Bike Forums - View Single Post - Forester takes on BF Posters

03-22-07 | 02:14 PM

#1417

John Forester

Senior Member

Joined: Mar 2007

Posts: 4,071

Likes: 0

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmike

I guess I respectfully disagree to a point and feel that his comments referencing the ADC, on his own website, conflict with his scholarly approach.

He is showcased here, on a speakers page.

They have his picture posted, a link to his email, and stipulations for paying him for speaking.

If he claims that he doesnt know about it, and he is half as scholarly as he pretends to be, and if he doesn't explicitly agree with the website that is using his image, and his work, he should ask that it be removed. I was asking these questions to get a broader sense of who JF is.

You will also note that the ADC links to a paper he wrote for the preserving the American Dream Conference 2005. Seems he would know about the organization if he presented a paper with their name in the title.

While I do not think this is relevant to the specific deconstruction of JFs work, it has for me filled in some information on who JF is and what he believes.

Like most of his answers he sidestepped some of the trickier issues until I pressed, when he answered them, the last of which seemed to actually be written by a human being sitting at a keyboard. I was thankful for this. I wish he'd answer to some of the other questions on this thread in the same way.

I guess the direction of my question was to press the issue of climate change and the data that we see from it - and does JF, who continually stands by his interpretation of the data in his studies, think this will change how he relates to cycling and advocacy.

Seems the two can be related, if one wants to maintain individual mobility (expanding the distance one can travel beyond a walk) and move away from the private auto. The private auto is in many cases the reason why we are having much of this debate at all - if there were fewer of them on the road cycling would be a safer, saner way to negotiate our environment.

Pick apart the data all you want and use the "straw-man" defense over and over - but the reality I see is that without cars we wouldn't be arguing over where JF pulled the data about bike lanes and collisions and what is safer. Working towards fewer cars and less sprawl would be a noble pursuit for a bicycle advocate - the world would get a little smaller - perhaps designed with people instead of plastic and metal in mind - and the roads that we do have might be a bit nicer to traverse.

Getting a sense of where JF stands politically and personally on these issues, and reading a website that has listed him as a speaker, has informed my understanding of him. One can't ask a question without influencing the answer. (I'm guilty of that!) JF's questions seem to stem from an autocentric base - and its no wonder his data supports it.

I thanked him for his response and do not think I chastised, only asked several pointed questions.

I never wrote that I did not know the American Dream Coalition. All that I did write was correct, and that was that I had never seen the posted list of speakers before being told about it on this list.

I have studied transportation issues since my teen-age years. With my best friend, we rode every ferry route and every streetcar route in the San Francisco Bay Area. We built a model of the Bay in the top floor of his house, in which paper model ferries and interurbans ran to schedule. This friend started his professional life as a civil engineer with Southern Pacific, and about ten years ago retired to become an international consultant in railroad engineering. I understand how it is that our cities have grown as they have as people chose to take advantage of the opportunities provided by sufficient money and by private automobiles.

I became involved in the governmental aspects of cycling when both California and the Federal Govt started doing nasty things to cyclists: California with bikeways; Feds with bicycle design regulation; both based on cyclists as incompetent children. Both of these I have opposed, and the opposition that I raised compelled government to remove the most dangerous aspects of bikeways and some of the absurdities, but not the most dangerous, from the bicycle design regulation.

Regarding motoring, I have neither promoted nor opposed it. All I have done is to consider what's best for cyclists, which is lawful and competent operation as drivers of vehicles. Might I have done more to oppose motoring? Two strong deterrents exist. The first is that the anti-motoring bicycle advocates chose to base their strategy on the system that was invented by motorists to treat cyclists as incompetent children in order to make motoring more convenient. The anti-motoring bicycle advocates should have chosen to treat cyclists as competent adults who should be given the same respect as other drivers, and hence avoided all this bikeway controversy and gotten on with improving the roads for cycling according to standard engineering principles. The second deterrent is that I think that bicycle transportation, by itself, will never significantly reduce motoring. Cyclists need to wait until conditions make motoring much less useful and more expensive before expecting a significant switching from motor trips to bicycle trips.

Reply

0