kob22225

Never in my decades of bumping around in the bicycling world have I witnessed people getting _less_ vehicular with greater experience. Sure, here and there some macho racing parts of some clubs re-inforced each other to stay for long periods of time plateaued at certain poor and immature behavior. But I _never_ witnessed a regression to _less_ vehicular behavior - even on an individual basis... I KNOW what the general trend is.

kob22225

I am pressed for time for a week or two, but see syntheses for above 5X number in:

Bicycle Transportation: a Handbook for Cycling Transportation Engineers,
2nd edition, John Forester, MIT Press, 1994, ISBN 0-262-56079-8.

You can see the group definition from studies he pulled from to get this rough 5X number (which I suspect would end up greater with a study that better selects for best-practice vehicular bicycling behavior.)

The Human Car

kob22225

Equity is another value that should be honored too.

A tip of the hat to the political process that gets us there should be made.

The mile high view looking down:

The roadway portion of the public travel corridor should be designed for vehicle drivers (which includes motorists and bicyclists.) However, each and every public travel corridor should be design for as many modes as practicable. Especially efficient modes like high utilized mass transit should be shown some favoritism, in general getting a dedicated corridor - or in the case of busses, at least perhaps a dedicated roadway in high density areas. (Note, do not use the bad idea of bus _lane_... all the roadway in that corridor belonging to bus routes.)

An _individual's_ speed from point a to b is not a parameter that should be assigned a high value in designing system. What we are talking about is the _whole-public's_ infrastructure and the important service measure goals should be whole-population service measures. This is especially true when we are talking about an individual who has made a particularly bad set of anti-social 'choices' with their life. Perhaps this individual's a-to-b speed should be assigned ZERO value for directing the public's transportation expenditures.

buzzman

oh,boy.

pacificaslim

Time is just about the only thing that we can not get more of. It is therefore one of the things we should value the most. I love cycling, but rather than take my time cycling to work on boring city roads, I'd much prefer to drive and save time that I could later spend cycling in the location of my choice, such as up and down the coast near my home. Therefore, even though I do often cycle on roads, I'd prefer they be maximized for car travel! I can still use them on my bike, and don't need any special modifications (I thought you were of the same opinion?)

btw, if i had my choice, the main "dedicated corridor" for public transportation would be...underground. The corridors for walking and cycling could be unpaved paths instead of yet more asphalt and concrete with paint on them. Strips of pseudo-natural park land all through our cities with paths for walking and cycling would be awesome - as long as cyclists were still allowed on the roads if they'd like.)

The Human Car

Ohhh, I know this one. There is a correlation between how fast my car goes and how much I depress the gas pedal, similarly there is a correlation between miles of bike facilities and the number of cyclists. For causality when my car is going fast it causes me to depress the gas pedal, similarly the more cyclists there are the more bike facilities that magically appear.

Seriously, if you look at bike ridership world wide you get hints of many causation factors, most interwoven but here in the states it does seem like more bike facilities = more cyclists.

invisiblehand

While I don't think anecdotal experiences have zero weight, _my_ personal experience is that the more extreme someone's views generally the more they interpret the world to fit their views.

genec

I have never advocated for bad bike lane designs. I have actually fought locally against these and won.

I strongly believe in well designed MUPs.

How about if you stop advocating that bicycles belong on freeways... which is what some "vehicle part of the public corridor designs" are. 60MPH+ freeways designed for vehicles moving fast. These exist all over southern California... which you apparently missed in your 49 year trek.

I also strongly advocate for lower speed shared roadways.

I firmly believe that well designed lower speed roadways can be designed to be shared by all road users.

I-Like-To-Bike

Ah yes, as I suspected - the infamous Forester brand comparison of various safety results recorded (by different methods) by others of 8 year old cyclists, with another study of a population of experienced middle aged cyclists, with another study of a population made up of of mostly college aged cyclists. NONE of which measured any of the cyclists for vehicular cycling tendencies. NONE of which even mention vehicular cycling or bicycling techniques.

Only Forester, and his devoted acolytes, would attempt, with a straight face, to claim any quantified (80% safer due to vehicular cycling!) conclusions after comparing the behavior and different safety results of populations of 8 year olds with teenage boys, and then with middle aged, mostly professional, married men. Most telling of all about the value of such a farce of a "study" - only Forester and his ilk would ignore the obvious age, maturity, and experience differences of the grossly different populations, and claim with mathematical certainty that any and all variances in safety results is the result of a single variable (likelihood to be vehicular cyclists) that was never identified in any of cyclists.

I-Like-To-Bike

That explains exactly why the views of the resident of Planet kob22225 are so much at variance with the views of those who who don't experience cycling in that unique world.

buzzman

exactly.


and then I'd like kob to correlate his "findings" of age, maturity and experience as a factor with the 2007 NHTSA statistics, which shows the group having the highest incidence of death by vehicle collision while biking are men in the age range of 45-54.

genec

OK here is reality.... https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...twood-phy.html

Far from your world, eh?

cbr2702

One thing many cyclists do is ride through red lights after slowing down/stopping when it looks safe to do so, sort of like most states allow for right on red. This is illegal, and not vehicular. But I would say many cyclists will do it when starting out, then stop for a while if they learn about vehicular cycling, then start again.

pacificaslim

It's not illegal everywhere. Idaho allows it and several other places are discussing allowing it (including Portland and San Francisco).

cbr2702

Sure. And I do it sometimes. But I did it less when I was less comfortable with biking in the street as a vehicle. And from talking to (2, an admittedly small sample) friends they do it more now as well.

TRaffic Jammer

Especially once it's discovered that one can get away from idling traffic, not be there when they all go green, and be well across the intersection having crossed the red perfectly safely without having caused motorists one iota of aggro.

RobertHurst

...And then deal with the fact that most of the adult victims of car-bike collision are riding in a lawful fashion when they are hit, unlike little 8-year-old Johnny who comes rolling out of his driveway into the street without looking.

This may be too much reality to deal with all at once though.

RobertHurst

Forester's compilation of statistics is useful to show that bicyclist age and experience are closely related to accident rates. But that is all it shows.

It's simple really. If 'degree of vehicular bicycling' were the key variable, then bicyclists who make their living breaking traffic laws could not possibly be among the safest bicyclists in the world. If 'degree of vehicular bicycling' were the key variable, then bicyclists would get hit by cars much less often while riding in a lawful, vehicular manner.

kob22225

Death _statistics_ is a much smaller number problem then injuries, and has a completely different cause profile. Do you have the full table of raw numbers? I happen to have it for 1988 age group and sex. We can compare. I suspect if we look at it over the years what would control would be changes of exposure to the activity over that time period.

kob22225

My opinion is that bicyclist will always fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles. This is true now and this will continue to be true when we have a better transportation infrastructure of the future. Given what you write above I doubt you and I will agree on much of the larger elements of that full transportation infrastructure design.

An example that will help you see where we might start to diverge: This common use of 'public transportation' for what would be better called 'mass transporation' has always been one of my pet peeves. 'Public' transit begins the moment an individual driver's rear wheels cross off his driveway into the public street. I live in Maine now where the paper company owns a few long stretches of roadway way up in the northern woods. Perhaps that small subset of roadway transit is private. But almost every trip every one of us takes every day amounts to 'public' transit. The trucking industry in this country is big-picture-approximately as much 'public' transit as Conrail.... and trucking industry probably amounts to a somewhat more 'public' form of commercial transportation than a number of privately owned train freight companies out there.

kob22225

I've provided you the detailed breakdown and references for the whole-population numbers. When I get back next week I will see how much age-related breakdown I can pull from these full population numbers.

Could you list your references and equivalent breakdowns please?

kob22225

Seriously. It looks like what it is: With increasing popularity of bicycling as an activity locally, there is a greater call for special facility placement locally.

kob22225

Excellent. We are allies here. Keep up the good work. I suspect you need to expand your understanding that a bikelane is bad design at its most basic. Therefore every bikelane is a bad design.

The best political process is one that has everybody solving the same problems in the same place.... not slicing and dicing the problem with segregationist design ideas.

I want it to become well recognized in design circles that there is no such beast as 'well designed' sidepath.

As a pedestrian I do not want vehicle drivers - even if just the sub-class of bicyclist vehicle drivers - invited onto pedestrian part of travel corridor design. I also don't want them on specialized pedestrian dedicated corridor - when this specialized limited corridor design is used in rare places, typically an occasional, rare recreation-related facility ('greenways' are WAY overdone right now as parts of our recreation infrastructure. I want to see more recreation destination parks and more general aethetic amenities scattered about densely developed communities rather than sprawling 'greeway' projects.) Therefore, in general I oppose "MUP's" whether 'well designed' or not.

There are all levels of advocacy - and triage of that advocacy - that could be applied to this very specific subset issue of the more general overall access issue.... and it would be a long and involved discussion.

Some hint of the triage I would apply to this advocacy:

I advocate that bicyclist have reasonable, equitably convenient access to every location society has built public infrastructure to serve. As a practical matter, that starts with some targeted lifting of bans - most typically across a bunch of bridges - whether those bridges happen to be freeway bridges or not. This also could target a whole slew of places where bicyclist are allowed on one entrance ramp, and then off at the next exit ramp they reach along freeway.

Yes, I advocate that bicyclist not get banned from any public roadway facilities. But designated freeways are a small enough part of the public's total transportation infrastructure. Plus, as the US transportation system moves to a better and better place, freeways will become less and less of a significant element in that infrastructure. Therefore, limiting advocacy for access to freeway pinch points (still difficult to achieve) is the practical targeted advocacy effort for this subset problem for a while.

We must also fight ANY ban not on a designated freeway, no matter how many freeway design features may have been added to that roadway.

Freeway traffic can potentially go 60+mph because of the design sightlines, similarity of intersection design, the VERY high VERY expensive engineering of those similar intersection designs, and the simple low decision-environment this all creates. For all those same reasons, if a bicyclist _is_ introduced into this design a bicyclist would be safe. Probably politically won't get to this place. But since in the larger political process I see - the future transportation infrastructure I see - freeways, ESPECIALLY urban/suburban freeways, will have withered away... it will work itself out.

As with your bikelane opposition: Excellent, we are allies.

I'm sure we have differences to work out on this of course. I suspect from what you write - and even though you say you advocacte for lower speed roadways - you are WAY more accepting than me of segregated roadway design with REALLY high speed segregated freeways.... while you are less accepting than me of a range of roadways with a range of speed limits that integrate out to all trips taken by the population having a slower average speed (though as we change community configuration because the trips taken are shorter... _maybe_ we get shorter total trip time, even as many of those trips move to the walking mode [though I don't put that _way_ high on design value/goal table - Overall equity and sustainable/lower impact get high value assigned for design goals.])

I submit: your acceptance of freeways remaining an important element of our total transportation infrastructure and your acceptance of the supposed unquestioned danger of bicyclist use of freeway and freeway-lite roadways is leading you down a practical and polictical dead-end.

kob22225

I suppose. But that idea swings both ways, depending which view Godess Reality dubs 'extreme'.

I would assign this interpretation-blindness to folks who compare the behavior of the overall bicyclist population versus overall motorists population on roadways, and do not see that the more basic and more serious traffic behavior mistakes are more consistently commited by bicyclists (as a population.)