John's Blog: History and my current opinion on bike infrastructure
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History and my current opinion on bike infrastructure
Monday, December 22, 2008
[ Time for the yearly post! :-) ]I'm enjoying learning more about the social history of cycling transportation, especially as it relates to the current debate over bicycle infrastructure. As someone who "got back into riding" as an adult, mainly for transportation purposes, I didn't have the benefit of a club to educate me about how to ride properly in traffic, yet I have managed to learn standard vehicular methods and believe they are the best way to go. I don't need bike lanes or paths; I'll just use the same road as motor vehicles. Furthermore, I believe that most other adults who already know how to drive a car in traffic can learn the same, without depending on bike lanes and paths. Yet, bike lanes and paths are usually the first thing people think of when they think about bettering the biking environment and getting more people riding. It's a dilemma for me as I think about where to put my advocacy energy.(Click title to read more...)
What I've been reading lately is John Forester's Bicycle Transportation: A Handbook for Cycling Transportation Engineers. Forester is considered the premier "vehicular cyclist", having also written the book Effective Cycling, considered the "bible" of the field, and the basis for national cycling education in the United States from the League of American Bicyclists. Forester was smack in the middle of a big change in the United States during the 1970's towards the emphasis on bike lanes and paths (which he opposes), and the change of laws that came with them, and as a result holds very strong opinions about what happened during that time. Because of that, reading him is sometimes difficult, as he relates his own point of view on what happened, and goes further to berate the motivation and sometimes even intelligence of those who took (and continue to take) an opposing viewpoint. Yet, he very clearly knows a lot about his subject, and it is very enlightening, if nothing else, to read the history.
The history, as I understand, not having been there, is as follows. The concept of bicycle clubs date back to the late 19th century, when cycling was primarily the province of fit young men of means, riding those large-front wheeled machines you sometimes see in historical pictures. There was no rear-wheel chain-drive yet -- the pedals were attached right to the front wheel, so the only way to increase the forward distance of each pedal stroke was to increase the size of the wheel. When chain-driven bikes were introduced in the very late 19th century, it meant that more people were physically able to ride, and the development of mass-production in the early 20th century brought the price down to the point that more people were able to buy them, and the idea of bicycles as practical transportation was born.
The bike clubs were the early promoters of what has been called the "good roads movement", advocating for paved roads before cars even entered the picture. Indeed, the question of bicycles as legal road vehicles, alongside horse-drawn carriages, had already been taken up and mostly decided in the positive. There was no such thing as the "bikes to the right" law at that point -- bikes were the fastest things on the road! It is interesting to note that when cars came along, there was initially a question of whether they would be afforded full rights to use the road, alongside horse-drawn carriages and bicycles! Obviously, they eventually were, thanks to the efforts of the automobile industry and other motoring advocates.
The Great Depression, and the Second World War which followed, prevented a full-fledged automobile culture from developing as fully during those eras as it later did in the 1950's. However, the idea of mechanization was on the march, alongside the war effort of the Allied and Axis powers. Wikipedia notes that Nazi Germany viewed the bicycle as an impediment to its goal of mass motorization, and in response, was among the first countries to push for bike lanes and paths, with the stated goal of excluding bicycles from the roads. In the United States, 1944 was the year that the "ride to the right" law was first enacted and inserted into the Uniform Vehicle Code (which is the vehicle code of no state in particular but exists as a national model on which many states may base their own code). The initial version of this law contained no exceptions! Forester believes that almost no cyclists knew about or at least opposed this because they were all fighting overseas or otherwise too busy with the war effort to know or care.
After the war, automobile culture took off, and cycling became largely limited to recreational cyclists in the cycling clubs that still survived, sometimes with only a handful of members. These club cyclists knew how to safely share road space with cars, acted vehicularly, and taught their new members accordingly. This club education was often at odds with "official" bike safety advice from non-cycling sources, which consisted mostly of "stay out of the way of cars" (Forester's characterization). According to Forester, many of those "bike safety" rules even advocated riding against traffic or making turns from alongside the curb!
However, cyclists who continued to ride vehicularly were not officially harassed, and there were very few of them anyway, so this uneasy co-existence continued throughout the 1950's and '60's.
The 1970's brought increased environmental awareness, and with it, a resurgence of the idea of bicycles as transportation. This is where things get interesting. Again quoting Wikipedia:
In 1971, the California state government contracted with University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for the design of bikeways (bicycle paths, bicycle side-paths, bicycle lanes). UCLA largely copied Dutch bicycle facilities practice (primarily sidepaths) to create their bikeway designs, but the derived designs were not made public. The California Statewide Bicycle Committee (CSBC) was created. Initially composed of representatives of governmental and motoring organizations. When John Forester, a cyclist representative, became a member he concluded that its real motivation for moving cyclists aside was the convenience of motorists, although the stated reason was the safety of cyclists. Serious safety issues were identified with the proposed designs. The resulting cyclist opposition discredited the designs and prevented enactment of a mandatory side-path law. This forced the state to start over with new bikeway design standards in 1976. Those designs were subsequently adapted by the Association of American State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) to form the first edition of the AASHTO Guide for Bicycle Facilities, which is widely followed in the USA.From this beginning came the acromonious split between "bikeway" (lanes & paths) advocates and vehicular cycling advocates that continues to this day. Out of this experience also came the addition of "exceptions" to the "ride to the right" law, making clear that cyclists may move left to avoid debris, right-turn-only lanes, to position themselves for a left turn, and so on. Although the initial round managed to defeat a law requiring use of a side path if one exists, several states do now have laws requiring bike lane use if one exists.
It may be somewhat valid to characterize the sides of this debate, as Forester does, as traditional club cyclists representing the vehicular education viewpoint, over against the odd bedfellows of environmentalists who want to promote bicycling as green transportation, and motoring advocates who are willing to go along with that as long as the bikes don't get in the way of the cars. Beginning cyclists who have never ridden in traffic are, of course, very willing to go along with the idea of "staying out of the way of cars", for their own comfort as well as perceived safety.
Muddying the debate is the use of statistics to try to prove one viewpoint or the other. Common sense informs most of the non-cycling public and beginning cyclists that lanes and paths must be safer, and indeed this is the ostensible reason most frequently offered to support the need to build them. Yet statistics consistently show that the majority of bike-car collisions happen at intersections, not on straightaways, and segregated intersection solutions that are both safe and efficient for all users have yet to be identified (in the opinion of the vehicularists, including me). This further means that while offroad bike paths may be great where there are not many intersections, between major connection points such as different towns, opportunities to build paths with minimal intersections are not very frequent in town, and can never go everywhere a transportational cyclist will need to go.
Another common argument against paths for transportation is that they tend to underserve the experienced cyclist who wants to go fast (useful for transportation!), because the paths are often not wide enough to accomodate safe passing and are frequently used by pedestrians and other non-cyclists, slow cyclists, or unsafe cyclists. Critics also note that in terms of bike-bike and bike-ped collisions, paths have a much worse safety record than the road.
From my exposure to the debate, almost no one disputes that bike lanes and paths are more comforting to beginning cyclists (not to mention that they do prevent some inconvenience of motorists), but the difference of opinion is mainly over how much they actually affect safety (and in which direction), as opposed to simply giving the impression of increased safety. Is that impression real, especially compared to the increased cyclist education advocated by the vehicular cycling advocates?
There is also a difference of opinion over the cause-and-effect relationship of bike lanes and paths and the number of cyclists. If lanes and paths make beginning bicyclists more comfortable, the argument goes, more people will do it, and the increased numbers will also make the activity safer by making it the sight of a cyclist more common to motorists. Vehicularists contend that to the contrary, it is the increased numbers of people interested in bicycle transportation, or a perceived imminent threat of increased numbers, that drives the advocacy for more lanes and paths, not the other way around. Personally, I frankly don't know which of these I agree with. They both sound plausible to me.
Another facet of the discussion is how wide a user base will a facility serve? A frequent criticism of the pure vehicular cyclist position is that it works less well for beginners, who haven't yet gained confidence and technique in riding with traffic; for children, who don't yet know the rules of the road; and for senior citizens, who are more frequently nervous around traffic, and whose reflexes and vision might not be what they used to be. I think these are all valid concerns. We do limit adult motorists to trained individuals over the age of 16, and on the older end, those whose vision and reflexes are not obviously impaired. (For cycling, decreased balance and strength are also common issues among the elderly.) I don't think anyone wants to limit the requirements for cycle transportation quite as narrowly as for driving a car, but obviously some of these groups should not be attempting to share the road with cars, either, even with vehicular training. I think that does call for some effort into paths, but with the admission that their bicycle transportation cannot safely be as convenient as that of cyclists who use the public roads, for pure engineering reasons, especially concerning intersections.
So as one of the transportational cyclists who got into cycling for environmental reasons and without the benefit of a traditional, vehicular club education, and someone who does want to advocate for more bicycle transportation, and yet believes that the vehicular behavior is most proper for most adult bicyclists, where should I put my energy?
Here's where I am today: I do not support bike lanes and paths whole-heartedly enough to actively advocate for their construction, especially given that so many others are already doing so. However, I cannot bring myself to be a strong enough critic to publicly argue against them across the board either. For lanes, as long as they stop far enough prior to intersections, I may wish they weren't there but if it makes others more comfortable, maybe that's okay. For paths, if they don't have too many intersections and those intersections are not too dangerous, I still may or may not want or need to use them, but if others do, great.
I conclude for now that my energy is best expended on education of cyclists to ride more vehicularly. I think that will give more bang for the buck in regards to safety, in addition to being more compatible with the advancement of cyclists' right to the road, than bike lanes and paths. I am not comfortable speaking too loudly against lanes and paths, but I will follow their progress locally and speak out against any dangerous or non-standard ones that I encounter, as well as continue to consult in planning efforts regarding them.
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