Avid cyclists as policy makers are going extinct and they've no one else to blame

I think the 1% - that is the cyclist that rides regardless of adverse weather, infrastructure, or daylight - has helped establish and maintain the relevance of cycling, while leading the charge to improve conditions for biking. I'd argue that they're still there, and as others join the mix, I hope cycling advocacy is simply going through a process of distillation instead of serving to make it's foundational elements obscure.

Considering the potential to get up to 30% of a population in the saddle, it is reasonable to expect that as public policy starts to tilt in the interests of cycling, infrastructure and policy will trend toward being more inclusive and safe. This is all good of course, but we will need to continue expanding the frontiers of cycling, and I don't see anemic lip biters pushing those boundaries.

I think Herb has raised an important issue in an unfortunate way.

"Old experienced white guys playing fast and loose with your safety versus hip, female neophytes who are safety-conscious" may read well, but it is certainly reductive. Pointing to female cycling planners and claiming they have some special insight or “safer” approach is no more sensible than pointing to the existing male cycling planners in other parts of the world that are progressive about cycling and saying that it has something to do with the fact they are men. It’s a factor, but the far more relevant one is experience. This may have been Herb’s main point, but it was needlessly obscured by discussion of gender and clothing.

It is also a mistake to portray this as a safety issue. The vehicular cycling movement arose in the US, driven by advocates such as John Forester, and it was a response to a cycling environment bereft of what is now standard cycling infrastructure (lanes, separated or otherwise). Vehicular cycling is all about safety, so the dichotomy you have presented is false. It is of course safer to ride in a separated lane, but that doesn’t mean that vehicular cycling is somehow divorced from safety concerns.

This is another example of a policy position that divides us and makes it harder to achieve positive change. Separated bike lanes are good for the novice, and thus good for cycling, as we want more novices considering cycling as an option. But it is not appropriate for every part of the city, and it is best in denser downtown areas. I don’t envisage separated bike lanes running up Keele any time soon.

By focusing on novice/expert distinctions we forget about for example long-trip bike commuters that need a wider range of infrastructure than separated lanes as separated lanes cannot cover their whole trip. We forget about multi-seasonal riders that need to ride on clear roads so prefer main arteries where there are no separated lanes. We forget about off-peak riders who can ride on main arteries more safely as traffic density is lower, etc, etc.

I’m sympathetic to the argument that novices will not ride in large numbers without more separated lanes, and I encourage their construction. We will always need SOME separated infrastructure. And there may be parts of the city where this kind of infrastructure should dominate.

But framing the issue in terms of novices and experts and letting that dominate the discussion is just as reductive and counterproductive as the exclusive focus on minimal infrastructure and experienced riders.

The immediate reaction here from posters that rejected this dichotomy should be sufficient to indicate that this is a limited approach. I’m a vehicular cyclist (sometimes), a trail, lane and path user (sometimes), a commuter and casual rider, a motorist and a father. I want my kids to have safe options, and I want them to know how to ride with cars one day too. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

To keep this post short I have posted a longer and more involved discussion of this issue on my blog:

http://cyclinggotham.blogspot.ca/

Cheers,

Ian

Herb,

Putting words in your mouth implies that I’m doing violence to your intended meaning, but you made this about “hip” and “young” when you said things like,

“Some surviving avid cyclists” and “the survivors when everyone else stopped cycling”, repeatedly in the post.

There is a picture of three cycling advocates with grey beards for heaven’s sake. You could easily have found a photo of a younger vehicular cycling advocate for example, you chose this. And you chose two of what appear to be promotional photos for the women mentioned in the post.

Context means a lot.

I have also suggested that you are portraying this as a neophytes versus experienced cyclists issue.

Since you don’t want to admit this, here are your words:

“She only started cycling after BIXI Toronto launched.”

“In Dr. Campbell's case, she had only taken up cycling when BIXI Toronto was launched”

This point, repeated twice in the post, and a lack of any sort of discussion about the backgrounds of the other advocates mentioned in the post would suggest that you are framing this issue in precisely the way I claimed.

In your response post you also said this,

“The new leaders are smart, educated and good with their research and planning. It's no longer about being skilled cyclists”

So I maintain you are presenting this as an issue of neophytes versus experienced cyclists, as I said above, unless you have some convoluted argument as to why "skilled" in this context is somehow unrelated to experience.

As for the gender issue, of course it matters, and I said exactly that in my post,

“It’s a factor, but the far more relevant one is experience.”

You want to set me up here as dismissive of gender issues in all cases as I question their relevance in one case.

I also brought up a relevant objection, if gender is the determinant factor (as you want to claim it is with respect to safety issues) then you need to account for the fact that other places that develop safer infrastructure are not dominated by women as you claim cycling advocacy here is dominated by men.

This comment,

“It's like sexism, just because there are men who are enlightened doesn't mean that it doesn't exist” just shows that you don’t really understand the problem.

The presence of “enlightened” men in European cycling planning doesn’t change the fact there can be “unenlightened” men here involved in the process. But that wasn’t the point of my claim. I was suggesting that the presence of “enlightened” men involved in cycle planning shows that it is not a gender based issue. Enlightenment does not have to come from gender, it can come from many different places. Of course being male can contribute to some of this, aggressive, competitive behavior is certainly part of male culture, but without more than a simple correlation (more men involved in planning) you are engaged in wishful thinking, not argument.

Your quote from Dr. Lusk is of course suggestive, and I’m not closed to the possibility that gender is a factor. But you gloss over the fact that Dr. Lusk’s study did not rule out any other possible explanations for these differences. Were the more than 90% of men that were on these committees all the same race, class, occupation, age, social background, religion, etc.? What Dr. Lusk has found is a correlation, not a cause, unless you think that gender is the ONLY factor involved.

Just for interest's sake, why not check out one of the new advocates of "vehicular cycling" from the cyclingsavvy link given above:

http://cyclingsavvy.org/2013/09/smart-moves-video-preventing-right-hooks/

There a female cycling advocate (Keri Caffrey) discusses "right hooks" and her philosophy, "My mission in the cycling world is to empower individual cyclists to ride with confidence and realize unhindered access to the transportation grid."

Hmm, a wolf amongst the sheep? A vehicular cycling advocate and a woman? Impossible!

I think the real issue here is multi-modal cycling infrastructure, and the need to acknowledge that there will always be cycling outside of this infrastructure, and thus that some combination of separated infrastructure and vehicular cycling is necessary to make this all work. A discussion of gender is of course relevant, but not the focus of this sort of problem.

Cheers,

Ian

http://cyclinggotham.blogspot.ca/

This kind of blog post is why I rarely come here any more.

Herb, if you propose to read a whole class of people out of the movement to improve access to cycling, I think you do have a pretty high burden of proof. And yes, I think that unless you can meet that burden, you shouldn't do it. And in this case, I don't think you have come close.

Getting infrastructure for cyclists means overcoming a huge amount of political inertia, and it can't just happen in the middle of the city. You can't have one transportation system for one part of the city and another for other parts. That just leads to congestion. You can't tell someone who lives in East York and works at Richmond and University that they have the right to drive, just not downtown. If cycling only works for inner city residents and those who live close to a cycling corridor then cycle commuting only works only for a paltry two or three percent. If we don't have anything to offer suburban commuters, whatever their gender or age, then we won't get the majority of residents, or voters, to cycle and support cycling. We won't get infrastructure built and more important, we won't get it protected.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=q5y4EfaoFHY

We need everyone's participation: men women, children, suburbanites, inner city dwellers, homeowners, renters, commuters, people who work from home, commuting cyclists, transit riders who bike to the store, people who have given up their cars and people who, for vocational or family reasons, can't. It only makes sense to read people out of the movement if they disrupt it by insisting that they have the only one true way to cycle, or if they try to divide us.

Herb, I disagree with you on two heads, and agree with you on two others:

1) Having a different point of view does not make anyone disruptive.

As someone who has fought hard, and will continue to fight, for cycling infrastructure, I appreciate vehicular cyclists at their most annoying, when they make themselves very awkward for me by insisting that taking the lane makes more sense than using unsafe infrastructure. I believe that even relatively poor infrastructure has a role to play in getting more people out on the roads. And I see the lousy infrastructure we settle for all the time: a disconnected cycling network with bike lanes that peter out, gaps in the lanes in front of every storefront with an aroused BIA, bikeways that meander and come to an abrupt end wherever extending them would require actual investment, cycle paths that wind through trees leaving cyclists profoundly vulnerable to predators, cycle infrastructure that dumps us on the wrong side of high speed roads with no way to cross. If you can think of a way to implement cycling infrastructure badly, you can probably find an example of it in Toronto. If we don't hold the feet of the planners and the engineers and the politicians in the fire, they won't spend the money or the political capital to do it right. And if we don't have vehicular cyclists nagging us that no, building cycle lanes in the door zone doesn't really make us any safer, no, cycle paths in the side of the road with no safe way to cross major intersections don't make us safer, no that cycle path that dumps us onto the wrong side of a high speed road doesn't solve the problem, then who will?

2) It simply makes sense for cyclists to wear safety gear and improve our skills.

Period. I don't get the conviction that somehow people who ride bicycles don't need to wear head protection and shouldn't strive to cycle as well and as safely as possible. There are few things in this or any city more worth doing or more pleasant than getting on a bike. Taking sensible precautions, to make sure other road users can see you, to keep yourself safe from one of the most common and devastating injuries, concussion, does not take away from that feeling. And one of the distinct pleasures of cycling for me has always come from feeling and seeing my confidence and competence growing.

3) We need to welcome more cyclists

Every cyclist, vehicular, infrastructure, or in between, ought to welcome and invite people to the cycling world. Every additional person who gets on a bike whether to tootle to a local neighbourhood shop or just ride around the park makes us all safer. We need to welcome everyone. But again, that means everyone. The spandex road warrior doing a training century, too. The cyclist who rides a 20km commute every day. And it doesn't do to stop with the first welcome. Every increment counts. When someone who doesn't think of themselves as a "cyclist", avid or otherwise, gets into the saddle and rides around the park, celebrate. When someone who just rides in the neighbourhood in the day goes out to a store several blocks away, celebrate. When someone who just does errands starts riding to work, celebrate. When someone who used to panic at the thought of riding at night puts lights on their bike, celebrate.We don't just need to welcome everyone: need to welcome everyone's progress as a cyclist.

4) We need infrastructure standards.

No question about it. But again, we need to get engineers and politicians to build to those standards, even when it costs money, even when they have to hold the hand of a merchant panicked about losing business to a big box and not making rent or payroll. That means we need everyone. A standard telling engineers not to build bike lanes in the "door zone" works a whole lot better with a group of cyclists who won't settle for any paint at all on the roads-- who will make themselves unpopular by insisting that cyclists will enjoy more safety if we take the lane than if we ride in clearly unsafe substandard gutter lanes.

Herb,

Thanks for the reply.

On the subject of gender in all of this, you wrote,

"Since this isn't an academic paper I can't prove that there's a causal link between that trend and an increase in women as key cycling policy makers, but since it's just a lowly blog I don't need to prove anything. I can just point out some interesting trends and stoke some fires."

Well, good enough then, I can't argue if you are going to set aside standards of evidence just to stoke some fires. I will remember this the next time you ask someone if they have more than anecdotal evidence for a claim though.

It works both ways, yes?

On the subject of experience, you wrote,

"When we hire people to be good planners of cycling infrastructure, we should not look at their skillfulness using a bike. "

I'm getting the problem here now. We actually agree on the definition of neophyte, but you thought I was using it in a much more inclusive sense.

I think you are being unduely narrow here. Having cycling experience need not be the primary criteria for hiring a cycling planner, but surely it would be welcome and helpful. Mia Birk, according to her web page, was an experienced cyclist before becoming a planner. And any planner that has no cycling experience would surely have to consult and take advice from those who do? I think the only thing you want to rule out is hiring someone with no planning experience but lots of cycling experience.

I think Locutas has hit on two important points, one of which I also made:

"If we don't have anything to offer suburban commuters, whatever their gender or age, then we won't get the majority of residents, or voters, to cycle and support cycling. We won't get infrastructure built and more important, we won't get it protected."

I agree. By focusing on short trip downtown users we are missing out on a potentially huge group of daily commuters that have seen their commute increase to an average of 40 minutes each way. Pretty much by definition the majority of Toronto is outside the downtown core, and expecting fully separated cycling infrastructure over this entire area is both unrealistic and unnecessary. Focusing on one kind of rider and one kind of ride is divisive and ultimately will not do enough to generate the critical mass needed to make city wide cycling a realizable goal.

I think Locutas is also right when he writes:

" I appreciate vehicular cyclists at their most annoying, when they make themselves very awkward for me by insisting that taking the lane makes more sense than using unsafe infrastructure"

The thing I dislike the most about this discussion is that any sort of questioning of cycling infrastructure safety is taken as heretical as we get so little of it and it is so hard fought. I appreciate the sentiment but I disagree with the result. Cyclist safety is paramount, and thus we need to have frank and honest discussions of safety issues.

I think that this issue is best addressed through inclusiveness. Vehicular cycling, or current variants thereof, is an end point. Put in another way, cycling infrastructure will always lag cycling scope. Until the whole city is spiderwebbed from Steeles to the waterfront, from the Humber to the Don, with protected bike lanes you will always have to ride with cars for some of your trip. This means that relying on protected infrastructure as the main cycling option will severely curtail expansion of cycling in the city.

I think that new cyclists should by all means rely on protected infrastructure where it is available, but for the greatest flexibility learning to ride in traffic a must. A vehicular cyclist can still use a protected lane, but a novice is restricted to that lane.

Cheers

Ian

http://cyclinggotham.blogspot.ca/