There are so many places in the city where the fastest and safest path between two points on a scooter or a bike is to ride on the sidewalk for a block or two. The best example I have is coming north out of Otterbein/Fed Hill to get on the Sharp/Hopkins/Cathedral/Maryland cycle track. What do you do?

• Head north on Light? If you ride in the road, it's four or five lanes wide with traffic that moves way too fast for comfort. The cycle path along the harbor bends you around onto Pratt, away from where you want to go. You end up having to go Light -> Pratt -> Commerce -> Lombard -> Sharp, which is a long detour.
• Head north on Charles? Marginally better, but Charles is still three lanes wide with no shoulder from Conway to Lombard, and the road surface is atrocious. The drivers aren't much better than on Light. Plus, you still have to make a left turn across Charles onto Lombard to get over to Sharp.
• Head north on Sharp? You can't, it's one way southbound through the convention center, and riding counterflow on a road with two lanes and no shoulder is both illegal and a death wish. There is a sidewalk that will take you between Sharp & Conway and Sharp & Pratt, though.

The quickest and safest thing to do in this case is to take Sharp north out of Otterbein, cross Conway, hop on the sidewalk, duck under the convention center, and then cross Pratt onto the cycle track. It's the most direct route, and it minimizes your exposure to multiple lanes of high-speed traffic.

I wish it weren't the case, as riding on the sidewalk should be frowned upon, but because the city loves to build disjointed bike infrastructure rather than a coherent network, you end up with situations like this all over.