Originally Posted by
Daniel4
I've waited in-line with congested traffic before and then I realized it doesn't make any sense.
Cyclists who filter remove themselves from being part of the congestion. Those cars are going to be waiting the 10-minutes regardless if the cyclist was in front of them or not. But the line up is shorter than the length of that bike.
In the specific case described by the OP, though, how does filtering help you? You have to wait for the train to pass either way (whether you filter or not), so at most you're "saving" a hundred yards or so, which is negligible in the context of a typical 1hr+ ride. I can see filtering to a stop sign (assuming it's safe to do so, of course), so that you don't have to stop and go a bunch of times. I can see filtering to a traffic light, so you don't miss the green cycle and have to wait for the next one. In this case, however, you aren't really saving anything by filtering.
And filtering doesn't "remove (yourself) from being part of the congestion", it only moves you to the front of the congestion.
The point is that we should not be oblivious to the effects of our actions. I usually ride low-traffic roads so I'm normally not blocking traffic, even though most of the roads I ride are too narrow for a bicycle and a car to share, and there is rarely a shoulder to ride on. However, when I do get a line of a few cars stuck behind me, it costs little to pull into a driveway or cross street for a couple of seconds to let cars get by. If stuck at a railroad crossing with a line of cars behind me, it costs nothing to wait a few seconds while the cars behind me pass before starting out again. And, if the road is too narrow to share the lane with a car, then it's too narrow for filtering, too. Sometimes we cyclists want it all our own way: we want motorists to drive safely and considerately around us, but we also want to be able to ride dangerously and rudely around motorists. Not that I'm perfect, I've done stupid/dangerous/rude things on occasion, too, both riding and driving.
I'm not convinced that a lot of motorists actively take it out on other cyclists when they see one behaving badly, but it does seem reasonable that they would be less willing to give cyclists in general the benefit of the doubt. There are always the hotheads, of course, who will do the "punish pass", or lay on the horn, or yell something (usually unintelligibly). Most motorists I've been around don't do that sort of thing, however. They're much more aware of cyclists and drive much more safely around cyclists than they did 30 years ago when cyclists were rare birds. To me this indicates that most of the rude/dangerous actions by motorists are due to ignorance rather than malice.