A few months ago, a police officer yelled at me over his loudspeaker for rolling a stop sign on my bike. The street was empty. I always signal and wear a helmet when cycling in Pittsburgh, and I stop pedaling at intersections, but I do sometimes roll stop signs when the intersection is clear. Still, rather than risk a ticket, I did as instructed and kept on my way, wondering as I did if there weren’t other things law enforcement personnel could be doing with their afternoons.
The brief encounter got me thinking about the Idaho stop. If you’re not familiar, the law, which originated in the Gem State as the name implies, allows cyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield and a red light as a stop sign. Since Idaho adopted the law, other states have followed suit, including Delaware in 2017 (unlike Idaho, Delaware and other jurisdictions do not permit cyclists to roll red lights). Advocates say the law helps cut down on crashes with motorists and helps cyclists conserve energy. Cycling advocates in Philly have taken notice.
Pittsburgh, it’s time — let’s legalize the Idaho stop.
On my commute, there are several stretches with stop signs at least every couple of blocks. This makes sense for cars! Until Pittsburgh gets serious about building more roundabouts, stop signs keep drivers’ speed in check in dense inner-city neighborhoods. But for cyclists, whose average speed is typically below 15 miles per hour, stopping at every stop sign, especially when there are no other cars at an intersection, is tiring and unnecessary.
As a Connecticut study found, “The mobility benefits of the Idaho Stop are that it (1) enhances traffic flow, especially for areas with a significant number of cyclists, (2) allows cyclists to maintain momentum by not coming to a complete stop at every intersection, thus reducing the amount of physical exertion, and (3) formalizes a behavior that is already common among cyclists, thus making the law more reflective of actual cycling practices.”
Unless you’re cooking along on a Class 3 e-bike, most cyclists approach intersections with plenty of time to see if anyone else is crossing. Treating a stop sign as a yield doesn’t mean blowing through every stop sign, but it does mean that, especially at three-way stops where there’s little risk of competition with motorists, cyclists can continue through with less inertia to fight. These little conveniences are further incentive to ride a bike in the first place — if you know you can save five or 10 minutes by traveling more or less uninterrupted, you’re more likely to consider swapping your car for, say, a cargo bike.
Treating cars and bikes as legally equal is silly, like saying scissors are as dangerous as a lawnmower. It makes sense to have different approaches for different vehicles. Pittsburgh is starting to recognize this, with the city stepping up to ticket people who park in bike lanes and build speed humps with notches for cyclists to pass quickly through.
But even if we Complete the Loop, bicyclists and drivers will have to share most local infrastructure. Commuters cycling along the Three Rivers are likely to encounter long stretches shared with vehicles that are broken up by frequent stop signs (think Smallman and Muriel streets or Friendship Avenue). Legalizing the Idaho stop in Pittsburgh or even Pennsylvania would give cyclists more visibility and agency, a key intangible needed for Complete Streets.
Ultimately, each one of these Transit Talks is a variation on a theme: slow down cars and speed up everything else. In the case of the Idaho stop, this is very literal. Let’s codify what everybody is already doing and give cyclists an edge on Pittsburgh’s backstreets.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2025.
