Brian Ratliff

You make incorrect assumptions about the street layout and traffic control.

Brian Ratliff

Your "accumulative list" is not supported by anything other than assertion. Bring back some hard evidence of your contradictory theories, and I'll certainly hear them out. You are reaching.

Bike lanes are what they are; nobody is claiming some magic pill. I'd appreciate it if you don't put words in my mouth. You are not familiar with Beaverton; like most outsiders you are blending Beaverton and Portland into some seemless morass called "Portland". The road layout is challenging in Beaverton as it evolved not from a city but from a farming community. But it is better now than it was 15/20 years ago. Regardless of bike lanes, the requirement to use major arterials and vehicular cycling methods at intersections to get almost everywhere within Beaverton is a sever hindrance to increasing bike mode. It is a work in progress.

Brian Ratliff

As an XKCD comic (mouse over the comic to find the quote) once stated: "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."

CB HI

Yet you have no hard evidence for your bike lane claims and wish to lay any increase of ridership on the infrastructures. Come back when YOU have some hard evidence.

This is the hypocritical stance of the bike lane people, they only need correlation for their claims while demanding HARD EVIDENCE from everyone else.

Brian Ratliff

Careful now. You are getting shrill.

FanaticMN

I'll just leave this brand spanking new report of the 2013 count results in Minneapolis, with data on gender and winter and all sorts of things, showing a 78% increase since 2007, a 13% increase in the past year, a 9% mode share on bridges, and a significant decline in sidewalk riding when bicycle infrastructure is present, right here.

https://www.bikewalktwincities.org/si...nal-lowres.pdf

buzzman

Some of this info is not going to be received too well.

Brian Ratliff

Now that is pretty cool.

I am waiting on the edge of my seat to witness CB HI's creativity in explaining this one away. Should we start a pool to bet on which canned responses he asserts? Do you think he'll be bold enough to truck out the saw about correlation and causation again?

Brian Ratliff

How would you even do a double blind study on a road? The "blind" part of "double blind" means both the test subjects and the testers are blind to the control and test groups. This works in medical studies because you can have a placebo that looks like a drug to both the subject and tester. The doctors examine both the control and test group but doesn't know which is which, so you get unbiased results as to a drug's efficacy.

So, the best I can figure this test, you take two statistically similar cities relatively close together. You assign one be a test and one be the control. You put cycling facilities on one and don't on the other. It would be tricky figuring the "blind" part of the study, much less the "double" part. I'm not sure how you go about keeping information about which has cycling facilities and which does not from both the city officials (the testers) and the cyclists (the subjects). Any ideas? Anyone? I mean, once you build stuff and ask people to ride on it, it becomes immediately apparent they are part of the test group.

Closest I can think is to do a natural test where you take two statistically similar cities, one which has a strong bike program and one that does not. You can create a test and control group this way; i.e. a controlled study, but there is no way to make it blind to anyone.

FanaticMN

You might try an ABAB design, where you measure traffic, add infrastructure, measure traffic, remove the infrastructure, repeat.

But around here, the infrastructure pretty quickly becomes heavily used (see the study above) and removing it becomes very difficult.

Brian Ratliff

You can do this for small things, and in fact Portland does exactly this with things like bike boxes and "blue lanes" where the jury is still out as to efficacy. But there are a lot of problems when it comes to ABAB test designs with really big things. Building a piece of road infrastructure of any type takes years of planning and development. And taking it away is the same as the process of building it. You don't just get to make modifications to a road willy nilly. So, it's not just politics: there are problems in the fundamental infrastructure building and approval process as well.

And again, you can't make something like this double blind or even single blind. I don't think this kind of study would rise to CB HI's level of "hard evidence".

buzzman

I think what we're witnessing in this thread is not that uncommon.

Many bike lane/infrastructure opponents are most concerned with "mandatory use" laws. While this is a legitimate concern it can so trump logic and reason that any evidence of the efficacy and popularity of bike infrastructure is met with flat out denial and resistance. After all, any proof that bike infrastructure works feels one step closer to losing personal liberties and being forced to ride on said infrastructure.

An inability to separate the two issues makes it impossible for someone to see facts even when they stare them right in the face.

Brian Ratliff

I think you are right. For me, there are other, more important issues than mandatory use laws. But then again, I'm a guy who regularly breaks the speed limit in his car, so maybe I live life on the edge.

Brian Ratliff

This kind of thinking is a slippery-slope type argument. One thing happens, which allows another thing to happen, and one slip in personal liberty is inevitably followed by another and another until bicyclists are banned from the road altogether. But this is a fallacy. The way to keep cyclists on the road is a build a coalition with a shared interest in cycling on the road. The more people to use a resource, the more people there are to protect access to that resource.

In an entire city of 600k people (e.g. Portland), there might be two dozen cyclists in the first risk bin, and four might be willing to get political about it, the others just want to mind their own business. There might be 10x that number in the second bin. In the third, fourth, and fifth bins, there might be several thousands. The way you keep your right to the road is to utilize these people. And guess what. The people who are really good at political organizing? They are all in the third, fourth and fifth bins. Most of the people in the first two bins couldn't give two s**ts about political advocacy. You want to become a political force, you figure out how to use those thousands of people in the third, fourth, and fifth risk bins.

turbo1889

The problem with engagin the political advocacy of the "third, fourth and fifth bins" as you state is that in my experience a considerable majority of them are anti- road rights for cyclists and believe cyclists do not belong on the roads and are willing to violate the rights of others to get them off the road. Once you get low enough down on your "risk bins" your not just talking about people that don't want to ride on the roads with the cars themselves, you are talking about people that are willing to actively attack the rights of others to do so if they so choose.

I personally have debated such individuals who I would classify generally as "bikes on dedicated side-paths ONLY" types and more often then not also "At every bike side-path road crossing bikes shall always yield to all cars and if ever car hits bike it is bikes fault for not waiting to pass until they can do so without a car driver even having to take their foot off the gas pedal much less anything more then that such as actually having to use the brakes to slow or stop to yield to bikes at the path crossing."

Don't get me wrong, so long as bike-side paths have the same traditional cross-walk legal protection and ROW as pedestrians traditionally enjoy and their use is not mandatory I do not oppose them and I totally understand that some possibly even the present majority of potential cyclists prefer them. But it is my experience that once you get down into the low end of the risk bins with the big numbers you are talking about the politically active segments in that area want cyclists completely off the road in every way and respect and on dedicated side-paths only and want all priority and legal protection at all crossings to be in favor of automobile traffic rather then crossing bike traffic and I've seen that exact scenario implemented as a result. Most of these people do not even want on roadway bike lanes even bad ones that deliberately and intentionally marginalize cyclists to the maximum extent (DZBLs, TBL-TRO-RTOLs, & GBLs). Even that is not "out of the way" enough for them and cyclists only belong on side-paths and then whenever such side-paths intersect with roads, parking lot entrances, or even single resident drive-ways bikes shall always yield t the superiority of automobiles and are always in the wrong whenever they get hit.

Brian Ratliff

The answer is not to make these people your enemy, but to help them learn to ride on the road. Also, you are making some projections (as am I) as to who these people are. Each community will have its own sweet spot, but tapping this political interest group requires a little compromise, not of your ideals, but of your goals.

turbo1889

I'm not the one initiating the "enemy" status they are the ones who have chosen to attack me and my rights. And when I say attack I am including a couple incidents of actual physical attack on my personage including one situation where I had a chair thrown at me in a meeting.

My primary "compromise goals" methodology I have been using with these people (want cyclists completely off the roads) is to push ONLY for:

----- "The restoration of traditional cross-walk legal protection and ROW standards for side-path crossings."
----- "If you don't want to ride on the road fine, heck even if you think we are stupid for doing so fine, but you don't have the right to attack those of us who choose to do so. (Live and let live.)"

And that by the way is what I had a chair thrown at me in a meeting for articulating by a supposed "fellow cyclists" who was physically violently apposed to both of those two goals which I have limited myself too when dealing with such individuals.

I would much prefer not to have such people as my enemies. Unfortunately one does not always get to pick ones enemies often short of compromising your core values ones enemies are the ones that make the choice and it is not always possible to reason with them to convince them otherwise.

CB HI

Exactly what we have been talking about throughout this entire thread. Claims of causation by correlation without even considering any of the other factors of causation.

Brian Ratliff demands hard evidence until it comes to his beloved infrastructure. Now he derides me for turning the tables and asking for his hard evidence.

And then buzzman declares he knows why anyone would oppose his infrastructure. Where in this thread have we discussed support or not of infrastructure. I have only discussed the false claims of fact and attempts to link correlation with causation. But it is good to know that buzzman is a mind reader, some of us may be able to use a mind reader in the future.

The link is very nice and flashy, much like Portland's format, put out by those promoting bike lanes to claim what a great job they have done. But hardly impartial or scientific.

When someone actually does a impartial scientific study that considers all of the other possible causations, please post that up, because that is a study I would really like to read, as opposed to a bunch of PR junk.

buzzman

Really? Are you talking about open town meetings or within a bike advocacy organization? I've yet to attend a Mass Bike meeting where this is anywhere near a majority view.

buzzman

Uh...yep.

You throw something long enough you hope it will eventually stick.

*oops, there I go mind reading again!

Brian Ratliff

CB HI, tell me more about how you would design your double blind study testing your alternative explanations.

See, on one hand, I'm seeing a strong correlation between facilities and mode share across three cities. On the other we have a single counter example from Hawaii consisting of the ad hoc observations of a single person who is obvious about his agenda. How am I supposed to interpret this evidence? Science is about finding the most likely explanations to fit the data, not creative writing trying to fit data within a political ideology.

Hammer on the saw about correlation and causation all you want, but in this case, I have not seen one valid counter example meaning the correlation is pretty strong. The correlation is backed by a mechanism explaining the effect as well, which makes the case stronger. You should go back to admitting that mode share increase is not your goal, because that is your stronger policy argument.

Brian Ratliff

Sounds like something you are doing is royally pissing people off.

dynodonn 

I'm not bad mouthing all the population of Montana, but in my visits to the state, I can tell that a few can be a rough crowd to play to.

genec

Perhaps you are just not looking... after all, it isn't as if people are commuting to work with parachutes...

But apparently skydiving IS soaring in popularity...

https://www.mpacorn.com/news/2008-02-22/sports/026.html

genec

Yeah right... it was purely coincidence that the Sec Def at that time was the former CEO of GM... and that the mood in the country was "anything that is good for GM is good for the country."

Oh sure, they got funding based on the supposed military aspects of the proposal... nice selling point.

Meanwhile you are missing the big picture... people started crossing the country long before there was infrastructure to support such crossings... later there were roads (slight infra improvement) that connected most of the country, but there were still questionable gaps, but now more people were crossing. Then the government added more and better infra, until now crossing the country is routine.

It is a gradual thing... First the demand, then the response and improvement, then more demand, and so on, with each improvement enabling greater and greater numbers until ultimately the activity is seen as a routine thing.