From: elr@trintex.uucp (Ed Ravin)
Subject: Re: Cycling and Environmentalism
Organization: Heap Big Eco-Warriors
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 21:37:44 GMT

In article <71905@cup.portal.com> JForester@cup.portal.com (John - Forester)
writes:
>
>                    CYCLING AND ENVIRONMENTALISM
>
>   The question here is to what extent cycling and environmentalism
>agree or disagree.

The real question is how John Forester and cycling environmentalists
disagree.  Forester seems to see disagreements where none exist, and then
creates political positions which do not exist that he claims are supported
by "environmentalists".

For example:

>Environmentalists ...
>advocate bikeways that make cycling more dangerous, slower, and with
>lower social status, in the expectation that this will encourage many
>people to cycle.

John Forester has no basis for this statement, but it sounds good when
you want to bash environmentalists, so he uses it.  He supplies a quote
or two from a post on rec.bicycles.soc (as if the ultimate authority
for environmentalists resides among us netsters) and an article in
Sierra magazine from "some years back" that he disagreed with.

The sad part of this waste of net.bandwidth is that most bicycling
advocates seem to agree with Forester, at least when he is writing
about bicycling.  For example, Forester says:

>I say that cycling is an environmentally benign
>form of personal transportation. I say that doing good for cyclists
>by making cycling safer, faster, more convenient, with higher
>psychological rewards and with higher social status is likely to
>increase the amount of cycling done and decrease the amount of
>motoring done, which is a good effect.

Most bicycle advocates agree with this, especially about decreasing
the amount of motoring.  But when bicyclists actually begin to talk
about how to reduce automobile usage, Forester turns ugly.  He has written
articles and letters to Bicycle USA claiming that bicycle advocates
should not advocate against cars, because we would "anger the majority".
He has posted on the net vicious attacks on Transportation Alternatives,
NY City's bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group, claiming that they were
"anti-cyclist", filled with fabricated arguments that he claimed were
those of "environmentalists".

Most bicycling advocacy organizations have a broad agenda -- they want
some bike paths here, better roads there, bike parking in some other
places.  They also want metropolitan transportation planning agencies to
stop promoting automobile transportation above all other options, and to
stop building roadway infrastructure that encourages automobiling to the
exclusion of anything else.  They're also concerned about land use issues
and the spread of suburban sprawl, which separates workplaces and homes
so that non-automobile travel becomes untenable.

I have yet to hear a single person from the bicycle advocacy
movement say that cyclists should be kicked off the roads and forced
to use trails or paths.  Bicycle advocates in NY City, for example, have
long complained about police ticketing of cyclists not using a dangerous
bicycle lane on 6th Avenue.  Advocates in Los Angeles are trying to
construct a bicycle "freeway", designed for high-speed cycling (that
presumably will also be designed with safety in mind).  Noone has said
that this substitutes for access to the roadway network.  T.A. in NY City
spends much of its time asking the local department of transportation to
include bicycles in their roadway development plans.

So why does Forester bash bicycle advocates?  Although he is on the
record over and over again complaining about poor roadway design for
bicyclists, when cyclists suggest that maybe there are too many cars
on the road, they are greeted with a 1000 word article telling them
how they have been duped by "automobile-hating environmentalists".  When
someone writes about a coalition between cyclists and pedestrian advocacy
groups, he writes that "pedestrians are the most dangerous user group we
know", as if thousands of bicyclists were dying each year because of impacts
with pedestrians (of the 18 bicyclists killed in traffic in NY City last
year, all died in motor vehicle collisions).  At any mention of bike paths,
no matter what the context, 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, for one, am tired of this idiocy.  Forester's occasional intelligent
statement has so far kept me from placing him in my kill file.  His
constant fabrication of the positions of "environmentalist" makes him
intellectually dishonest.  I don't know what his agenda is -- I suspect
that he has separated the world into Effective Cycling Instructors and
everyone else, those evil people who don't know how to ride their bikes
like he does.  And when other people want to participate in the bike
advocacy movement that he once made a contribution to, he gets mad and
says "don't play in my sandbox -- I already wrote the book on this stuff."

Thanks Forester, but no thanks -- we can get along fine without you.
-- 
Ed Ravin- elr@trintex.uucp| I like to think (and the sooner the better!)
  elr%trintex@uunet.uu.net| Of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers
           +1-914-993-4737| Live together in mutually programming harmony
my opinions, nobody else's| Like pure water touching clear sky.  -R. Brautigan
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc