren't intended to get you anywhere useful like work or the store.

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Street or sidewalk with bikes -- which is illegal?

Cars cannot ride on the sidewalk ever. No bicycles on the sidewalk in the downtown area. The yellow-shirted Keep Cleveland Clean crews ought be reminded of this fact.

Explain the difference in Class A and B bikers.

The classes define the confidence level and skill level of cyclists. Generally, Class A cyclists are skilled, confident cyclists that you currently see pedaling Cleveland's streets. The city has done very little to facilitate less-skilled, less-confident cyclists to use their bicycle as transport. We've created such bicycle facilities (multiuse paths) in the Metroparks, but they don't get you anywhere you need to go.

What does the term "taking the lane" mean?

Cyclists have the right to take the full lane. It's a confidence move as you are on the road with vehicles weighing 25 times as much (as a bike) being piloted by people who are . . . paying more attention to reading the grocery list and texting back than to the road (and obstacles) ahead.

Why is there such contention between drivers and bikers?

It is societal. For the past 60 years, Cleveland's leadership has gone out of its way to accommodate automobile traffic. Consider the vast acres of parking lots downtown! Consider all the highways built, and ask yourself why the population of the city has been drained. It's not a coincidence. Where are the highways for cyclists in the city? Local roads are paid for with local income/property taxes, so if I don't drive, where are the roads for me? If the city began to invest some of their repaving budget in bicycle-only facilities, you'd see a lot more cyclists obeying the law.

What is the biggest misconception drivers have about bikers?

That we all wear Spandex.

What is the most common sin bikers commit against drivers?

I'd guess not stopping at red lights or stop signs in busy intersections. But the system wasn't designed for us. Start by providing cyclists with some protected bicycle-only highways that connect city neighborhoods, east and west, and you'll not only attract tens of thousands of Clevelanders out of their cars, but you'll get buy-in from many more cyclists in doing their part by obeying traffic law.

What is an obvious thing Cleveland could do to improve relations between drivers and bikers?

Build dedicated bicycle-only highways. Just think what our city could look like if we had Metroparks-style trails protected with trees running down the middle of vacated streets like St. Clair, Madison and Buckeye. Progressive cities around the world are doing this to improve urban transport, local economies, public health and self-esteem. Cities like New York, Portland, Minneapolis, Montreal, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Bogota, Amsterdam, Berlin and Perth.

What is it about cyclists that most drivers don't know?

Bicycling culture is very do-it-yourself, and bicycling itself is naturally a very social activity versus car culture, which is often very isolating.