uke

Word. Portland is following the BF (bike friendly) formula, and, surprise, surprise, they're already the most BF city in the US, and have almost cracked the 10% barrier. While the rest of the country maintains a .5% (ie, half of one percent) commuting average, Portland has almost joined the ranks of internationally renowned BF cities. But the VC brigade is determined to keep pushing that square wheel, I guess.

Fortunately, more and more people are waking up to the reality that the only way to meaningfully increase the cycling population is through the tested measures of infrastructure and traffic calming. When you live in a reality-based cycling community, things are different. You don't have to fight for "respect" from cars. You don't need to "take the lane". You don't need to piss your pants while hoping your next left turn won't be your last. You just need to ride.

CB HI

How about if you actually show the full studies rather than some abstract! I am sure JF and HH have already sighted the problems with these so called studies to you.

CB HI

And in the end, Jacob will educate two ignorant cops, a Dean and a bus driver. So it seems in the long run, JF and HH are right. Let the process play out, Genec.

Several times in BFs, I have pointed out that I have NEVER been harassed on Oahu by a driver that was young enough to have taken the 4th grade VC BikeEd course. The young drivers here do other stupid things, but they do not harass cyclist. BikeEd started in 1988, the youngest driver to ever harass me was at least 25 and that was six years ago. That means this guy would have been in at least sixth grade when BikeEd started. It is the 40 to 70 year olds that you have to watch out for, here.

There have been several post about how bad young drivers are towards cyclist across the country. If you do not want to learn from Oahu's experience, fine, continue to spend your time coming onto BFs complaining about young driver.

Bekologist

sorry, but oahu has only educated a few thousand youth since the inception of the bike ed program and it does not get to all schools on the island. and this is just one island in hawaii.

love the sugar coating you're applying. actually, its sacharine.


um, sorry, dude.

NOT OFF TOPIC.

YOU brought up honolulu. I dispute your lofty claims about honolulu's grand cycling brought about by educating a few thousand kids about bicycling. bosh.

i think its the weather and the working underclass transportational bicycling out of financial necessity. that cost of living plenty high, eh?

your city doesn't just promote 'vehicular cycling' anyway, that's misleading. multitiered pledges to make honolulu and the whole island of oahu more bike friendly using a variety of tools - including infrastructure as well as education.

I bring in what your CITY GOVERNMENT published as the failings of your community design. you call that a rant? it's "calling it like it is", bra.

I also bring up another city vehicular cyclists ride in.

I postulate more vehicular cyclists ride daily in portland than honolulu. i also postulate vehicular cyclists can take advantage of on road infrastructure as seen in portland.

Bekologist

brian lci is correct however - vc ain't about getting high bike rider share - it's about teaching bicycling skills to riders. however a few vocal vc smear bike specific infrastructure of any type in favor of a 'cars first' autocentric approach to public road design that has been shown to stunt bicycling participation - look at what honolulu city thinks about THEIR roads!~!!

CB HI

Bek again ignoring the benefits of education, simply because it includes the VC label.

And again Bek talks about Honolulu as if he lives here. He has no clue as to who is commuting here.

Bekologist

Saving Hawaii

Well, if shoving the horse in the cart and sending the thing downhill makes it move, at least we're getting somewhere with nearly a 12% modal share, as compared to Honolulu's dismal 1%.

I've ridden the route since with a minor adjustment (taking a back road near the Skyway I found for the first half), and it's a doable route. I'm unable to commute to work by bike however, because my employer can't allow that; I'm required to have a personal vehicle at work. If I worked a 9-5 in some office, I'm certain that'd be a different story but, unfortunately that's not the case. So I drive to work, drive back, and leave my car parked for the rest of the week until I have to drive to work again.

I haven't attacked Jacob. I've attacked a bunch of armchair laywers who think that the ******* maneuver is the only acceptable maneuver. I'm a huge advocate of cyclists rights, but I also realize that he is inconveniencing and pissing off a lot of drivers, and that sometimes an acceptable compromise is the better choice. Just because you have a right doesn't mean you should always exercise it; and to demand that Jacob ride the route just because he can despite perfectly reasonable (even preferable) alternatives is nothing better than a protest maneuver - and drivers see it for what it is. I'm allowed to burn a flag, but I don't do so simply because I can.

I brought Jacob's case up, because Jacob's case is a classic example of a <.5% town. The parts of America where cycling and cycling infrastructure have been long neglected, and road networks have been designed for cars and cars alone. To introduce bicycles seriously screws up traffic flow, and drivers are not going to welcome him as long as he rides there. VC is definitely the best coping method there (along with being smart about routes), but there's no question that his city doesn't promote cycling and he'll always have trouble there. Without a doubt, if Jacob's city had been planned differently and in a manner more compatible with cycling, he wouldn't have these problems. But as is quite apparent, we've created a car-centric world and this poor kid gets to swim upstream in a part of the country that really couldn't care less about him or his rights.

genec

This pretty much hits the nail right on the head for me.

Let me state that I am a vehicular cyclist... vehicular cycling IS the only solution for most areas of the US, as there IS no other choice. I have well over 34 years experience cycle commuting, and about 7 years living car free. I have been riding bikes since I was 9; I am now 52. I have toured parts of the US on bike as well as Baja, and have ridden bikes in several other countries.

My experience outside of the US tells me that there are other vastly better cycling environments than that which we now have in this auto centric nation.

The biggest eye opener for me was touring in Baja... where bicycles are seen as a form of transportation... yet curb hugging is the norm. Since cycling is used for transportation down there... the Mexican drivers accept cyclists on their roads... but that "taking the lane" stuff just won't fly either. What I saw was that Mexican drivers tend to give you plenty of room... usually moving to the center of the road, whereas American motorists, under the same conditions, failed to "share the road" and often crowded cyclists instead. (it was easy to see who was who by the license plates)

So the first challenge is to teach all Americans that bikes are not just toys, but are viable means of transit.

The other thing I saw overseas (and in Portland) is that cycling can be far more fun and relaxed when it is supported by the government and by facilities... Cycling also becomes an all generational thing when it is conveniently done. Of course it is highly unlikely that the US will ever have the network of paths that crisscross Finland... but we can do far far more to support transportation cycling here... well beyond the current "workaround" of strict vehicular cycling in an auto centric environment.

Yes VC works... as long as one is willing to brave the traffic, is generally strong, puts up an assertive front, and is willing to ignore the occasional taunts of motorists while dealing with auto centric designs and speeds. Strict vehicular cycling in the US also at this time means dealing with an uneducated motoring population and an undereducated police force. That all pretty much limits transportation cycling to about 1% of transit needs.

CBHI brings up a good point... that educating all citizens does tend to make for a more bicycle friendly environment... so again this moves the education issue from one of just teaching cyclists, (and hoping for a trickle down) to teaching everyone, that bikes belong, much as they are at least accepted in Mexico.

But really getting cycling accepted requires much more, as is shown in places like Amsterdam and Portland. And that "much more" includes well designed facilities. Even something as simple as bike racks on street corners can make a difference.

Bekologist

i postulate many more factors are at work in honolulu than educating a few thousand skoolkids.

invisiblehand

Actually, we talked about papers that compare cities with a high proportion of cyclists to others and conclude that more is safer. Long story short -- this is true with the Jacobsen paper, I have yet to look at the other cite -- the papers fail to control for a different composition of cyclists. That is, a large majority of cyclists in many areas are kids. If you get more adults to cycle -- and you believe that adults have lower accident/injury rates than kids -- then you naturally get a lower accident rate among the population without actually changing anyone's risk. The idea crossed my mind, but R. Hurst actually wrote it in a thread.

As far as I know, I have never heard of a municipality, state, county, etc., ever implementing an active "VC" strategy. Then again, if we have high standards of proof, what can you really conclude from the evidence? If people were to apply the same standards of proof to both sides of the ledger, I don't think that there would be as many extremists. By my take, one has to have fairly strong priors -- i.e., you have to be explicitly or implicitly Bayesian -- to make any strong conclusions. In other words, those conclusions will only be strong if others accept those strong priors.

Somewhat off topic since you asked VC advocacy ==> increased % of cyclists, my own take is that given limited resources and political willpower, a strategy that omits engineering "improvements" will fail to result in a meaningful increase in utility/commuter cycling. I came to the conclusion from carefully presenting the arguments/evidence to people with a real interest in cycle commuting -- they all expressed an interest to me. Roughly, these people are generally "environmental and health conscious" people with their efficient vehicles who already demonstrate a willingness to make sacrifices for their preferences. Oh ... they are all PhD researchers in various fields. In the end, they found the theoretical arguments and descriptive evidence compelling but unwilling to take the plunge. Generally they cited notions of safety, a disutility of riding in particular environments, and the amount of time needed if they rode where comfortable. My conclusion is that if this group of people were ultimately convinced to try an alternative -- did I mention that this was six people? ... not exactly a large sample so this was more like one of those anthropology studies -- then I have serious doubts that an education-only based strategy would be effective across the population without major resources.

BTW, I don't recall this paper floating around A&S.

https://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/h...facilities.pdf

CB HI

And in another forum this last month, you claim Chico has a modal share of only 7.4%. Pretty poor for a small college town. Which is the real number, you seem to be all over the map with your claims?


Saving Hawaii on his cycle commuting:
]What, you just claimed in another forum that you just started cycle commuting in 2008.

genec

So rather than staying on the topic at hand, you instead chose to discuss "the messenger?"

Bekologist

what does saving hawaii's personal riding choices or experience have to do with the failure of vc to increase cycling?

indeed.

invisiblehand

Doesn't this affect the poster's claims based of his/her experiences or his/her reporting of statistics without cites?

The differential in cycling rates, however, might just be citing two different sources. In the DC area, if you play with the Census 2000 tool -- https://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html -- I can get quite different results by changing geography ... all of which arguably represent "DC". Of course, changing data sources or definitions can alter the results even more -- just look at ACS results.

Gene, what do you really hope that this exercise will show? Can you demonstrate the converse? That is, "Can anyone show where VC has not increased cycling?" At least in my opinion, for this to be meaningful, one would have to find an active VC based strategy which would include

• an active driver/cyclist education program;
• actively engaging LEOs regarding cyclist rights to the road and how to protect them; and
• legislation that reinforces these rights.

I think that a good measure of "active" would be by the proportion of resources dedicated to the program. That is, measure the amount of resources dedicated to a facility based program in Portland or Seattle and find a good comparison. Like any cross culture/city comparison, it won't be perfect -- for instance, comparisons to analyze facilities across countries are confounded by different liability statutes and mores with respect to cyclist rights -- but it would be a start. By my reading, I have never come across a report of such a program. But I am always interested in hearing from the "old-timers" regarding past advocacy.

Bekologist

it smacks of a personal attack. lowbrow.

heres' my postulation: in cities with an growing bicycling population and high modal share there is a higher percent of vc riders.

what is vc really except following the basic rules of the road? (well, there's also pesky facilities obstructionism by some of the rabid members of the sect)

vehicular cyclists like myself and many thousands of others ride daily in cities in the Northwest. these cities are revamping the streetscapes to better accomodate all road users. this is happening in honolulu as well.

these collective efforts encourage more cycling and more vehicular cycling.

Miseading attempts to disassociate vc in cities that have bike infrastructure falls flat against reality as I suspect more cyclists ride 'vehicularily' in portland than any other city in america!


portland and seattle don't have a 'facilites based program' and honolulu doesn't have an 'education based' program......

all three communities use a variety of tools in the toolbox (bikesafe) including education, public awareness, infrastructure, etc.....

Seattle, for example, has only 4 percent bike laned streets and the largest bicycle club in the nation leading year round education efforts and road skills classes. where does this leave the state of cycling in Seattle?

can anyone claim 4 percent bike laned streets render vehicular cycling impossible to achieve inside Seattle city limits??? I see a lot of us taking the lane round here, but there's also a few bike lanes. hmm... education? infrastructure?

genec

What do I hope that this will show... well primarily I hope it will get vehicular cyclists to start admitting that perhaps some forms of facilities are a good idea. Forester does do this by admitting that short cuts are good. But what about bike boulevards? What about lower speed limits, what about traffic calming. Forester tends to think that those that ride bikes are the only ones that will continue... and any movement to increase cycling is "anti-motoring."

Personally I think we have taken motoring too far and there should be some balance. For this I want to see some increase and support for cycling facilities.

Bike lanes even to me are marginal at best and I understand the concerns about those.

But what I'd really like to see is cyclists unified and carrying a message to government that we need to be recognized as valid transportation with the support that other transit forms receive.

Surprisingly I tend to agree... but neither Forester nor old HH apparently see the need for

• an active driver education program; (I removed "cyclist," the current VC view tends to be that trained cyclists will train all other road users by example... which I highly doubt)
• legislation that reinforces these rights.

In fact proposed legislation in CA regarding three foot laws was fought by vehicular cyclists in CABO (the CA advocacy group)... so much for legislation that reinforces cyclists rights.

There is some local talk about trying to educate LEOs.

Ultimately what I am looking for is a mode share of about 10% for cycling in America... I believe that will dramatically reduce the crowding of our roadways, reduce our demand of oil and help spur folks with health related issues. I also feel that a change of 10% would be enough to show that funding of bikeways is more economically beneficial than adding more traffic lanes to freeways. But that won't ever happen as long as bikes are "toys."

I also want to see PSAs and other support for cycling as an accepted form of transportation.

invisiblehand

I assume that you mean a 10% modal share in urban areas. My own speculation is that 10% share in say areas 10-20 miles from an urban area -- that would be Fairfax County here in Virginia -- is pretty much a fantasy (but a lot of people live there). But I think that engineering improvements for connectivity and a bunch of small changes -- improved legislation, better enforcement, bike parking improvements, etc. -- can be fiscally reasonable, provide impetus for more cycling now, and provide alternatives for your 10%.

Pushing the extremists aside, I don't think that you will get much argument over the broad ideas Gene. Certain folks will scream until blue over close to meaningless details and where the line is drawn for an acceptable facility. But those aspects are not unique to bicycle advocacy.

What are you referencing?

Interesting idea. Although I think we all understand that is speculative at best. What came first? Did the greater proportion of VC riders lead to a greater awareness and impetus for more cycling resources or vice versa? How would you differentiate the two?

You wouldn't classify Portland -- or I guess Seattle -- as a facilities or engineering based program? At least given by the popular press and various statements here, I think that it is a minority opinion. Just because one uses all tools it may still be the case that most resources are devoted to a subset of those tools. Then again, if the facilities make those cities unique, then facilities would be the focus of popular press and so on.

Personally, I would follow the dollars and person-hours. If they are predominantly dedicated to researching/building/improving bike facilities, then you have a facilities-based program. If they are dedicated to lawyers and lobbyists then you have a legislative-based program. If the dollars and/or person-hours are minuscule, well you don't really have a program. I don't know what the answer to this is for here nor Portland/Seattle.

One more point: I think that the small percentage of bike lane'd streets is telling. At least by my interpretation, it suggests that you don't need a lot of engineering/facilities to improve the cycling environment as opposed to focusing resources in a few "hot spots".

genec

Exactly. It is also the urban areas that tend to have the greatest transportation "issues," so improvements there would tend to yield the best results.

It is of course foolish to think that the more rural areas would benefit from increased cycling. It just isn't feasible.

Unfortunately it is the extremists that need to also get on the bandwagon... I think the example of LAB and "LAB reform" probably best exemplifies the current "divided voice" in the cycling community. I also think the example of the changes brought forth by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is an example of what can be done by a unified vocal minority to change the infrastructure of America. (of course there are "detail issues" there too... but overall, the changes have been positive for disabled Americans.) MADD is another example of social political change brought about by unified voice... granted people do still drink and drive, but the social negative pressure of drunk driving has brought about at least a conscious awareness of the problems.

Bekologist

to invisible hand:

it's not an either/or proposition. Portland, Seattle and Honolulu (in the future, I'd like to speak to Hawaii more generally as I'm more familiar with Maui's cross island-roads than Oahu's) all use education as well as infrastructure to influence cyclists numbers and behaviors of all road users.

I think it's fairly simple to say there's much more vehicular cycling going on in North American cities with higher modal share. This is my experience observing cyclists in cities up and down the west coast.

As even the more heavily built in cities have less than 10 percent bike laned streets, (Seattle was less than 4 percent at the time of the 2006 bike master plan), there's vehicular cycling going on on a lot of those unaccomodated streets as well. In Portland, recent studies showed 10 percent of the streets carry 50 percent of the bike traffic. in vehicular cycling's support,there's a loose extrapolation to be made that most of the other 90 percent of the streets there are carrying the other 50 percent of the biking traffic.

that's relatively loose but you do get the drift.

bikes ride all streets.

genec

I think it's fairly safe to assume that vehicular cycling will always be a mainstay on lower speed roads... and really there is little reason to change that.

The real issues come in the form of roads designed to only support higher speed motor traffic... and the attitude of motorists.

A change in the way the government views cycling (such as the support given in Portland) can have a very dramatic effect in how the public deals with cycling and how problems are resolved when there are design conflicts.

Richbiker

All the other non-VC initiatives may well increase cycling, but they don't necessarily lead to more skilled or safer cyclists. My community puts in a lot of bike lanes. The number of cyclists has gone up. So has the number of cyclists riding contra-traffic in bike lanes, not using lights at night, running red lights, and doing other stuff that increases their risk levels. A bike lane doesn't teach you how to use your gear system or practice good bike handling skills. VC does. There are other reasons besided traffic safety that ****** the growth of cycling, and much of those reasons have to do with knowledge / skill issues which make cycling more enjoyable. A lot of people walk into a store and buy a bike that is wrong for them (wrong size, not what they need), don't know how to adjust the seat. They ride that bike for a few miles around the neighborhood, then sign up for a 30 mile event ride. That's when they discover that the bike is too heavy, not set up properly, and they don't know how to use the gears. Then they give up. The education stuff that VC does touches on all those enjoyment/knowledge/skills issues that infrastructure reform can't begin to touch.

I don't get all the anti-VC stuff in the bike advocacy community. The bike laws of all 50 states give cyclists the rights & responsibilities of using the roads. That's VC. I don't see any responsible bike advocates telling cyclists that it's suddenly OK to start blowing off basic traffic safety precautions just because there are more bike lanes (OK, there are some folks here in a prominent local organization which poo-poo the idea that cyclists should stop at red lights; these are the first folks to jump up & down screaming when a red-light running cyclists gets struck & killed). Even when using multi-use paths, people still have to use traffic skills when overtaking others and crossing road junctions. To ignore basic VC advice about how to cycle in traffic is to increase your own peril. Nor does being in a separated bike path or on-street bike lane suddenly make one immune from traffic fatalities; in my region I know of 4 episodes of cyclists dying while using separated bike paths (in 3 of the cases, the cyclists was wholly or partly responsible for the crash), and one case of a cyclist dying while using a bike lane. Bike lanes may help increase the number of cyclists, but they don't magically make those cyclists safe from traffic. I'm not saying that to bash bike lanes & paths (I use a long separated path daily, and pretty much love using it). I'm just saying, let's not overstate their contribution.

There is a significant element in the advocacy community who wants to always blame motorists for bike crashes (something that's statistically impossible, or assumes that the cyclist is never in the wrong), and is anti-car. Being anti-car may be all well and good, but waiting for that nirvana when motor vehicles disappear, drivers suddenly become angels, or there are separated bike paths in front of every doorstep isn't a viable short term proposition. There are people who want to get into bicycling THIS YEAR; VC classes help them become more confident to do that.

I think the big VC failing is the stridency among some, that borders on religious fundamentalism. Having been on LCI & VC type listserv's, there are people who are like medieval theologians arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There are people who are just way too reflexively anti-bike lane/bike path, even going so far as to argue the dubious proposition that they are more dangerous than cycling on the roads. So VC often turns off a lot of people, by acting like some sort of special priesthood, rather than portraying it's basic tenets as just good common sense advice for how to cycle in traffic.
Rich

I-Like-To-Bike

See your last paragraph. That, and their religious-like belief in conclusions drawn from John Forester Brand Pseudo Science and Statistical Voodoo about the safety record of a chimeric group of Vehicular Cyclists known only to John Forester.

Saving Hawaii

CB, let's make some things really clear. I've tried to make a pretty fair and honest argument relying on substance and fact to craft my point and I think I've done so pretty well; well enough that you've now given up refuting my argument and instead simply have thrown together a weak ad hominem attack irrelevant to the topic being discussed.

So let's get back to some substantive discussions.

Statistics is a pretty interesting topic, is it not? Dependent on what you count you come up with wide discrepancy in results. The 11.4% figure that I've cited is an estimate provided in the City of Chico bike plan that is composed of cyclists commuting to both work and school - a figure I thought pretty relevant considering your the importance you place on school-age VC education. The 7.4% figure is one that I find the most interesting and something that Chico should be remarkably proud of. This is a US Census figure of cities with populations of about 57,000 that is composed solely of adult cyclists commuting to their workplace. 7.4% is the third highest such figure in the nation, and Chico is only outperformed by Boulder, CO and Eugene, OR. It is nearly double the very successful city (and larger) city of Portland, OR and around seven times the share seen in Honolulu (which isn't shabby for an American city). So, 7.4% of adults cycle-commuting to work? That's a number most cities in America wouldn't dare dream of.

Fair?

CB HI

ALL small college towns. Go figure!