ESCANABA — Despite heated remarks from the victim of a bicycle/pedestrian collision and some changes to the way the city will regulate sidewalk usage, the Escanaba City Council officially approved language that will allow cyclists to use the sidewalks along Ludington Street Thursday.

While the council had voted to adopt the new ordinance language on June 21, Thursday’s second reading officially puts the new language on the books. Under the revised Ordinance No. 1199, whenever a person is riding a bicycle on a sidewalk, that person shall yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian and give an audible signal to pedestrians before passing them. Cyclists are also forbidden from riding anywhere it is posted that bicycles are prohibited on the sidewalk.

However, one major change from the plans approved by the council in June is that there will not be a designated bike lane painted on the sidewalk dictating where cyclists are allowed to ride. The issue had been sent to the city’s Department of Public Works, which had already purchased a stencil for indicating bike lanes, but it was reported Thursday the lanes would not be complaint with AASHTO guidelines. AASHTO serves as a liaison between state departments of transportation and the federal government and sets technical standards for transportation systems from major highways to bicycle paths.

Prior to the council learning the lanes were not an option for the city, resident Karen Flynn, who was struck by a cyclist while exiting Orange Cat Antiques in December of 2016, told the council the lanes were “not a common sense approach” and repeatedly requested a written legal opinion on who was liable for injuries sustained by pedestrians struck on the sidewalk by cyclists.

The city’s attorney Ralph B. K. Peterson told Flynn and the council that depending on the situation the responsible party was either the cyclist or the pedestrian — not the city or the downtown development authority.

“It would depend on the facts of how the accident happened, and you could have a thousand different scenarios as to how this accident occurred. So there isn’t a black and white answer,” he said.

Flynn suggested keeping cyclists off of Ludington Street by rerouting them onto other roads.

“There are common sense solutions to this issue, and a bike path on 1st Avenue North and 1st Avenue South would be a common sense solution, possibly. Often times bicyclists are not shoppers, they are going as fast as they can down the sidewalks,” she said.

A bike path currently exists on 1st Avenue North from immediately behind city hall to 9th Street, near the old farmers market.

Flynn also claimed that Marquette had forbidden cycling on sidewalks in its business district and asked how they had done so if Escanaba could not, to which Mayor Mark Tall replied, “This is Escanaba, not Marquette, and we make our own rules.”

Ultimately, council members expressed the decision to accept the ordinance language on second reading was based largely on the advice of the city’s public safety department, which had serious concerns about the safety of children on bicycles in the roadway.

“We are all hoping that pedestrians and bicyclists will cooperate and look out for one another on the sidewalks of Ludington Street. We, all of us at one time or another, I believe, said we don’t want to see bicyclists — young people on bikes — being in the street,” said Tall.

In other business, the council approved a last-minute request to close a larger portion of Ludington Street than previously requested for the city’s annual sidewalk sales on July 28, tabled awarding a street paving contract until the council could be provided with bid information packets, and approved renewing a lease agreement with Community Action Agency for the use of the Catherine Bonifas Civic Center for senior center activities.