Pedaling Revolution, Chapter 1

As part of my class on Sustainable Transportation in the Netherlands, I was assigned to read Pedaling Revolution, a book about cycling written by Jeff Mapes, a Portland native and reporter for the Oregonian newspaper. Mapes focuses on the way cycling culture has grown over the past several decades and how public policy and planning is starting to catch up with the need for more and better bicycle infrastructure and safety measures.

Overall, unfortunately, the book feels a bit weightless, as if it started as a long magazine article but was puffed up to achieve book length. Mapes displays a distressing surfeit of credulity, uncritically accepting the idea that cities like Portland and New York are doing all the right things when it comes to cycling policy. Some of the chapters come close to hagiography, both for cities and the individuals involved. In general he takes a typically journalistic approach to the material, relying a great deal (too much, I would say) on interviews and profiles of the people involved rather than digging very much into the nuts of and bolts of what cities need to do if they want to dramatically increase cycling rates.

Chapter 1, in particular, is a long and tiresome rundown of the major figures in the cycling movement since the 1970's, when a temporary cycling boom gave birth to the idea that cycling could someday become a mainstream form of transportation. Mapes commits the common historical fallacy of focusing on individuals rather than the broader forces that influence people. It is the same approach to history that tells the story of America by telling the story of one President after another.

Despite this deeply flawed approach, there is one aspect of chapter 1 that is worth focusing on, as it represents a fundamental conflict within the bike movement in the US that still affects public policy to this day. Mapes spends a substantial chunk of the chapter profiling John Forester, the foremost proponent of what has come to be known as "vehicular cycling." The vehicular cycling movement, active since the 1970's, opposes the use of separated bicycle facilities in favor of treating bicycles as just another vehicle on the road along with cars, trucks, and motorcycles. The theory is that separated facilities like bike lanes or cycle tracks are inherently unsafe, since they create major conflicts at intersections that would be avoided if bikes and cars shared the same lane.

While my instinct was to dismiss this idea out of hand, I soon recalled the case of Kathryn Rickson, a young woman who was killed by a right-turning truck in downtown Portland even though she was riding in a bike lane and had the right-of-way. In that case, it is true that had there not been a bike lane, she would have been behind the truck and the collision may have been avoided altogether. Clearly there are cases like this that vehicular cyclists can point to in which the added confidence provided by bike lanes may be illusory and contribute to conflicts. John Forester and others long ago pointed out these problems and successfully convinced many state and local transportation departments to adopt their approach in the name of safety. Even today the AASHTO guide recommends against the use of cycle-tracks on safety grounds.

The counter-argument, advanced by other bike advocates like Bill Wilkinson and Andy Clarke, is that well-designed, separated bikeways can be more safe than on-street riding and are a necessary prerequisite to turning cycling into a mainstream form of transportation. Vehicular cycling is a more elitist approach, in this view, because it will only ever appeal to what are now known as the "strong and fearless" type of cyclist who is willing to drive in high-speed and hostile car traffic. If we care about getting all kinds of people to regularly ride bikes, even the elderly and children, it is unreasonable to think we can achieve that with vehicular cycling alone. The bike movement in the US over the past decade has decisively moved in this direction, and cities have begun to install bike lanes and even a few cycle tracks, along with other improvements like bike signals and bike boxes.

And yet, cases of right-hook collisions and other problems continue to crop up even in the presence of what we would consider high-quality facilities. So are vehicular cyclists correct? One response is that a small decline in safety may be outweighed by the total increase in the number of people cycling. There is also the idea of safety in numbers brought about by increased numbers of cyclists. These arguments, while they have merit, provide little comfort given that collisions still occur fairly frequently in supposedly bike-friendly Portland.

While Mapes doesn't discuss the Netherlands until a later chapter, I will go ahead and jump ahead to say that the answer to this dilemma is found in the Dutch approach to cycling. Decades ago the Netherlands made a clear policy decision based on the use of separate bike facilities on major roads and completely rejected any notion of vehicular cycling. While low-traffic local roads do feature a shared-space concept with bikes and cars sharing the road, cars are expected to match bike (or even pedestrian) speeds, not the other way around. On all major roads, it is simply expected that bikes will have either a bike lane or more commonly a cycle-track. Even motorways typically have a nearby parallel bike route.

By all accounts, the Dutch approach has been a resounding success both in terms of promoting a high bicycle mode share and in improving safety. The Dutch approach to a problem like the above right-hook scenario would be to recognize that route as a priority bike route with potential conflicts and make the necessary investments to improve safety. Most likely this would take the form of removing the bike lane  leading up the Hawthorne Bridge and replacing it with a fully-separated cycle-track with separate bike signals at intersections. This investment, combined with prohibitions on right-turns on red, would give bikes a safe way to access the bridge with much less fear of turning cars. The tradeoff would be that the city would need to accept somewhat lower speeds and more delay for cars.