Asking for room is OK. But the usual tone is “jump out of the way, or else!”. Just today there was a letter to the editor in the newspaper about reckless bikers in a busy underpass here. Admittedly, this underpass is to narrow for it’s use, but this women regularly observes bikers who speed up down the ramp to the underpass and basically plow through the pedestrian passage at full speed from both directions - and the passage is just 3m/10ft wide.