Ken - Thank you for the reference to the other list.
I will see what else others have said about the study(s) being
referenced.

Cause and effect is very hard to determine at times (chicken/egg).
The demand may have been there for facilities due to the volume of
cyclists or the lack of facilities may have inhibited cyclists, who
only began to ride regularly once those facilities opened. I
suspect there was some of both.

I note the most heavily used facilites in my area tend to be those
that provide a perceived level of comfort (as determined likely by
each individual themselves) that outweighs perceived risk.

For the majority, where the speed differential is significant or auto
volumes vastly outnumber bikes, it would appear that would be shared
use paths, bike lanes and shoulders - segregated facilities.

Of course, I'm dealing with laws that prohibit lane sharing if
a 'smooth paved shoulder' exists - Maryland law requires the cyclist
to use the shoulder in those cases (yes, I continue to try, with
various groups, to get that repealed).

May I ask for clarification on an earlier comment ("We
all need to learn to be more comfortable doing this on roadways built
with a more solid respect that each and every public way should be
shared with pedestrian use.")? - Should I take this to mean, that
every road needs to have sidewalks or that one paved surface should
be used by cars, bikes and peds? And (possibly an extreme) does
this mean that cyclists and cars should co-exist on the highway
system on 65MPH limit roads (where an 8 mph cyclist (going up a
hill?) could be overtaken by an 18 wheeled vehicle at 65 MPH)?

Thank you again.



--- In bicyclingadvocacy@yahoogroups.com, Kenneth O'Brien <kob2@...>
wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 31, 2008, at 2:45 PM, Kenneth O'Brien wrote:
>
> >
> > On Aug 31, 2008, at 2:37 PM, Jon Morrison wrote:
> >>
> >> A link to the article and the full article follows.
> >> At risk of getting the 'must be on road' cyclists stirred up -
please
> >> note the study (yes, Ken a study) produced by Rutgers
> >
> > Pucher's "studies" have been discussed here in the past, so you
can
> > check those discussions out if you like.
> >
>
>
> Sorry, I missed this was bicycleadvocacy list and not chainguard
> list. Chainguard is list where more Pucher discussion took place,
if
> you want to check its archive.
>
> I admit to not looking too close at the whole discussion, because
it
> was clear Pucher didn't study facilities. So check it out yourself
on
> chainguard archives.
>
> My sense of the discussion as a listener:
>
> Pucher studied cultural patterns and differences between cultures
> related to bicycling. The important things that will get bundled
into
> that are things like: who are members of the subset of population
who
> are bicyclists, what percentage of population bicycles, what the
total
> infrastructure of that country or culture looks like, what are the
> development patterns that make up that culture, etc. The problem
is:
> people have misinterpreted whatever Pucher studied as if it had
> something specific to say about _facility_design_comparsions_ -
and
> even less realistically - as if it had something to say about
> infrastructure design applied across different cultures... and it
does
> not. They also make the mistake of believing that the _facilities_
> created the bicycling, which is getting their cause-and-effect
> backwards. It looks like this Washington Post article is making
all
> the same mistakes.
>
> Ken
>