Originally Posted by John Forester
Certainly such studies exist. Government was extremely anxious, after starting its bikeway program, to discover engineering evidence that it had made the correct decision. Government paid for many studies that attempted to justify the policy of incompetent cycling on bikeways. However, they all failed.
Our point, which Bekologist tries to mislead people about, is that none of those studies demonstrated any of the three basic claims for bikeways. The claims are that bikeways reduce car-bike collisions, that bikeways reduce the level of skill that is required for safe cycling, and that bikeways make a transportationally significant reduction in motoring.
Your Government Conspiracy Theories to propagate cyclist’s inferiority are laughable. Gee I want segregated facilities (expressways) for my automobile so I must be brainwashed by the government and have motorist-inferiority syndrome. You logic does not work when applied to other things. Your logic is simply a way to resort to name calling when your arguments have failed.
Bikeways get the wrong way and the sidewalk cyclists in a better and safer road position. Bikeways are not about just reducing rear end collisions which you are constantly misdirecting arguments. And studies do show that bikeways work in this aspect.
And VC increasing the level of skill needed to ride a bike is a better option? Keeping the current ambiguity between a WOL, NOL and NSNOL (Not So Narrow OL) I do not find helpful for cyclists or the general public.
And it has already been pointed out that bikeways are increasing their modal share and I will point out that here mass transit has a 10% modal share so numbers approaching 10% I think are very encouraging.