Against Forester and Also Zealots
So the Not Just Bikes guy recently dropped a scathing critique of some guy named John Forester, who strongly advocated for something called vehicular cycling. According to the Not Just Bikes guy, the philosophy of vehicular cycling is that cyclists should ride in traffic, and that bike infrastructure (bike lanes, etc) do more harm than good. Since Forester was influential in North American planning circles, and since modern North American traffic engineering is carbrained and largely unsafe for cyclists, the Not Just Bikes guy concludes that cycling in North America is unsafe because of John Forester.
For some reason (namely, he is persuasive and funny) the Not Just Bikes guy is very influential in urbanist discourse, and since some of my own beliefs about safe cycling echo those of Forester, I shall forever have to defend myself against accusations that I am Forester-brained.
I had never heard of vehicular cycling before this video, and I had never directly been exposed to either of its magnum opuses: Effective Cycling or his urban planning manual Bicycle Transportation. Perhaps some of his views infected me through the noosphere, but I feel I have come to many of my opinions about safe cycling through hard-earned personal experience. Many of the scathing critiques I have about local cycling advocacy organizations come from personal experiences trying to use the "segregated cycling infrastructure" the advocacy groups demand ceaselessly. There is some overlap between the conclusions I have reached and those that Forester apparently held, but there are also vast differences.
I am writing this entry as if you had watched the Not Just Bikes takedown, but given that the video is over an hour and a half long, I don't blame anyone for skipping it. My hope is that it will be self-contained enough that it will make my positions clear even to those who have enough self-respect to refrain from watching the video.
I have expressed many of these arguments before; see the bike-lanes tag for other screeds.
Principles I Hold
Here are a bunch of disclaimers: Just like the Not Just Bikes guy and John Forester, I am a grumpy old man with strong opinions about cycling. Like those two, I am not an urban planner and (like, it seems, Forester) many of these opinions are shaped through personal experience and anecdote. My primary forms of transportation are bicycling and walking, and I also use my bicycle for exercise and recreation. Having said that, I am not a "cyclist". Maybe I would qualify as a MAMIL (Middle-aged man in Lycra) if I wore lycra, but I think that my approach towards cycling differs a fair amount from people we think of as "road cyclists".
Having said all that, here are the broad strokes of my cycling philosophy:
- I believe cycling for transportation is important, and should be accessible to as many people as possible.
- In choosing routes for transportation I prioritize safety and directness. Sometimes these values are in conflict, but ideally both are achievable.
- I like bike infrastructure when it is safe and direct. I dislike bike infrastructure when it is unsafe. I despise bike infrastructure when it is unsafe but appears to be safe.
- I believe that we should prioritize bike safety over the perception of bike safety. Whenever these are in conflict actual bike safety should win.
- I believe that (for the most part) painted bike lanes are pretty good bike infrastructure, so long as they are clear and maintained. I go so far as to say that every new road should include painted bike lanes even if they offer other bike infrastructure.
- I believe we should build as much bike infrastructure as we can afford.
- I believe a good fraction of the people who do not bike but say they WOULD bike "if only" are lying, and that we should be cautious about building bike infrastructure to accommodate those people.
- I believe that when people commit to cycling and get over the fear/learning curve that they do pretty well.
- I believe almost all bike infrastructure should support year-round cycling, and that failure to support year-round cycling in a climate where it is winter six months a year is inadequate.
- I believe almost all bike infrastructure should support cycling at night, and that failure to support cycling at night means that bike infrastructure is inadequate.
- I believe that detritus on the road (whether ice, wet leaves, loose gravel, mud or something else) is very hazardous to bicycle riders.
- Although it is very entitled of me, I believe I should be able to get anywhere I need to go within the region on a bicycle, without having to put my life in danger to do so.
There are some nuances in these views. I will elaborate on some of them below.
Comparisons to Forester
Based on the Not Just Bikes video, I can see some strong disagreements I hold with his views (again, as filtered by the Not Just Bikes guy):
Apparently Forester believes Real Cyclists ride road bikes with drop down handlebars, and that all other cyclists are immature or fake or something. I strongly disagree with this. There are many types of cyclists on many types of bicycles. I am a slow fat cyclist who prefers straight handlebars and hates dropdowns, and I still feel entitled to ride a bicycle in public.
Apparently Forester believes you should ride in traffic, and that you should take the lane for left turns. I agree that if one is forced to ride in traffic one should take the lane when it is unsafe for cars to pass. I strongly disagree that cyclists should be forced to cycle in traffic. Even when I ride down roads with no bike lanes (like Weber) it is usually when the road is quiet enough that cars switch lanes to avoid me. I almost never make left turns on the road unless traffic is quiet enough that I know I can do so without drama. Being in busy mixed traffic stresses out both car drivers and cyclists, and in most cases is to be avoided.
I strongly disagree that we should prioritize cycling on roads vs having good bike infrastructure.
I think I do agree with Forester on some things:
Riding on improper bike infrastructure (such as sidewalks) can be dangerous and should be avoided. I agree with the Not Just Bikes guy that Forester's stats about cycling infrastructure being 1000x more unsafe than riding on the road is bogus. (Having said that, I have also had bad experiences using supposedly-safe bike infrastructure.)
I agree that learning to ride in traffic safely is an important skill. Expecting the entirety of an urban area to consist of segregated bike infrastructure is unreasonable, which means that most cyclists who use bikes for transportation are going to have to share the road sometimes.
I agree that some people have unreasonable fears about cycling, and that people need to get over those fears if they want to ride a bicycle for transportation.
I am frequently stressed out by the behaviour of other cyclists. I don't like seeing cyclists speeding on sidewalks or running red lights or weaving through traffic or going the wrong way down bike lanes or dressed all in black with no lights at night. Seeing these things makes me very grumpy.
I believe that bicycles should be allowed to ride in traffic with cars when necessary. They should not be prohibited from riding on roads even if segregated cycling infrastructure exists.
Comparisons to Not Just Bikes/Urbanist Zealots
The urbanist zealots (think TriTAG, CycleWR) are very loud voices in the region. They advocate for Dutch-style cycling infrastructure everywhere, and get real mad at city/regional staff when they don't cater to those demands. I am probably more on their side than against, but some of the positions they hold get me real mad:
They parrot the Not Just Bikes guy's derision of painted bike lane. The Not Just Bike guy calls them "bike gutters" and refuses to see them as adequate bike infrastructure. I strongly disagree. Good bike lanes are fine. They are more safe than a lot of other bike infrastructure because car drivers have a lot of practice obeying lane markings, and because car drivers know how to distinguish "road" from "not road" in a way they don't know how to do when it comes to multi-use trails. I especially disagree with the facile statements that "paint is not bike infrastructure". This is not only incorrect but hypocritical, since the safety measures protecting cyclists using the segregated bike infrastructure is largely... paint. Every time a segregated bike lane intersects with a driveway or a road plain old paint ("elephant feet") are supposed to be sufficient protection from being T-boned. In my experience elephant feet don't stop cars very much, but most cars are pretty good at staying in their painted lanes.
They think that if you just build enough segregated bike infrastructure then cyclists will come, and we will be just like the Netherlands. I don't think this is true at all. The counterexample to this might be the downtown Kitchener bike infrastructure, but it might not be. For reasons why, read the next section.
They think that if they force city planners to build expensive segregated bike infrastructure then the cities will feel obligated to maintain that infrastructure. I strongly disagree.
They believe it is possible to design segregated infrastructure that works from "age 8 to 80". Having seen some of the awful results of this infrastructure, I disagree.
They carefully neglect mentioning what makes us different from the Netherlands. The Not Just Bikes guy goes on lots of rants about how North American excuses against bike infrastructure are stupid, but rarely does he show just how different the Dutch experience is from ours. For example, he never talks about taxes. He also does not discuss just how chaotic all the bike infrastructure is in Amsterdam, although you can see the chaos in his videos -- if you look at the people when he is crowing about how the Netherlands is better in every conceivable way, they are always barely avoiding each other. It seems very stressful to me.
Having said that, I do agree with the zealots in their basic goals. Both they and I want safe biking routes throughout the region. Some of them even advocate for year-round cycling facilities.
Build It And They Will Come
As mentioned above I disagree with the bike zealots that if you just build enough segregated bike infrastructure then everybody will bike.
Bike theft. If people cannot park their bikes without the bikes being stolen when they return, then many of them won't bike.
Perceptions of danger. If people are scared of cycling then you can build all the segregated bike infrastructure you want, and it won't be enough.
Bad experiences. It is my firm belief that most people give up on cycling once they have a close call, and that having a close call on a supposedly-safe segregated lane is much more traumatic than having one on the road. This is one reason I rage against bad segregated bike infrastructure. (It would be good for me to find research that either confirms or refutes this belief, but I have not done so.)
Cycling is exercise. People will get sweaty while riding. Sometimes they will get cold or wet. This dissuades people from riding, especially if there are not good ways for them to clean up at the end of their trips.
Carbrain culture: People who own and drive cars are used to getting around in ways that are different from those who cycle. People own cars in the Netherlands too, of course, but the cultural perceptions are different. Cycling is still "weird". I understand that this weirdness is exactly what zealots are trying to change, but while that perception exists people will continue to refrain from cycling.
Sprawling City Design: If you look at the Not Just Bikes guy's videos, you see lots of Amsterdamian multi-use buildings and lots of walkable/cycleable/compact neighbourhoods. In North America we have strictly segregated retail vs commercial vs residential areas, and because everybody is entitled to a single-family home in the suburbs, cycling becomes much more of a challenge. Adding cycling infrastructure in these places only helps if people have places to go and are willing to take bicycles there. As the garbage suburbs of Williamsburg illustrate, this does not seem to be working. (Williamsburg now has fairly-decent multi-use trails on its major roads. I have seen cyclists and scooters using those trails, but not that often.) That doesn't mean I am against adding these multi-use trails in Williamsburg and other garbage suburbs; I am saying that adding such trails is not sufficient to spur demand.
CapEx and OpEx
My biggest complaints about segregated bike infrastructure have to do with safety and maintenance. These are related, but not identical. I will discuss safety more below, but I want to reiterate my complaints about bike infrastructure maintenance.
I am no financier (New York or otherwise) but I know enough about projects to know that there is something called "capital expense" (CapEx) vs "operational expense" (OpEx). In terms of bike infrastructure, capital expenses take the form of "building the thing", and operational expense take the form of "maintaining the thing".
In my experience the cities and Region seem to have money to build things, but don't have money to properly maintain them. This is one of the main reasons I advocate so strongly for painted bike lanes: they are fairly cheap (although not free) to build, and fairly cheap (although not free) to maintain. Maybe in the Netherlands the government is willing to pay for good bike infrastructure; all too often North Americans get halfway measures that are terrible (hello Albert Street!)
What does "maintenance" of bike infrastructure mean? It largely means keeping the asphalt in good condition, keeping the paint visible, keeping the infrastructure lit, and keeping the infrastructure clear of hazardous debris. It is this last point where cities and the Region do such a terrible job, especially in the winter.
It is possible and not that difficult to keep painted bike lanes free of debris: you clear the bike lanes at the same time you clear the road. This is not perfect (see below) but it should not be that hard to do. Sadly, there are many places (hello Kitchener!) where this seems an impossible task: snowplows will clear the road right up to the bike lane paint, and no further. Then winter cyclists are faced with the choice of cycling in the snow (and ice) or taking the road and cycling in traffic. Neither of these options is good. Having said this, there are other roads (hello Bleams Road in Wilmot) where somehow the Region/Township manages to clear the roads properly. It is still my contention that it should be possible to keep these lanes clear fairly cheaply, even if the municipalities fail to do so: they don't need any special trucks.
Compare this to segregated infrastructure. One problem is that there are so many different kinds of infrastructure. Some places have multi-use trails. Some places (hello University Ave) have narrow on-street lanes with concrete curbs. Some places (hello Ottawa Street) have concrete "cycleways" -- sidewalks that are neither level with the road nor level with the pedestrian sidewalk. These all require specialized trucks to clean, so they don't get cleaned well and sometimes do not get cleaned at all. Witness the horrendous results on University Ave.
This is especially important because there is an inconvenient truth when it comes to winter: cycling infrastructure has to be cleaned to a higher standard than the corresponding automobile road. This is for two reasons: firstly there are no heavy vehicles to heat up the path and melt whatever snow and ice the snowplows have missed. Secondly, if there is a small patch of ice on a road then most four-wheeled automobiles will be able to traverse it without dire consequences, but even a small patch of ice in a cycling path is treacherous to a two-wheeled bicycle. So much of the supposedly safe cycling infrastructure (hello downtown Kitchener) suffers from this: the paths are cleared to some extent, but there is lots of snow and ice left behind.
This is even worse when driveways are involved. Maybe the cute bike path snowplows clear the bike lanes adequately after it first snows, but then people clear their driveways and shovel snow right onto the cycle path, where it freezes into ice. I can't tell you the number of scary experiences I have had when encountering this.
That means that it can be pretty expensive to keep bike infrastructure clear in the winter. And since "nobody bikes in the winter" there is lots of pressure to drop this expense. If there are no alternatives to taking the segregated infrastructure (hello Ottawa St west of Fischer-Hallman, where the car lanes are too narrow to cycle safely) then getting around becomes a real challenge.
Winter maintenance is really important, but there are other operating expenses that get neglected too. One important one is lighting. If you have on-street bike lanes then the same streetlamps that light the road light the bike lane. But there are lots of cute trails that have no night lighting, and some very important trails (namely the Iron Horse) that for years and years got no lighting. Thankfully they fixed the Iron Horse (and as a result it is much safer than it used to be) but this is the kind of expense where municipalities are all too happy to drag their feet.
In this light I have some sympathy for Forester's view that segregated bike infrastructure can be more dangerous than riding on the road. If you neglect to take care of that infrastructure because nobody want to pay for OpEx, then you can generate some pretty dangerous situations no matter how fancy the bike infrastructure is.
Safety vs Perceived Safety
Let's get deeper into the weeds. Picture a 2x2 grid, where one axis is "Actual safety" and one axis is "Perceived safety". In an ideal world these would match -- anything that is actually safe would be perceived as such and vice versa. Unfortunately in my opinion (but not in the opinion of most bike zealots, it seems) this is not the case.
There are going to be a lot of caveats to the examples I provide below, but hopefully they illustrate the broad principles. One big caveat is that different people have different perceptions of what is safe and what is unsafe.
In terms of perceptions it probably makes sense to distinguish between feeling unsafe because of unfamiliarity with a situation, versus feeling unsafe because one perceives an actual hazard. I think it is important to accommodate safety concerns from hazards; I think it is much less important to build out bike infrastructure solely to address safety concerns due to unfamiliarity.
Perceived Safe and Actually Safe
- Riding on quiet streets without much traffic.
- Riding on long stretches of segregated infrastructure without encountering driveways or cross-flowing traffic. traffic (eg driveways).
- Riding out in the country when the roads are paved.
Perceived Safe but Actually Unsafe
This is the killer category.
- Riding on segregated infrastructure with cross traffic (eg driveways). The danger is that traffic does not stop for you because the bike path is not perceived as road. (Don't believe me? Ride on some of these multi-use trails and note where the vehicles stop when they are trying to turn.)
- Riding on multi-use trails without a centre dividing line, and with lots of pedestrian traffic.
- Riding on the sidewalk in most situations. You have to deal with driveways AND pedestrians.
- Riding alongside parked cars, any of which might open suddenly and door you. (Hello, uptown Waterloo bike lanes!)
Perceived Unsafe and Actually Unsafe
- Riding in dense traffic, with no easy ways to bail out.
- Riding on slippery surfaces, such as loose gravel, ice, mud, or wet leaves.
- Riding in the dark with no lights.
- Riding in the winter when it is snowy and/or slippery.
- Riding in the country when there is oncoming traffic and traffic behind you, so the traffic behind you tries the "squeezy-squeezy".
- Riding in a narrow bike lane when some idiot is coming at you the wrong way (which happens nearly every time I take the University Ave lanes)
- Riding in a narrow lane when somebody faster than you is trying to pass
Perceived Unsafe but Actually Safe
In some cases "safe" should be interpreted to be "not as unsafe as you think".
- Riding in a painted bike lane with traffic whizzing by you. In my opinion there is a greater risk of being T-boned or doored than being hit from behind. [citation needed]
- Riding at night, with good lighting and not too much traffic.
- Riding in the winter when the roads and bike lanes are dry and clear. (This is not safe for freezable toes and fingers, however).
- Riding on roads (hello Weber) that are quiet enough that not all lanes of traffic are full. Traffic behind you just switches lanes to avoid you.
Electric Transportation and Bike Lanes
One thing that did not come up much in the Not Just Bikes video is the issue of electric transportation (e-bikes, e-scooters, e-unicycles, etc). Somewhat reluctantly, I feel these are legitimate forms of transportation, and they should be able to get around just as much as those of us who ride manual (or, as the Not Just Bikes guy says, "acoustic") bicycles. However, I find sharing traffic with them irritating, because they are so much faster than I am.
I think this is a strong argument for putting painted bike lanes everywhere, even when there is other segregated bike infrastructure available. As far as I can tell there are now at least four classes of transportation that don't mix:
- Pedestrians
- Slow manual transportation like slow cyclists, most kid cyclists, push scooter riders
- Electric transportation like e-scooters and e-bikes
- Fast transportation like cars
I do not think any of these classes mix very well. It looks like the Region has settled on multi-use trails with painted lines down the middle for most of their bike infrastructure. I mostly don't hate this. In general pedestrians and manual transportation do not mix well, but at least if you have a painted line pedestrians and cyclists both know what to do. (See? Paint works as bike infrastructure.)
Now add the e-scooters and e-bikes. At 30km/h they are too slow to ride safely with cars. But at 30km/h they are far too fast to be sharing infrastructure with pedestrians (and many cyclists, including me). It seems to me that having them use painted bike lanes is the least worst option. It still is bad for slower cyclists like me, but at least with a painted bike lane the e-scooters and e-cyclists can pass me using the road.
Conclusions
If any bike zealots read this blog (they don't) then I expect I would not convince a single one of them that I am not Forester-brained.
Nonetheless I stand by my principles, and I feel these principles do not align all that closely to those of vehicular cycling.
My principles have shifted over time (for example, I think that the multi-use trails are less disastrous in the suburbs than I had thought, because there are not a lot of driveways along them) but most of them have remained stable for years, which is why I repeat myself over and over again when it comes to this stuff.
I want to say something else: I am not an urban planner, but neither is the Not Just Bikes guy. He is an old grumpy techbro who used to work for tech companies before he got Youtube-famous. I am not sure his opinions should hold so much sway over urbanist discourse, but that's what has happened. (In fairness to him, I think he admits as much, but that does not stop him from being more influential than actual city planners, because actual city planners are less entertaining.) John Forester was also not an urban planner, and apparently his opinions caused a lot of damage to North American bike infrastructure. Are we so sure the Not Just Bikes guy isn't doing the same? I think the Not Just Bike guy's take on "bike gutters" is wrong. On the other hand, unlike me (and maybe unlike Forester) the Not Just Bikes guy does research into his videos. He and his research team read papers and stuff. Motivated reasoning is still a factor here, but hopefully referring to the research literature is less harmful than spouting uninformed opinions based on personal experience.
Although I hold my opinions strongly, I am fairly confident that these opinions are incorrect, because my opinions are incorrect about everything. Probably the bike zealots are correct about everything and I should shut up.
Unanswered Questions
In writing out this entry I was repeatedly frustrated because I thought I knew facts that I could not back up with web links. There are a lot of unanswered questions I have. The answers to some of these would likely sway my opinions on safe vs unsafe bike infrastructure:
I am of the opinion that side collisions (being T-boned) and door collisions are more risky for cyclists than being overtaken and run from behind. Is this true? When bicyclists get into "accidents" with cars, what are the primary mechanisms?
I am of the opinion that much of the suburban multi-use trail infrastructure is not well used. Is that the case?
I am of the opinion that segregated infrastructure is unsafe because it is not "protected" at driveways and intersecting roads. Is this the case? How much risk is there of being T-boned by cars that try to stop at the road, and are not looking for traffic in the segregated infrastructure?
Were concerns from neighbours adjacent to the Iron Horse Trail one reason the City/Region delayed in adding lighting to the trail?