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Tag Archive for: bike commuting

Join Us at the Philly Bike Expo!

October 28, 2021/0 Comments/by John Allen

The American Bicycling Education Association is pleased to announce that we’ll be at the Philly Bike Expo. So mark your calendars!

Our booth at the Philly Bike Expo
We’re back! This was our booth in 2019.

Founded in 2010 by Bilenky Cycle Works, the Philly Bike Expo promotes “the fun, function, fitness and freedom to be found on two wheels.” The event fosters relationships between the cycling community and dedicated companies and organizations.

Bilenky hosts the event so we can all “admire the artisans whose craft enables us to ride two-wheeled art, to applaud the activists whose tireless efforts further our cycling infrastructure and to explore cycling as a fun and efficient transportation alternative.”

We’ll be sharing a booth in the Expo Hall with the Lehigh Valley CAT-Coalition for Appropriate Transportation.

Concerned about Covid? There is information online about the Expo’s Covid Protocol. We are vaccinated, will be masked, and consider the risk acceptable.

Pam Murray’s bike, home from errands…

Street Smarts — and a raffle.

The recently published Bicycling Street Smarts, CyclingSavvy Edition will be available at the CyclingSavvy/CAT booth. Yes, autographed by the author!  And we’ll be raffling off copies. The grand prize winner also gets a full scholarship to a CyclingSavvy course, online or in person.

We’re having workshops too!

Two of us are giving presentations on Sunday:

John and a friend rode Spruce Street.

Pamela Murray, The Bike Life, Sunday. 1:30 PM — Pam rides over 6,000 miles per year for transportation, fitness and recreation. She is a CyclingSavvy instructor and Bicycle Benefits Ambassador, and leads bike rides for vacation and camping.

John Allen, Riding Philly Streets, Sunday, 3 PM. Videos and discussion of tactics to meet the challenges of Philly riding. In and out of the bike lane! Getting a smile from a SEPTA bus driver!

Click to zoom in for details about the ride.

And a bike ride…

We are also organizing an unracer bike ride. It will leave at 7:30 AM on Saturday from the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial (just downriver from the Girard Bridge), and will arrive at the Convention Center in time for you to check in for the opening of the exhibit hall.

We hope to see you in The Cradle of Liberty!

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PBE-featured.png 310 594 John Allen https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Allen2021-10-28 17:56:592021-10-28 22:28:51Join Us at the Philly Bike Expo!
Happy cyclingSavvy group

Webinar Starts Today

December 9, 2020/0 Comments/by John Allen

In a few short hours

CyclingSavvy’s free one-hour Zoom webinar, Introduction to CyclingSavvy, starts today:

6 PM Pacific time
7 PM Mountain time
8 PM Central time
9 PM Eastern time

Because of demand, the American Bicycling Education Association has purchased lots more Zoom room.

California CyclingSavvy Instructor Gary Cziko will present. The Webinar will include live chat with three other instructors, and a Q&A session. If you can’t make it, ABEA will be posting a recording. We’ll announce where YouTube has placed it, once we know.

Bike club/organization members

Your club’s requested donation of $100 will give all club members free access to the Zoom Webinar for Bike Clubs and Group Rides, being held at the same time next Wednesday, December 16, 2020.

Club leaders, register here. Choose the Benefactor level. Include your organization’s name in the “Company” box. Note that your club is a Webinar Sponsor in the “Comments” box.

Donations will pay for work being developed exclusively for club and group cycling. Here’s a preview of the new online Group Ride Leader course currently in development:

Here are the sponsoring organizations as of December 8, 2020. Yours can still be on this list!

  • Bicycle Club of Irvine (CA)
  • Big Orange Cycling (CA)
  • Cincinnati Cycle Club (OH)
  • Coalition of Arizona Bicyclists (AZ)
  • GS Andiamo (CA)
  • Major Taylor Cycling Club Los Angeles (CA)
  • Riverside Bicycle Club (CA)
  • San Diego Bicycle Club (CA)
  • Velo Club La Grange (CA)
  • WeeklyRides.com (NC)
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/52509228_1496747777124705_786802399053348864_n.jpg 680 960 John Allen https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Allen2020-12-09 10:55:382020-12-09 11:38:13Webinar Starts Today
Still from video shot fro ma bicycleMadrid Ciclista

The Madrid Model

August 7, 2020/17 Comments/by Miguel Cardo

Note from Editor John Allen: This post started with a request from Madrid Ciclista in Madrid, Spain, to publish a translation of an article on this blog into Spanish. We were happy to comply. A look at their website revealed that Madrid has been thinking outside the box about bicycling. Miguel Cardo of Madrid Ciclista wrote the post below describing the “Modelo Madrid” in 99.44% perfect English.

Fire up Google Maps.

Switch to satellite view and have a look at any large avenue in my city, Madrid:

Madrid boulevard with ciclocarriles 30 marking

 

 

Madrid boulevard with ciclocarriles 30 marking

Lanes marked with that symbol have a speed limit of 30 km/h (about 19 mph). The default of 50 km/h (about 31 mph) is allowed in the other lanes. The marking with the oversized sharrow means:

  • Bicyclists can use the lane;
  • They have to ride in the middle of the lane.

All this started in 2013.

The city government was still reeling from the excesses of a real-estate bubble. Debt had ballooned to 7.4 billion euros after a failed Olympic bid. [1] The city could not even dream of any significant infrastructure project. A giant fine from the European Commission was looming for the city’s failure to reduce its pollution levels. [2]

City officials had to come up with something. This time they just couldn’t buy their way out of trouble. So they tried something different: a plan to increase cycling modal share without any large infrastructure projects.

The first plan was modest.

City officials started with a timid plan of “ciclocarriles 30” along the avenues and boulevards surrounding the Old Town. “Ciclocarriles 30” means 30 km/h bike lanes. The plan also included a municipal bike-share scheme that would use electric bikes, because Madrid is notoriously hilly. [3]

Municipal bike-share bicycle riding over a CC30 marking - photo by permission of @MadCycleCuqui

Municipal bike-share bicycle about to pass over a CC30 marking. Photo by permission of @MadCycleCuqui

In the beginning, nobody thought much of the plan.

In a chaotic and aggressive environment, motorists would not welcome the new users on “their” roads. Madrid city police have a well-deserved reputation for not enforcing traffic laws. Most people thought of the plan as some low-cost desperate measure to postpone the EU fine for a while, at least until a different administration was in charge. I’m not even sure that the city officials who created the plan had much faith in it.

Onward to Modelo Madrid.

Modelo Madrid makes urban cycling a transportation mode equal to any otherFast forward five or six years. Madrid city police still turned a blind eye to speeding, but the unexpected happened.

Madrid’s undisciplined, chaotic, aggressive motorists can be seen moving slowly behind a cyclist, waiting for the right moment to overtake — changing lanes to pass in the lane to the left.

The true benefit of the 30 km/h (19 mph) speed limit is not that motorists comply with it, but that they drive at 15 km/h (9 mph) behind cyclists without even revving their engines. A new generation of cyclists — many of whom started riding on the new municipal white electric bikes — uses these roads with confidence.

Every road user is mandated to control his or her traffic lane.

A third measure sustaining this change was a city ordinance issued in 2010, which not only allowed but made mandatory riding on the center of the lane. [4]

In the video below, shot by the rider of a folding bicycle, nothing exciting happens, so don’t feel compelled to watch it all the way through.

The number of cyclists is still modest (2-3 percent in the central area, according to counts by Madrid Ciclista) but growing. [5]

Percentage of bicycles in central Madrid with respect to other vehicles, counts by Madrid Ciclista

Percentage of bicycles in central Madrid with respect to other vehicles, counts by Madrid Ciclista

The graph below, from the city’s lower, less accurate counts, shows the trend from year to year:

Yearly trends in bicycle use in central Madrid

Yearly trends in bicycle use in central Madrid

When compared with other European cities, the number of crashes per million trips is encouragingly low. [6].

City counts showing trend in bicycle use

We can now say that slow lanes were the origin of the so-called Modelo Madrid. The Madrid Model recognizes urban cycling as a transportation mode equal to any other, not requiring special infrastructure but granting the same rights to cyclists as to other vehicle operators. [7]

No cyclists ride on the sidewalk. Cyclists grant the same respect to pedestrians as they demand from motorists. Modelo Madrid puts in practice many of the principles pioneered by John Forester and refined in the United States by CyclingSavvy.

Modelo Madrid: the way of the future?

As with any other aspect of public policy, we can’t “ride” on our laurels — to paraphrase the English idiom — and expect equal treatment for cyclists in Madrid forever.

Economic stimulus money spent on “sustainable” projects is always a threat for urban cyclists, especially in these COVID-19 times. Going back to the segregated model is still possible. Some very loud cycling activists and associations are always demanding narrow bike lanes in the door zone or on sidewalks, following the North European model.

Here’s an example from Seville:

Sidewalk bikeway in Seville, Spain

Bikeway in Seville, Spain, 2018. Photo credit: Gary Cziko

On the other hand, more Spanish cities are introducing slow lanes, especially after the COVID-19 lockdown: Valladolid, Burgos, Leganés, Granada…

Cyclist in Ciclocarril 30

Photo by permission of @MadCycleCuqui

Additional thoughts from Editor John Allen:

Which way should US states go? Could there be slow lanes on multi-lane streets in the USA? Keep in mind that higher speeds are common now on e-bikes, which probably did not in exist when Seville bikeways were planned and constructed.

Consider that automated crash avoidance is becoming common on motor vehicles, and improving. A transition to autonomous vehicles will follow, in time.

Suppose that a hoped-for decrease in motor traffic occurs with autonomous vehicles. Consider also the dangers of edge riding, and the reduction in efficiency and safety when turning vehicles must cross the path of through-traveling ones, rather than merging before turning.

All of these factors suggest that an integrated model like the Modelo Madrid could become more compelling as time passes.

Does US practice support the Modelo Madrid?

There is no specific mention in the model US traffic law [8] of different lanes with different posted speed limits. Yet these are in wide use, established indirectly.

In several states, large trucks are held to a lower speed limit than other vehicles [9], and are prohibited from using the leftmost lanes on multi-lane highways [10]. Edge-of-the road “friction” with parked vehicles, walk-outs, drive-outs and parking decreases the safe speed in the rightmost lane on city streets.

The general rule is to pass on the left, in the “fast lane”. But faster vehicles may pass bicyclists on the right in a right-turn lane, and sometimes a bus lane.

In all of these cases, the basic speed limit applies: to drive no faster than is reasonable and prudent. That speed is established by the design of the street and by the users who are present. Here’s an example of a bike lane to the left of a bus lane on University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin. [11]

Bike lane to left of bus lane, Madison, Wisconsin, 2001

Bike lane to left of bus lane, Madison, Wisconsin, 2001. Photo credit: John S. Allen

Footnotes

(Web links in the body of an article are more usual, but we prefer not to sidetrack readers into articles which need explanation, some in Spanish. So, these footnotes – Editor.)

[1] Newspaper article about the debt

[2] Newspaper article about the fine

[3] Online news article describing the original plan, with map

[4] City ordinance;  translation of relevant sections into English

[5] Madrid Ciclista’s article “en Madrid no hay bicis” (“There are no bicycles in Madrid”) describes and promotes bicycle counts by citizens, and asserts that the city government has been undercounting.

[6] Crash rates in different European cities, and bicycle trends in Madrid. Article is in English: http://madridciclista.org/city-of-bikes/

[7] Madrid Ciclista article describing the Modelo Madrid.

[8] https://iamtraffic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/UVC2000.pdf — see pages 147-148. Each US state enacts traffic law separately, and so there are differences.

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States

[10] https://static.tti.tamu.edu/tti.tamu.edu/documents/policy/congestion-mitigation/truck-lane-restrictions.pdf

[11] The University Avenue installation serves a large student population. The buses, on their fixed route, stay in the bus lane. More details here.

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/city_of_bikes1.jpg 395 702 Miguel Cardo https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png Miguel Cardo2020-08-07 11:55:282020-08-07 12:51:20The Madrid Model
Correct lane positionJohn S. Allen

Passing a City Bus Safely on a Bicycle

June 8, 2020/2 Comments/by John Allen

A savvy cyclist shot this video.

Little did he know that a yet-to-be savvy cyclist would play a starring role in it.

Here’s what the savvy cyclist did in the video.

  1. He sees the bus stopped ahead. Well in advance of reaching it, he looks over his shoulder to check whether there is a vehicle behind him.
  2. There is, so he makes a left-turn signal with his left arm, indicating the desire to merge left to pass the bus.
  3. He verifies that the driver behind him is yielding to let him move left before he does so.
  4. He passes the bus with safe clearance, ready to brake and fall back in case the bus starts to merge out from the curb.
  5. Once in the bus driver’s forward field of view, he signals to the bus driver the desire to merge back to the right.
  6. He positions himself so that he can see a pedestrian crossing the street right in front of the bus. He allows ample time to slow down or maneuver if  a pedestrian pops into view.
  7. After passing the bus, he adopts an appropriate lane position, preventing being overtaken by two lines of traffic at once and jammed against the curb.

Protected by SUV

The next driver behind has let the savvy cyclist into line.

The yet-to-be savvy cyclist:

  1. Keeps far right as long as possible before reaching the bus, and does not check for overtaking traffic.
  2. Does not signal to indicate the desire to change lane position.
  3. Swerves out shortly before reaching the bus, again without checking to see if there is any traffic behind.
  4. Rides close to the side of the bus! This puts the yet-to-be savvy cyclist in danger of being swept underneath if the bus merges out.
  5. Would not see a pedestrian crossing the street from in front of the bus until the last split second — and therefore would be likely to collide with that pedestrian.
  6. Merges to the right without signaling to the bus driver.
  7. Merges all the way over to the curb, inviting drivers of motor vehicles to “share” an un-sharable lane.

Swerve out

The other cyclist merges out just before passing the bus. What if a car, rather than another cyclist, had been following her?

I, the savvy cyclist

I’ll admit it, I was the savvy cyclist. What were my expectations?

  • I believed I could communicate with the driver of the vehicle behind me using a hand signal and head turn.
  • I knew the driver behind me had to digest my request to merge into line, so I started my communication early.
  • I did not assume the motorist would cooperate and let me merge, so I checked — trust but verify. This is easy to do with a quick glance into a rear-view mirror.
  • I understood that passing a bus close to its side places me in deadly danger if the bus merges out, and also invites unsafe overtaking.
  • I knew the bus driver would have an easier time knowing my intentions if he or she could see me as I prepared to merge right.
  • I understood that I could safely allow only one line of traffic to overtake after passing the bus. I had to position myself to avoid unsafe passing by two lines of traffic at once.
  • I had a mental inventory of things to watch for: the bus pulls out abruptly, an overtaking motorist moves too soon, a pedestrian abruptly emerges in front of me. But I was ready, so none of these things would cause me a problem, or even require quick action on my part.

This sounds like a lot, but it’s not. It becomes second nature when practicing “driver behavior.”

Too close to bus

I am passing the bus safely. The other cyclist couldn’t see a person crossing the street in front of the bus, and couldn’t avoid the bus if it merged out.

The cyclist in the video was practicing “edge” behavior

Her behavior indicated that she wanted to take up as little space as possible. She was an “edge rider,” naive about potential hazards in front of her, and fatalistic about those behind her. This made her moves unpredictable and turned potential hazards into real ones.

What behavior is truly easier for motorists?

I have long contended that having to slow and follow a bicyclist disturbs motorists much less than the following confusing situations:

The cyclist is inviting me to pass, but the available width looks iffy. The angel on one shoulder says that I should wait till there is more room. The devil on the other says: ‘It’ll be close, but I’ll make it.’

Or perhaps:

The cyclist can’t continue riding behind the bus. She is either going to stop behind it, or swerve out. The angel on one shoulder says: ‘Slow down so she can swerve out in front of me.’ The devil on the other shoulder says: ‘Damn bicyclists.’

How about if you’re the bus driver:

I lie awake at night worrying that I’ll crush a cyclist under my bus.

This has happened in my city.

How much better it is for the mental health of everybody concerned for a cyclist to act as a participant in traffic, rather than a nobody!

Correct lane position

The shared-lane marking properly indicates my line of travel. The bus changes lanes to pass me safely. The other cyclist’s wheel is visible in the corner of the picture.

Lower stress and more safety passing a bus

As for cyclists, it is infinitely more satisfying to interact as a full participant in  traffic, rather than be a wallflower!

For savvy cyclists, stress levels go way down, safety goes way up — and there’s even more: A rewarding sense of interaction with other people. Almost every motorist will cooperate with you, if you only help them know how to do that.

One more thought

The driver of the vehicle behind me, intentionally or not, was standing guard for me. I was protected from following vehicles. (The word “protected” has been used and misused in other ways related to bicycling, but that is a discussion for another post.)

On any typical ride, a cyclist interacts directly with tens or  hundreds of strangers, sometimes thousands. Cycling and motoring are the daily activities in which a person interacts directly with more strangers than in any others.

It’s a dance, and as we say in CyclingSavvy, the dance is yours to lead. I find it soundly rewarding to do that assertively yet cooperatively.

I shot this video in May 2017 on Boston’s Longwood Avenue — here, in case you would care to know. This neighborhood has a high concentration of health science and research facilities. I may well have been photographing a doctor or scientist. Brilliance in one field doesn’t help you understand safe behavior near a bus. That’s why we need to teach all people, no matter how smart, how to ride safely.

Update

I wish that I could offer a bright and sunny conclusion to this article: Longwood-area cyclists signed up for a CyclingSavvy course, discovered how easy it is to communicate with other road users and control safe space around themselves.

Not so. Since I shot the video, the shared-lane markings on Longwood Avenue have been replaced with bike lanes.

bike lane on longwood avenue boston

2019: Google street view of Longwood Avenue

These bike lanes direct cyclists to ride like the one in my video, and give motorists to understand that this is bicyclists’ proper place and conduct — as shown in the image above downloaded from a 2019 Google Street view.

Enough for now. The reasons bicyclists get set up for failure like this are a topic for another post.

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bus-SLM.jpg 335 536 John Allen https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Allen2020-06-08 09:55:062020-07-21 18:55:14Passing a City Bus Safely on a Bicycle

Requiem for a Heavyweight-••-John-Forester-1929-2020

June 2, 2020/11 Comments/by John Schubert

(Also in Spanish — este artículo está también disponible en español en la web de Madrid Ciclista.)

Back in my misspent youth, I dropped 60 cents on the then-new February 1973 issue of Bike World Magazine. In it was the first-ever article by a guy named John Forester.

John Forester photo with note of appreciation.Forester was steaming mad.

The city of Palo Alto, California, had decided it wanted bikeways. The city got them by putting up signage, requiring bicyclists to ride on the sidewalks. Forester tried them and found them dangerous at very ordinary cycling speeds of 10-12 mph, and so he chronicled the hazards in a two-page article.

Forester cited two fatal bike/pedestrian collisions to underscore the danger of mixing bicycles and pedestrians. He wrote about turning conflicts, poor sight distances at driveway intersections, and the impossibility of making a safe and sensible left turn. Forester wrote that he hoped to get arrested, so he could challenge the city’s sidewalk requirement.

That article sparked an epiphany for me. Until then, I’d dreamed of sidepaths along all my favorite roads. Three feet wide, and just for me! Wheeeeee!

The epiphany was, “Be careful what you wish for.” Because even a city as sophisticated as Palo Alto got it completely wrong.

I learned: Sometimes, a well-intentioned intervention is far worse than leaving well enough alone. And that is just the beginning of what I learned from John Forester.

Forester died on April 19, half a year shy of his 91st birthday. The cause of death was a lingering flu, not suspected to be Covid-19. Forester left behind nearly 50 years of immense contributions to the cycling community, in ways that weren’t even imaginable before he articulated them.

My own Forester-related epiphany pales in comparison to those of many thousands of others. I was already a bike rider. Forester made me a better bike rider. Others were liberated to use their bikes to go anywhere, when they previously couldn’t.

Independent mobility for a legally blind person

No one has expressed this better than Eli Damon, a resident of western Massachusetts whose eyesight is not good enough for him to get a driver’s license:

Socializing was especially difficult for me for many reasons, but an important one was that my mobility limitations hindered my ability to act spontaneously or to interact with others on an equal basis. . . . Asking for a ride . . . left me in a constantly dependent and inferior social position. I was lonely and isolated. . . .

. . . My principal social outlet [in 2005] was my weekly choir practice, which . . . was fifteen miles away (ten miles was my limit at the time) on unfamiliar, difficult, scary roads, so biking seemed impossible. I was too far out of the way for other members of the choir to pick me up. There were no buses that could take me.

And Damon had lost his ride to the choir practice.

He found a cycling book that had been given to him.

Eli Damon's copy of Effective cycling 6th Edition

Eli Damon’s copy of Effective Cycling, 6th Edition

In desperation, I dug the book out and started reading it, hoping to find a clue to my mobility problem. The book was Effective Cycling, by John Forester.

As I read the book, I became very excited. It suggested that I should ride my bike according to the same rules drivers of motor vehicles use and that I should stay away from the edge of the road, sometimes riding in the center or even on the left side of a lane, thus occupying the entire lane. I knew that the designs of roads provided a simple and predictable environment for motorists to travel with ease and flexibility. If I could use the roads in the same manner on a bike, then I could go anywhere with the same ease and flexibility. This was a totally new concept to me, and I was somewhat skeptical of it, but I recognized its immense potential.

I quickly became comfortable riding assertively on small quiet roads. I advanced my testing to bigger, busier roads. And then even bigger, even busier roads. . . I was ready to take on the scariest road I knew of: Route 9 in Hadley, a major four-lane arterial.

. . .

Eli Damon Rides Route 9

Eli Damon rides Route 9 in Hadley, Massachusetts

It was as if I was no longer disabled. . . I was still [legally] blind, but ignorance, not blindness, had been my disability all along. I had been healed. I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I could do all of the normal things that other people did. I could live a full, normal life. I could go to choir practice.

That’s what John Forester did for people.

(You can read Damon’s entire 2013 essay at https://iamtraffic.org/equality/overcoming-ignorance-and-fear.)

And yet, Forester made many enemies in bicycling, thanks to a famously abrasive temperament. Sadly, Forester’s detractors are mercilessly dancing on his grave.

For years, Forester’s detractors have shamelessly mischaracterized his opinions with demeaning distortions and outright falsehoods. Some have written hit pieces disguised as obituaries. One obit called Forester a “Dinosaur” in the headline.

John Forester’s contributions . . . far outweigh those of his detractors.

A man who gives legally blind people independent mobility deserves a better remembrance than that.

More like this:

“John’s contributions to bicycling — as transportation, recreation, sport, a vehicle for fitness, social interaction, and discovery — far outweigh those of his detractors, wrote Pete Van Nuys, executive director of the Orange County (California) Bicycle Coalition. “John stood for, and rode for, human dignity and equality. He advocated respect for law and common sense; he trusted civility over fearmongering; he promoted responsibility of the individual above government overreach.”

Yes, one had to look past Forester’s famously abrasive temperament to get the value he offered. But there was immense value.

Because what Forester did was far better than complaining about bad bicycle facilities. He gave us the vocabulary and the framing to understand good versus bad facilities, good versus bad riding, and the root causes of crashes. He gave us the revelation that we could control the behavior of other road users to make ourselves safer. We didn’t have to be passive victims. We could create our own success on the road. On almost any road. Today.

That vocabulary and framing didn’t exist before Forester. If I may exaggerate only slightly to make the point, how good a chemist could you be if you didn’t have the periodic table of the elements?

Before John Forester, we were all road sneaks.

Before Forester, almost every bicyclist rode in a style we call “road sneak,” hiding from other traffic, believing s/he didn’t belong, and even hoping to go unnoticed. Forester replaced all that with a concept well articulated by one of his best instructors, the late Steve Schmitt: “Visible plus predictable equals safe.”

Fred DeLong's illustration of how to avoid a car door

Fred DeLong’s illustration of how to avoid a car door. Well-intentioned, but this exact behavior causes many collisions, some of them fatal. Forester liberated us from this thinking.

Before Forester, other famous bicycling writers pretty much endorsed the “road sneak” vision of a cyclist’s place (or lack thereof).

Even the great Fred DeLong instructed people to ride in the door zone, with the absurd notion that you could swerve to avoid an opening car door and yet be safe. Writers Richard Ballantine and Eugene Sloane, whose books sold in the millions in the early 1970s, offered similarly hapless advice. Other authors of that era were also hapless. They were well-intentioned, but they didn’t know any better.

(In 2013, our colleague John S. Allen wrote a very good critique of the “dark ages” of bicycle safety advice before Forester. It’s at http://john-s-allen.com/blog/?page_id=5273.)

Five core principles guide our thinking

Forester’s framing began with articulating the core principles of traffic law, and telling bicyclists to follow the core principles. Today, they sound pretty mundane:

  • All vehicle operators keep to the right.
  • Yield to cross traffic according to pre-defined rules and traffic-control devices.
  • First-come, first-served (meaning that if someone wants to pass you, s/he must do so safely, and you still have the right to be on the road).
  • Destination positioning at intersections (Left-turn lanes and right-turn lanes are for everyone.)
  • Between intersections, you choose your position on the roadway based on your speed and on the usable width of the road.

Traffic collisions are caused by disobeying these core principles, and not by obeying them.

In 1982, Forester explained to me that these principles were not articulated in traffic engineering classes. He had ferreted them out by thinking and observing the unspoken common principles of all traffic, and seeing how they would be applicable to bicyclists.

Here’s what he said at the time (from a June 1982 article I wrote in Bicycling Magazine):

Highway people had training deficiencies because of the overwhelming success of motorization. They never had to teach any traffic engineers how to drive. They never had to teach the theory of traffic safety — the theory was implicit in everyone’s driving knowledge. Therefore, these people never questioned the principles of the ‘bike safety training’ they had received. They didn’t recognize that it conflicted with the theory behind vehicle safety.

The legislators put up money for very specific things — bikeways. So basically, society bribed the highway departments to do the wrong thing.

John Forester around 1980

Forester around 1980, wired up to score students in a road test. A switch in his glove starts the cassette recorder in his backpack. Credit: IPMBA

So, Forester preached the principles of traffic law to any bicyclist who would listen.

Forester was also a keen student of the characteristics and limitations of bicycles and motor vehicles, bicyclists and motor vehicle operators. His early experience in Palo Alto made him a vigilant watchdog for unreasonable sight distances, curb radii, reaction times and intersection turning conflicts. Forester coined the term “rolling pedestrian,” and noted that even a slow bicyclist is several times as fast as a pedestrian, with very different ability to manage sharp turns and short stops. Forester observed that most bicycle facilities were designed with obliviousness to how a bad sight distance or a sharp turn could make a bicyclist crash.

(Even that observation got distorted by Forester’s opponents. Forester once wrote that a bicycle facility should be designed for a bicyclist going as fast as 30 mph, to accommodate all extremes of bicyclist behavior. His opponents turned that into, “Forester brags that he rides 30 mph.” And Forester’s advice to make traffic law work for you was twisted into “compete with the cars,” or “think you’re just like a car.” That level of distortion can best be described as mean-spirited.)

Without Forester’s innovative instruction, bicyclists of the 1970s, including those who considered themselves safety advocates, simply didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about how a bicyclist’s operating characteristics would interact with a given facility design, to produce a crash. They certainly had little notion that a bicyclist’s own behavior could make him safer.

Forester knew why bicyclists thought that way, and gave it an annoying, but accurate name: the “cyclist inferiority complex.” The cultural pull of the cyclist inferiority complex — the belief that we don’t have the full right to use the road — was, and is today, so strong that it subverts safe behavior.

We all thought we should stay out of the way of “real” traffic, hug the curb, and hope for the best.

Abrasive . . . but he wanted to sit next to me!

And with all the diplomacy of a professor dressing down an ill-prepared student, Forester told us all to think again.

So, let’s talk about his abrasiveness.

Many of us have been on the receiving end of it.

You could be in 98 percent agreement with Forester, and he’d come down on you like a ton of bricks. It sure happened to me plenty of times. I disagreed with Forester on technicalities of retro reflectivity and night time conspicuity; on developmental maturity and teaching children to ride in traffic; on an aspect of rider position during maximum-performance braking; on the political tactics of opposing or not opposing dangerous bicycle facilities; and a few other topics. I learned to ignore — and often not even read — his, uh, disagreements with me.

Still, he must have disagreed with me less often than he disagreed with many others. Because he always wanted to sit next to me in various national committee meetings.

And I watched him make an arse of himself in those meetings, grinding my teeth while it unfolded. If a well-intentioned mayor or traffic engineer used one wrong word, Forester would stand and attack. The vitriol made many of us wince, because we knew it undermined his persuasiveness.

I can’t defend the vitriol.

But in some instances I can explain it. Forester was using science and engineering to describe how bicyclist behavior and bicycle facilities could either help or hurt people. Forester took very seriously the immense responsibility of telling the public what was good for their own safety, and he expected others to gravitate to the facts he presented. When Forester’s opponents displayed obliviousness and/or defiance to the reasons why they were risking serious personal injury or death — not for themselves, but for others — Forester would attack.

It’s a shame so many people never saw past the vitriol, because there was much wisdom underneath it.

John Forester’s books, the curriculum, courses

So, let’s talk about that wisdom — and about how he promulgated it.

That first Bike World article gave birth in 1975 to the book Effective Cycling, which Forester self-published with his own printing press in his garage. It would go through many editions and get published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press; it is now in its 7th edition.

Forester also devised a 30-hour course, also named Effective Cycling. That course made novices into cyclists who were self-sufficient and proficient in every way. In keeping with the more self-reliant ethos of that era, Effective Cyclists were expected to be capable of doing their own repairs, sewing their own cycling clothing, and making various adapters and accessories for their bikes. And, of course, they could ride confidently and safely on big arterial streets just like my buddy Eli Damon.

Forester wrote a second curriculum, called Effective Cycling at the Intermediate Level. He successfully taught it to middle-school students in Palo Alto for a time. He created an instructor’s manual. He scripted and directed Iowa State University’s 1979 film, Bicycling Safely on the Road. and was behind the 1992 Seidler Productions film Effective Cycling.

Cover of Bicycle Transportation, by John ForesterForester also saw the need for professional training, so that engineers would not design bad bicycle facilities. This led him to write the book Bicycle Transportation Engineering, later renamed Bicycle Transportation after MIT Press picked it up.

The book Effective Cycling has a defiant, angry tone. Forester believed that you couldn’t be a safe cyclist without being aware of public policy’s endorsement of the cyclist inferiority complex, and the book gives a lengthy dressing down of that policy. Forester offered his rants, expected the reader to take his side, and then showed the reader how good cycling works. It’s not the most welcoming sales pitch I’ve ever seen. But it created an aha moment for many thousands of people.

Forester reached an agreement with the League of American Wheelmen (which subsequently changed its name to the League of American Bicyclists) to train instructors nationwide.

Forester travels the country for policy advocacy

The man went to conferences everywhere, to offer his advice on designs, and on the bad assumptions behind bad designs. No one was paying him. He did it out of a passion for safety.

In the 1970s, many people were working with this newly popular concept of adults riding bicycles. Government agencies everywhere wondered what they should be doing about it. Palo Alto’s sidewalk bikeways were only one small piece of a nationwide let’s-try-this approach to bicycle facilities.

Forester was willing and able to tell them all how it should be done. Having written his books and taught his classes, he set his sights on government policy documents.

Forester was afraid, not without cause, that government policy for bicycle facility design would shunt bicyclists off to sidewalks, leading to turning-conflict collisions and other bad outcomes. Along with other stalwarts of that era (notably the late college professor John Finley Scott and traffic engineer Bob Shanteau), Forester worked hard to make sure that the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) policy would be good for safe cycling.

The CalTrans policy went national in 1981. Much of the language in the CalTrans policy was used in the 1981 edition of the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials’ Guide for the Development of New Bicycle Facilities (AASHTO Guidelines). “That AASHTO document explicitly states the detriments of bike lanes and mentions the alleged benefits in the 1981 AASHTO Guidesubjunctive mode,” Forester said at the time. For once, he was actually pleased.

Forester advocated for competent, safe cycling.

But by necessity, that meant he spent most of his energy, and his audience’s attention, talking about things he was against — laws and societal customs that prohibited safe cycling. The big three such laws were laws requiring riders to ride far to the right, laws requiring bicyclists to ride in bike lanes, and laws requiring bicyclists to use sidepaths. Almost every conversation with Forester quickly turned to the bad consequences of these three.

Forester spent about $50,000 of his own money, and months of his time, in support of the California Association of Bicycle Organizations (CABO) for bicyclists’ rights in a well-known lawsuit, Prokop v. City of Los Angeles. The problem Forester was fighting was government immunity. Under certain circumstances, the government could build a bicycle facility and if the facility was dangerous, there would be no recourse for an injured cyclist. Sadly, Prokop lost that lawsuit. Forester again showed generosity to CABO when he had to give up bicycling. He donated his bikes, equipment and tools to CABO, and CABO sold them on eBay. (Not incidentally, Forester was the founder of CABO.)

Held up by Downward Pull. Yes, really!

And although Forester was known primarily for opining about traffic riding, he was a top-shelf expert in many other areas of cycling. I’ll mention my three favorites:

  • In August 1980, Forester published the provocatively titled “Held Up by Downward Pull” in the League of American Wheelmen magazine, explaining with great clarity the counterintuitive way a tension-spoked wheel supports the rider’s weight. (Writer Jobst Brandt is widely acclaimed for explaining this in his book The Bicycle Wheel, but Forester was a year ahead of Brandt.)
  • In April 1983, I had the pleasure of publishing in my very own magazine, Bike Tech, Forester’s eye-opening and ground-breaking “Physiology of Cyclist Power Production.” Forester deftly explained why measuring efficiency on an ergometer was misleading, and how the makeup of muscle tissue meant that a faster riding technique would score less efficiency in the lab.
  • In the 1971-1976 time period, Forester sued the then-new U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on the grounds that many of its proposed regulations were technically incompetent. He had many spot-on arguments. Accordingly, the CPSC 1976 Bicycle Safety Standard — which remains federal law today — has many numbered paragraphs that simply say “[reserved]”. The court picked through Forester’s points and upheld some and rejected others.

Back in 1977, I spent some time in a Washington, DC courthouse studying the lawsuit documents, and I marveled that a non-lawyer could get to first base arguing on his own behalf in federal court. Forester would write incisive technical stuff, and the attorneys defending the CPSC would get it struck down because he’d used the wrong-size paper. Nevertheless, he persisted. (How does this affect you today? The bikes you buy today are not burdened with useless design constraints they would have had without Forester.)

These are only three examples. There are hundreds more.

Time does not permit a listing of all the unfair criticisms of Forester’s work. But one I’ve seen repeated endlessly was that he was “against all infrastructure.” He was certainly against unsafe infrastructure. But he had no objection to rail trails, and in certain circumstances (bridges and high-traffic-volume arterial streets) he was okay with well designed bike lanes. I never asked him about secure parking or bike stations, but I believe he would have supported them.

Forester was the son of C.S. Forester, the famous British author. There was a complicated father-son relationship, and Forester’s two-volume biography of his father (available for free download at JohnForester.com) will test your attention span. Forester was born in England, and his childhood years cycling there, sharing roads with motor vehicles, demonstrated to him that bicyclists could do so safely. He frequently cited his experience in England as informing his advocacy when he moved to the U.S.

Ballroom dancer, model boat racer, photographer

John Forester was an industrial engineer with two masters’ degrees and a couple decades of work experience before he quit engineering in 1972 to go full-time on bicyclist advocacy work. He once said, “If you can’t make it as a mechanical engineer, you become an industrial engineer. If you can’t make it as an industrial engineer, you become a traffic engineer.” He wasn’t particularly modest, but that was his way of saying he had insights that many traffic engineers didn’t, without sounding too imperious about it.

The man had a human side too. He was enormously talented in more ways than I’ll ever know.

John Forester was an avid photographer with his own darkroom, an accomplished ballroom dancer, an avid square dancer, a downhill skier and active swimmer.

Forester had interests you might expect of an engineer: a broad knowledge of train engines and aircraft. He built radio controlled model airplanes and ship models. He built and raced radio-controlled model boats. He had an aquarium and, of course, lots of papers and books.

His own cycling got slower as his years went on, and continued until about age 80. His last bike had five-cog half-step gearing, with a top gear of about 78 inches. That’s about right for an old man.

“I just got rear-ended.”

Once, I saw John Forester look a bit embarrassed. It was 1986, and I was interviewing him in his house, which at that point was in Sunnyvale. It was raining cats and dogs outside.

The front door burst open, and in stormed a teenage girl. It was Forester’s significant other’s daughter. Not only was she soaking wet. She was carrying the pieces of a broken bicycle, and she was mad as a wet hen.

“I just got rear-ended,” she shouted. “The Ken Cross study says that motorist overtaking collisions are only four percent of non-fatal car bike collisions, and I just had one.” Forester responded with . . . embarrassed silence. You could see his pride that the girl knew to cite the Cross study, his horror that she’d been hit, and his relief that she wasn’t hurt.

I smiled inside. It was a unique interaction between a teenager and a semi-parental unit.

Cyclists fare best when. . .

John Forester usually spoke and wrote in long paragraphs, but his best sound bite was 13 words:

“Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles.”

As long as this remembrance is, it leaves out many, many things. There is so much I failed to mention. Forester’s work was very far-reaching, and his motives were always to help us be better bicyclists.

John Schubert during his transcontinental tour

John Schubert during his transcontinental tour

Shortly after I first met John Forester, at a mini road course he taught in Washington DC in 1977, I launched on a spectacular solo 4,000-mile transcontinental tour. I was grateful for Forester’s wisdom to make myself a safer rider on that tour. My buddy Eli Damon is glad he could go to choir practice. Many thousands of others thank Forester too.

We’ve come a long way since 1977.  The way we teach safe cycling behavior is far easier for a novice cyclist to learn and do. That’s the way of all improvement. Complexity starts. Simplicity follows.   In future articles, John S. Allen will describe how Cycling Savvy was able to stand on Forester’s shoulders.

For that instruction to be improved on, it had to start. And it started with Forester.

Thanks, John.

With thanks to Jim Baross, Bill Hoffman, John S. Allen, Clint Sandusky, Robert Seidler, John Brooking, Eli Damon, Keri Caffrey and many others.

Countless other people had remembrances about Forester. Read some here.

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/john-forester-feature.jpg 499 700 John Schubert https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Schubert2020-06-02 12:55:222021-01-04 12:23:32Requiem for a Heavyweight-••-John-Forester-1929-2020
Passing safely with lots of clerance on shared-use patsh

Shared-Use Paths, Part 1: Etiquette

May 30, 2020/8 Comments/by Keri Caffrey

etiquette of passing on shared-use paths

Have you been out walking or riding on your local shared-use paths? Has use been a bit heavier than usual? It certainly has been where I live.

The Orlando metro area has over 100 miles of shared-use paths. I’m an avid user, both for walking and cycling. But with increasing use, it becomes apparent that a lot of users don’t have a good grasp on safety, or how their behavior affects others — more so as new users seek fresh air and sunshine during a pandemic.

This is part one of two posts about how to be safe and considerate on shared-use paths.

Path Etiquette: ensuring you and your fellow path users have an enjoyable time.

keep right on shared-use paths
On roads, pedestrians are required to walk facing traffic, so they can see cars coming and step aside. Stepping off the road is not always necessary, but pedestrians can easily do it when it is.

Pedestrians should never be expected to step off a shared-use path or a sidewalk to make way for another user, and so it doesn’t make sense for them to walk on the left.* Doing so causes both the pedestrian and an oncoming user to have to stop whenever passing isn’t possible due to opposite-side traffic. When all users keep right, faster users can simply slow and wait for the opportunity to pass. BTW, if you cannot keep your bike balanced at walking speed, you probably aren’t ready yet to be on the path (more on that below).
yield to oncoming traffic

Take it easy!

That brings me to my next point. When an obstruction is on your side of the path (or road, for that matter), YOU yield — whether it’s a fallen branch or a slower user. If there is oncoming traffic, wait until that traffic has passed.
don't thread the needle
Don’t thread the needle! This is disrespectful to both the person you are passing and the oncoming person. A crowded path isn’t the place to set speed records. If you have a need for speed, you should use the road instead.
move over to pass
When you do pass a slower user, move over! This is my chief complaint as a walker. I can’t tell you how many times a pathlete has blown past my elbow when there were eight feet of path to her left. Why would you do that? You know you hate it when motorists do that to you on the road.

It’s also nice to say something. I personally prefer to offer a gentle “good morning” vs screaming “ON YOUR LEFT.” Some people may react by moving left! Some are listening with earbuds and may not hear you. Startling them by yelling doesn’t necessarily help you pass safely.

So even if you say nothing at all, moving over as far as possible and passing at a reasonable speed is fine. In this pandemic time, social distance is about more than only common courtesy. (See our recent post about riding in the pandemic.)
single file to pass
Along those same lines, when you are riding side-by side with a companion (these days, a member of your household, I’d hope!), it is polite to single up in order to give a slower user more space when passing. Oftentimes two cyclists are so engrossed in their conversation that the left rider doesn’t even move left and the rider on the right brush-passes the pedestrian (me, yes, this happens a lot). Please be present.single up for oncoming traffic on shared-use paths for oncomingSimilarly, many older shared-use paths are not wide enough to remain side by side when there is oncoming traffic. Without a centerline, some users don’t recognize this. The additive closing speed of both users can be disconcerting.don't take up the whole path

Shared-use path courtesy when walking

When walking or jogging with family/friends, do not spread across the path requiring every other user to have to ask you to move in order to pass.
keep your dog on a short leash
I’ve walked many path miles with my dog. I trained her to walk on my right. She does this by default now, so I never have to worry about her wandering out in front of someone. A well-behaved dog makes everyone’s life easier on the path.
don't let the dog lurch
It’s very alarming for bicyclists to have a dog on a retractable leash run across in front of them or wander toward them while the owner appears distracted. Dogs can cause a crash! Some people have a fear of dogs due to having been attacked. Having a dog lurch toward them can cause panic.

Another point on retractable leashes: they can cause cuts and burns to both pets and people.

shared-use paths are not for unskilled riders

Brush up on skills

Though it may not seem to make sense, the path is NOT the place to learn bike handling. You need a set of simple skills before you ride on the path, especially a well-used path. To be safe around others, you need to be able to:

  • start and stop easily,
  • balance at very low speed,
  • ride in a straight line,
  • look over your shoulder while riding in a straight line (particularly if the path goes alongside a road, more in part 2).

This is true for kids as well. Please don’t bring your kids to the path to teach them basic skills. Children (and adults) tend to have target fixation when learning basic balance on a bike. A kid will literally ride straight into an oncoming bicyclist instead of steering away. A kid will also ride off the edge of the path and then fall, trying to steer back over the pavement lip.

Skills can be developed in a parking lot or quiet street. Or in a CyclingSavvy Train Your Bike class.

Using shared-use paths in the dark

Most shared-use paths are technically “closed” from dusk to dawn even though they are not physically closed. Many of us use them anyway, either for commuting or early morning exercise. And you know what, they were built with transportation funds, so… that’s a rant for another time.

Rule 1. Use lights! Head-on collisions between unlit users are a thing—they can be a deadly thing. Don’t count on well-lit cyclists to see and avoid you, either. It isn’t easy to detect an oncoming ninja outside the range of a headlight, and closing speed can make the range of a headlight too short to react. I’ve learned to look for the tiny glint of pedal reflectors, which is how I saw this guy coming:


The burden of care rests with faster users — bicyclists — but pedestrians also do well to carry a light and wear reflectorized items.  In a few places, this is required by law.

Rule 2. Aim bright lights down. I love that bright headlights have become so affordable. I’m old enough to remember when a 300 lumen bike light cost more than a bike. Now you can get 3x that for $30. But with great brightness comes great responsibility… to not blind your fellow users. The old “be seen” weak headlights needed to be aimed straight out at the horizon for maximum visibility. Today’s 900 lumen LED lights should be aimed toward the ground ahead of you. This is not only to keep you from blinding other people, it helps you see debris or pavement issues that could cause you to fall. The best bicycle headlights have a flat-top beam pattern to cast the beam farther without glaring into people’s eyes.

Rule 3. Don’t flash! When it’s dark out. that bright headlight should stay on steady mode. First of all, a flashing headlight is blinding and annoying. It keeps other users from being able to gauge your speed and location. And most importantly, it can cause an epileptic seizure in a vulnerable person. You could literally kill someone with that thing. 

If you want to have a blinkie to catch attention, there are lots of little low-powered lights you can pick up for a buck apiece and strap onto your helmet or bike. Here is some good advice on headlights.

Next: Safety

The next post will cover safety concerns. We’ll look at some path hazards, and discuss intersection safety.

Have fun out there!

* Yeah, there’s always some dumb law out there. This is no exception. Rhode Island requires pedestrians to walk on the left on shared use paths.

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/path-etiquette-feature-702x373-1.jpg 373 702 Keri Caffrey https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png Keri Caffrey2020-05-30 09:00:022020-07-20 22:10:40Shared-Use Paths, Part 1: Etiquette
spruce street bike lane philadelphia

A Philadelphia Bike Lane Learning Experience

October 4, 2019/6 Comments/by John Allen

In My First Post

…about bike lanes in Philadelphia, I showed how I rode on Spruce Street, a narrow one-way street in Center City with a bike lane.

When my safety required it, I merged out of the bike lane — for example, whenever I might be at risk from a right-turning motor vehicle. At those times, it was safest to be in line with motor vehicles, where the driver behind me could see me.

Such Assertiveness May Seem Strange and Forbidding

It’s indeed counterintuitive to practice “driver behavior,” and take your place in the queue with motor vehicles. Yes, they are big, and heavy, and they can go fast. But these vehicles also are controlled by drivers. You use head turns and hand signals to communicate with drivers, and move into line when one has made room for you. That driver’s vehicle is protecting you from all the other ones behind!

Putting “driver behavior” into practice on Spruce Street was easy, as traffic there is mostly slow. I had no trouble just falling into line with vehicles waiting at a traffic light.

A First-Timer’s Mistakes

If you think that CyclingSavvy Instructors always do everything right, watch today’s video. This was my first ride ever on Spruce Street. I wouldn’t do everything quite the same way a second time.

There were a couple of times when I didn’t move far enough OUT of the bike lane. I was in line with motor traffic, but I stayed in the right tire track — on the passenger side of cars — so that bicyclists in the bike lane would show in my video.

Right Tire Track Distracted Me From My Safety

That distracted me from an option which would have made my ride go better. As I reviewed raw footage, it dawned on me that most of the streets which cross Spruce Street are one-way. Some are one way right-to-left, others left-to-right.

I could take advantage of this!

Avoiding Unnecessary Delay at Intersections

savvy cyclists learn from their mistakesLook at the incidents at one-way left-to-right cross streets. In one of these, a motorist ahead of me pulled over to the right curb just past the intersection. In the other, a motorist behind me turned right. Neither used turn signals. The driver who merged right delayed me, and I delayed the one who turned right.

Things would have gone more smoothly if I had been riding farther to the left. That is my usual practice where traffic can turn right, but it is even more emphatically correct where traffic can’t turn left.

I still won’t pull all the way over to the left, out of line with the motor traffic: even if a motorist is unlikely to turn the wrong way into a one-way street, one could still merge over to the left curb, like the one who merged over to the right curb in my video. It’s safest to wait in line.

Just For Fun

I’ve included a third incident where the mistake was made years earlier, in the design department of an automobile manufacturer halfway around the world.

Why would I want motorists behind me? I don'tIn this segment, the driver did use a turn signal, but it was so far around on the other side of the car, I couldn’t see it.

This driver was yielding right-of-way to me when I should have yielded to him. To avoid a “no, you go first” situation, I went ahead. If I’d known that the driver wanted to turn right and would have to follow me, I would have been more assertively polite. Why would I want motorists behind me if they don’t have to be? I don’t!

The first two incidents illustrate why I never assume motorists will use their turn signals. The third incident brought home to me that I sometimes can’t assume that they are not using turn signals.

Savvy Cyclists Learn From Their Mistakes

While I kept safe, the encounters I’ve described could have gone more smoothly. Every ride can be a learning experience, and the next ride can go better.

More to Come

I have one more post about Spruce Street on the way. So far I’ve done my best to avoid discussing politics and religion.

But in my final Spruce Street post, churches are involved. In that post I’m going to let loose!

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Screen-Shot-2019-09-30-at-1.39.50-PM.jpeg 744 873 John Allen https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Allen2019-10-04 09:00:202020-07-21 23:26:25A Philadelphia Bike Lane Learning Experience
savvy cyclist

Commuting Perceptions & Reality

February 21, 2018/9 Comments/by Gary Madine

8:45 a.m. December 14, 2010 — Allentown, PA (US)

17 degrees F

NW winds 20 to 30 MPH

As usual, I’m cycling to work. On this day my fingertips are numb upon arrival.  But as I walk to the locker room I notice — of all things — sweat!

What’s not to love about bike commuting?

Every ride offers different sensations and constantly changing scenery. I save money. I exercise. I don’t have to wish for physical fitness. It’s built into my daily commute.

I have to get to work in the morning and home in the evening. Why drive when I can pedal?

I’ve often wondered: Why don’t more employees bike to work? I’ve come to believe that perceptions — of safety, time, and appearances — keep people off their bikes.

bike commuting in Bethlehem

The author on the rear right — part of normal traffic last September in Bethlehem, PA

Is It Really Safe To Ride In Traffic?

Since 1991 I’ve made more than 9800 trips. Many of these were on big and busy roads. More than 1100 of my trips were after sundown. Dangerous, right? Wrong! In all these years I can say I’ve had just two close calls.

To demonstrate how unusual such an event is, I’ll detail the first — which is seared in my memory, even though it happened decades ago.Biking reduces delay for others.

On a quiet suburban street in 1997, I was towing my 8-year-old and 5-year-old to school in a bicycle trailer. We were behind a large pickup truck belonging to a commercial landscaper. The truck stopped mid-block. We stopped behind it. Then the driver put the truck in reverse! Nothing bad happened except for me yelling out “STOP” at the very top of my lungs while quickly scampering aside with my rig.

The truck driver and I then spent a few minutes consoling my sons. They’d been upset by my yelling, not the traffic situation. Since then, whenever I have to stop behind a truck, I first merge to the left side of our common lane so I’ll be visible in the driver’s side-view mirror. That way, what happened once in forty years is now a lot less likely.

I learned that safety technique by experience. But you don’t have to make my mistakes! CyclingSavvy was designed to help you avoid the School of Hard Knocks.

I wouldn’t ride if it weren’t safe. For me, 68,500 miles of bicycle commuting has been safe and provided physical fitness. And it was cheap. Timewise.

It’s So Much Faster To Drive

From 1991 to 1998, my route to work was 8.7 miles each way. My transit time on bicycle was typically 35 minutes. I had motored that same route for a couple of months in the winter of 1990/91. The transit time by motor vehicle was typically 20 minutes. Why is motoring only 1.75 times faster than pedaling? The local road system with intersections, stop signs and traffic lights acts as a slow pass filter. When I used Allentown’s Airport Road, motorists passed me doing 45 mph. Often, I pedaled up right behind them at the next traffic light.

Regular bike commuters know this phenomenon well. You’ll have several stretches on your commute where you and the fastest motorists cover the same distance at the same time, therefore having the same effective average speed. Bicycling is still done at low cruising speeds. If you’re going any distance at all, it probably will take longer to ride. But is it that much longer? And should time be your only consideration?

In 1984 I bicycled to work occasionally. My route then was 12.5 miles each way. I love to bicycle so much that I still consider that distance optimal. Biking time was 45 to 50 minutes. Motoring time was 25 to 30 minutes.

The average US commute time is 25.4 minutes. So most US employees live close enough to bike to work. Bicycling will be slower. But you’ll be getting good exercise during every minute of the short overtime.

Safe. Good exercise for just a slight time commitment. Smart.

Normal People Drive Cars

A third reason many employees don’t bike to work is appearances. Does biking to work appear unwise? Once you understand the truth about safety and relative travel time, there’s nothing dumb about biking to work. Rather than sit at your desk and plan a run after work, at quitting time you can bypass the parking lot and have to exercise to get home. And still enjoy the ride.

gary madine

The author, whose helmet offers a friendly reminder that “normal” is overrated

Bicycling can be taken up no matter what shape one is in. Bicycles can support any weight. Special bikes and accessories are available for special situations. Best safety practices can be learned quickly — and tested and refined on your route. As time goes on, you’ll be amazed at how distances “shrink.” What used to seem far and intimidating becomes easy and routine.

A major social objection toward US bike commuters is that they might slow down motor commuters. Sure, this happens sometimes. But this perception is way out of proportion to reality.

There are times when a motorist has to wait behind me for an opportunity to pass. No doubt some of those motorists grumbled to themselves: “14.7 mph on Airport Road is ridiculous!” But see again the example I gave above. He’ll pass me. Then there’s a fair chance I’ll pedal up right behind him at the next traffic light. He might be third in line; I’ll be fourth. Therefore, I did not delay him. Had I been using a motor vehicle, I would have wound up ahead of him still at that light. So by choosing to bicycle, I reduced his delay.

And while all of us are stopped at the intersection, I doubt very much he’ll be looking up at the red light and complaining: “Zero mph on Airport Road is ridiculous!”

Regular exercise. Safe exercise. Low-cost exercise. That’s how I feel the moment I push off every workday morning and evening. Smart. Even when T=17F.

 

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/gary-madine.jpeg 300 400 Gary Madine https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png Gary Madine2018-02-21 11:30:082018-08-23 18:37:23Commuting Perceptions & Reality
daytime running lights

Daytime Lights: Magic Bullet Or Not?

February 7, 2018/13 Comments/by John Schubert

Two recent tragic bicyclist deaths in Florida resulted in a local newspaper column extolling the importance of daytime running lights. Without going into detail about these tragedies, I’ll say one thing: It’s doubtful that either death would have been prevented by daytime running lights.safety equipment for cycling

That’s the thing about tragedies and safety equipment. Whatever safety equipment you’re enamored of — daytime running lights, protective padding, helmets — it will help some times, but not others. But when you’re upset because a friend died, that kind of thought-chopping doesn’t come to mind.

Of this you can be sure: Safety equipment is an area where “always” and “never” don’t exist, and where emotional baggage leads all of us to want to cling to a magic solution.

As an expert witness in bicycle crash reconstruction cases,  I believe daytime running lights are usually superfluous. Yes, there are specific occasions where they do help. But they often are used as a makeshift solution for problems best solved by behavior change. If daytime running lights are offered as a do-it-all solution, they become grist for victim blaming when a cyclist was doing nothing wrong.

When To Light Up

Let’s start with the situations where daytime running lights do help. These would include fog, heavy rain, the sun low on the horizon, confusing lighting, and short sight distances on curvy roads.

Fog can reduce visibility to a very short distance. Where I live, in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, the hilltops can be in the clouds and the valleys can be clear. Sometimes I may need daytime running lights — very bright ones at that — to be seen in the fog. But a half-mile later, I’m out of the fog, and visibility is good.

Some of the curviest country roads make a case for daytime running lights. Even so, if you measure the actual sight distance on a curvy country road, you’ll be surprised at how far it really is.  There’s plenty of space to slow down from curvy-road driving speed to cyclist speed. But there’s no harm in giving the overtaking motorist a wake-up call.

man cycling with daytime running lights

Scott Slingerland, executive director of Bethlehem, PA’s Coalition for Appropriate Transportation, demonstrates the effectiveness of daytime running lights earlier this month in Easton, PA.

view from rear of man cycling with daytime running lights

Scott is easy to see coming and going. But is this because of his lights?

Lane Position

It’s your lane position that affects how soon you’re seen, often more than any light can. This is especially true on curvy roads. If you’re hugging the curb on a curve to the right, you come into view later than a rider using a lane control position.

Dappled mottled light, on a tree-shaded road, makes a case for daytime running lights. The brain takes longer to assemble the picture of a bicyclist in such lighting conditions.behavior more important for cyclist safety than daytime running lights

Daytime running lights need to be bright enough to be conspicuous in daylight. If not, they’re no more effective than a rabbit’s foot. How often have you seen a bicycle light, in bad need of new batteries, blinking feebly — in broad daylight? I saw several on a recent trip to Philadelphia. A dim, poorly aimed daytime blinkie just sucks up the electricity to make the light even less effective at night when that rider absolutely needs it.

Brightness costs money. The least expensive bike lights (less than $10 for a front-and-rear set from a major discount retailer) are usually bright enough for nighttime use. But I wouldn’t bet on those lights being noticed on a sunny day. To be seen in daylight, you want a more powerful light. The taillights that have a strobe function (Portland Design Works Danger Zone and Planet Bike Superflash are two that come to mind) cost more than this. So do brighter headlights.

I recommend that you test daytime running lights in the situation when you might use them. Turn them on, take them outside, and see how they appear from 50 paces away. Do they jump out at you? Are you sure? Remember, you’re an alerted observer, and you are far more attentive to them than the people you want to see them. Those people are un-alerted observers.

When the Sun is Low: Your Shadow Points to the Danger

Does a daytime running light really solve the sun-low-on-the-horizon problem?

when the sun is low, your shadow points to the danger

While the world probably looks clear to this cyclist, his shadow points toward drivers on a high-speed arterial road who have the sun in their eyes – and may not see him as he violates their right-of-way

As we teach in CyclingSavvy, the sun low on the horizon can be a serious problem. Your shadow points in the direction of people who can’t see you. And in the class, we tell people to take a different route or to wait a few minutes for the lighting conditions to change.

The need to verify your lights’ adequacy is most especially true when the sun is low and casting glare. In that situation, you’re asking your daytime running lights to overpower the entire sun! If you do a good observation experiment — with several observers, please — take good notes and tell us what you saw. We’ll publish it. Bonus points if you take a good photo.

Blinded By The Light

What if your light is too bright? At a minimum, you annoy people. You distract drivers from their ongoing job of absorbing visual information and then going on to the next bit of visual information.

It’s a fad — a bad fad, in our opinion — to make emergency vehicle lighting so bright and so discordant that it’s difficult to look away from it. But look away you must, in order to focus on the path you need to travel. The driver needs to watch where she’s going, and watching the light display interferes with that.

Some of today’s lights are strobes, rather than light-emitting diodes. Are they too bright? In some situations, yes. For daytime running lights in pea-soup fog, probably not.

Remember, in normal lighting conditions, a cyclist in a black shirt is easy to see from 200 yards away. And all of us have an obligation to be looking when we drive.

Daytime running lights make you more visible, certainly. But if you were already visible, does making you more visible help? I don’t think so. You need to be relevant as well as visible. The nature of driving is that the driver discards most visual information. When he sees a bicyclist on the shoulder, his brain thinks, “That cyclist is out of my way, and he’s not a factor.” A blinking light is unlikely to change that thought process.Do daytime running lights make you more visible in court?

Any search engine will find you dozens of articles in which daytime running lights are praised as if they are mother’s milk. In those articles, people who don’t use daytime running lights are badmouthed. This is stunningly irresponsible, because it aids and abets victim blaming where it matters most — in court.

Imagine yourself, the victim of a motorist-at-fault car/bike collision. You were plainly visible. But the defense counsel brings out a stack of articles telling you what a jerk you were for not using daytime running lights. He asks you to read them aloud on the witness stand. Your emotions go south and your blood pressure skyrockets. After the first dozen articles, he calls for a break, and out in the hall, offers you $100 to settle the case then and there.

So. . . use daytime running lights mindfully. And promote them cautiously.

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/daytime-running-lights.jpeg 267 400 John Schubert https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Schubert2018-02-07 11:30:392018-08-23 18:39:12Daytime Lights: Magic Bullet Or Not?
biking in winter

Empowered for Unlimited Winter Travel

November 15, 2017/6 Comments/by Josh Stevens

CyclingSavvy is “Empowerment for Unlimited Travel.” We mostly think of this as removing obstacles so we can cycle anywhere, but CyclingSavvy also empowers us to cycle any time, any day or season.No need to let cold weather separate you from your bike.

While many of our friends in southern latitudes are getting their bikes out after a hot summer, cyclists up north are putting their bikes away for the season. It doesn’t have to be that way! When cold weather threatens to keep you off the saddle, tell Old Man Winter you can take anything he can dish out and still get to your destination under your own power.

I’ve been cycling to work year-round in Michigan for many years now. With the right equipment and savvy cycling skills, my commute is stress-free. I get to my destination refreshed, warmed up, and ready for the day.

When road conditions are less than optimal, best strategy is to use "driver behavior."

Winter streetscapes are totally manageable and have a magic of their own.

There are of course unique considerations when the temperature drops lower than would be comfortable in your lycra shorts and jersey. As they say in Norway, though: “Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlige klær” (“There’s no bad weather, just bad clothes”). We can extend that to other equipment as well. If you plan ahead with the right gear and the right strategy for how and where to ride, Jack Frost can go nip at someone else’s nose.

Starting with gear, here’s a few additional items you’ll want to consider:

  • Lights. Remember that the hours of darkness are long in the winter. Also, the weather can change quickly. Don’t leave home without good lights! You’ll want lights strong enough to see the pavement in front of you. Your lights should make you look like a motorcycle from the front, and slow-moving vehicle from the rear. Point your headlight slightly toward the ground, so that you don’t blind oncoming drivers. If you use USB-rechargeable lights, make sure they’re fully charged. Regarding batteries: Alkalines won’t work well below freezing, but lithium primary cells like Energizer’s Ultimate Lithium are good down to that unique temperature where Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same (-40). It’s a good idea to have “redundant lighting” (two headlights and two taillights). You don’t want to be fumbling with batteries in the freezing cold.Take the road more traveled.
  • Tires. If there’s any possibility of encountering a patch of ice, consider investing in studded tires. 
  • Clothes. Wind is the big enemy. As long as you’re protected from that, you’ll likely be able to generate enough heat to keep comfortable. The trick is covering your face, ears, hands, and feet. There’s an impressive variety of masks, hats, gloves and shoe covers available to meet the need. Dress in layers, and find out what combination works best in which temperature ranges for you.

With the gear sorted, strategies really aren’t too different from how we’d ride in any weather, but even more important when the mercury drops:

  • Lane position. Drive your bike where other vehicle operators are driving their vehicles. Not only does this make you visible and relevant, but it also puts you in a position where other road users have cleared a path on the pavement for you.

    This bike lane is a slushy mess.

    Bike lanes may not be plowed in the winter.

  • Route. When there’s snow on the ground, the plow crews prioritize the main roads and school routes. Counter-intuitive as it sounds, it’s usually best to ignore Robert Frost’s advice. Take the road more traveled. As with lane position, this provides the best and cleanest surface to enjoy.

There’re many more nuances and details, but those are the basics. If you live in Michigan, Maine, Montana, Minnesota, or some northern state that doesn’t start with “M” and are ready to give winter biking a try, contact me or your local friendly CyclingSavvy instructor and get Empowered for Unlimited Winter Travel!

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/josh-stevens.jpeg 300 400 Josh Stevens https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png Josh Stevens2017-11-15 11:30:252018-08-27 20:56:36Empowered for Unlimited Winter Travel
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Tag Archive for: bike commuting

waltham cyclingsavvy class

Three Part Course: Waltham MA – May 2020

November 22, 2018/0 Comments/by John Allen

Maximize your cycling experience!

The full CyclingSavvy Course INCLUDES Truth & Techniques (classroom session), Train Your Bike (bike handling) session, and our signature on-road experience — Tour of Waltham.

Truth & Techniques (classroom session) and Train Your Bike (bike handling) are included in this 3-part workshop. Completion of these two sessions is required before taking the Tour session, and you may sign up for individual sessions  — see their listings to do that.

Truth & Techniques – Friday, May 8, 2020, 6:30-9:30 PM at Linwood Avenue, Newton

Train Your Bike – Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 9 AM – Noon at MacArthur School

…Lunch break…Pizzi Farms deli and ice-cream stand is just across the street.

Tour of Waltham – Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 1 PM – 4:30 PM from MacArthur School

The Tour of Waltham is an experiential tour of our city’s roads. The course includes some of the most intimidating road features (intersections, interchanges, merges, etc.) a cyclist might find in his/her travels. The students travel as a group, stopping to survey and discuss each exercise location. After observing the feature, discussing the traffic dynamics and the best strategy for safe and easy passage, the students ride through individually and regroup at a nearby location.

Train Your Bike (bike handling) and Truth & Techniques (classroom session) are included in this 3-part workshop. Completion of these two sessions is required before taking the Tour session.

The ticket below gives the time for the first (classroom) session, but it is for the full three-part course, including the Tour of Waltham session.

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20170806_141756.jpg 720 1280 John Allen https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Allen2018-11-22 13:21:382020-02-13 20:58:06Three Part Course: Waltham MA – May 2020
waltham cyclingsavvy class

Three Part Course: Waltham MA – May 2020

November 22, 2018/0 Comments/by John Allen

Maximize your cycling experience!

The full CyclingSavvy Course INCLUDES Truth & Techniques (classroom session), Train Your Bike (bike handling) session, and our signature on-road experience — Tour of Waltham.

Truth & Techniques (classroom session) and Train Your Bike (bike handling) are included in this 3-part workshop. Completion of these two sessions is required before taking the Tour session, and you may sign up for individual sessions  — see their listings to do that.

Truth & Techniques – Friday, May 8, 2020, 6:30-9:30 PM at Linwood Avenue, Newton

Train Your Bike – Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 9 AM – Noon at MacArthur School

…Lunch break…Pizzi Farms deli and ice-cream stand is just across the street.

Tour of Waltham – Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 1 PM – 4:30 PM from MacArthur School

The Tour of Waltham is an experiential tour of our city’s roads. The course includes some of the most intimidating road features (intersections, interchanges, merges, etc.) a cyclist might find in his/her travels. The students travel as a group, stopping to survey and discuss each exercise location. After observing the feature, discussing the traffic dynamics and the best strategy for safe and easy passage, the students ride through individually and regroup at a nearby location.

Train Your Bike (bike handling) and Truth & Techniques (classroom session) are included in this 3-part workshop. Completion of these two sessions is required before taking the Tour session.

The ticket below gives the time for the first (classroom) session, but it is for the full three-part course, including the Tour of Waltham session.

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20170806_141756.jpg 720 1280 John Allen https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Allen2018-11-22 13:21:382020-10-26 16:09:52Three Part Course: Waltham MA – May 2020
waltham cyclingsavvy class

Three Part Course: Waltham MA, May 14-15 2021

November 22, 2018/0 Comments/by John Allen

May 14, 2021 @ 6:30 PM – May 15, 2021 @ 4:30 PM EDT

waltham cyclingsavvy class

Maximize your cycling experience!

The full CyclingSavvy Course INCLUDES Truth & Techniques (classroom session), Train Your Bike (bike handling) session, and our signature on-road experience — Tour of Waltham. Truth & Techniques (classroom session on Zoom) and Train Your Bike (bike handling, outdoor session) are included in this 3-part workshop. Completion of these two sessions is required before taking the Tour session. Truth & Techniques – Friday, May 14, 2020, 6:30-9:30 PM Zoom meeting online (Signup information to be provided). Earlier online sessions, in person or online, and the self-teaching Mastery Course may be substituted. Train Your Bike – Saturday, May 15, 2020 at 9 AM – Noon at MacArthur School …Lunch break…Pizzi Farms deli and ice-cream stand is just across the street. Tour of Waltham – Saturday, May 15, 2020 at 1 PM – 4:30 PM from MacArthur School. You must have taken the two other sessions to proceed to this session. The Tour of Waltham is an experiential tour of our city’s roads. The course includes some of the most intimidating road features (intersections, interchanges, merges, etc.) a cyclist might find in his/her travels. The students travel as a group, stopping to survey and discuss each exercise location. After observing the feature, discussing the traffic dynamics and the best strategy for safe and easy passage, the students ride through individually and regroup at a nearby location. The ticket below gives the time for the virtual classroom session, but it is for the full three-part course, including the Tour of Waltham session.
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Details

Start:
May 14, 2021 @ 6:30 PM EDT
End:
May 15, 2021 @ 4:30 PM EDT
Cost:
$95.00
Event Category:
CyclingSavvy Full Course
Event Tags:
American Bicycling Education Association, bicycle commuting, bicycle driving, bicycling, bike commuting, bike ride, bike training, confidence, Cycling Savvy, CyclingSavvy, Education, empowerment, John Allen, john brooking, john s allen, Lane Control, safe bicycling, savvy cycling, savvy cyclist, visibility

A virtual session with John Allen and Bruce Lierman

610 Main St,
Waltham, MA 02452 United States
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781 856-4058
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Who's coming?

9 people are attending Three Part Course: Waltham MA, May 14-15 2021

https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20170806_141756.jpg 720 1280 John Allen https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.png John Allen2018-11-22 13:21:382022-03-14 13:09:44Three Part Course: Waltham MA, May 14-15 2021

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CyclingSavvy is a program of the American Bicycling Education Association. Our mission is to provide programs and resources for the education of bicyclists as drivers of vehicles, and bicycling-related education for traffic engineers, transportation planners, law enforcement professionals, educators, and the general public.

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