I typically ride away from downtown when I leave my house, but it's pretty irritating when I do decide to go downtown to go to the post office or the library via bike. There's maybe a 1 mile stretch which has a lot of traffic dumping into it from the highway and a military base, with businesses , banks, restaurants, and gas stations all crammed in it... I tend to ride on the road there, but if it's rushhour, I will usually ride on the sidewalk. Although, the sidewalk in several places just has like 8 inch drops in it or disappears or has a telephone pole in the middle of it. And it's going up and down driveways constantly. Actually crossing the entrance ramp for teh highway can be hard, because everyone floors it when they get in the vicinity of it.

The way back in the same stretch is full of disappearing sidewalks and at least 2 parallel grates in the road with spacing larger than my tires. (both directions have grates with potholes all about them)

I'm pretty sure if I ever get hit by a car, it'll be on this one little stretch.