I have yet to read John Forester's study on bike paths verses street cycling, but I have ridden quite a lot on the paths in my area of Beaverton-Hillsboro, Oregon. I think there are big differences in these paths in different parts of the country. Here, very few cyclists are on these paths, perhaps because there are not a lot of cyclists compared to other areas (although this is a cycling area). Most cyclists are not on the paths, and there are very few people on either these paths or the sidewalks. Maybe this is weather-related too, as especially on rainy days, there usually is no one on these paths or sidewalks. Here, the paths do not come directly out onto a roadway, and so riding the sidewalks is necessary to get back to a read. We also have elevated areas of paths that go over marsh land, and these are wooden structures with a wooden surface. This wooden surface is quite slippery on days that dip below freezing and there has been precipitation.

When I ride on the paths, I commonly go between 12-18 mph with no problems, slowing down for bridges, and slowing down especially on the wood surface to 8-10 mph. I find the wooden surface easier to ride on than to walk on, as the bicycle I ride is a better than walking on the slick surface (I ride a Rans Stratus LWB recumbant bike). I have had very few safety problems on these paths. I did have one accident, which cannot now be repeated, when my front wheel caught in a groove between parallel boards (I was riding a Trek 1450 upright bike at the time). This cannot be repeated because I reported it to the City of Hillsboro, and they installed a flush metal piece between the boards to preclude this from ever happening again (it helped that City of Hillsboro workers observed this crash). This was a slow-motion crash from about 8 mph, and I almost did not go over--on my recumbant bike, it would not have happened as a crash, and this event was what finally caused me to buy a recumbant. I had said that if I had another incident attributable to the design of the upright bicycle, I would switch. The week after this crash, I put money down on my Rans Stratus, and also got the City of Hillsboro to pay for my front wheel, where the rim was significantly bent.

I will look at the "study," and may try to replicate it, depending on what I see. Realize that any study, to be valid, has to be validated by people replicating it; in other words, in needs to be repeated to ensure that all the variables have been taken into account. It sounds like this study by John Forester was a one-time ride. If that's the case, then it needs to be repeated a number of times (more trails) to validate the conclusions. But this is before I have ever read what he has to say, and based only on the posts I have seen in this thread. So, I'll take a look.

John