Friendly reminder for you that in most places, adults should not ride on sidewalks.

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No person shall ride upon a sidewalk within the central business district of Aurora, and no person 15 or more years of age shall ride upon a sidewalk anywhere within the city (Aurora code of ordinances 27-267)

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I was on a stretch of road that did not have a proper bike-friendly wide sidewalk. Funnily enough too, it was on a downhill and the dude was going maybe 5mph faster than me.

And yes, I was going at least 35. Not hard downhill on an endurance or race road bike.

Edit: I hit 40mph. Proof

Re-read.

Numerous studies (for example, Aultman-Hall and Adams 1998; Wachtel and Lewiston 1994) have shown that crash risk, overall, is higher for bicyclists riding on sidewalks than for bicyclists riding on streets.

You might find this hard to believe, but think about visibility of bikes when making left hand turns into side roads, or even cars trying to take a right onto a busy road.

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The following is from a pdf so sorry for the formatting:

http://www.bike.cornell.edu/pdfs/Sidewalk_biking_FAQ.pdf

Bicycling on the sidewalk eliminates the relatively small danger to cyclists of crashes with overtaking motorists, but increases the potential for more common intersection collisions. To follow is an excerpt from the Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Center’s web site1 about sidewalk bicyclists and crashes: Rather like the situation with riding the wrong way against traffic, there is no specific crash type reserved for bicyclists riding on the sidewalk. However, the fact that the bicyclist was on the sidewalk is a contributing factor in a great many crashes at intersections.

Yeah but it’s not ideal. I was going southbound, just after 2nd. The sidewalk widens enough for bikes just before Alameda, when it turns into Buckley. I normally merge onto the widened sidewalk just after Global Village Academy

I do when feasible. It’s not on that stretch though.

As you know, we live in an imperfect world. Unfortunately it is safer to ride in the street as opposed to a sidewalk, especially for a skilled biker. This is mostly due to visibility on cross streets. I am glad that Denver is doing a better job of integrating wider sidewalks on bigger roads so that both drivers and bikers can feel more comfortable.