For decades American society accepted incompetent operation by cyclists as a consequence of keeping cyclists out of the way of motorists. The acceptance was tacit instead of explicit; nobody really wanted to admit it, and the laws, contradictorily, both required and prohibited operation in accordance with the rules of the road. Now government demands, as a patriotic measure, that bikeways be installed specifically to encourage a greater volume of incompetent cycling. This puts traffic engineers in the difficult position between conflicting demands of politicians and traffic-engineering knowledge. The best that they can do in these circumstances is to work for repeal of those laws that prohibit proper operation. This will enable cyclists to operate properly and safely no matter what bikeway is installed. Traffic Engineers and Incompetent Traffic Operation
In June of 2009, the Transportation Research Board issued Volume 18 of NCHRP 500, which I have reviewed: Guidance for the Reduction of Collisions Involving Bicycles. This document does not seek out the most important types of collisions and figure out ways to reduce each type. Instead it uses a clumsy and inaccurate classification system based, apparently, on the location where corrective action might be taken. This classification system lumps together collisions that have entirely different causes, and hence need entirely different countermeasures. A far better job was done thirty years ago by Ken Cross and me (see my Bicycle Transportation). Many of the recommendations are only speculative. Would reducing the number of driveways in a length of roadway, without reducing the traffic using them, really reduce the number of driveway-associated car-bike collisions? And the document spends inordinate amount of space concerning bike lanes, which have never been shown to reduce car-bike collisions, while actually recommending two dangerous types, the bike box that entices cyclists into overtaking on the right-hand side of traffic that can turn right, and the colored bike lane that persuades cyclists to ride directly into conflict with motor traffic without using judgment. In short, this document is the same old incompetence based on the same old superstitions of the exaggerated danger of same-direction motor traffic and promotion of cyclist incompetence.
American professor of planning's advocacy of Dutch bikeways blows up in his face. Not only is there no science in it, but known science contradicts Dutch claims. Professor Pucher of Rutgers wrote academic articles praising the Dutch bikeway system. My criticism of those articles incited him to making some rash claims, such as that there was no science existing to support the vehicular cycling view. That admission that he didn't know the literature got his editors' attention, so they asked me for a paper on The Bikeway Controversy. The paper appeared in Transportation Quarterly, Spring 2001, Vol 55, Number 2, as The Bikeway Controversy.
My first review of Pucher's paper advocating Dutch-style bikeways to make cycling safer started a public email discussion with Pucher that resulted in my second review and, ultimately, in my paper listed above.
Pucher's new paper is titled Making Cycling Irresistible, Transport
Reviews, Volume 28, 2008.Pucher has improved his paper since the prepublication
version that was first available. The paper is still no more than a collection
of statistics regarding transportation and city planning, but Pucher has got
over his former arguments that doing this or that will make cycling popular and
safer, when he has never been able to show why or how doing this or that would
produce the effect that he claims. This present paper presents a long list of
actions taken by European governments, ranging from the mundane provision of
bicycle parking to the radical rebuilding of cities, and says that if we in
America do as the Europeans have done we will achieve similar effects. However,
Pucher has no means of determining how much result is produced by each
characteristic of the urban or social fabric, or even whether or not he has
listed all the relevant actions, only that the sum total of the actions that
have been taken, whether listed or not, is correlated with the sum total of the result.
I have criticized Pucher's earlier papers, which are much the same collections
of statistics, for emphasizing some aspects, as bikeways, while ignoring others,
such as urban pattern, and claiming to have demonstrated causation rather merely
correlation.
In one sense Pucher's latest paper is more useful than his earlier ones, because
in this paper he admits the wide range of characteristics that, by his view, are
necessary for making cycling really popular. In this respect, any responsible
person needs to consider the whole range of characteristics listed by Pucher as
the minimum list of characteristics that need to be changed to make cycling
really popular in the USA. Since a great many of these cannot be changed in
reasonable planning time, it behooves the planner, and the bicycle advocate, to
consider a practical plan of what might be done and what evidence exists for
whatever results it might
achieve, before taking significant action. Pucher's paper provides no assistance
in this task.
Forester criticizes the document that describes the methods by which the present governmental policy and programs for bikeway design were developed. This document is the basis for the manual for designing bikeway systems, Selecting Roadway Design Treatments to Accommodate Bicycles, FHWA-RD-92-073, and it is quoted from extensively in the document that describes the scientific basis for the government's policy and programs for cycling, Bicycle Safety-Related Research Synthesis, FHWA-RD-94-062. These documents use the bikeway standards contained in the AASHTO Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities. It is assumed that these documents provide the scientific basis for the government's bikeway program, but in fact these documents provide no such support, being merely compendiums of anti-cyclist superstition.
This is an early study that pretends that the superstitious fear of same-direction motor traffic reflects objective reality, but it also pretends to be a scientific policy recommendation.
This is a system for rating roads that tries to reflect the actual hazards of each kind of road, but simply boils down to guesses about the speed and volume of same-direction motor traffic.
This is a collection of studies that simply demonstrate that cyclists are frightened of same-direction motor traffic, with no correlation with objective reality. However, government wants to use this type of system to justify its bikeway program.
We know the items that make sidepaths so dangerous: crossing motor traffic, cyclist speed, chaotic other traffic. Government wants sidepaths so badly that it paid for a study of how to design safe sidepaths, a study that said how to do it without ever considering the sources of sidepath danger. It is a statistical vision that has no connection with reality.
This measures cyclists' behavior in cities with different types of bike-lane system. The differences demonstrate that bike-lane system design affects the types of errors that cyclists (and motorists) make, that bike-lane systems delay or prevent cyclists from learning how to ride properly, and that good club cyclists have learned to ride properly despite the systems' errors.
This the section of Forester's Bicycle Transportation that criticizes the government's bikeway policy.
The Highway Safety Research Center of the University of North Carolina has recently published two documents whose comparison unwittingly reveals the emptiness of the bikeway theory. King's Bicycle Facility Selection attempts to combine documents from many nations to produce a system for selecting the type of facility according to the intensity of same-direction motor traffic,. Aside from his own mistakes, his unquestioning assumption of the validity of that criterium discloses its contradictions. Chicago's Bike Lane Design Guide shows that, even after proper selection, bike lanes neither produce room for the cyclist, protect him from traffic, nor reduce the level of skill required.
At ten bike-laned intersections which apparently were unusually dangerous, Portland OR painted the bike lane blue where motorists crossed it. The object was to persuade motorists to yield to cyclists, even though that was the opposite of normal traffic law. This installation was investigated by the Highway Safety Research Center of the University of North Carolina. Their report demonstrates that they know nothing at all about proper traffic operation, at least when the think of cyclists.
The Federal Highway Administration compared traffic operations with wide curb lanes against those with bike lanes, but it failed to make either valid comparisons or to collect pertinent data. As a result, its investigators reached the conclusion that their study tells us nothing that is useful. Of course, they considered only the behavior of typical, untrained cyclists, and ignored traffic law, so they did not consider the other features that make wide curb lanes better than bike lanes.
The present system for calculating the time to be allowed for traffic to clear an intersection after a signal turns yellow, before the opposing green appears, does not allow for lone cyclists to clear wide intersections. This paper discusses the traffic laws that apply and provides formulas for determining the proper clearance interval.
The Federal Highway Administration has desired bikeways from 1972 or before, despite not having evidence that bikeways made cycling safer or more convenient. Therefore, it searched for evidence, and each search was rewarded with evidence that bikeways did not do what was claimed for them. It has now been reduced to the excuse that bike-lane stripes reduce cyclists' fear of same-direction motor traffic. So it commissioned a study to measure the reduction in fear. Since it could not give that as the real purpose, it camouflaged the study as a study of the ability of different roadway designs to accommodate bicycle traffic. This review exposes the lies.
Facilities page last changed: 22-Nov-09