The plain fact is that when you get behind the wheel you need to recognize that you are stepping into an inherently dangerous machine. If you are not prepared to take that responsibility and take *extra* measures to ensure the safety of others, by not driving distracted/drunk/sleepy, not using excessive speed, not being aggressive, by focusing solely on the task at hand, which is driving safely, you shouldn't be driving.
The other aspect people fail to realize that THERE IS A CONSEQUENCE when you "buzz" a pedestrian walking on the edge of sidewalk or bicyclist riding on the road. Trying to teach a cyclist a lesson does lead to serious injury for the cyclist. "I didn't mean to hit the cyclist" is a very poor excuse.

Now for the matter of discussion:

As a matter of being a manager, not only are you worried about getting the widgets out on time, if you are in manufacturing, you also think about liability mitigation. Can I deliver per contract. Is the product safe? For a city manager, he not only has to worry, is the city maintained properly? Are the city services being fulfilled to expectation? Fire? Police? And one of his BIGGEST responsibility is mitigating any possible lawsuits: fix the uneven sidewalk so no one trips and gets hurt, fix that pot hole that may cause serious injury if a car went out of control because of it... Does the busy intersection need to be upgraded from a stop sign to a traffic light?

City manager's hand is quite full, so like anyone else, goes for the easiest fix. It's also the cleanest thing to do when you get dragged into court. People have a "very difficult" time following the simplist of rules so it behooves the cities to make the rule as simple as possible. Not that it ever is. The 10MPH limit on the MUT being 3x the walking speed is in keeping with reasonable compromise. As for the entire 17 mile MUT, well it was the easy thing to do.

Would someone fund a study to say when the MUT isn't so busy to allow cyclists to go faster at certain time of the day, day of the week? Almost all municipalities are severely in red and can't afford it. It's expedient, cheaper, and mitigating of potential lawsuit, so 17 mile MUT has a speed limit of 10MPH.

It is about as simple as I can make it.

I don't like it either. But I do have to share and live with everyone else who thinks otherwise.