“We are, when on our bikes, timeless kids crawling fast; experiencing what we had (and lost) when the conscious mind began to impede us.”  – Robert Seidler

At the end of my essay Which Cycling Politics: Doom or Possibility? I presented two stories for cyclists to live by.  One in which we see ourselves as vulnerable, pleading to the government to give us a place to ride; the other in which we present ourselves as confident equals, fully entitled and capable of using the existing roadway system.

Stories can have great power.  For thousands of years people have told stories – myths – to illuminate how we should move forward toward fulfillment.  While the word “myth” often has negative connotations in our culture, often disparaged as “somebody else’s religion,” or something foolish or untrue, the late mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote that one of the key purposes of mythology is to psychologically carry us through the stages of life; from the dependency of childhood to the responsibility of adulthood.  With a truly mythological perspective, one doesn’t worry about “facts” (not that they are unimportant) as much as a universal truth.

Campbell wrote extensively of the mythological Hero’s Journey; in which the hero hears a calling (often resisting it at first), undergoes transformation and trials, and comes out the other end with new wisdom, freedom and power.

You can read on it more extensively here:

It’s a story of such universal power that every culture has some version of it, and our culture has told the story over and over, including in many books and films.  George Lucas was heavily inspired by Campbell in his writing of Star Wars, and Campbell lauded the original film trilogy as a superb retelling of the Hero’s journey brought into the technological age.

To make an analogy between cycling and Star Wars, if Luke Skywalker had used the strategy of the “please give us a place to ride our bikes” side of bicycle advocacy, he would have asked for a barren little moon to live on where he wouldn’t have gotten in the Galactic Empire’s way.  And spent the rest of his life as a slave.

Most people in government have bought into the bicycle traffic myth.  When they say “bicycling in traffic is dangerous,” they rarely understand what they’re talking about.  They can’t explain coherently why it is dangerous, and have no idea how to remedy the risks of cycling.

Their “common sense” (in the most original sense of that term) of cycling is that small, slow and vulnerable users and large, fast and massive users cannot safely share the same roadway. This common sense isn’t based on any objective data, but on experiencing large vehicles passing fast and in close proximity while on a bike (because they’re hugging the edge) – a scary experience for many – and hearing sketchy fatality reports on the news.  People conflate the scary feeling of being passed close with the fatality stories and assume the former is the cause of the latter, when more likely the death involved some other violation of the basic rules of traffic.

Former Bogota, Columbia mayor Enrique Peñalosa has notably claimed that “A city should be so constructed so that it is safely navigable by any seven-year-old on a bicycle.”  A laudable goal, but is it practical and affordable, or even possible within our current land use configuration?  I’m afraid not.  As long as people in the suburbs have the need and money to travel long distances to work and shopping, they will demand that they be able to do so at speeds that make it unsafe for that seven-year-old on a bicycle to travel freely.  No bikeway design can remedy that problem.  We are far from ready to convert four- and six-lane arterials into woonerfs.  We are stuck with suburbia for at least decades to come.  People are not going to willingly let their large lot, single family homes be torn down to be reconfigured into pods of high density.

Over the past six decades we have created a type of wilderness on many of our arterial and collector streets.  Dangerous things run wild there.  Pre-civilized tribal peoples certainly didn’t put their seven-year-olds out there with the dangerous animals; they kept them safe in camp. Take the bicycle out of the equation for a minute.  Would you let your seven-year-old walk along this road, or cross it, unescorted?

Putting a six-inch high wall (a curb) between those wild things and our kids will not keep them safe, whether those wild things are cars or bison.  So the “seven-year-old bicyclist as design vehicle” argument is bogus.  It makes for good political rhetoric, but unrealistic traffic policy.

Our tribal ancestors understood the continuum concept of allowing kids to be exposed to risk when they were ready – both through training and maturity.  The problem today is most parents don’t understand the risks, so they don’t know how to train their kids or set boundaries for them.

Where this animal/car analogy breaks down – to our benefit – is that the bison are us.  We can change how they/we behave.  Ultimately it’s changing the way we see our streets that will make them humane again.

And we can change the manner in which we see our streets.  I wrote of this in my review of the book Fighting Traffic.   Such a change happened in the late Teens and early Twenties of the 20th Century.  We went from believing our streets were public utilities open to a multitude of uses – commerce, play, and socialization as well as travel – to thinking of them as a commodity paid for by motorists for the purpose of going fast.  It is that perception of the street that is the key to change.  Asking to be shoved into bicyclist reservations alongside the “adults” in cars is just reinforcement of that motorist mindset.

The Galactic Empire of Star Wars could just as easily be our current Gasoline Empire.  This Empire, which I named The Tyranny of Speed in another post, depends entirely on the belief that streets are primarily for fast-moving cars.  Overthrowing the Empire will require people behaving in ways contrary to the Empire’s desires. Segregated bikeways are not at all contradictory to the Empire’s belief system; indeed, they fit it perfectly.  (Some even claim that the concept of the bike lane originated in the motor-centric traffic engineering realm; and that while it was pitched as a “safety improvement,” the real agenda was keeping bicyclists from slowing down motorists.)

In her novel The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin wrote:

“You cannot buy the Revolution.  You cannot make the Revolution.  You can only be the Revolution.”

“Being the revolution” is a Hero’s journey.  One moves from childhood to adult.  From childish cycling – the playground, the sidewalk, staying out of the way of the adults – to adult cyclist; an equal, negotiating and standing up for one’s needs and principles.   Does a free and empowered adult ask permission to do the right thing?  Does she ask to be segregated from other adults in order to avoid upsetting them?

The most important thing the Hero does is inspire others to follow in his path.  In him they see the possibility of a better future.  Even the primitive Ewoks were inspired by Skywalker’s example.  Indeed, those Ewoks played an integral role in the defeat of the Empire.

But Empire’s can be defeated by means other than force.  Campbell wrote, “Revolution doesn’t have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth.  If you spend all your time thinking about what you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it.”  Once again, such a strategy is well suited to the cyclist’s situation.  Most people have positive feelings about cycling; it has a primal power over us.  Robert Seidler believes it taps into memories of early childhood, while we were crawling, experiencing movement for the first time.  Now we are in much the same position as that crawling toddler; head up, torso leaning forward, arms and legs down, but now with immensely greater freedom.  (Of course this head-forward position is not essential for the enjoyment of cycling, as any recumbent rider will tell you.)  Focusing on the positives of cycling is the most effective strategy we can use.

(By “defeating the Empire” I don’t mean eliminating cars.  I simply mean ending their hegemony.)

Where we have been failing for so many years has been with marginal education and outreach programs, and with messages that reinforce the Empire’s agenda.

“The adventure he is ready for is the adventure he gets.”  – Joseph Campbell

First things first.  If Obi-Wan Kenobi had told Luke right off the bat that he was going to confront Darth Vader in a duel, Luke would have been frightened out of his mind.  Instead, Obi-Wan focused first on building Luke’s basic skills in training for a “simpler” task – rescuing Princess Leia.  Similarly, we don’t start out by teaching cyclists to confront the Gasoline Empire on the worst arterials or in the political arena, we just get them comfortable with the skills of traffic cycling.

We show them what is possible.  Like this. (Mindful cycling can defeat mindless motoring.)

And this. (A light saber duel can also be a dance.)

The average American cyclist believes safe roadway cycling without special accommodation is like lifting an X-wing fighter with one’s mind – impossible.  Those of us who know better have to learn how to be Obi-Wans and Yodas; the shaman.  Campbell described the shaman as the one was drawn, by natural forces, beyond the commonplace.  Into – for lack of a better term – insanity.  Or at least seen as insane from the point of view of the rest of the community.  But traditional tribal cultures respected the views of the shaman; he was able to lead others to see new ways of dealing with the world.

That’s us – those of us who have left the fear of traffic behind and learned to be cycling Jedi.  It only looks supernatural to the uninitiated.

And that’s the role that awaits you if you’ll take it.

“Of course we have a deal. They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecation.”

- George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld

The tyranny of speed rules over nearly every road in this great nation.  Florida is perhaps the tyrant’s most resolute stronghold.  It’s as if gravity or latitude or the warm climate (or perhaps the convergence of the three) have funneled that power into our peninsula from all across the land.  Hemmed in by the Everglades, the tyrant’s power concentrates even more as one moves into Broward and Miami-Dade counties.  It then squirts out along US 1, the Overseas Highway that runs from Key Largo to Key West.  The Highway is now mostly overwhelmed by the tyrant; its miles of ugly strip commercial development making it look like nearly any other four-lane highway.  If it weren’t for the palms and tropically-themed signs you might think you were outside Atlanta along some stretches.

N. Roosevelt: sidepath on the left side; destinations on the right.

One-hundred and two miles down the highway you enter the Conch Republic, aka Key West.  It’s the end of the road.  The tyranny of speed has pushed its invading wedge westward into the island along US 1, and its commercial minions — fast-food purveyors, big box retailers… — have come in behind to claim territory.  At its ironic intersection with Eisenhower Drive, it loses nearly all its power as it changes names from N. Roosevelt Boulevard to Truman Avenue and becomes a narrow, two-lane street.

Most of the tyrant’s soldiers relax and drop their weapons when entering this human-paced paradise, but enough keep their warrior mentalities to make trouble as they scatter throughout the fine grid of narrow streets.  The saner ones leave their cars at their hotels as they visit, or even sell them if they decide to stay and put down roots.

The End of the Road. Welcome to human-scale.

The tyrant’s soldiers have a deal with the pigeon cyclists of Key West; the cyclists scatter out of the way of their cars, the tyrants look the other way when cyclists run red lights or ride with a beer in one hand.

I traveled to Key West over the first weekend of December with Keri Caffrey and John Schubert.  As we biked around the island we found ourselves running afoul of their pigeon-deal.  Not accustom to getting out of the way, we annoyed quite a few of the soldiers, and they made threatening motions with their weapons.  The problem became severe as we traveled N. Roosevelt; no doubt the leading edge of an army is where the fighting is the bloodiest.  The tyrant had provided the pigeons with a place to keep out of the way; something called a “bike path.”  The path was pleasant enough as it followed the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, but on some stretches the commercial minions had build driveways across it, and the soldiers were not terribly polite about yielding at those crossings.  At the very first driveway we were nearly taken out by one.

Our purpose that weekend was to introduce some key Conchs to the principles and practices of vehicular cycling.  In that we feel we were quite successful; all who attended our course said they saw real value in it.  The larger challenge for Key West though, is getting local motorists to accept vehicular cycling.

Conchs in Training

The local cyclists may feel the current situation is pretty good.  After all, bicycling makes up a far greater proportion of traffic on Key West than in perhaps any city in the nation outside of Davis, CA.  Eddie Marsh, proprietor of a pedicab and bike rental business, told us the tourists who rent bikes for a week usually return reporting that they had a great time.  But I wonder how many crashes are caused by their relatively new door-zone bike lanes and their sidepaths.  It’s common for untrained and inexperienced cyclists to be unaware of the conflicts posed by such facilities, and see only the “benefit” of “having a place to ride.”

I’ve been traveling to Key West since 1982.  During that first visit I noticed how some motorists were easily aggravated.  The juxtaposition of aggressive driving and the “mañana” mentality was surprising.   But it was still a fairly sleepy island at that time.  In ’85 I rode the Old Town section of the island with a friend and it was roughly the same.  My next visit in 1994 was as a budding bicycle transportation professional, spending a week observing and analyzing conditions and behaviors for an FDOT-led project.  Locals were increasingly concerned that cycling was becoming dangerous on the island, but many of our team routinely rode the N. Roosevelt roadway with no grief from the soldiers.  In 1998 I went down there for a Florida Bicycle Association advocacy-building effort.  The attitude from the locals was much the same as in ’94; “it’s a dangerous place; we need more bikeways,” yet I still saw it as a fairly easy place to ride.

Now, a decade later, they have those bikeways they asked for, and my perception of the island is that motorist attitudes towards cyclists are worse than they’d ever been.  Motor traffic levels are much higher (especially on N. Roosevelt) and motorists are much more intolerant of roadway cycling.  (So much for the theory that increasing the amount of cycling improves motorist attitudes towards cyclists.)  On the other hand, the locals we spoke to think things are pretty hunky-dory.  It’s so rare for American cyclists to say they live in a good place for cycling; one needs to respect that, so I question my own perspective.

When I visited in 1994 the cyclist crashes we were hearing about had little to do with the lack of bikeways; they were mostly instances of cyclists not yielding or otherwise violating the rules of the road.  I wonder what the causes are today.  Has safety actually improved along with its perception?  Nothing I saw this year would lead me to expect objective improvement.  But without actual data that’s just conjecture.

It’s an important question.  I hope someone can provide answers.  Because if Key West is perceived as a success while actual safety has been degraded, it becomes yet another misleading example in support of misguided planning and design.

The sad irony in this story is that Key West prides itself on tolerance.   “One Human Family” is the official city motto.  The mayor wrote that this motto “reflects our commitment to living together as caring, sharing neighbors dedicated to making our home as close to ‘paradise’ as we can.”  The city is known for accepting and welcoming those who wish to live differently from the norm.  Such tolerance does not, however, appear to extend to those of us on bicycles who behave as equals on their streets.  You can flaunt your sexual orientation or your outrageous artistic sensibilities, or wear a t-shirt that would get you thrown out of your mother’s house…but drive your bicycle like you’re a first-class citizen?  Now you’ve crossed the line, bud.

Enough with the "she's not wearing a helmet" blather, already.

“65% of statistics are just made up.”  — unknown

It’s been repeated so many times as to be considered a “fact.”  But this “fact,” which has been used to justify mandatory helmet laws across the nation and around the world,  is based on a misleading report about a poorly designed study.  I’m speaking of course about the “fact” that bicycle helmets reduce head injury risk by 88%. This paper does a great job of explaining the errors in the infamous Thompson, Rivara & Thompson study, published in New England Journal of Medicine in 1989. The key shortcomings:

• The “cases” (bicycle head injury hospital admissions) were significantly different in character from the “control group” population.
• None of the cases involved bicyclist crashes involving motor vehicles.
• The report is claimed to apply to all ages, but the case and control groups were all children.
• Helmet use was “self selected.”  Non-head injuries were less severe among helmet-wearers than non-helmet-wearers, implying that helmet-wearers are less likely to get involved in more serious collisions.

According to the Florida Department of Health, there were 622 traumatic brain injuries (TBI) among bicyclists in Florida in 2005.  By comparison, during the same period, 14,696 automobile and truck passengers, 1,643 motorcyclists, and 1,189 pedestrians suffered traumatic brain injuries.  Cyclists were only 3% of all traffic-related TBIs.  The TBI rates per 100,000 population* (2005 thru 2007) are: motor vehicle occupant 82.5, motorcycle 10.7, pedestrian 7.1, bicyclist 3.7.  (That’s total population, not “cycling population” or “motorcyclist population,” etc.)

[The above paragraph has been updated with better data.  The previous numbers were from a report that evidently only included injuries recorded in the state's "Central Registry."]

Since helmet use is such an important element of the “dangerization” of cycling, we owe it to ourselves to do what we can to smack down those ubiquitous “88%” claims whenever we can.

Obligatory Disclaimer:  I am not anti-helmet.  I wear one most times I ride.  I am anti-helmet law because there is some evidence that such laws reduce cycling (especially among kids) and because there is no evidence of a compelling state interest.

My wife, who was believer when we met, expressed a similar sentiment about my agnosticism.

Respect for honest doubt would go a long way towards mending the huge rifts among the two main bicycling “camps.”

Bikeway proponents must respect the doubts of vehicular cycling proponents about the benefits of facilities, because there is significant objective evidence to support that doubt.  Since decisions about bikeways are done by governments, objectivity is essential.

Vehicular cycling proponents must respect the doubt of others about the effectiveness of vehicular cycling.   While vehicular cycling can also be measured objectively, it is experienced subjectively.   There is significant subjective evidence to support that doubt; those many personal experiences in traffic which reinforce our culture’s taboo about cycling.   Since cycling itself is done by individuals, many of whom are not trained, comfortable with, or prone towards objectivity, we vehicular cycling proponents must take a softer, subjective approach.

Respect and caring are the foundation.

“Certainty divides us; doubt unites us.”
– Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus

I have estimated the percentages from the chart and converted it to numbers showing percentage increase from the historic low to 1995.

For those who believe The Netherlands’ and Denmark’s high cycling numbers are due to facilities, you might consider that many of these places never dropped below 20% cycling mode share.  Cycling has always been a prominent component to their traffic environment.

Take a look at what they themselves say about the effectiveness of bikeways to increase cycling:

“Since 1990, the total length of cycle paths has increased to almost 19,000 km, doubling the length in 1980.”
“Results: In 1994, the total distance cycled was 12.9 billion km, compared with 12.8 billion in 1990. The number of km traveled by car was 125 billion in 1990 and 129 billion in 1994.”
“Expansion and improvement of the infrastructure does not necessarily increase the use of bicycles.”

From “The Autumn of the Bicycle Master Plan”
1994, Dutch Ministry of Transport

And

From “The Economic Significance of Cycling”
The Netherlands Interface for Cycling Expertise
“Experiences in Amsterdam show that the increase in bicycle use in the city centre in the last 10 years is mainly due to increased parking rates.”
“The policy of reducing car traffic in city centres therefore often consists of reducing parking facilities, and this method is used to cut car use.”
“Many cities have started to reclaim space from the car in the last 10 to 20 years. … A good example of this is Copenhagen where, between 1962 and 1996, the number of parking spaces was reduced from 3,100 to 2,000…”

The existence of an extensive rail transit system is also a very important factor:

“In 1991, 44% of [transit users] went to the local train station by bicycle.”
From “The Autumn of the Bicycle Master Plan”

If you start with different ingredients for two recipes, then add the same new ingredient to both recipes, do you end up with the same results?

– Genesis, Squonk

A woman walks into a marketing and public relations firm and sits down to talk with their lead strategist.

“Our organization has a fun, safe and healthy activity we wish to promote, but we’re struggling to figure out the right approach,” she says.

The strategist thinks for a moment, then responds, “I recommend the approach bicycle advocates have been using for the past 20 years; reinforce the public’s fears about your activity.”

The woman is taken aback, pauses for a moment, then says, “Oh!  You had me going there for a moment!”

“What do you mean?” asks the strategist.

“Well, you were joking, right?…”

If only.

The Politics of Doom

Think about the things that keep people from bicycling these days.  Fear of traffic.  Fear of injury.  Of looking awkward.  Of the equipment.  Of being left behind.  Discomfort.

On what do most bicycle advocates focus?  Bike lanes, new laws, and helmets.  None of the three do much to reduce those fears, and to a significant extent they increase them.

Let’s start with helmets.  A little perspective would be nice.  According to the Florida Department of Health, three times as many pedestrians, three times as many motorcyclists, and ten times as many automobile passengers suffer brain injuries as bicyclists do each year.  Florida bicyclists suffer between 80 and 90 brain injuries per year.  We account for about six percent of traffic-related brain injuries, and three percent of all brain injuries.  European nations have very low helmet use, but much lower bicycle fatality rates than the USA and especially Florida.  But we act as if bicycling were the primary cause of brain injuries and berate people for not wearing helmets.

New laws.  “We’re special.  We deserve special protection.”  Some advocacy groups have either managed to or attempted to pass laws to increase penalties for motorists who kill or seriously injure “vulnerable users” such as bicyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists.  Well “why?” one might ask.  Is the rationale for such a law, “We deserve special justice because we’re at such high risk?”  Once again the underlying message is, “Bicycling (and walking and motorcycling) is risky.”  While the laws usually cover all “vulnerable users,” it is bicyclists who take the prominent role in pushing them.

Imagine a wife who enters a courtroom to watch the case of a careless (not reckless) motorist who caused the death of her husband, who was in a car the defendant ran off the road.  The guilty driver gets a fine of a couple hundred dollars and a few points on his license for careless driving.  But the wife learns that in the previous case in that courtroom, a driver who killed some other woman’s husband who was on a bicycle was fined a couple thousand dollars, had his license suspended, and was required to do community service.  Should she feel it was fair because the other man was on a bicycle?  Now add into this picture the high percentage of bicyclists who run red lights and stop signs, drive at night without lights, or ride in large groups that sometimes back up traffic.  This group deserves special justice?

Bicycle lanes are sold as an essential safety strategy.  The problem with this strategy is that bike lanes can only affect about six to eight percent of crashes between motorists and cyclists; the ones involving overtaking motorists.  But since that is exactly the type of crash non-cyclists and novice cyclists fear most, we have a problem.  It’s just paint.  While many experienced cyclists feel bike lanes provide some improved passing separation, many non-cyclists reason that motorists can obviously just drive right over them.  So the next “logical” strategy is some sort of barrier separation between motorists and bicyclists.  Aside from the fact that such barrier-separated bikeways force cyclists and motorists into intersection conflicts (which account for about 90% of crashes), such facilities even further reinforce the belief that bicycling is risky.  The logical next step in reasoning for the uninformed and inexperienced is that only streets with barrier-separated bikeways are safe.  (I was right-hooked by a motorist on my one-and-only trip on St. Petersburg’s barrier-separated bikeway on 1st Avenue South.  It was the first time I’d been right-hooked in about 20 years.)

Both helmets and bike lanes offer some positives while simultaneously contributing to fear, and they don’t necessarily add to the fear level for everyone.  We just need to first realize how they add to fear, and weigh that against potential benefits.  Some new laws might be useful, but they must seen as fair by all.

Generally I see our culture’s beliefs about bicycling heading towards this:  Bicycling is…

A. Very risky, and requires head protection and physical separation from auto traffic in order to be made safe, and

B. Is done by a minority who believes they deserve special justice, even though they often violate the law.

The efforts of many advocacy groups are strengthening this belief.  Not only by focusing on bikeways, helmets and special laws, but by prominently featuring bicyclist deaths in their communications: covering the stories in newsletters; putting up “ghost bikes;” holding “Rides of Silence.”  Certainly we should honor our friends who have been killed on our roads, but let’s figure out a way of doing it that doesn’t reinforce the belief that cycling is exceptionally risky.

The Politics of Possibility

Because cycling is not very risky.  The average bicyclist – and this includes all those ones who ride in a less-than-competent manner – will travel about 4 million hours before experiencing a fatal crash.  That is equal to 456 years of non-stop cycling.  Cyclists who follow the basic rules of the road will travel significantly farther before a fatal crash.  But we focus way too much on these rare crashes, instead of on the hundreds of millions of miles cyclists travel every year without incident.

How exactly are these common strategies increasing cycling?

If my fictitious marketing strategist understood these numbers, he’d likely spin it like this:  “In spite of the fact that many bicyclists routinely violate the rules of the road such as traveling at night without lights and running red lights, and that motorists are often inattentive and careless, and that Florida’s bicyclists travel hundreds of millions of miles each year, only about 120 Florida bicyclists are killed each year.  It’s hard to imagine a safer activity, especially if you learn how to do it properly, which is easy to do.”

The strategy bicyclists have been using for too long is the same one used by most environmental organizations:

Scare people with stories of doom and gloom, and attempt to use the law to force governments and individuals to do things they don’t want to do.

It is the failed strategy Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have described in their book Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility.  (And no, the authors are not right-wing ideologues; they are liberals who care deeply about the environment.)

Even when we do focus on the positive aspects of cycling, it is simply elaborating on what people already know: “biking is fun,” “it’s good for the environment,” “it’s good for your health,” “it saves you money.”  And we wonder, “Hey, why hasn’t everybody started biking already?  Let’s repeat those things louder!”  To which the masses reply: “Well, none of those things matter if you’re dead!”

The solution is to help people to see bicycling as safe and personally rewarding.  Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s alternative “politics of possibility” points us in the right direction.  It is based on five key experiences all people find rewarding: Flow, Service to Others, Self-Mastery, Belonging and Fulfillment.

Flow

Flow is of course inherent to cycling.  But the “flow” they are talking about involves challenge and mental engagement.  Truly enjoyable flow requires just enough challenge to be interesting, but not overwhelming.  Vehicular cycling in urban traffic fits this perfectly.  We also need to apply flow to our education programs.  They are often too classroom- and lecture-oriented, and don’t spend enough time on the bikes.  Bikeways can sometimes interrupt flow, so we need to plan and design them carefully.

Service to Others

Service to Others is something the bicycling community needs to do better.  It’s certainly true that many cyclists participate in rides to raise funds for a variety of charities, but few events have the kind of direct service Nordhaus and Shellenberger mean.  In Orlando we’ve seen some good examples.  In the Parramore Kidz Zone Pedal 4 Pride ride, club riders help underprivileged kids learn to ride properly.  The local allycat racing folks put on a race which included buying and hauling groceries for the needy for Thanksgiving.  Earn-a-bike programs are making new community connections across the nation.  I’d like to see “street spam” (all those illegal advertisements littering the roadsides) clean up rides.  Imagination is needed.

Self-Mastery

Self-mastery is also a natural aspect of bicycling, but we often fail here, too.  Self-mastery often requires some hand-holding in the early stages, but too often bike clubs do not serve the needs of novice cyclists.  I’ve heard too many stories of people who went to one club ride and gave up, or were just too intimidated to even consider trying.  Too often we’re asking new riders to climb a much-too-high first step.  Shimano tried to address this through bicycle design with their Coasting components, believing that a bike which shifts on its own and has a simple coaster brake would bring more people into cycling, but they forgot to take the human factors into account.  The bike worked against self-mastery in the opposite way; there was nothing to master.  Note that the Coasting line has quickly gone the way of U-brakes and BioPace chain rings.

Too many “bicycle advocates” in academia insist people don’t want bicycling to be an effort; that training and practice are somehow anathema to cycling.  People don’t hesitate to take lessons for a wide variety of activities; what is so special about cycling?  Some say, “Well, we all learned to ride bikes when we were kids.  What do we need to take lessons for?”  Yet their bikes stay in their garages gathering dust.  The bikeway side argues that these people are waiting for the bikeways to be built so they can “feel safe.” (Never mind that the data from Europe shows those facilities have higher crash rates than shared roadways.)  Metro Orlando now has over 90 miles of trails and over 400 miles of bike lanes and paved shoulders, up from virtually zero in 1995.  Where are the cycling hoards?  No doubt waiting for the million-dollars-per-mile barrier-separated bikeways; a $1.5 Billion project if applied to Metro Orlando.

Keri Caffrey and I taught vehicular cycling to a group of teens this past spring.  One girl, perhaps 12 years old with minimal cycling experience, was having trouble just keeping the bike moving in a straight line, but with some one-on-one coaching from Keri, she made great improvements.  By the end of the day she was confidently cruising down four-lane Robinson Street in downtown Orlando in full control of the right lane, bridging from the “slow-poke” group to the faster kids.  As she rolled up to the back of the lead group she was absolutely beaming.

That is Self-Mastery.

We can make people feel safer now (and actually be safer, too), on nearly every road.

Belonging

The sense of Belonging is achieved by those who make it up enough steps to keep up with the club riders.  But we are not offering enough opportunities for everyone to be part of a community of bicyclists.  Critical Mass does this; the need to belong is a huge part of its growth.  Sociologist Robert Putnam explored the lack of social capital – the lack of strong social ties – in modern American cities, and especially in suburbia.  But there is also a “strength of weak ties,” which Richard Florida discusses in The Rise of the Creative Class.  Increasingly people have many weak ties in their communities instead of a few strong ones.  Bicycling lends itself well to this, and we must take advantage of it.  Social networking sites have enormous potential for us, if we learn to use them.   For example, there are 101 members of a Facebook group supporting an urban mountain biking park under I-4 near downtown Orlando, and this park is nothing but a dream for the moment.

Most importantly, Belonging for cycling must mean anybody can participate, no matter what kind of bike, what attire, how fast or slow.  Not just weekend mornings at 8:00 a.m., but weeknights, mornings, afternoons too.  It’s not a 9-to-5-Monday-thru-Friday world any more.  Paved trails can act as “bicycling nurseries,” but we must help people move beyond the paths for the sense of Belonging to meet its full potential.

Fulfillment

Cycling has great Fulfillment potential.  Just ask anyone who was unhealthy, overweight, depressed, or otherwise feeling inadequate who took up cycling and found themselves living a more positive life.  That’s why people stay with it.  If we strengthen those four previous factors the Fulfillment quotient will grow even larger.

It’s not that “only certain people can be capital B Bicyclists.”  We just haven’t done a very good job as a community of helping more people get there.

Ultimately it comes down to what story we will tell about ourselves as a community.

Story One:

“We are bicyclists.  We are vulnerable road users who are being killed and maimed at unacceptably high rates.  We are an aggrieved minority who are bullied by motorists and ignored by law enforcement, and we respond either by behaving unpredictably as individuals or gathering in large groups and impeding motorists.  We believe the majority of our class are unwilling or unable to learn to safely integrate with the motorized users of our roads. We wear helmets to protect ourselves from the inevitable head injury, and support laws which compel others to do so as well.  As an aggrieved minority we call upon our federal, state and local governments to build special places for us to travel, because without such segregation we are at great peril.  Please come join us!”

Story Two:

“We are citizens who often drive bicycles.  We are confident road users who pose very little danger to others, and only rarely are we seriously hurt ourselves.  We are highly competent and predictable.  We work to make our public roads safer for everyone, especially pedestrians and children.  We are healthy and positive because we get regular moderate exercise; we engage positively with our community, instead of being walled-off behind steel and glass.  We believe anyone can quickly learn to bike competently and confidently on our roads, and offer a variety of fun and effective ways for people to do so.  Many of us wear helmets because they are cheap insurance to protect against the rare head injury, but we don’t get too worked up if others don’t wear them.  We encourage federal, state and local governments to treat us as vehicle drivers with the same rights and responsibilities as all other drivers, and not as second-class citizens who are “in the way.”  Please come join us!”

It’s not that one story is “right” and the other is “wrong.”  Or that these are the “only stories.”  The real questions are, “What collective story do cyclists want to live by?” and “What kind of story will get us to where we want to be?”  A story of limits and tragedy, or a story of personal growth and freedom?

The common belief about European cities is that they have so many bicyclists because they have extensive (and “safe”) bikeway systems.  This travelogue from 1937* shows Copenhagen streets filled with cyclists.

Granted, auto ownership in 1937 Copenhagen was rather tiny compared to present-day American cities (or for that matter present day Copenhagen).  But watch how the motorists and cyclists interact.  To us it looks like chaos.  Traffic control appears minimal at best, yet the cyclists all seem blithley unconcerned.

It is certainly true that bike used plummeted in Denmark after World War II, and one can argue that the increase in auto use made it “necessary” to build segregated bikeways in order to increase bicycle use.  My point is: look at how they all behave.  Integration inspires cooperation — especially when the bicyclists are dressed just like everybody else.

Thanks to Copenhagenize for the find.

* YouTube shows this as from 1953, but info from IMBD and auto styles in the film indicate it’s 1937.

Passing within 3 feet is of course a violation now in Florida.  As someone who spent 20 years hugging the white line, and the past 10 riding more assertively, and has been passed by probably a million motorists in his lifetime, it’s obvious to me that hugging the edge invites close passing while lane control does not.

Here’s another illustration to show the dangers of having a large group ride single-file along the edge.  Thanks to Keri Caffrey for the truck & trailer illustration.

And if a cyclist is hit in such a scenario, count on the driver claiming the cyclist “swerved into me; there was nothing I could do,” and the officer going along with it.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Working up a sweat may be even better than angioplasty for some heart patients, experts say.

Studies have shown heart patients benefit from exercise, and some have even shown it works better than surgical procedures. At a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology on Sunday, several experts said doctors should focus more on persuading their patients to exercise rather than simply doing angioplasties.

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