From: JForester@cup.portal.com (John - Forester)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc
Subject: Cycling and Environmentalism
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 11:32:04 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

   This conversation has been very instructive. My original equation
of environmentalism with bikeway advocacy is described as a straw man
tactic; that is, describing a state of affairs that is easily argued
against but is not true. I am very happy to learn that some people
who call themselves environmentalists don't advocate bikeways.

   However, that leaves me in greater confusion than before. Who are
those people who advocate bikeways and use anti-motoring arguments to
support their case? Ed Ravin writes that I have no basis for my
statement, but use that excuse to bash environmentalists; in other
words, such people do not exist.  All I can say is that I have met in
the political arena many people who give this type of argument.

   Three general types of arguments have been made against my
campaign for improving the skills of cyclists and the utility of
cycling: 
1)  Powerful parts of the motoring and highway establishment oppose
   cyclists' use of roadways. They advocate bikeways and bikeway
   cycling because they see bikeways as means of clearing roadways of
   cyclists for the convenience of motorists. They justify their
   position by arguing that cycling on roadways is too dangerous.
   They are supported by the bike-safety people, who want merely to
   make cycling safe, particularly for children (although they give
   an entirely incorrect solution to the problem).
2)  Some people argue that government should produce bikeways to
   encourage cycling. These people are rarely concerned about
   improving cycling for cyclists and usually base their arguments,
   at least partially, on what appear to me to be environmental
   arguments about the evils of motoring.
3)  Some people argue that government should produce bikeways to
   accommodate the majority of people who, according to them, either
   cannot, or will not, learn to ride properly. They justify their
   position by exaggerating and misstating the dangers of motor
   traffic.

   I have met people of each of these types and read their writings.
I am convinced that they exist. Then who are they? Of course, there
is some overlap in the positions. For example, consider the
politically powerful congressmen Kennedy and Oberstar. They use
environmentalist arguments to support governmental money for bikeways
-- as Oberstar stated (by video) at Velo Mondiale: "The Intermodal
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act provides money for bike paths."
But they managed to get this portion of the act passed only with the
support of the highway establishment for getting cyclists off the
roadways.

   Some environmentalists have not understood my positions, or have
deliberately misstated them:
1)  Ed Ravin writes that he has not heard "a single person from the
   bicycle advocacy movement say that cyclists should be kicked off
   the roads and forced to use trails or paths .... Forester brings
   up his green-baiting argument that all bike paths are a conspiracy
   plan of the environmentalists to kick cyclists off the roads." I
   have never written that. I have always ascribed that motive to the
   motoring establishment. What I have written is that those who
   argue for bikeways are playing the motorists' game, giving
   political power to those who wish to kick cyclists off the roads.
   I have seen that alliance in action many times.

2)  Ed Ravin derides my statement that pedestrians are the most
   dangerous group to share with, offering as proof the fact that few
   cyclists are killed in bike-ped collisions. His logic is faulty;
   the measure of danger requires both the number of casualties and
   the conditions of exposure. Cyclists can ride on roads that they
   share with motor vehicles as fast as their legs will propel them
   at a reasonably low accident rate. Cyclists who tried to ride as
   fast on paths shared with pedestrians would have a far higher
   accident rate. They don't have such a high accident rate when
   riding among pedestrians only because they recognize the great
   danger and ride slowly. Since one major reason why people don't
   cycle for particular trips is that the speed is too low, I see
   that conditions that slow cyclists even further reduce the amount
   of cycling that will be done. 

3)  Ed Ravin writes that I have been "on the record over and over
   again complaining about poor roadway design for bicyclists." In my
   book *Bicycle Transportation* I give a table of factors responsi-
   ble for cycling injuries and deaths. 
        Cause                        Percentage
        Cyclist error                   50
        Road-surface defect             20
        Motorist error                   8
        Bicycle equipment failure        6
        Pedestrians                      4
        Dogs                             2
        Insufficient signal clearance    1
        Road design defect               0.5 max
        Road capacity overload           0.5 max
        Undetermined                     8

   I hardly think that a person who ascribes less than 0.5% of
   accidents to cyclists to road design defect, or 1.5% if signal
   clearance time defects are included, can be described as being an
   outspoken, adverse critic of road design. In general, my position
   is that application of standard traffic engineering knowledge has
   produced reasonable roadway designs, and that defects can be
   recognized by use of that knowledge.

   My statement was criticized for assuming that the Sierra Club is
an environmentalist organization and for using as illustration the
events surrounding an article advocating bikeways in its premier
magazine, Sierra. All I can say about that is that I took the Sierra
Club at its word, as regularly delivered to my home because I am a
life member. No person has criticized my statement of the content of
the article or the events following publication.

   Well, would the pamphlet *The Bicycle: Vehicle for a Small
Planet*, by Marcia D. Lowe, published by Worldwatch, be considered a
more representative statement of the environmentalist view of
cycling? While Lowe gives many anti-motoring arguments her statements
about cycling in the industrialized world are inaccurate. About North
America she says that "Many major cities are largely bicycle-proof,
their roadways and parking facilities designed with only motor
vehicles in mind." The fact that road designers considered only motor
vehicles does not prevent cycling; where a motor vehicle can go a
bicycle can also go. She writes that "The Netherlands and Denmark are
Europe's exemplary cycling societies." Yet Danish law prohibits
cyclists from making a vehicular-style left turn, requiring instead
the very dangerous left turn from the curb lane, and Dutch practices
delay and endanger cyclists by putting them in low-speed facilities
of various types. At Velo Mondiale in Montreal in September the
executive director of one of the three Dutch schools that teach
traffic engineering confessed that they have no scientific rationale
for their designs of bicycle facilities: "Just common sense." At the
same conference, official researchers from Denmark couldn't
understand why their bikeway designs endangered cyclists, even when
one of their photographs showed a cyclist making a left turn from the
curb lane immediately in front of a bus. Lowe herself presents
misleading data on the space requirements of various transport modes
by giving the number of persons served while ignoring the speed of
travel. While she advocates governmental action regarding cycling,
she doesn't advocate increasing the skill of cyclists and fails to
distinguish between bikeways that do harm to cyclists and other
facility efforts that would improve cycling. 

   Lowe's paper has all the problems that I attribute to the
environmentalist movement. Its recommendations for cycling in the
industrialized world (the third world has different problems and
solutions, about which I know little) tend to support programs that
delay and endanger cyclists. While she recognizes that some people,
such as myself, "oppose any special cycleways or routes that are
separate from motor vehicle traffic, believing them unsafe and
discriminatory," she fails to resolve that conflict, merely deploring
that "many local authorities dismiss requests for new bikeways on the
grounds that cyclists themselves do not want them." Naturally, I
think that my analysis is correct; what other analyses are offered?

   I think that cyclists need a program that encourages them to ride
on the roads that we have in the traffic that we have. I think that
cycling under present conditions can, in nearly all locations, with
the proper skill, be done at an acceptable accident rate. I consider
that bikeway programs, in general, do not make cycling safer but make
it more dangerous and therefore slower while pre-empting programs for
improving cyclists' skills and protecting their legal rights. I do
not consider that anti-motoring advocacy is necessary for improving
the safety and convenience of cyclists. I consider that discussion of
urban designs, based on whatever considerations the discussants
believe are important, are a different subject with a longer time
frame and wider scope. All I will say about such discussion is that
any proposals that affect cyclists should at least provide the level
of safety and convenience that can be achieved with the present
system.

   The question has been asked why cycling on bikeways is less safe
for cyclists than is cycling on roadways with the rights and duties
of drivers of vehicles. I will answer that on a separate posting.

JForester@cup.portal.com               John Forester
                                       726 Madrone Ave
408-734-9426                           Sunnyvale CA 94086 USA
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc