Michael Wilson described his purpose in reading this list: "I have no
policy or vc advocacy experience. I am on this list in the hopes of
lending my support to the idea that I can continue to cycle legally
on the public roads in the USA."

Michael, I am happy that you are concerned, and also that you have
described both your limited experience and your limited aim. I think
that your fear of prohibition was more justified some twenty years
ago than it is today. Over the years, we have managed to work out
greater agreement over reasonable principles. The idea that cycling
could be prohibited from general public roads was never accepted,
indeed has always been denied as being either impractical or
impossible. The threat came from sidepaths, both physically and in
the form of the prohibition against cycling on a roadway which was
paralleled by a usable path. Those statutes have been repealed almost
everywhere they had existed, and sidepaths are the one form of
bikeway which has been officially recommended against by the bikeway
standards, because of their dangers. The prohibition against cycling
on freeways, which has been much discussed, with no purpose, in these
lists, was long ago negotiated into an acceptable form, in which use
of the freeway system is allowed between those points for which there
is no reasonable alternate route. Toll bridges and toll tunnels, and
some bridges and some tunnels, are out of this agreement, because of
the very high cost of providing width that allows bicycle travel
without delaying other traffic. These facilities still produce
controversy. There are also problems with parochial jurisdictions in
those states whose legal system allows local authorities to establish
their own traffic laws; such governments have only low levels of
expert knowledge and run on common opinion, which in bicycling
affairs is almost always incorrect.

The issue which has never been worked out is the way to use bicycles.
Traffic law and traffic engineering principles require that all
roadway users operate in the same way, which has been worked out as
the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles. Despite these two
facts, American public opinion held, from the 1930s on, that bicycles
were toys operated by children who were incapable of operating as
drivers of vehicles. This got enshrined in the side-of-the-road
prohibition against using most of the width of the roadway, and
resulted in various dangerous methods of operating. Of course, these
dangerous methods of operating suited motorists because they kept
cyclists to the side of the road, thus clearing the way for
motorists. The only solid analysis of car-bike collisions, the Cross
study of thirty years ago, demonstrated that 30% of car-bike
collisions were caused by the cyclist doing exactly what he had been
urged to do by the bike-safety instructions. However, adult America
cyclists learned to operate by the rules of the road for drivers of
vehicles. In this they were assisted by those cyclists who had
learned cycling abroad, without the American superstition about child
cyclists being incapable. These adult cyclists were left alone,
because they obeyed the laws even though they disobeyed public opinion.

Then came the 1960s, a time of political turmoil that also produced
the "bike boom", in which, for the first time in decades, increasing
numbers of young adult cyclists appeared on the roads. Motorists
became concerned that these cyclists were not staying where they
belonged, out of the way of motorists. In 1970, the government of
California, dominated in highway affairs by motorists, started the
first steps to building bikeways that would keep cyclists out of the
way of motorists. That system, of course, indeed necessarily, imposed
on all cyclists the dangerous methods of operation that the public
believed were appropriate for child cyclists. By fighting very hard
in California, we managed to get the worst dangers removed, and the
resulting California bikeway standards became the present national
standards (with subsequent changes over the years, of course).

One would think that that would be the end of the business, with
bikeways seen for what they are, ways to clear bicycle traffic off
the roadways for the convenience of motorists. However, because the
bikeway system was built according to ignorant public opinion about
cycling, rather than in accordance with standard traffic-engineering
principles (which the bikeway system violated), the public saw it as
protecting cyclists who were incapable of operating safely. This
enabled the anti-motorists to claim that the bikeway system was the
vital heart of any program to reduce motoring.

Therefore, we have the ironic spectacle of an anti-cyclist,
pro-motorist system that suits motorists very well being the highly
praised foundation of the program by which the anti-motoring faction
of society is appeased. We competent cyclists, who understand the
value of operating according to the rules of the road for drivers of
vehicles, are caught in the middle, because both the motorists and
the anti-motorists want us to operate as incompetent children. I must
add here that children are perfectly capable of cycling competently;
like any other skill, say soccer or dancing, it has to be taught
them, but is well within their capability.

That is the controversy in which we have been engaged for the last
few decades: whether cyclists should operate as the traffic laws and
the principles of traffic engineering require, as drivers of
vehicles, even though that means violating the bikeway superstitions,
or whether we should operate as incompetent children in accordance
with the bikeway designs and superstitions. And, more fundamentally,
whether the government should continue with its bikeway program that
physically institutionalizes incompetent cycling. That program should
be discontinued, because it neither makes cycling safe nor reduces
motoring, as well as placing vehicular cyclists in jeopardy.

At this time I need to add that the League of American Bicyclists,
which should be representing the interests of lawful, competent
cyclists, has been taken over by the bicycle sellers, who believe
that bikeways sell bikes, and the bicycle planners, who know full
well that the bikeway program employs bike planners, people with no
recognizable professional attributes for other work. It is the object
of the Reform Group to win seats as directors so we can return LAB to
its proper function.

John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer
7585 Church St.
Lemon Grove, CA 91945-2306
619-644-5481 www.johnforester.com