Welcome to the week. Let’s make it a good one.
Below are the most notable stories I came across in the past seven days. Thanks to everyone who suggested links this week!
Daylighting data: I love two things about this story: First, it underscores the positive impact of removing parking from corners (aka “daylighting”) and it is an inspiring example of a city council holding a DOT to account. Can you imagine Portland City Council staff launching an investigation of a PBOT decision? (Streetsblog NYC)
Road rage turns ugly: A driver and bicycle rider were detained by police in Marin, California after some sort of altercation caused the driver to get out of their car and stab the bicycle rider with a knife several times. (CBS News)
Cycling award controversy: A UK nonprofit who intentionally excluded trans riders from the winners of its, “100 Women in Cycling Award” now faces backlash. (Bike Radar)
Anti vehicular cycling video: Popular YouTuber Not Just Bikes has released a 90-minute takedown of the late “vehicular cycling” advocate John Forester, whom he credits with single-handedly making cycling dangerous in America. (Not Just Bikes)
Wrong turns on red: A city in Missouri has banned right turns on red in school zones following a collision that killed a nine-year old who was riding to school. The policy allows schools to opt out of the law if they so choose. (KSHB)
Cost of cars: Because of rising prices on cars and service/repairs, the cost of owning a car is up 40.59% since January 2020 and nearly one in five buyers has a monthly payment over $1,000. (NPR)
Homework: Get ready for ‘War on Cars’ Week in Portland by reading this short interview with Life After Cars authors and then make sure to see them live at Bike Happy Hour on Wednesday and/or Powell’s on Thursday. (OPB)
It’s official, car bloat kills: What further evidence do elected officials need to make policy that further regulates the purchase of supersized vehicles than an op-ed from the BMJ saying unequivocally that larger cars are a public safety hazard? (British Medical Journal)
Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week. The Monday Roundup is a community effort, so please feel free to send us any great stories you come across.
Thanks for reading.
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We watched the Not Just Bikes video last night. It’s 3x the length of videos we tend to have the patience for, but it was GOOD. I love attention to footnotes and he brought all the receipts.
It’s amazing. A must watch. I wasn’t aware of the depth of idiocy and harm Forester accomplished. Jason Slaughter is a saint for reviewing all those hundreds of pages Mr. Forester wrote in his engineering and proper riding manuals, as well as all the vids of Forester’s speeches. It goes to show how effective someone’s argument can be based purely on a common-sense, rationalist view, while essentially ignoring any actual evidence.
There were several times during the vid I was dumbfounded someone could actually believe this silliness, let along persuade others. One of my favorite parts was an instance where Forester is trying to show how clueless the Dean of traffic engineering from a University in Holland is when attempting to answer questions related to traffic engineering.
Hearing his book read out-loud makes it sound like satire, honestly. I can’t believe this was considered the definitive cycling book in America for so long.
thanks for commenting this. I’ll make sure to watch the whole thing now!
This video vastly overstates John Forester’s influence on stroadway design. I have yet to meet a highway or city transportation engineer who has ever heard of John Forester or even “vehicler cycling” – some planners may have heard of him, yes, but not engineers – and it’s engineers who make the final design decisions. The MUTCD and AASHTO has a far bigger influence on our more awful bike infrastructure. LCI, Cycle Savvy, and the numerous pro cycling clubs are clearly an outgrowth of John Forester, however. I found this video in poor taste, poorly researched (no mention of the 1970s oil crises related to bicycling suddenly becoming popular), and the presenters were highly biased.
And JF is correct on several points. Most bicycles out there, by volume, are “utility bikes” with brands like Next, Magna, Pacific, Murray, Huffy – are utter crap, always have been and always will be. Similar bikes made by Trek, Specialized, Jamis, etc are much smaller in number, some of which are higher quality (though a Trek 220 is consistently utter crap and Specialized Hardrock isn’t much better), but a much smaller segment of the overall market. I like my Surly bikes, but I know that the total volume of all Surly bikes is a tiny percentage of all bikes out there. John Forester was writing in the 1970s and 80s when most bicycles were still heavy steel, the time of the Schwinn Varsity and 27×1 1/4″ tires – mountain bikes was a niche market – and in spite of all the progress since then in bicycle technology, the most popular bikes by sales volume is still the crap that Walmart and Target sells.
I see people all up and down the comment section on this blog and in Reddit comment sections making arguments about bike infrastructure from a vehicular cycling point of view. John Forester is an avatar of the car brained anti bike infrastructure crowd, writ large. Even if people aren’t directly quoting or name checking him, his way of thinking has infused American attitudes toward bike lanes and bike infrastructure.
Also, the fact that his opinion on non drop handlebar bicycles didn’t change one iota between the first edition and most recent printing of his book (forty years later) is a microcosm of his unwavering and unfounded views about bike lane safety.
I also watched it last night. The audio and captions are good enough that I had no problem watching it at 2x speed.
And yes, it is extremely well made.
Interesting choice with the Bike Radar article as this is one of the few topics you heavily censor. Kind of hard to discuss when only the allowed perspective gets through.
“I will not accept recognition from a committee that has chosen to align with the Supreme Court’s definition of “woman” as sex at birth. “
What other definition is there? I am no more a Black cyclist if I show up with blackface than a biological male is a women showing up for a women’s ride or race.
I don’t understand how biological women are so eager to be displaced in the sporting world.
Let men wear what they want, whatever makeup they want or hair they want, be accepted for “top 100 road or mountain bike riders” but let’s please keep an understanding of biology and keep female spaces and recognition available to females.
Oh look, another biology expert who hasn’t cracked a biology textbook in decades. Suffice it to say that the science of sex and gender have evolved since you were last in a classroom.
We don’t actually need to wait for another nine-year-old child, or even an adult, to die. We can just end turn-on-red. Not just near schools. End it everywhere. It’s dangerous, and it also enforces the idea that a driver should get to decide whether or not to observe traffic laws based on their expedience. There’s forty years of data, plus enough dead and injured pedestrians and bicyclists, to indicate that mildly inconveniencing motorists by making them wait for the light to change is a net good.
‘Murrica:
The tiniest driver inconvenience >>>>>> brutal homicide of your neighbor by cage-driver turning right on red