Herb at IBIKETO posted recently on a change that has been
happening in bike planning.
http://www.ibiketo.ca/blog/avid-cyclists-policy-makers-are-going-extinct-and-theyve-no-one-else-blame
He argues that those with the most influence these
days are women, and in some cases neophytes to cycling. They bring concerns
about safety (can my kids ride using this infrastructure?) to the table, and
have been pushing for more separated infrastructure.
This goes against the grain of the past advocates, who
pushed for minimal intervention, and were critical of established
infrastructure. These advocates, mostly men, pushed for “vehicular cycling”,
learning to drive with the traffic rather than in separated infrastructure.
I think that Herb has presented an interesting 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 “more safe” approach is no more sensible than
pointing to all 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.
There is a historical dimension to this question. The bike
advocates he is challenging are rooted in a tradition that emerged from the
cycling environment of the time. Bike infrastructure was non-existent until
recently, and a vehicular cycling maximized safety in a car-dominated environment.
This is why Herb’s take on this is reductive, vehicular cycling is designed for
safety too.
An experienced cyclist can work with less bike
infrastructure, and may actually prefer a lack of infrastructure in certain
cases. A separated lane constrains you from exiting earlier, and limits your
ability to pass in certain situations. Experienced cyclists like the freedom of
left turning with traffic, exiting where desired, etc. But this is entirely
separate from the question of how to set up bike infrastructure from a planning
perspective. The planner has to think through who is going to be using the
infrastructure, and how they want to meet the needs of these users.
In the case of new cyclists you have two broad choices,
train them to be road safe first and have minimal infrastructure, or build
separated infrastructure so they can be safe and learn while they ride.
The problem with Option A is that it forces cycling
education on people, it pushes the minimum cycling age up, it restricts its use
to those with access to training, etc.
But from the perspective of early, experienced cycling advocates like
John Forest (who is conspicuously absent from Herb’s post) everyone should go
to cycling clubs and gets good enough to ride on the road with the big dogs.
So what you are really talking about here is not a shift to
a focus on safety, as Herb suggests. Rather you are talking about a shift in
perspective about what constitutes a safe environment for cyclists, one that
emphasizes training and experience with minimal infrastructure, or one that
emphasizes separated infrastructure and slow, “on the job” learning (with *access*
to training and education).
The problem is that posts like Herb’s just exacerbate the
tensions between the groups. I know plenty of experienced cyclists who also
like the idea of more separated infrastructure, as they have friends,
co-workers and family that would like to ride but don’t due to safety concerns.
And the presentation of this dichotomy also sells short the very real political
and safety concerns that advocates like Forest made the centerpiece of their
work. Pushing for separated bike infrastructure emphasizes the idea that bikes
don’t belong on the road: roads are for cars. The presence of more separated
infrastructure will no doubt exacerbate this trend.
And it is also worth mentioning that, for better or worse,
bike infrastructure will always lag need for that infrastructure, which means that,
with very few exceptions, cyclists will ALWAYS have to drive with cars, at
least for part of their trip. So the model of trained cyclists and minimal
infrastructure may not be as unrealistic as it sounds.
The thing that I think is lacking from Herbs post is some
sense of the larger picture. A few thoughts in that direction.
First, I personally know a great deal of people who live in
the downtown core and have a very short commute. They could cycle to work.
Separated bike infrastructure would work for them as they are in the dense,
downtown core. So I’m all for separated infrastructure to encourage the casual
rider to ride more often.
I also know a great deal of people who commute “cross town”.
I’m one of them. I cross the city N/S from Bloor to Steeles, and EW from
Ossington to Jane. So not completely
across the city, but a good chunk. I have an 11 mile commute. It takes me 45
minutes or so to get to work by car in rush hour, or about 75 minutes or so on
the TTC and a rock solid reliable 50 minutes on the bike to get to work.
The mid-to-long distance commuter are simply ignored by most
cycle advocates, either they are assumed to be experienced and not worth the
concern, or they are ignored as they are not part of the untapped masses of
neophyte cyclists who don’t want to ride due to safety concerns.
However, they could represent the largest untapped portion of the potential
cycling population. How many people do you know that commute to work cross town
and take more than a ½ hour at rush hour to get where they are going? These
people are all perfect candidates for cycle commuting.
However, here’s the catch. Once you get beyond short hop
trips in the core the demand for separated infrastructure is unrealistic. A
densely packed downtown core is an ideal spot for separated cycling
infrastructure, but the spread out main arteries and secondary roads outside
the core will never support the bike traffic to justify widely distributed separated
lanes.
In addition, the city is spread out over a lot of space.
Amsterdam, a good comparative case since everyone seems to agree that the Dutch
have figured this out, is approximately 230 square KM, Toronto is around 650
square KM in size. Unless you plan to spiderweb the city with separated
infrastructure over a 650 square KM area, you will have to rely on multiple
cycling infrastructure modes (separated lanes, non-separated lanes, trails,
secondary roads and even some main arteries) and then knit them together to
form a city wide cycling infrastructure.
In short, presenting this as a neophyte (separated lanes
only) versus experienced (little infrastructure needed) fundamentally skews the
discussion towards simplistic and non-inclusive options. Considering where we
are going with traffic and congestion, if all you are shooting for is the
short-hop casual downtown commuter the future of gridlock in Toronto is bleak
indeed.
The exclusive focus on any one part of the cycling
population is a hindrance to progress. I have discussed long-trip riders as one
example, but there are others. Mixed mode riders (take the bike then the bus,
take the bike on the bus…), non-peak riders, night riders, all season riders,
etc. All season riders are just as
concerned with road clearing on non-infrastructure routes as they are with the
installation of more separated infrastructure. In the winter large, higher
traffic roads are more likely to be clear and thus more easy to ride for
cyclists. Night riders and off-peak riders encounter less traffic so are more
willing to use main roads. Long distance commuters need more than just
separated infrastructure, etc.
It would make more sense to portray this as a problem of
inclusion: how do you maximize the number of cyclists on the road? To my mind
this implies looking at all the options and considering them: separated lanes,
non-separated lanes, recreational paths marked side roads, traffic re-routing,
recommended routes, sharrows, etc. It also suggests not only that both the
novice and the expert need to be accommodated, but also that short trip and
long trip riders, off peak riders, night riders, multi-seasonal riders, etc.
all need to be considered.
This is what is missing from cycle advocacy, an approach
that recognizes the inherent multiplicity of users and the wide range of needs
within the scope of “safe” riding.
Cheers,
Ian
