Is this the most counterproductive idea in the world of cycling?
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Thanks to John Simmerman of Active Towns for footage from the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF_Ck5za0Yk
John Forester resources:
https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a32257789/vehicular-cycling-advocate-john-forester-dies-at-90/
References:
“Enjoy the Ride – Essential Bicycling Skills”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5hJhLBUec
Vancouver study on preferred bike routes: https://cyclingincities-spph.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2015/01/Winters-Teschke-2010-Route-preferences-among-adults-in-the-near-market-for-bicycling-findings-of-the-cycling-in-cities-study.pdf
Public bike counter data (including top bike counter in Paris): https://data.eco-counter.com/ParcPublic/?id=4586
Montreal bike counter data: https://data.eco-counter.com/ParcPublic/?id=630
Commuting data came from 2021 census in Australia and Canada
Study on cycling in Melbourne: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140521003200
Research review of cycling safety: https://bikehub.ca/sites/default/files/imce/safety_performance_of_bicycle_infrastructure_in_canada.pdf
Bike lane safety study in Montreal: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3064866/
Astonishingly high cyclist death and injury rates in USA: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cyclist-and-pedestrian-fatality-rates-and-nonfatal-injury-rates-in-the-Netherlands_fig3_279579564
Cyclist death on Saint-Denis in Montreal: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/cyclist-mathilde-blais-death-was-avoidable-says-coroner-1.2782554
42 Comments
I was taught this in Winnipeg. But there was no massive trucks & SUV’s at that time. Plus car driver are worse.
Most likely was on payroll of auto industry
Like most ignorant people pretending the know something & don’t. Like a red neck.
The problem is Car drivers are dumb & agreesuve. Something that is problem
Bike lanes are bad when they have to share a lane with a car. Bikes obstruct traffic.
@4:15 Netherlands is practically entirely in Red, with some exception in the north-west and south-west.
The Vehicular Cycling concept is simply outdated with modern knowledge. Lelystad is known actually to be car centric, despite that, it has the same level of cycling infrastructure. Same can be said about Almere, which is a suburb to Amsterdam. Despite being a suburb to Amsterdam, not many people in their right mind would cycle from Almere to Amsterdam for work. It's simply way faster with a car or train or bus. Because cars do have their place. Traffic calming is also necessary in a modern city to keep it livable. No wants want to live nearby a busy road. Traffic calming is a great way to filter out unnecessary car traffic and stop it becoming being abused as a short-cut.
As a cyclist in Amsterdam myself. I would also argue against vehicular cycling as most cyclist capability cannot be compared to a motorized vehicles. The speed difference is simply too big. For sake of traffic flow, you want vehicles of various speed to be separated to prevent traffic congestion. So from the point of view of optimizing traffic flow. Cyclist should be separated from motorized traffic in their own lanes and their own stoplight sequences.
Granting bikes their own infrastructure is more than just having bike lanes. It's also making cycling solution not much slower than if you would take a car. That's when people have incentive to choose bike over car. If using the bike is taking the same route as the car. Most people would just take the car. As it'll be faster.
Banned cars from city and town.
Looking at old pictures of US towns with walkable streets that were bulldozed for stroads is depressing.
Forester is/was an idiot! Who would send their kids to school on a busy road?! And he uses the usual nonsense of talking about motorists and cyclists like they are different groups of people. I'm a motorist and a cyclist, like many of us. And the rubbish about Amsterdam being old and not designed for cars. Virtually all American cities were built before the car. He's also wrong about driving in Amsterdam, because those that don't want to drive in the Netherlands, don't have to, the Netherlands is one of the best places in the world to drive.
it is true that when cars were first coming in both pedestrians and cyclists were upset by being forced off the roads they had traditionally had full and unimpeded use of. And they saw the introduction of bike lanes and pavements as surrendering the roads to cars. But their solution wasnt to learn to ride on 8 lane strodes among fast moving trucks and cars. Their solution was to limit the speed of cars to walking pace so other road users could continue using the roads as they always had (obviously that didn't last long). Well, maybe if you pedestrianise all urban roads, giving walkers and cyclists right of way over cars and limiting motor vehicles to 5 miles an hour then that would be the best solution for getting more people to use bikes. But that's not going to happen in most places. In those places where it is feasible then we should definitely push for it cause pedestrianised shopping streets are great. But for the vast majority of routs given that cars have already taken over the roads and aren't giving them back any time soon segregated cycle routes are essential. This guy is trying to use the arguments of the early 20th century anti car cyclist lobby against cycle lanes while also promoting the anti cyclist car lobbies arguments against traffic calming
The street of terraced houses where I live was built in 1900, footpaths on either side, plenty of room for two vehicles to pass on the road. But the vehicles it was designed for were horses and carts. Now both sides are lined with parked cars nose to tail with barely enough for a single car in the centre. Not a problem for cycling, the mass of cars have turned the road into a carpark. The problem is the laws made in the 19th centaury insisting cyclists use the road and not the footpath were fine when the main roads were used by horses, but are murderous now the main roads are used by 50mph cars. In 100 years the world has changed the Highway Laws need to change too.
If I had to cycle in the middle of busy traffic, I wouldn't feel safe, and thus wouldn't cycle. I would likely drive a car instead. And who benefits from that? Not the bicycle shops, certainly.
Seeming to represent a group while simultaneously blaming that group, and indirectly supporting a would-be-opposing group? Astroturfing, anyone?
Try riding like he suggests in most US cities and you’ll be lucky if all the drivers do is yell at you. If education is what we need m, then the focus should be on teaching auto drivers to operate their vehicles responsibly and safely. Let me know how that works out. 🙄
I honestly believe Forester was a shill for the car companies, similar to scientists who were paid to write anti-climate change papers by the oil industry.
Everything he said was contrary to developing bicycling infrastructure in the US. He served as an effective distraction preventing any progress, ensuring people remained car dependent with no alternative for decades.
Do not ride along side a cyclist 😑👎
13:25 from a street full of life to a barren looking high-way
Hahahaha, so pathetic, it’s a culture thing. We were almost born on bikes. You can also ask yourself why do we need roads for cars. In the Netherlands bikes are part of the whole. If you let bikes behave like normal traffic, you have to learn car drivers a bike is like a car, and only then you got a solution going on. As long as car drivers ignore bikers you have a problem.
It’s crazy how people can frame bike lanes as discriminatory, but carpool lanes as a luxury. They are simply different lanes for different purposes.
Vehicular cycling sounds like some boomer “I walked up the hill every day to school in the snow” kind of nonsense.
Put that man on a bike in heavy traffic and see how he does.
"[…] what we need to do is to educate riders into sharing the road with drivers" -> stopped watching
I was a very dedicated road cyclist for many years. I took a long break from it when I had too many activities to do with my kids and worked too far away from home for bike commuting to be practical. Once those pressures were gone, I rediscovered road riding. My goal was to average 100 miles per week during riding season. I rarely missed that goal and often doubled it. Then along came texting while driving and cars with infotainment centers. After observing dozens of drivers swerving well into the shoulder, head down, in one case even hitting the soft shoulder and losing control, I made the decision to ride on dedicated lanes and paths as often as possible. Sure – it's a slightly slower pace but, at my age, that's just fine.
I like bike lanes, but I don't like DOOR ZONE BIKE LANES. They are dangerous.
He is right, cyclists do best when they act and are treated as vehicular traffic. If I can keep up with the traffic, I take a lane, I cycle the way I drive and get treated (almost always) like any other vehicle. He is not saying anything counterproductive.
He is also correct that modern cities, particularly North American cities, are designed for cars and that the car lobby, which is almost everybody, is extremely powerful and is not going away. Also, most bike lanes are not fit for purpose. They are too narrow, they are not safe from the right hook, and they are not protected from parking, bus stops, and trucks loading/unloading, they tend to be poorly maintained with potholes and accumulated road litter including glass. A well-maintained hard shoulder is very helpful but this is very unusual.
Any person who rides a bike is a cyclist. Cyclists have a full range of skills and fitness levels. Cyclists may be able to cycle between 5mph and 30 mph in a town/city setting. Cyclists range from commuters to local leisure riders. I have always argued that it is incumbent on each cyclist to obtain suitable fitness and skill levels and that this is an unrealistic goal as people tend to do what they want.
It is also true that some of the bike campaigners are anti-car fanatics for a variety of reasons. This just plays into the hands of the pro-car fanatics who paint all cycling advocates with the same brush. This can play out on the roads with disastrous results. Traffic gridlock is the best advocate for commuting by bicycle.
There are no good answers just steps that can be taken and that is, by and large, what is happening with the development of city bike lanes. However, using the bike lane should not be a legal requirement as a bicycle is still a vehicle, just like any other.
gosh, guy was a tool. not much lost with his passing
Would you be have for 12 your old kid to cycle in traffic along side cars?
One issue that I have with your video is that it should have gone more in depth into the validity of the statistics Forester used to justify his claims, and his responses to the proposed intersection treatments by bike lane proponents, as this video only glossed over them.
I wish we had a bicycle freeway for every car freeway. Every mile of road has to have a mile of bibycke road and sidewalk, and that includes the width. I hate obesity and fatness.
I've been cringing at and disagreeing with Forester for 60 years. His book used to be about the only one about cycling you would find in the library, as if it were some sort of standard. It seemed really dangerous. I see people practicing it around Portland, where there are many alternatives, and I'm just disgusted.
Biking shouldn't be allowed
This video is a great reminder as to why people over 60 shouldn't be in charge.
This is the first time I hear about this Forester guy. I don’t see why anyone would take him seriously. Seems like just a crazy old guy making insane claims without a shred of evidence to support those claims.
I tend to be a vehicular cyclist, but there's no question that there are huge benefits to expanding dedicated bicycle infrastructure.
I was struck by car turning out of a business biking along a stroad and I was told by the police officer who took my statement he believed I would been safer if I had been biking in the bike lane(closer to the thing that hit me). I will not not drive on the side walk as long as the best we can do in Fake London in painted bike gutters. No number of fines will ever get me to stop
Forrester sounds like he's stuck in a car first paradigm and he just wanted to push an elitist cycling ideology.
As someone who's cycled in peak hour in Sydney to get to work before and after the bike lanes and infrastructure came in, it's so much better with better infrastructure. Much much much safer. Cars just have blindspots and are death machines. It doesn't matter how you ride. You're at risk of getting hit. Get better infrastructure and more people will be encouraged to ride.
Anyone who thinks Vehicular Cycling works, should try spending a few hours driving around town at 15 kph (most cyclist go faster, but this speed is not uncommon). Especially try doing it on a 4 lane road that widens to an extra lane for lefts turns at the intersection, and see how it works to make a left turn.
I absolutely prefer vehicular cycling. My problem with cycle lanes is that most people using them cycle maybe 15kph or slower. That is just too slow for me. On top of that, the lanes are often too narrow to overtake, so I end up stuck behind a slow cyclist. All of this wouldn't bother me if using the cycle lanes wasn't compulsory here (Germany). If the use of cycle lanes were to be voluntary, I would be very happy to see more of them.
Cars = Whites
Bikes = Blacks
People absolutely opposed to any dedicated plan to help Blacks and accused those in favour of it of being "Anti-White" complete the modern analogy.
Tokyo doesn't have much boke infrastructure yet lots of people bike. They just bike in the busy streets, but it works
A bike lane isn't a traffic calming measure. It increases the average car' speed bigtime!
16:05
You could have elaborated that one of the coroner's recommendations was
"that the provincial transport board rewrite the road safety code to include a minimum distance for cars when passing a bike, saying the advertising by the SAAQ is not sufficient."
So from what I can find… the truck 'close passed' her into death;
quote from Montrealgazette;
“The lane was not wide enough to accommodate both the truck and a bicycle,” the coroner notes.
The truck pulled away slightly from Blais, then drove back into her lane in order to keep the left lane open.
“We will never know if there was contact with the woman,” Dionne writes. “We do know that she was struck mortally by the front wheels of the trailer. … First impact was to the head. Death was instantaneous.”
Can I take a guess; she rode on the right of that lane. Had she 'taken the lane'; like Forester seems to advocate… 1) the truck wouldn't have overtaken here in the same lane. 2) If attempted at all leave more space for the cyclist to swerve right. But either way the truck driver is at fault; let's be clear about that.
17:05 What on earth is that for cr*p. Riding like on that book cover is the shortest route to your death… car drivers think you invite them to an in-lane overtake. On this agree with the comments from @Oh The Urbanity!