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The Bikeway Creation Controversy

There are still cyclists who believe that bikeways are intended to make cycling safe. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bikeways were created by the highway establishment to get cyclists off the roads for the convenience of motorists. The facts of the story allow no other interpretation. The national history of bikeways starts in California.

Preparing for Bikeways

I wrote in the preceding chapter that several laws to restrict cyclists for the convenience of motorists were placed in the Uniform Vehicle Code in 1944. One of those was the mandatory-bike-path law that prohibited cyclists from using any road that had a path nearby. As I described it, very little was done to implement that law between 1944 and 1970, largely because there was very little cycling done once the wartime conditions had passed. The members of the highway establishment thought that the bicycle was obsolete, used only by children until they learned to drive cars. And indeed this assumption was practically correct. In Northern California, I could ride all weekend without seeing another adult on a bicycle. If, by chance, I did see one, I knew him.

The highway establishment became very concerned in 1970 with the second bike boom (the first having been in 1895). The reasons for the bike boom were sociological and demographic. One very important factor was that the postwar baby boomers had grown up in new suburbs without adequate mass transportation. In modern cities, the only reasonable and available transportation modes are motoring and cycling; walking takes too long for the distances required and mass transit is ineffective. Parents used the family cars; children had to cycle. Another reason is that the 1950s idea that the person who rode a bicycle must be a financial (and hence personal) failure became eroded by the 1960s reaction that there were far better things to do with one’s life than earning money. People who wouldn’t have been seen dead on a bicycle in the 1950s became willing to cycle in the 1960s. Bike clubs revived. The first American double-century ride in generations was organized about 1969 by Dr. Clifford Graves in San Diego. I rode it. By 1970, the highway establishment was very concerned by what it saw. Its members believed their own propaganda that bicycles plugged up the roads and delayed motorists. “Impacted the roads” was the phrase that they used in their own literature, as if bicycles caused transportational constipation.

The members of the highway establishment saw what they considered phenomenal growth in cycling. True, cycling had increased manyfold, from substantially zero to considerably less than 1 percent of traffic, but at that level it wasn’t a significant amount. However, the members of the highway establishment became afraid; they foresaw millions upon millions of cyclists if this growth continued. They predicted that their roads would be plugged up by these millions of cyclists. It didn’t occur to them that there was a natural trade-off; a person who was riding a bicycle was a person who was not driving a car, and thereby was reducing the congestion upon the roads because a bicycle takes less roadspace-hours than a car for the same trip. Furthermore, there was a limited supply of new cyclists; they had to have been born years before. The fact that motorists so illogically exaggerated the problem shows that they were motivated by fear instead of logic. This is the cyclist-inferiority phobia when the person affected has become a motorist.

In California, which for decades had led America in motoring affairs, the highway establishment took action to prevent their roads from getting plugged up with cyclists. They planned three actions. The first was to produce standards for bikeways. The second was to get the mandatory-bike-path and mandatory-bike-lane laws in California, for which they organized the California Statewide Bicycle Committee that I described in the previous chapter on traffic law. The third was to build bikeways with the certainty that wherever they chose to do so they could clear the roads of cyclists.

The first action of getting standards for their proposed bikeways was accomplished very quietly without the knowledge of cyclists by paying traffic engineers at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to prepare the standards.

Creating Discriminatory Laws

The second action of organizing the Statewide Bicycle Committee to work out the changes in law was also done very quietly without the knowledge of cyclists. I saw a very short notice in the newspaper that a governmental committee with responsibility for reviewing the traffic laws for cyclists had held its first meeting; therefore, I went to the second. Because I appeared and made a pitch that I thought that cyclists should obey the traffic laws, I was accepted as the single cyclist member that their organizational plan permitted on the committee. They and I had opposite aims, though both stated in the same words. I aimed to clarify the bicycle laws so that cyclists were clearly drivers of vehicles without the attached child-cycling laws. They aimed . . . well, they never informed me of the purpose of their committee, but they clearly expected me to agree that cyclists should obey any foolish law they persuaded the legislature to enact.

As the committee proceeded, it became clear that their only purpose was to add a mandatory bike-lane law and a mandatory-sidepath law to the existing side-of-the-road law. They justified this by claiming that same-direction motor traffic was enormously dangerous for cyclists. I replied that none of my associates believed that claim, not on the basis of our experience. The committee members replied to this by saying that they were not concerned about “professional” cyclists, who can look out for themselves, but about child cyclists, who cannot.

There were no car-bike collision statistics to support either side, nothing more than the experience of actual cyclists, but the members rejected that evidence. Unknown to me, part of the bikeway program had been to commission the first statistical study of car-bike collisions, which was done by Kenneth D. Cross, using all the car-bike collisions in Santa Barbara County for a year. When that study was complete, the committee hired a conference room at the Sacramento Airport for Cross to present his study.

I did not understand the anticyclist politics driving the government. Cross presented his study, handing out purple hectograph (or spirit) copies. The data showed that same-direction motor traffic had caused only 0.5 percent of the collisions studied. I got up and stated that this study completely refuted the arguments for restricting cyclists to the side of the road, or to bike lanes, or to side paths. The Committee therefore trashed Cross’s study, leaving me with one of the few copies. It is now on my website. Years later, Ken Cross wondered to me about the concealment of his study.

Another way in which I attacked the restrictive laws was to point out the ways in which they conflicted with the standard operations of drivers of vehicles. The most obvious example was staying at the edge of the roadway until directly turning left. It took a while for me to understand that whenever this occurred, the committee wrote an exception into the restrictive laws, thus protecting them from being reversed by judges. Once I realized that, I offered no more suggestions.

As the result of these maneuvers, crowds of cyclists praise the California Statewide Bicycle Committee for letting them turn left in the normal manner, without realizing that that supposed permission (competent cyclists had always turned left properly) is the price of retaining the law that prohibits cyclists from operating as drivers of vehicles.

California cyclists had one success in that committee. The mandatory-sidepath law had already been tried in Palo Alto, and became the subject of a trial. The evidence presented there, by me, demonstrated that cycling on side paths produced so many car-bike collision conflicts that the committee decided not to recommend the mandatory-sidepath law to the legislature.

This history contains a very important lesson. You who read this because you are considering learning traffic-safe cycling need to note the source of the opposition and the methods of your opponents. The motoring establishment so opposes proper cycling by the rules for drivers of vehicles, and so wants to push cyclists to the side of the road, that it

1. concealed the process for enacting bikeways and restrictive laws from the cyclists most concerned.

2. rejected the best expert evidence about traffic cycling.

3. rejected and concealed the statistical evidence that completely disproved its agenda.

4. based its program on the false claim that cyclists are unable to operate according to the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles.

These falsehoods allowed the creation of the governmental program for bicycle transportation, and they are still the basis, and are repeated, for that program today. Any cyclist who chooses to operate safely as the driver of a vehicle needs to understand that the social forces opposing his operation are based on nothing but falsehoods created by self-interested motorists.

Creating the Bikeway Standards

In the course of working on the Statewide Bicycle Committee, I discovered—through my own prying, for the information was not offered freely—that California had already contracted with UCLA traffic engineers for a set of bikeway design standards, which had already been embodied in a document. I obtained a copy of that document and found that it was a comprehensive standard for bikeway design, a bound book titled Bikeway Planning Criteria and Guidelines.

When I read it, I was appalled; it embodied everything that I already knew was dangerous in cycling and placed in grave jeopardy our rights to use the roads safely. The UCLA traffic engineers had largely copied Dutch sidepath bikeway practice and obviously had no knowledge of cycling in traffic. The traffic movements required of cyclists were dangerous, and because they were dangerous they delayed cyclists, who had to wait for a safe break in traffic before making a move. In truth, the whole thing was based on the idea that motorists were a superior class whose convenience justified endangering and delaying cyclists. However, nobody else saw the designs in these terms—not even the designers, who obviously believed that they were producing a system that would make cycling much safer. The fact that the designs were so illogical and dangerous for cyclists when compared to the normal principles of traffic engineering, but were honestly believed to be improvements that made cycling much safer, shows the cyclist-inferiority phobia in full power. Nobody with traffic-engineering training could believe that designs that so contradicted normal traffic-engineering knowledge would produce safe traffic movements unless their minds had been scrambled by some sort of emotional problem. If these designs had been proposed for some class of motorized traffic—say, trucks or motorcycles—the designers would have been considered crazy. The designers did express some caution about the lack of actual accident statistics to guide them, but that didn’t prevent them from providing the designs for which they were being paid. I prepared a written review of the document and I publicized its errors in a newsletter that I distributed to cyclists in California. My comments killed that bikeway standard.

That put the highway establishment back to square one. Therefore, immediately after the termination of the California Statewide Bicycle Committee, they started the California Bicycle Facilities Committee to prepare another set of bikeway standards. This history is important because the standards that were then prepared became the national standards. Naturally, I was not permitted to join the committee; it was alleged that I was an expert bicyclist who knew too much. That is correct. By that time they knew that I knew enough to upset their plans and that well-informed cyclists opposed their plans, so they proposed their plans as being suitable for the many incompetent cyclists rather than the expert few. Therefore, they wanted somebody else to be the cycling member of that committee. Professor John F. Scott of the sociology department of the nearby University of California at Davis volunteered. He turned out to be an experienced cyclist with opinions very like mine, and we cooperated fully. Meanwhile, I had become the president of the California Association of Bicycling Organizations and led the delegation of cyclists who sat in on all meetings and, in fact, did more work than the actual members of the committee, who were mostly government people representing the governmental organizations who would design, build, and operate the bikeways to be produced.

There was no doubt about who wanted the bikeways. The representative for the League of California Cities told the legislature, “If cyclists are allowed to ride on the roads, California cities will have great problems.” Somewhat later, the official spokesman for the CHP told the legislature that car-bike collisions were caused by those cyclists who thought that they were driving vehicles. The president of the senate, the chief legislative sponsor of the Statewide Bicycle Committee and the California Bicycle Facilities Committee, sent his principal staff man to the committee meetings, and he told us cyclists quite openly that it was pointless for us to oppose the bikeway standards because the legislature was determined to have bikeways, and if we continued to oppose the program we would get worse bikeways than if we assisted it. Cyclists opposed the bikeway program at this stage by criticizing the standards for bikeways, while the highway establishment insisted that bikeways would be produced with or without adequate standards. The facts speak for themselves.

The standards were produced by incompetent people. The man who actually put pen to paper for the committee was Rick Knapp, of the California Department of Transportation. At one point, I was objecting to bike-lane designs that put the straight-through bike lane on the curb side of a right-turn-only lane. If anyone had proposed that any other class of vehicle, motor trucks for example, were being compelled to travel straight across an intersection on the right side of a right-turn-only lane for automobiles, he would have been considered crazy. That idea contradicts everything traffic engineers know about traffic movements in intersections. But the majority of the committee thought that it was entirely suitable to require cyclists to operate in this dangerous manner. Rick Knapp, who, I repeat, actually wrote the California standards, responded to my objection by saying, “But your proposal would put cars on both sides of the cyclist. Nobody would want to do that!” A person who is so afraid of the mere presence of cars that he would rather have one stream of cars turning dangerously into him than be between two streams of cars, one of which is going straight alongside him and the other of which is turning away from him, is manifestly crazy. Yet Rick, and the other members of the committee who agreed with him, are not crazy by what we consider normal standards. They thought crazy thoughts only about bicycles, which is the action of the cyclist-inferiority phobia. The phobia made the majority of the committee members, the noncyclist members, do things to cyclists that they would consider crazy if they had done them to motorists.

One might say, as many people did, that even though the highway establishment wanted bikeways, it did so out of the goodness of its heart—that it was willing to spend its money merely for the safety of cyclists. That opinion is false. The highway establishment paid no attention to the safety of cyclists when it produced the California bikeway standards that are now the national standards. Although there was much talk about safety, the safety effort was directed only at trying to overcome the dangers that bikeways added to the roadway system, and the committee refused to recommend designs that would reduce the collisions that we knew we already had. Adding bikeways to the normal urban road system makes traffic more complicated and increases the dangers. For example, the complicated traffic-light systems that are used in Holland and are highly praised by bikeway advocates are merely attempts to correct the dangers that have been created by the bikeway system. Their initial expense and the added delays that they cause both motorists and cyclists would not be necessary if both classes of traffic used the normal roads in the proper manner. I repeatedly requested that the committee consider the bicycle accident statistics and prepare its designs to reduce the actual accidents that were happening to cyclists. The committee as often refused to do so. Their refusal made it obvious that the members recognized by that time that if they produced designs for facilities that would reduce accidents to cyclists, they would be recommending the existing designs for good roads rather than designs for bikeways. This is clear proof that the committee that produced the present national standards wanted to get cyclists off the roads regardless of the danger that action caused to cyclists.

Under these circumstances, cyclists could have little effect. We were compelled to accept bikeways that we knew could neither reduce accidents to cyclists nor make cycling generally more convenient and would in all probability make cycling more dangerous and less convenient. We conducted a holding action. Our strategy was to get rid of those bikeway features that were most dangerous to us and to insist that bikeways be built with as much safety as we could get in, and if that made bikeways more expensive, so much the better, because we would get fewer of them. I wrote that cyclists did more work than the actual committee members. We did so because all the committee had to do was to propose ideas to get cyclists off the roads, while we had to evaluate those ideas, prepare written criticism, prepare alternate proposals for these details, and continue to submit comprehensive papers describing the policies that the committee should be following instead of its actual policy of getting cyclists off the roads. I did most of that work.

Our most effective tactic was to make the committee members fearful of lawsuits against governmental organizations for accidents caused by their dangerous designs. Whenever we could show with the knowledge that we had in 1976 that the dangers of the design would be obvious to a jury, that design was withdrawn. That doesn’t mean that the present standards are safe. Because reducing accidents to cyclists wasn’t a factor in their initial design, you can’t reasonably expect it to be there now. What now exists are those ideas for clearing cyclists off the roads that we could not prove at that time to be obviously dangerous. If the present designs actually reduce some type of accident to cyclists that is only fortuitous luck that must be balanced against the accident types that they undoubtedly increase.

California issued its bikeway design standards in 1976 and made minor revisions in 1978. Meanwhile, the federal government was preparing bikeway design standards of its own. In 1973, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) contracted with the traffic engineering firm DeLeuw, Cather, and Company of San Francisco, with the University of California at Davis and Bicycle Research Associates of Davis, to research the subject and produce bikeway standards that would be justified by scientific research, for a cost of $281,000. The results of this research were issued in 1976 in the form of two volumes of standards, one for planning bikeways and one for designing them, and a volume of research reports on which the other two were based (Safety and Location Criteria for Bicycle Facilities, Final Report, FHWA-RD-75–112).

The research was incompetently performed. At one point, the researchers declared that speed differences made cycle traffic incompatible with motor traffic. However, their data showed that motor traffic was even more incompatible with itself because the difference in speed between motorists was greater than the difference of speed between cyclists and motorists. Because motorists say that their own speed differences don’t make them incompatible with themselves, there is no reason to believe that smaller speed differences make them incompatible with cyclists.

The researchers measured the lateral clearance with which motorists overtook cyclists who were employed in the study on very wide roads with and without bike lanes and claimed that bike-lane stripes “reduce hazardous close passes and avoidance swerves by autos.” The actual data showed no difference when bike-lane stripes were installed, the observers never observed any “hazardous close passes” or any collisions, and their measurement technique (still photos, one per passing maneuver) could not detect swerves by either cyclist or motorist. Furthermore, the situations that they researched are not typical, and particularly not typical of situations where advocates of bike lanes think they should be installed. The motor vehicle lanes (without counting the cycling space) were already from 15½ to 23½ feet wide, far greater than the usual standard of 12 feet.

The researchers claimed on the basis of paper analysis of design drawings that certain bike-lane designs reduced the conflicts between cyclists and motorists at intersections. However, in 27 percent of the situations that they analyzed, their analysis of what constituted a conflict situation was incorrect, and the researchers also assumed that the cyclists would be riding dangerously rather than properly. When corrected for these errors, their method shows that the no-bike-lane design produces fewer movement conflicts than does any bike-lane design.

The researchers tried to show that installing bike lanes actually reduced the accident rate by comparing accident rates on streets of different design without any measure of traffic volume. They developed a new, unproven statistical test that produced internal inconsistencies and has not been used since, and when their data were tested for confidence limits by normal statistical procedures, they showed that bike lanes could either have reduced or have increased accidents; nobody can tell.

After the three volumes were published, I reviewed the research reports and criticized the methods and conclusions. The federal government withdrew its proposed standards. That left the states and the federal government with nothing but the California standards. They adopted those standards with practically no change except that they left out some of California’s propaganda.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) revised the Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities in 1991, making only two significant changes. The first change says that we need more information on traffic characteristics and other factors to develop additional criteria for deciding whether a normal road, a bike-laned road, or a bike path is the best facility for any particular situation. Because the former version had no criteria (it had a list without rules that could be used to justify anything), that means that the government has no criteria that justify building a bikeway. The government obviously doesn’t want to admit that roadways are better than bikeways, but it has at least admitted that it cannot now claim that bikeways are better than roadways. The second change warns against bike paths adjacent to roadways, giving the arguments that I gave twenty years ago. The AASHTO Guide has been revised several times, but without any significant change and without any significant scientific knowledge.

These two changes and the material that was retained show in the Guide’s own words the futility of the concept of an urban transportational bikeway system. Bike paths are useful only for shortcuts where roads don’t go, and bike paths alongside roads are dangerous. The only arguments for bike lanes are those that were false when they were proposed twenty years ago. Although government shows no signs of reducing its desire to get cyclists off the roads, it finds that it is more difficult than ever to pretend that it has a scientific excuse for its desire.

That is the story of how the United States got its bikeway standards. The bikeway standards were part of the highway establishment’s long-term effort to get cyclists off the roads for the convenience of motorists. The highway establishment arranged for production of the standards and produced them over the opposition of cyclists. The highway establishment consistently refused to consider the reduction of accidents to cyclists as a goal of the bikeway standards. The only modifications that cyclists could obtain were elimination of the proposals that were so grossly dangerous that government would be liable in lawsuits.

That’s the history before about 2008. Since then, two things have happened. The antimotoring environmentalists, city planners, and such have made a big push for sidepaths, previously recognized to be dangerous, under the catchy European name of cycle tracks. Their argument is that because people prefer paths to lanes, we must build paths to achieve a big switch from motor to bicycle transport. They say that official guidance will be available before 2012. The second event is that the government, as high as the president, has announced that it is our patriotic duty to build bikeways to save the environment and escape Arab oil domination.

Governmental Policy Regarding Cycling

Governmental agencies have been notably reticent in publishing their true policies regarding cycling. They publish propaganda saying that they are in favor of cycling and intend to facilitate cycling, to make cycling much safer and more attractive. However, when the details are published, they show that government is against cycling on the roads and favors only cycling on bikeways. For example, during the time when people could submit comments regarding the federal government’s proposed adoption of the California standards, I wrote to say that the government should acknowledge that cyclists legally have the rights and duties of drivers of vehicles and that cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles. The FHWA replied that the federal government would not adopt that principle because there was insufficient evidence to prove that it was correct; that is, the federal government intends to continue its discrimination against cyclists because there is insufficient evidence to prove the contrary policy. The federal government’s statement contradicts standard scientific standards in two ways. First, in science there is never sufficient evidence to prove a theory. Scientists adopt the theory that has the best evidence. Second, the FHWA continues to discriminate against cyclists even though there is no evidence to support that action and there is some evidence against it. In other words, the FHWA was willing to denounce the vehicular-cycling principle with a claim that sounded scientific to the unsophisticated while flagrantly disobeying scientific standards to suit its own desires.

In April 1991, the administrator of the FHWA issued a public policy statement that the FHWA considers cyclists and pedestrians to be legitimate users of the highway system and intends to accommodate their use of it. Many cyclists cheered. However, I wrote to the administrator saying that use of the highway system was not the issue; the issue was whether the FHWA considered cyclists to be legitimate users of roadways. The administrator explicitly refused to answer that question, saying that he stood by his first statement. The meaning of his first mendacious statement was that the FHWA intends to get cyclists off the roads and onto paths that are shared by pedestrians, but he was afraid to say that openly.

The national highway funding act of 1991, which started with the standard name of Surface Transportation Assistance Act, was enacted under the politically correct name of Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, to the loud cheers of the cycling press. Its bicycling sections provide money for “new or improved lanes, paths, or shoulders” and for bicycle program coordinators. It provides no money to make roadways better for cycling.

The latest iteration of this mendacity has the FHWA proclaiming that it considers cyclists to be legitimate roadway users under the traffic laws and its bikeways are designed to comply with the traffic laws. Loud praise from the bikeway advocates. Sure, we allow you to use the roadway just as long as you obey the laws restricting your rights as drivers; no change from 1944, that policy.

The facts are clear. Government has a long history of trying to get cyclists off the roads while lying about that policy. The only people who have detected its lies are the cyclists who will be adversely affected by that policy.

Governmental Scientific Policy Regarding Bikeways

The Transportation Research Board, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is the nation’s official organization for transportation research. Its Bicycling Committee is the only American scientific organization intended for presenting refereed research papers on cycling transportation subjects. (Refereeing is also known as peer review. Papers that are offered are reviewed by a panel of experts for accuracy and significance only, not for other concerns.) Conferences and journals of other disciplines sometimes present research that involves bicycles or bicycling in some way, but the authors and the referees of papers in these journals are not experts in cycling, and many papers contain errors that cyclists consider elementary. For example, it took exercise physiologists about ten years to adapt to the idea that cyclists deliberately choose inefficient cadences instead of the most efficient cadence, because exercise physiologists were not expert in cycling. Only the TRB Bicycling Committee is devoted to publishing research on bicycle transportation in all its ramifications. You would expect that the TRB Bicycling Committee would be most expert about cycling and have the most competent referees in the nation. TRB has distributed to its referees an article entitled “Rules for Referees,” by Bernard K. Forscher of the Mayo Clinic, first published in Science. Forscher writes that scientific publication is intended to publish new facts or data, new ideas, and intelligent reviews of old facts and ideas. Forscher also writes that “the journal that attempts to avoid controversy, to publish only papers that are ‘right,’ or to limit its discussion and speculation defeats its purpose” (Science 150, no. 3694 [October 15, 1965]: 319–321).

A paper that I offered shows the quality of refereeing in TRB’s Bicycling Committee. I had refereed papers by others for several years and I had presented two papers before this one, so I knew the process. This paper, “The Effect of Bike-lane System Design on Cyclists’ Traffic Errors,” described and analyzed the differences in cycling behavior of cyclists in cities with bike-lane systems of different types, or none. Because the experimental method of observing cyclist behavior had not been described before in scientific journals, that was first discussed. The observed data showed that typical cyclists in cities with bike-lane systems make many more dangerous errors than cyclists in cities without bike-lane systems, or than club cyclists, and that the types of errors are logically related to the particular design of bike-lane system. The referees assigned by the Bicycling Committee submitted many objections to the paper. However, none of the objections showed that my method was unreliable, my data inaccurate, or my reasoning was flawed. Yes, they tried to show that I selected the cyclists I observed to suit my purposes, but they failed. They asserted that my data were inadequate, but as I discussed only differences that were 95 percent and 99 percent statistically valid (higher than in most behavioral research), the objection was foolish. They claimed that my data did not support my conclusions, but could not show any logical defects.

They also made many objections that are outside the scope of proper refereeing. For example, they objected that I earned money from Effective Cycling, ignoring the fact that most scientific papers are presented by people who earn their money as professional researchers. They claimed that I was biased, but never showed how that bias had affected my data or reasoning. They claimed that they would have done the research differently, but none of them ever have. Because I wrote that my system could not evaluate cyclists who rode on the wrong side of the road or on the sidewalk, they claimed that my paper should be rejected because it didn’t contain those data.

They attempted to find scientific-sounding excuses for objections. For example, I had included data from a group of club cyclists on a city ride. They complained that this was an improper control group, although I specifically wrote that it was impossible to find a control group and did not use the club cyclists as such. Because they thought that the club cyclists were too good, they assumed that I had scored the cyclists by a different standard. They complained that I had not matched the cyclists in the different groups for age, experience, sex, and so on. This procedure often serves to remove confusing effects. However, because one of the claims of bike-lane system advocates is that they attract different cycling populations, then each system must be evaluated according to those cyclists it actually has, not to just those individuals of its population that match individuals of other cycling populations. They objected that the percentage defective scores had not been obtained from rides of equal duration, although the object of using percentage defective was to eliminate the effect of different ride lengths and different routes. My comparison of behavior in different cities produced the objection that the different operating conditions created the difference that would not have existed otherwise. Of course they did; that was the discovery.

The objections were most passionate around two subjects: cyclist competence and the disadvantages of bike lanes. These are related. The referees objected to my words: “The prime advocates for bikeways expect most cyclists to ride improperly.” Because bikeway advocates argue that bikeways are intended for average unskilled cyclists rather than for elite expert cyclists, it is hard to see what is incorrect in stating their own thoughts. The referees objected that I wrote that bike lanes did not teach proper cycling behavior, basing their objection not on whether the data showed this (which, if true, would have been a valid objection) but by arguing that bike lanes were not intended to teach. Well, many people argue that bikeways are good places to learn cycling, which makes this a valid subject for discussion when data exist that bear on it. The same dislike of competent cyclists showed up in objections to another paper of mine that described the results of teaching intermediate-school cyclists. In that paper, I compared the behaviors of those trained students with those of the adult cycling population of the same city. The referees objected to that comparison, presumably because it showed that the students were much better than average adults.

Certainly, I intended my paper to stimulate thought about a controversial subject, which is a valid scientific purpose. Equally certainly, I also did not realize in advance all the items that would arouse objections. But the fact remains that although the referees opposed the paper with every thought they could invent, they did not state any objections that were valid according to Rules for Referees.

That discusses one aspect of my own experience with TRB. I also refereed papers by others and listened to presentations of papers that I had not seen before. I was most unimpressed by the quality of most papers offered for refereeing and even by many that were accepted. In short, the committee’ referees did not understand the proper role of referees and accepted low standards for papers that suited their pro-bikeway prejudices while rejecting anti-bikeway papers on nonscientific grounds.

Safety Comparison of Bikeways and Roadways

Regardless of the anticyclist motives behind bikeways, many people still advocate them and the majority believe that bikeways make cycling much safer. What evidence is there for this view? The answer is: none whatever. The bikeway debate is as big a scientific scam as the debate over cold fusion power in 1989 or as N rays in 1905. There is no evidence in favor of bikeways to debate. No analytical study of traffic movements shows that bikeways reduce traffic conflicts that cause collisions or make them easier to handle. No accident study shows that bikeways reduce accidents to cyclists operating at normal roadway-cycling speeds.

On the other side, there is plenty of evidence against bikeways, particularly against bikeways intended for urban transportation. Analytical study of traffic movements shows that when cyclists act and are treated as drivers of vehicles, they make safer traffic movements with fewer conflicts with motor traffic than any bikeway design that has been proposed, except for the elevated bike path that flies over all traffic. In cities that have bike-lane systems, both cyclists and motorists make many more of the traffic mistakes that are significant causes of car-bike collisions than in cities without bike-lane systems. Analysis of car-bike collision statistics (Ken Cross’s second, national study done for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) shows that all practical bikeway designs increase the number and difficulty of collision situations that produce some 30 percent of car-bike collisions while reducing the difficulty of only 2 percent of collision situations. Analysis of all accidents to cyclists shows that bikeways are aimed at only 0.3 percent of accidents to cyclists. Cycling on bike paths has an accident rate 2.6 times that for the same cyclists on normal roads. Bike paths that attract sufficient traffic to be worthwhile have such dangerous traffic that the governments that operate them have had to establish speed limits far lower than normal roadway cycling speeds: 15, 10, and even 5 mph.

Certainly, the evidence against bikeways is not proof that cycling on the road is safer, but when one considers that many people with the full resources of government have tried for many years to demonstrate contrary evidence and have failed to find any, this is as close to proof as any scientific debate ever gets. The only reasonable conclusion is that traveling on urban bikeways, in general, is more dangerous than traveling on urban roadways.

Convenience Comparison of Bikeways and Roadways

Bikeways would make cycling more convenient if they reduced travel time for typical trips. To do this, they must either allow faster travel or shorten the distance. Because bikeways are generally not as ubiquitous as streets, distances are generally longer. Because of their greater danger, bikeways generally require slower travel and more delays than do streets. Therefore, in general, bikeways are less convenient to use than are normal streets.

There are exceptions. The bike path that makes a shortcut that is not permitted to motorists may reduce the travel time for those for whom it is conveniently located. Even if the cyclists have to ride very slowly because of its dangers, if it reduces the distance greatly it might also reduce travel time.

Importance of Speed in Cycling Transportation

It is possible that if cyclists ride very slowly on bikeways and accept many delays wherever bikeways cross motor traffic, travel on bikeways may be as safe as travel on roadways. However, excessive travel time is a great discouragement to cycling transportation. The slower cyclists have to go, the fewer will pay the time price of cycling instead of motoring. Bikeways discourage cycling transportation because of the longer travel times involved. If we are to get a reasonable proportion of cycling transportation, we have to allow cyclists to travel at the highest speed that their physical conditions can produce. Those who expect to get a great reduction in motoring by attracting people to bikeways are choosing the method that will produce the least effect. Although bikeways may attract short-distance cyclists, they will deter long-distance cyclists, and it is the long-distance cyclists who produce the most substitute miles. In a Bicycling! magazine survey in 1980, 50 percent of the commuting miles were produced by cyclists who rode more than 10 miles one way.

Relative Levels of Skill Required

The opposition to bikeways came from lawful, competent, well-informed cyclists who showed that no bikeway design could provide safer traffic movements than the lawful movements those cyclists employed and advocated. Once the highway establishment realized the source of the opposition, it argued that bikeways are intended for the less-competent and ill-informed average bicyclist who had been trained by bike-safety programs and cannot be expected to be capable of obeying the traffic laws. The argument is that bikeways make cycling safe for incompetent people and that cycling on bikeways can be done safely with less skill than cycling on roads. Analysis of the skill elements required for a safe cycling trip (such as making safe lane changes) on normal roads and on bike-laned roads show that all the same elements are required for each trip. Claiming otherwise is another evidence of fraud, because the highway establishment has discovered no evidence for its claim that bikeways eliminate the need for major traffic-cycling skills. It makes the claim only because it wants bikeways while expert cyclists don’t.

Not only is there no evidence that bikeways make cycling safe for incompetent cyclists, there is plenty of evidence that they make cycling more dangerous. A very simple example shows that bikeway systems require more skill than road systems. Even in cities with bikeways, cyclists cannot make typical urban trips without using the road system. Therefore, cyclists need to know both bikeway and roadway cycling techniques, which is a greater skill level than just roadway technique alone.

More accurately, because installing bikeways into a road system makes the system more complicated, difficult to understand and dangerous, problems which bikeway designers have not solved, cyclists in cities with bikeways need to know how to protect themselves by extra-cautious movements to compensate for the bikeway designers’ failure to provide safe movements through safe design. In short, the cyclist needs to know how to outwit the bikeway designers and correct their mistakes and difficulties, which requires a far greater level of skill than cycling on a well-designed road as the driver of a vehicle. If the designers and the skillful cyclists cannot solve these problems, it is entirely unreasonable to expect unskilled cyclists to solve them. We have been unable to devise any way in which unskilled drivers can operate safely, despite devoting almost a century to the effort.

Engineering and Scientific Summary of Bikeway Controversy

The addition of bikeways to the normal urban street system increases the complication of the system. This increased complication makes the system harder to understand, and it increases the number of dangerous traffic conflicts and makes them more difficult to handle, both from the design standpoint and from the user’s standpoint. The increased complexity raises the level of skill required of both motorists and cyclists and increases the number of traffic accidents.

The Appeal of Bikeways

Given the evidence that bikeways make cycling more dangerous and less convenient, why do so many people either advocate bikeways or at least favor them?

The first obvious reason is that motorists believe that bikeways make motoring more convenient by pushing bicycle traffic to the side of the road, or off it where possible.

The second obvious reason is that people believe that pushing cyclists off to the edge of the roadway makes cycling safe. As discussed previously, both traffic-engineering knowledge and car-bike collision statistics prove the exact opposite, as nearly as anything can be proved in engineering. However, people insist on strongly believing this falsehood despite the facts. This is a fear that they have been raised with and they won’t change their belief.

This cyclist-inferiority phobia has two obvious political and psychological effects. The first is to justify the selfishness of motorists’ desire to push cyclists to the edge of the roadway. See, we are doing cyclists a favor by prohibiting them from riding dangerously where we drive!

The second effect is strenuous bikeway advocacy by bicycle advocates who are opposed to motoring. One would think that bicycle advocates would hate the bikeways that were designed to restrict cycling, but bicycle advocates don’t think that way. They believe that bikeways make cycling safe, particularly for beginners, as proclaimed by the motorists’ propaganda. Therefore, they believe, providing bikeways will unleash a great flood of unwilling and unhappy motorists transferring to safe and happy bicycle transportation.

This combination has enabled government to cloak its actions in the flag of patriotism. The program of providing facilities that push cyclists to the edge of the roadway makes cycling safe and thereby enables America to fight pollution, reduce payments to the oil nations, reduce highway congestion, increase health while reducing obesity, produce a more vibrant society, and slow global warming.

What’s not to like? Except that it is all based on lies and the switch from motoring to bicycling caused by bikeways will probably be insignificant.