-
Was that on Farringdon Road, Phoenix Place, or Gough Street? The latter's cobbly, but I don't expect that's what you were referring to.
I've been trying to work out how one might go around a corner via the footway three times on either of these streets but it's not obvious to me what you mean.
In general (apart from possible site-specific reasons) people ride on the footway because they imagine it's 'safer', which it isn't. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do it specifically to go around a sequence of corners, although I've seen plenty do it for just one corner.
Oliver Schick-
It was turning left from calthorpe street to phoenix place, right from phoenix place to mount pleasant then left from mount pleasant where it intersects with Gough st onto the continuation of mount pleasant
I get that sometimes it is permitted or safer but this sequence just seemed like trying to take the shortest possible route. -
The footway isn't safer for cyclists?
Not saying you should cycle on it, but there are no risky overtakes, lorries... Maybe however my intuition is completely at odds with statistics :)
nickvonfiction
JWestland
I recall @Oliver Schick describing some people seeing cycling as being a form of assisted walking rather than using a vehicle, and saw the perfect example of this on the way in this morning: some guy leaving the road to go round corners by using the dropped kerb to mount the pavement then rejoining the road after the corner. He did this three times in a short stretch between Calthorpe Street and Mount Pleasant so I guess he must be really into it. It struck me as being pointless and annoying. A couple of those times I had to hold back from overtaking due to his trajectory being unpredictable due to this on/off approach to using the road and no attempts to look before manoeuvring. It may be some sort of marginal gains thing, but why not just ride a little bit faster and act like you belong on the road?