As the London group Reclaim the Streets argued, our streets were taken from us and sold back to us for the price of gasoline.  This is true for most aspects of The Commons as technologies have advanced: agriculture became agribusiness, stories became published books, songs became recorded and marketed music, forests became tree farms.  Our economy is based in large part on the conversion of The Commons into money.

And today we’re even losing the freedom to use our parks as a real Commons.  No sitting, no laying down, you must have a permit to have a gathering.  Keep moving people; you could be shopping and helping the economy grow.

Not everyone has the time to occupy a park or plaza; some of us are fortunate to have jobs, even good ones; but we can show solidarity with the other Occupiers by spreading the occupation across time and space in our own more modest ways.

The bicycle is an excellent tool of Occupation.  But I am not talking about Critical Mass. Critical Mass presumes (depending on who you listen to) that bicyclists can’t travel our streets safely as they are, that we have to travel in large groups in order to protect ourselves, that cyclists need special accommodation, that motorists are evil and cyclists must be protected from them with special laws, and that the rules of the road were written for motorists, not cyclists.

Let me address this last point before moving on.  We have to differentiate between rules and laws.  Rules grow out of the culture somewhat organically.  Even if one person develops them, we follow them by consensus if they work.  There’s no police or formal court to uphold them.  Laws are the formalized versions of those rules as they’re implemented by our governments.

The first formalized traffic rules were developed by a man named William Phelps Eno in the early 1900s and adopted by many cities as their official traffic laws.  In 1905 less than one in a thousand Americans owned an automobile.  Eno didn’t develop his rules for them; he saw autos as a passing fad.  No, the rules for vehicular traffic were written for drivers of horse-drawn vehicles and bicyclists.

A number of us have learned that adhering to the rules for vehicular traffic is the best way to drive a bicycle on our public streets, and what’s more, controlling a lane — riding near the middle of the lane — is the most effective way of reducing conflicts and crash risks.  I won’t go into the details in this piece; it has been covered extensively elsewhere, especially on CommuteOrlando.com.

While the rules for traffic have remained the same, the laws in most states have been changed to favor motorists over bicyclists.  They place motorist convenience above bicyclist safety and comfort.  Cyclists have had to fight to ensure they could operate in the safest possible manner, which often entails controlling a lane rather than hugging the edge.   In most states today bicyclists are required to keep “as close as practicable”  to the right edge or curb, but with many exceptions for safety.  The times and places which meet those exceptions are actually more common than the times and places which don’t.

While lane control is primarily a practical safety strategy, it can also been seen as a political statement.  It is a way of saying that speed is not the primary rule of traffic; that “first come, first served” is; that the basic right to travel in the safest possible manner must take precedence over the desire to travel at higher speeds.  That those wielding power cannot be given so much advantage over those who do not wield such power.

We see the Tyranny of Speed expressed in online newspaper comment sections when cycling is discussed: “If you can’t keep up with traffic you have to get out of the way.”  Should speed take priority before liberty, before health, before clean transportation, before a civil and communal public realm?  Is getting to one’s destination a few seconds sooner more important than cutting the amount of money we send to oil barons and Middle Eastern sheiks and instead keeping it in our communities? Occupying the Lane is one powerful way to answer, “No.”

Bicyclists and motorists are not “natural enemies.” We’re all simply people who desire to get where we want or need to go in a reasonable time period and in reasonable comfort and safety.  Only a tiny proportion of motorists act as bullies, and even that would be reduced if cyclists stood up to them.  Most motorists, when lane control is explained to them, understand and appreciate it.  They’d be very happy to share the roadways with assertive, predictable cyclists who communicate clearly and cooperate with their fellow road users.

Segregating cyclists into reservations or ghettos (bike lanes and sidepaths) only reinforces the belief that we cannot learn to share.  Separation is more often the problem rather than the solution.  By putting bicyclists “in their own place,” motorists can just forget about us.  Which they do. Until it’s too late.  Which is usually when they’re turning at an intersection or driveway.

Just as Occupiers have learned to use the tactics of non-violent protest, bicyclists can learn the strategies of sharing roadways — confidence, consideration, communication and cooperation.

As London’s Reclaim the Streets put it:

The street is an extremely important symbol because your whole enculturation experience is geared around keeping you off the street. Inevitably you will find yourself on the curbstone of indifference, wondering “should I play it safe and stay on the sidewalks, or should I go into the street?” And it is the ones who are taking the most risks that will ultimately effect the change in society.

The “risk” in this case is not a physical one.  Cycling as a vehicle driver does not add physical risk, it reduces it.  No, the risk is social.  It’s standing up to a taboo whose time has come and gone.

The great mythologist Joseph Campbell warned that if wish to make meaningful change in the world, we must define ourselves by what we wish to see, not by what we oppose.  I hope those in the Occupy movement will take that to heart, whether they are in a park or on a street; posting on Facebook or Twitter, on foot, in a car, or on a bicycle.

To learn more, go to CyclingSavvy.org and CommuteOrlando.com

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
– UCLA basketball coach John Wooden

I’ve spent the past two decades trying to figure out how make bicycling work better for people. Perhaps instead I should have been trying to figure out how to make our communities work better. As John Wooden implied, when it comes to cycling, I’m a know-it-all, but when it comes to what really counts…

I’ve found I have to refute a number of things I used to believe, or at least wanted to be true. That’s a fancy way of saying I was wrong.

This year the “bike lane wars” have really heated up.  The war stories keep coming through my web feeds. New York City is the front line. Florida’s legislature felt the need to control cyclists by passing a mandatory bike lane use law last year. Why so much rancor about something that’s supposed to be so wonderful and benign?

The book “Community: The Structure of Belonging” by Peter Block is helping me get to the root of the problem. Block’s book explores the all-too-common dysfunctions of our communities, showing why, in spite of immense affluence and ubiquitous communication options, we are unable to solve so many of our pressing problems. Reading it I came upon passages which could have been written explicitly for the “bicycling community.” But we shouldn’t feel too special; our problems are practically universal. Here are (for our purposes) the key statements from the most important passage in the book (underlines are mine):

“If we create a context of fear, fault, and retribution, then we will focus on protecting ourselves, which plants the seed of entitlement.

“The retributive context … is based on fear, fault finding, fragmentation … it is more about being right than working something out, more about gerrymandering for our own interests than giving voice to those on the margin. Other than that it is fine.

”The cost of entitlement is that it is an escape from accountability and soft on commitment. It gets in the way of authentic citizenship.

“What is interesting is that the existing public conversation claims to be tough on accountability, but the language of accountability that occurs in a retributive context is code for “control.” High-control systems are unbearably soft on accountability. They keep screaming for tighter controls, new laws, and bigger systems, but in the scream, they expose their weakness.”

Fear is the foundation of much of what bicycling advocates are concerned. “We’ve got to make bicycling safer!” (Or at least seem safer.) Since “safe” is an inherently relative term, it’s the grounds for endless argument. We’ve managed to get people so afraid of bicycling that recently a “bicycle planning professional” on the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals email list was asking about how one might create a designated pedestrian and bicyclist space, segregated from motor traffic, in an alley.

We fixate on who is at fault, rather than on how conflicts and injuries might be best reduced. Once again, this leads to endless argument and finger-pointing. Nobody wants to be seen as being at fault, so each focuses on the faults of the others. Since everyone else is at fault, we become the victims. And since we’re “doing god’s work” (being so green and healthy and all), we must be entitled to special treatment by everybody else: motorists, officers, planners, engineers…. We hold them all accountable for our safety and comfort.

How do we hold them accountable? By enlisting government to control them.

99.999% of motorists do not want to hit us or hurt us. But we try to control them anyway, through laws and engineering; the 3-foot passing law, a vulnerable user law, and bike lanes which say “This is our turf, you’d best keep out of it.” To which some motorists reply, perhaps righteously offended, “That’s your playpen. I paid for it and you’d best stay in it for your own good.” So in retribution they try to control cyclists with a mandatory bike lane law. None of these attempts come close to achieving their intent, because they focus on blame instead of on how crashes actually happen.

Controlling with Paint?

It’s time for some serious and honest research into the effectiveness of bike lanes.

For many years I tried to find the evidence that bike lanes increase cycling without compromising safety. That was my belief, but I’ve yet to find definitive data supporting it. Now I’m finding the validity of that hypothesis to be increasingly unlikely. While they do produce some modest increases, through my own use of bike lanes and observations of the behaviors of motorists and other cyclists, I’ve come to believe they create unnecessary hazards and conflicts on urban streets. They’re particularly problematic on lower-speed streets where bicyclists are often going as fast or faster than the motorists. The reports involving crashes due to conflicts created by the bike lanes are starting to come in. From my informed perspective, the negatives of bike lanes now outweigh the modest benefits.

And now we’re expected to always use them “for our own good.” Look at how New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg responded to the viral bike lane ticket protest video:

“Generally speaking bicyclists are going to stay in bicycle lanes because of public pressure, the same way that smokers aren’t going to smoke in this park; we’re not going to give out tickets, it’s public pressure — the same way you pay your taxes. Most people in America, unlike other places in the world, pay their taxes, and that lets us go after the handful that don’t.“

There you have it; the retribution cycle in action. Fearful cyclists push to get the government to control the “at-fault” motorists by creating bike lanes. Motorists, who see cyclists as unpredictable fools, show their disdain for that control (and loss of operating space) by parking in bike lanes. Bicyclists have to leave the bike lanes for valid reasons, then get ticketed by police who side with the motorists. One cyclist gets retribution by creating a very successful video, and the rest of the cycling community piles on. So the Mayor gets defensive and equates uppity cyclists with smokers and tax cheats. Block’s pattern of community dysfunction predicts it all. Everybody else is wrong, except us. Where will it end?

We try to control traffic engineers with “bike-friendly” policies, and take them to court when they don’t adhere to them, such as in the A1A case.

Of course the 3-foot passing law is not enforced, because officers don’t respect us (hmmm, why is that?). The mandatory bike lane law is enforced (at least socially). And increasingly across the country advocates and planners are saying bike lanes aren’t enough, because they don’t control motorists enough; so barrier-separated bike lanes — “cycle tracks” — must be the answer.

Block again:

“The concern about street safety and increasing the comfort and quality of the urban experience is of course legitimate. What limits us and undermines our quest for authentic community is the belief that fault finding, legislation, and enforcement can give us the security we seek. … We think more watching improves performance. All evidence is to the contrary, for most high-performing communities and organizations are heavily self-regulating.”

Who is Accountable?

And where is the accountability from the bicyclists? It’s rather hard to find. See them knocking down our doors to take safe cycling courses? Nope. Indeed, the most socially visible bicyclists are hardly accountable at all: Critical Mass riders, pack riders, hipster/fixie riders. Responsible cyclist behavior is so rare that I’ve heard stories of motorists going out of their way to thank cyclists for acting predictably. (Full disclosure: I used to ride with packs, and I’ve attended a handful of Critical Mass rides. Past tense. But I’ve never been hip or ridden a fixed gear.)

All these attempts at control, whether of motorists, bicyclists, planners or engineers, as they get increasingly specific in their intent, are also increasingly subject to challenge by the ones being controlled, because each party finds valid reasons to question the control. This only leads to more conflict, ultimately ending up in our courts. The only solution to this downward spiral is accountability, and accountability must start with me, not you. Us, not them. So that’s why I say, “I was wrong.”

Accountability must lead to commitment. In order for cyclists to be released of the control being imposed on us by others (mostly by the State), we must make the commitment, without condition, to change our ways so control is no longer necessary. That doesn’t mean we do what others want (because what others want of us is based on retribution, not fairness or reason), it means we do what’s best for all involved, including ourselves.

For many years I’ve argued that it’s unfair to expect bicyclists to “police our own,” since pedestrians, motorists and motorcyclists don’t. Now I believe it is our responsibility. Maybe not to “police” our fellow cyclists, but we must figure out how to influence and encourage them to strive to reach a higher standard. Not just to be conspicuous, predictable and the most polite of roadway users, but to work for the safety of all road users as well.

Capacities, Not Deficiencies

“The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.”
– Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

While there may be a few exceptions, it is possible for any reasonably competent person to bike safely on virtually any road. We know it’s possible because people are doing it. These people are not super-fit or fearless daredevils. They are individuals who have simply learned how to drive their bicycles in a predictable, defensive and strategic manner. If they can do it, most any adult can. Not only does such cycling eliminate the vast majority of hazards and conflicts with motorists, it is also appreciated by many, if not most motorists. Motorists know what to expect of such cyclists.

What should we call such cyclists? I suggest we avoid “vehicular cycling;” while it’s objectively correct, it’s loaded with too much political baggage amongst cycling advocates. Florida Bicycle Association calls its traffic cycling course CyclingSavvy, but a more generic term is probably needed. While it’s essentially defensive driving for bicyclists, the term “defensive” can have a negative connotation. What motorists need from us is to be polite and dependable. So I am proposing we use the term “dependable cycling.” Keri Caffrey likes to tell the story of how she used to have to deal with so many stupid motorists, but after she learned to ride properly, all-of-a-sudden those drivers got so much smarter. By being polite, defensive and dependable, we encourage motorists to be polite and dependable as well.

I’ve made my commitment to make cycling better by first and foremost being a better cyclist. I hope you will do the same. No matter how long you have been cycling, you will learn valuable lessons from FBA’s CyclingSavvy course. The course is all about being accountable and committed, not about avoiding becoming a victim.

“Typically I ride my road bikes between 9,000 and 12,000 miles each year and I ride them anywhere I want to go in daylight or darkness. I enrolled in the three-part Cycling Savvy course. I learned fundamentals I don’t remember thinking about . . . no wonder I wasn’t very helpful to beginners. Convictions that I held resolutely were challenged and shown to be indefensible. This course is wonderful for timid cyclists and a must for those of us who know it all.”
– Larry Gies, Seminole County

“I don’t think there are too many people in the world who have more experience with different kinds of cycling (recreational, commuting, touring and racing) in different parts of the world (five continents) than I have. …When CyclingSavvy came to the midwest in April and June 2011, I took both the Three-Part Course and the Instructors’ Course in St. Louis. I believe that I learned more in these few months about cycling safely and comfortably in traffic than I had learned from my previous 50 or so years of cycling.”
— Gary Cziko, new CyclingSavvy Instructor in Champaign-Urbana, IL

Please don’t take these quotes as chest-thumping. Keri and I didn’t approach the development of this course with the thought of “We have all this game-changing information to share with cyclists.” Instead, we were focused on simply getting more people comfortable cycling in traffic by changing their beliefs and doing a better job of explaining key concepts. In the process we learned a ton of new things ourselves. It’s said one learns more by teaching than by being a student. I think one can expand that to: one learns more by developing a new curriculum than by teaching. And the most important thing we learned was that when we communicate politely and clearly, drive assertively, and act dependably, motorists treat us with respect. No bicycle facility, traffic law, t-shirt message, YouTube video, or protest ride can come close to the effectiveness of being a dependable cyclist.

Who Are You and What Can You Contribute?

This piece is entitled “I Am Not a Bicyclist.” Yes, I did that to grab your attention. Of course I am a bicyclist. I am also a husband, a reader, a gardener, and a number of other things; and somewhere near the top of that list is a Citizen. I used to believe the fact that we identified ourselves as cyclists was an advantage. It enabled us to come together to develop strategies and implement them to improve our standing in our communities. But by identifying ourselves as cyclists we also set ourselves apart. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, notable social psychologists have promoted the realistic conflict theory, which holds that groups which are segregated from one another — even ones that share core values and common backgrounds — inevitably develop prejudices and discrimination. The Robbers Cave Park experiment is a classic example. Capulets and Montagues. Motorists and bicyclists.

“Bicycling community” is an oxymoron, a dysfunction, as is any “(insert interest group) community.” It’s an idea we should leave behind. Community is about integration and sharing. In functional communities people help one another do the “right” things far more often than they punish those who do the “wrong” things.

Let’s be citizens first, and cyclists somewhere down the list. Let’s be individuals who take accountability for the future, rather than entitled consumers waiting for the government to give us “our own space.” Once again, Block says it best:

“A citizen is one who produces the future, someone who does not wait, beg, or dream for the future. The antithesis of being a citizen is the choice to be a consumer or a client … Consumers give power away. They believe that their own needs can be best satisfied by the actions of others. Consumers also allow others to define their needs. If leaders and service providers are guilty of labeling or projecting onto others the “needs” to justify their own style of leadership or service they provide, consumers collude with them by accepting others’ definition of their needs. This provider-consumer transaction is the breeding ground for entitlement, and it is unfriendly to our definition of citizenship and the power inherent in that definition.”

The rationale for segregation is deficiency. The rationale for control is deficiency. We call for the segregation of bicyclists and motorists because both are presumed deficient and unwilling or unable to avoid colliding with one another. We call for our governments to control motorists and cyclists with increasingly prescriptive laws and enforcement for the same reason. If deficiency is the expectation we set and the story we tell, then that’s where we’ll go. While the deficiencies are real, so are our capacities for competence, politeness, and dependability. Which story shall we tell?

“What do you want from me — my deficiencies or my capacities?”
– Peter Block

“We can only liberate our rivers and our seeds and our food, and our educational systems, and redefine and deepen our democracy, by first liberating our minds and decolonizing our minds.”  – Vandana Shiva

– apocalypse: a disclosure of something hidden from the majority in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception; the lifting of the veil.

– control mythology:  the web of stories, symbols and ideas which define the dominant culture’s sense of normal (including limiting our imagination of social change) and make people think the system is unchangeable.

Bicycling in the United States suffers from a failure of imagination.

Failures of imagination usually grow out of a sense that the current situation is unchangeable.  Cultures often create such a sense of inevitability inadvertently, but in some cases it’s due to an intentional effort by some to maintain the status quo.  Usually there is a control mythology maintaining that sense of certainty.

The Bicyclist Control Mythology can be described thusly:

A significant number of motorists either will not tolerate sharing roadways, or are so incompetent as to be unable to see and avoid hitting bicyclists who are plainly in front of them in the lane.  This control mythology is promoted not to keep bicyclists safe, but to support the belief that bicyclists sharing roadways cause significant delay to motorists.  Underpinning that conviction is the belief that bicyclists are second-class road users.  This control mythology presumes that motorists need to be changed in order for bicyclists to be safe, but cannot be changed.  Since the motorist cannot be changed, bicyclists must be moved out of the way for their own safety.

The dominant bicycle advocacy faction takes the position that bicyclists must be segregated into special facilities in order for significant numbers of people to feel safe when cycling.  Many of them also take an adversarial position against the motoring public; often demonizing auto users and pushing to restrict motorist mobility for the sake of bicyclists.  What they do not realize is that by insisting bicyclists must be segregated away from motorists in order to be safe, they are operating under the bicyclist control mythology and inadvertently reinforcing it.  Segregating cyclists actually makes motorists happier, because they believe they no longer have to “worry” about us being “in their way.”  Segregation makes motorists feel good (though they’d feel even better if they didn’t have to pay for those bikeways), but usually at the tangible expense of bicyclists.

Of course the segregationists will debate this.  They believe (or at least they claim, based on extremely weak evidence) that segregated bikeways, separating motorists and bicyclists with paint or raised barriers, improve safety and are the only mechanism by which cycling can be significantly increased.

This debate has been dragging on on internet forums and elsewhere for years, and I’m not interested in rehashing it here.  Instead, I am interested in discussing values.

The segregationists have taken an adversarial stance towards motorists.  Since the majority of adults are motorists, this makes for a foolish political strategy.  Liberated cyclists do not see motorists as the enemy.  They are our fellow citizens.  Yes, they are using machines which cause harm to our communities and to our environment, but they are simply behaving the way the culture expects them to, and to demonize them is to make ourselves look like fools.  Only a very small percentage of the motoring population gives us trouble.

If you take all the things we normally talk about — unsafe streets, a lousy environment, education that’s not working, health-care — everything we know is that none of those are going to get better without a social fabric existing in a neighborhood, a city, a community.  The idea that more programs, more money, better leadership, more expertise, is going to create a different future…  It’s not; and the only thing that’s going to create that is a deeper sense of connectedness, social fabric, community, citizens thinking this place is mine to create.

– Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging

Nature’s biological forces constantly work towards integration.  Integration is the basis for harmony.  Segregation inevitably means “I’ve got mine; you’ve got yours.”  It leads to suspicion, not cooperation.   That is no way to build community.  The more you are segregated, the less you understand the behaviors of “the other,” and the more they become “strange.”

One could say that by directing cyclists to the margin between the roadway (for vehicles) and the sidewalk (for pedestrians) we have been marginalized.  Margins aren’t necessarily bad.  In nature they are where lots of things are happening.  Sudden, surprising things, like a flock of birds bursting out of the forest into the meadow.  Or a car pulling out of a driveway.  The cyclist doesn’t want lots of things happening where he’s traveling.  He wants as few hazards and conflicts as possible, and wants advanced notice of them when they do occur.  Let’s use that margin for better things, such as wider sidewalks for pedestrians, or wider, landscaped buffers between the roadway and the sidewalk.

Before I get into the comparison of liberated cycling versus segregated, note that I am not criticizing trails or paths in independent rights-of-way.  I believe such trails are valuable to communities for a number of reasons.  First is to serve as a place for novice adult cyclists and children to get comfortable operating their unfamiliar machines.  Secondly, they provide pleasant places to ride, without the noise and pollution of auto traffic.  And lastly, they can improve connectivity in some suburban areas; in some cases reducing trip distances for cyclists.

Segregation advocates constantly point to The Netherlands, with its elaborate network of segregated bikeways as their ideal.  But our cultures are different in one very pertinent way; in The Netherlands cycling by adults has always been seen as normal, while in the United States it has been considered strange since at least the end of World War II.

In the 1920s the Dutch bicycling mode share was 80%.  Even at its bottom, cycling had a 15% share in most Dutch cities.  The past four or five generations of Americans on the other hand have been raised in a culture that sees cycling as frivolous; a toy for children or a sport for adults.  In most American cities the bicycling mode share has been below 1%.  That has resulted in a culture that no longer understands cycling, but still believes it does.

This critical difference means that bikeways have different meanings in The Netherlands and the United States.

A bicycling system is not just infrastructure.  It also depends on effective laws, competent and caring motorists, and competent cyclists.

Because they’ve always seen adult transportation cycling as normal, the Dutch have built a system intended not merely to separate cyclists from motorists, but to give cyclists priority at intersections and special legal protection in the case of a collision.  They have also continued to train cyclists and motorists thoroughly, because they hold order in high regard.  The desire among both the Dutch politicians and Dutch traffic engineers is to provide the best possible physical and legal environment for cyclists.  So a segregated bikeway in The Netherlands means a place that is well-designed and respected by motorists.  It is to be used by normal, competent cyclists, and the laws are written to favor them.  Dutch cyclists are also highly respected on roadways without bikeways because they are both seen as normal, and generally predictable and competent.

Even so, in many cases in Europe the segregated bikeways have poorer safety performance than cycling in mixed traffic on the roadway.

While accident risk for a cyclist in mixed traffic did not seem to increase to any great extent with growing flows of conflicting motor-vehicles, the same condition increased the risk for cyclists on cycle tracks.  In mixed traffic, the risk per cyclist seemed to decrease with an increased number of cyclists; on a cycle track, the risk seemed independent of the bicycle volume. … Intersections between carriageways [roadways] and cycle tracks are particular locations where infrastructure design often creates problems.  Lack of conspicuity of vulnerable road users is bound to make such situations worse.

– from Safety of Vulnerable Road Users, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1998

Because our American culture has long seen cycling as frivolous and no longer understands it, our engineering community has done a poor job of designing and maintaining bikeways, and our legislative bodies have crafted laws which either do nothing to improve cyclist safety, or actually degrade it.  Motorist training is laughably scarce.
Cyclist training in the United States has suffered from elitist or inept leadership.  Training for adults has been boring and poorly marketed, while training for children has been based mostly on fear and helmet promotion.

So a segregated bikeway in the United States means a place that can be designed to minimum standards, left mostly unmaintained by local governments, and disregarded by motorists.  It is to be used by strange, fearful, or incompetent cyclists.  The laws become meaningless or confusing since legislators don’t understand the hazards and conflicts of cycling.  American cyclists are relatively disdained on roadways because they are perceived as strange and unpredictable.

The culture creates the system, not the other way around.  American bikeway advocates are attempting to take a short-cut; trying to build a system that will change the culture.  One need only look at the anti-cyclist stories burning across the Web to see that isn’t working.

As American cyclists our first goal must be to be seen as normal and predictable.  The solution to that is quite simple.  Be polite to motorists.  Be predictable, which means behaving the way other law-abiding drivers do (which includes controlling a lane when it is warranted).  Be reasonably conspicuous.  And dress like normal people; not Tour de France wannabes.

Key to achieving that goal are the values of trust, cooperation, and nurturing.  The vast majority of motorists treat competent, liberated cyclists in a safe and polite manner, and if we increase the number of competent, liberated cyclists, motorist behavior will only get better, since cooperation breeds more cooperation.  So we must trust motorists to do the right thing.

It’s much easier and more realistic to trust someone to do what they’re already doing and what’s in their self-interest.  In the case of roadway cycling this means motorists already routinely scan ahead for other road users.  Expecting motorists to do something they don’t normally do, and which isn’t necessarily in their self-interest, is a set-up for failure.  In the case of bikeway cycling this means motorists taking the extra effort to scan their blind-spots.

Some segregationists take an elitist stance, believing some cyclists cannot or will not learn.  If we nurture and trust cyclists we can encourage them to become competent and confident roadway users.  In this matter the cycling community has failed in two disparate directions.  It has failed to reach out to novice riders; those who have no interest in becoming club riders.  And the club riders themselves assume they’re already competent and predictable.

Try showing up at the typical club ride or bike shop with a bike from a big box store and you can expect barely hidden ridicule.  Most clubs also have no effective strategies for helping people improve.  Their approach tends to be rather Darwinian.

I quit doing local club rides about ten years ago because their own behaviors had deteriorated to the point that the stress level made riding with them very unpleasant.  Stories from other cities lead me to believe those problems are not unique to my area.

At Bike-Walk Central Florida’s recent First Friday ride, a young woman showed up at the last minute on a low-end, single-speed cruiser bike.  We welcomed her onto the ride and kept the pace low enough that she could stay with us.  Evidently she didn’t “get the memo” that roadway cycling is a dangerous activity and only for those fit enough and outfitted with high-end gear.  Now she is receptive to taking the CyclingSavvy course (after she gets a new bike).  A month or so from now she’ll be willing and able to bike anywhere with safety and confidence, and she won’t need to wait a decade or more for the government to build all the bikeways she “needs” to get around.

Compare that to how segregationists believe they are nurturing cyclists. The following is an account from a cycle-track-riding reporter for the Montreal Gazette. Montreal is known for its many miles of cycle tracks.

“I was no longer simply watching out for traffic or an occasionally inattentive fellow driver.  I was now embedded in a circus.  Pedestrians moving at one speed, cyclists at another and cars at still another, and each of the performers moving to a different set of rules and in different directions.

Not that I didn’t enjoy some of the thrill. But sometimes I just want to get from Point A to Point B without the high drama. That means without riding on the de Maisonneuve bike path downtown.  One of my colleagues was hit by a car last year while cycling on The Path.  The inherent danger, or inherent extra danger, on The Path is that the two cycling lanes in the centre of the city are headed in opposite directions, she pointed out.  So a driver turning left from de Maisonneuve has to watch out for cyclists coming from the west and from the east. And watch out for pedestrians, of course, and other cars.”

My experience using a cycle track in New York City was similar to that of the reporter’s.  His “solution” to this problem — shifting to a parallel street without a cycle track — is quite revealing:

“I’m happy to say that now, I’ve found my own enlightened path to work. …  The right-hand lane of René Lévesque is wide enough for a parked car and for me and my bicycle, even with both panniers filled, so I stay out of the lanes of moving traffic.”

The right lane he refers to is only wide enough for a parked car and its open door.  This untrained cyclist mistakenly believes riding within the door zone of those parked cars is a safe option.  He has left the obviously hazardous conditions of the cycle track, only to put himself at risk for other more serious and unsuspected threats.  Dooring is the primary cause of cyclist fatalities in large cities.

Controlling a lane in mixed urban traffic is much less stressful than what he reports from the cycle track, and it also reduces the actual number of conflicts and threats.  To lead or force unsuspecting people into such a choice is unethical to say the least.

Training frees and protects the cyclist by enabling her to manage and minimize the hazards and conflicts as they arise.  Segregation confines the cyclist, limiting her choices and forcing her into manufactured conflicts; conflicts which do not exist for the liberated cyclist.

Many years ago I took a try at Tae Kwon Do, spending a few hours per week at a local dojo.  The Master was more-than-a-little full of himself.  One day he sat a bunch of us students down and posed the question: “If you were given a choice between only food or freedom, which would you choose?”  The answer was easy to me.  Choose freedom, because you can then get food on your own.  The Master wasn’t buying it.  Perhaps he was just being argumentative.  Surely choosing food in the hopes you could later gain your freedom could not be a better choice.

This is the choice being presented to cyclists by the bicycle segregationists, with “food” being replaced with “safety.”  You can have the freedom of the road, or the “safety” of segregated bikeways.

Perhaps if your dictator is both benevolent and competent you could accept the choice of safety (or food).  If he’s competent but not benevolent, you’ve got a serious problem.  You’ve also got a big problem if he’s benevolent but incompetent.

Am I being heavy-handed using the term “dictator” as a metaphor for bicycle segregationists?  Perhaps.  Certainly they don’t have anywhere near that kind of power, but we’re seeing mandatory use laws being passed in a number of states.  It’s a common sequence: advocate for bikeways; motorists get upset that cyclists don’t “stay in their place;” mandatory bikeway use law is implemented.  So segregation becomes not merely a preference, but the law of the land.  That’s not quite dictatorship, but neither is it headed toward freedom.  We are at risk of moving from being free, to being socially confined (bike lanes), to being physically and/or legally confined (cycle tracks and/or mandatory use laws).

This might not be so bad if the segregated facilities actually improved safety, but they don’t.  This topic is of course one which has been debated ad infinitum in many cycling forums.  I’m not going to bother to resolve that argument here.  But what cannot be argued is that a bikeway can’t improve safety for cyclists on streets without them.  As was made clear by the story of the Montreal reporter, a cyclist not trained to recognize and manage the risks of cycling might fare well if he or she travels on a well-designed, segregated facility, but could run into serious trouble on streets without them.

“Fine,” you might say, “let’s get busy building those bikeways.”

How long will that take?  How much will that cost?  The City of Chicago just committed to building a single mile of cycle track.  The project will cost $3 million.  Multiply that by Chicago’s 17,000 miles of highways and arterials and the bill will be $51 billion.  And that’s just Chicago.  If Chicago spent $100 million per year on cycle tracks it would take 510 years to “make all their streets safe for bicyclists.”  Simple math shows even bringing the cost down to $300,000 per mile means 51 years to complete the system.  Under that extremely rosy scenario, ten years from now 80 percent of Chicago’s streets will still lack “safe accommodation.”  So untrained cyclists who must use those streets will be out of luck for quite some time.

What’s more, at least a third of cyclist/motorist crashes happen on low-speed neighborhood streets which won’t get such bikeways.  Training, on the other hand, helps a cyclist everywhere.  With effective training a cyclist can use those quiet local streets when desired and possible, and use the arterials where necessary.

The beauty of training is that the more people you train, the more trainers you can enlist, and more normative the new behaviors appear.  So it’s a positive feedback system that gains power and momentum.  A trained cyclist can travel anywhere, immediately, instead of being limited to bicycle-specific infrastructure.

A typical six-lane arterial like the one getting a cycle track in Chicago carries about 60,000 car trips per day.  No doubt the segregation advocates would be thrilled if the cycle track stimulated cycling to a 20 percent mode share; 12,000 bike trips per day.  If it’s a round trip that means it serves 6,000 cyclists.  So 6,000 cyclists get to “safely” use one mile of arterial each day.

How about we try this.  Pay 200 Chicagoans $50 per hour to teach 25 ten-hour traffic cycling courses per year. That comes to $2,500,000 ($12,500 for each instructor).  Each instructor can teach five students per class, which is 25,000 students.  Since people don’t believe cycling training has value, let’s pay them to take the course; say $50 each.  That comes to $1,250,000.  Total cost: $3,750,000.

Which sounds like a better deal?  $3 million to give 6,000 cyclists access to one mile of arterial, or $3.75 million to give 25,000 cyclists access to 17,000 miles of arterial?

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  But with segregated bikeways it is not “temporary safety,” but the illusion of safety.

Of course the average person cannot even imagine cycling on arterials, since he or she is convinced it’s not possible to do so safely.  But what if they heard a number of stories from people who say, “I was just like you; I used to keep to the sidewalks and trails.  I didn’t think it was possible, but now I do it all the time and it’s fine.  In fact, it’s really cool.”

Effective stories spread and grow exponentially.

We can liberate current and potential bicyclists from their fears and from the inherent hazards of cycling near the edge of the road or on the sidewalks.  We can liberate them from the belief that they can only bike safely on paths and on streets with bikeways.  We know we can because we already have.

If we can show a woman in her sixties, who only a couple years ago was afraid to bike on a two-lane, low-speed collector street with bike lanes, how to be safe and comfortable cycling on four- and six-lane arterials…

If a young father, who initially started cycling to save money (from high gas prices) and began by cycling on sidewalks can, in a couple years, be confident enough to teach other cyclists how to bike on the road…

If we can show a young mom how to bike anywhere she likes, confident that she can safely transport her children on her bike as well…

If we can show a seventy-year-old man, who previously only transported his bike to a local trail on his SUV to ride, how to be confident enough now to bike to the grocery store, to church, and to any other destination…

…then we can teach most adults to get around safely and confidently on our existing roads.

Liberated cyclists are the new order.  We are not trying to stop “progress,” we are freeing people from the oppression of the bicyclist control mythology.  There is no us-versus-them.  There is only us-versus-ourselves, and our self-limiting beliefs.  Come join us.  We’ll have fun together learning how to be safe on your streets today.  We’ll show you how to get motorists to do what you want them to do (because they already want to do the right thing).  It’s easy.  Or you could wait ten years or more for the government to give you some poorly designed facilities that force you into manufactured conflicts and don’t go where you need to go.

“Regulation is a signal of design failure.”

– William McDonough

The childishness and fear-mongering over cycling continues across the land. It’s stories like these that make me fear for the future of cycling in this country.

The latest insanity comes from Portland, where an Oregon legislator is proposing (just for discussion, mind you) a ban on children under seven being transported via bicycle, either on the back of an adult’s bike or in a trailer. Presumably kids under seven could still ride bikes of their own? There was no mention of that becoming illegal.  So evidently parent cyclists are the problem.

Then there’s New Jersey, where a legislator thought bicycles needed to be registered through the DMV.  Imaging having to pay $10 per year to register the bicycle-shaped object you bought at Target for $89.  She’s since reconsidered.

Not to be outdone are the brilliant folks at the Bicycle Alliance of Washington who have actually endorsed a mandatory bike lane use law in return for a variation on the 3-foot passing law.  (In the proposed law, 3 feet would be the minimum passing clearance at less than 35 mph; over 35 mph it goes up to 5 feet.)  What’s more, their mandatory use law is extended to paved shoulders, not just bike lanes.

But hey, it’s OK, because they wrote it such that you’re only required to use the bike lane or shoulder if you think it’s safe.  I’m not making this up.  The actual language reads “…if such use is reasonably judged safe by the bicyclist.”  It’s one thing to tell someone they are not required to do something they believe to be risky, but to require someone to do something as long as they believe it to be safe?  Also, the well-informed cyclist can (in theory) avoid a citation for not using a bike lane by just telling the officer he thinks it’s dangerous.  The uninformed cyclist not using the bike lane just has to suck it up.  Or will officers volunteer that, “Well sir, we can avoid having you cited if you just tell me the bike lane is dangerous.”

The 3-foot law/fetish is a lousy trade for a mandatory bike lane use law.  Does anyone have the slightest bit of evidence that it improves motorist behavior?   Lane control on the other hand is a proven strategy cyclists can already legally use to get motorists to pass safely.   If one simply gets rid of all the absurdly convoluted language in the far-to-the-right/mandatory bike lane laws and encourage cyclists to control their lanes, passing clearance would improve for real.  More importantly, this obsession with passing distance and bike lanes ignores the fact that most crashes (over 90%) involve turning and crossing movements, not motorist overtakings.

I can just see all the police officers in Washington now, following motorists with one eye on the speedometer and one on some specially designed and perfectly calibrated device that measures the passing clearance, waiting to watch them pass cyclists.

Then there’s this beauty from a Brooklyn councilman.

…in many of these cases the bicyclists were violating the rules in some way. They were either on roads without bike lanes, going through a red light or riding the wrong way down the street.

His argument makes some warped sense if one believes the purpose of bike lanes is to keep cyclists safe, and one keeps seeing cyclists routinely violating the law.  Really, why not limit cyclists just to streets with bike lanes.  It’s for our safety!  Safety first!

Many of Reed’s fellow cyclists are criticizing him for not using the paved shoulder, even though Texas law does not require it, and also permits cyclists full use of a lane that is too narrow to share.

If Reed was riding on a roadway with a shared use path next to it in a state that has a mandatory sidepath law, many, if not most of you would support him, even though some of you might prefer to ride on the path.  Most non-cyclists however, would not understand why he wasn’t using the “bike path” because riding on the road is “so dangerous.”

If he was riding on a roadway with a narrow paved shoulder or bike lane that was full of debris and was staying out of that shoulder or bike lane, once again, many or most of you would support him, even though you might use the shoulder or bike lane.   Most non-cyclists however, would not understand why he wasn’t using the “bike path” because riding on the road is “so dangerous.”

If he was riding on a roadway without a paved shoulder, bike lane or sidepath and controlling the lane, many or most of you would support him, even though you might hug the edge.  Most non-cyclists however, would not understand why he was on the road at all, because riding on the road is “so dangerous.”

From the sound of how the Ennis police and Ellis County sheriff’s departments are behaving, I think they could have just as easily cited, jailed and convicted Reed for any of those types of circumstances, because they believe — in spite of a complete lack of evidence — that roadway cycling is dangerous and causes delay and chaos on our roads.

When I was pulled over for controlling a narrow lane in the City of Orlando, I heard the same kind of absurd and ignorant arguments from the cop who pulled me over.  Fortunately, there was no bike lane or paved shoulder present, and I was able to talk my way out of it.  Last week an off-duty sheriff’s deputy told me to get on the sidewalk.  Many will say, “Well that’s different,” but it’s really not; all of these police actions stem from the same bogus belief, not from their understanding of the law.

The real problem we face is not so much how our laws are written, but what people believe about cycling.  When we cyclists criticize Reed for cycling in the way he does, we are reinforcing the belief that roadway cycling is dangerous, and therefor irresponsible.

******************

A note about impeding traffic.  I looked up the traffic counts for the road Reed’s been using at the Texas Department of Transportation website.  It gets about 18,000 cars per day; rather low for a four-lane highway.  Reed’s first arrest happened at about 2:30 p.m., which is well “off-peak.”  Using standard traffic planning estimates, I’d guess the road was seeing roughly 3 to 4 cars per minute per lane, or one car passing ever 15 to 20 seconds.  How can one possibly think changing lanes to pass a cyclist is any sort of problem in such a situation?  By comparison, the street I ride to work during rush hour is a 3-lane one-way.  Each lane sees about 12 to 13 cars per minute, or one every 5 seconds (of course they actually come in platoons).  But even with much heavier traffic, motorists rarely have to wait more than a few seconds to pass me, and most don’t have to wait at all; they see me early and change lanes.

“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