I've been slowing down lately on my bike.  Surprisingly, I don't think I'm actually losing much if any time getting where I need to go. 

The strategy is really pretty simple:  I generally have plenty of time to watch the signals ahead-- my goal is to maintain a constant speed so that I don't have to slow down, or speed up to make the light.  

You might wonder, doesn't this mean speeding to catch the light? Yes, but only when I'm in a rush-- which isn't very often.  Generally, I'm slowing down.

Essentially my top speed is closer to my average. 

The real revolution would be if cars would only do this.  An essentially instead of going 30 MPH and then waiting at the light for two minutes, they could go 20 MPH and end up waiting a fraction of the time or not at all.

This speed modulation results in a calmer, saner street environment.

I was counting bikes for Somerville a few weeks ago when I witnessed some pedestrian/ bike road rage.  A bicyclist stopped at an all-way-walk signal and then proceeded through the intersection behind a pedestrian walking a dog in the crosswalk.  The pedestrian turned and screamed some thing to the effect of:

"you selfish, impatient piece of sh*t bicyclist, red-light-means stop..."

There was more than that. Real spitting anger. 

Putting aside whether the cyclist did the wrong thing... or that the pedestrian over-reacted-- what are some good ways to tell someone hey, you're making me mad, you're doing something dangerous, or giving a whole class of users a bad rap?

You could be responding to a car cutting you off, a pedestrian walking into the bike lane, or a bicyclist riding at night with out lights. 

Crazy venting doesn't do it for me.  If any of you out in Cyber land have ideas, I'd love to see them in the comment field below

I am reading David Byrne's bicycle diaries.  There's a great quote attributed to Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogota:

"One common measure of how clean a mountain stream is to look for trout.  If you find a trout, the habitat is healthy.  It's the same for children in a city.  Children are a kind of indicator species.  If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people..."