In my initial “Stroad Hack” article, I described a hack involving two intersections. I referred briefly to the quarter mile on a different stroad, but I didn’t go into detail on that.
This post will focus on the quarter mile, on Gorham Road. It stretches from left to right in the image below. I use it quite often to go to my dentist’s office.
Use Online Maps…and Work Backwards!
Route planning has of course always used maps, initially on paper. I rely heavily on online maps in these articles, and particularly on Google’s ground-level Street View. Zooming in on Google’s satellite view lets you plan your lane choice. That is especially useful on multi-lane roads that you may be apprehensive about.
Always Use Maps?
So, is it necessary to plan every stroad route with mapping? No, I don’t think so. One of my favorite ways of riding is to explore a new area when I go on vacation. Serendipity is an important aspect of those rides for me. “Hey, that road looks interesting, let’s see what’s down there.” Cycling by the rules of the road is generally safe, even on an unfamiliar road. But you may want to choose mapping, especially when you know you will be on uncomfortable roads. It can allow you to make more informed decisions so the journey is more comfortable.
Mapping is also useful for illustration in these articles. I am using Google Earth for these images, although Google Maps works too. Custom maps are a great teaching tool!
Why work backwards?
When planning a route, it is often useful to start from the destination and work backwards. That way, you’ll see what works as you approach it — and at each step as you work backwards to the start. For that reason, I am numbering the following hacks in reverse order, going back from from the turn into the dentist’s office, to the quarter-mile segment, to the start.
Hack 3 – Lane Choice onto Western Avenue
My dentist’s office is on the left side of Western Avenue. Conveniently, Western Avenue has a two-way center turn lane where I can wait for oncoming traffic to clear, before turning left into the driveway. If I’m already controlling the leftmost through lane, moving into the center turn lane as soon as it opens up is trivial.
Following the rules of the road for drivers, you must use the left-turn lane to turn onto Western Avenue from Gorham Road. If you’re uncomfortable with that, you can dismount and use the crosswalks. But we won’t go into that here.
What lane on Western Avenue do you turn into? Bicyclists who feel like they must always stay to the right might be tempted to turn into the rightmost lane, because “bikes stay to the right”.
Then Why Turn into the Left Lane?
There are (at least) two reasons to choose the left lane. For one, it’s more common when turning onto a multi-lane road to turn into the closest lane, Maine laws do not actually require that, though some states do, and it makes sense here regardless.
There’s an important operational reason here too: It’s only about 225 feet from the intersection to the center turn lane. It’s only about 100 feet more to the driveway. That’s only 25 seconds at 10 MPH. It makes no sense to turn into the right lane, then immediately have to change to the left lane to get to the center turn lane. If you do that, any traffic behind you will turn into the left lane to pass you, and will block your lane change. Why not just turn immediately into the left lane? Any traffic behind you will pass you in the right lane, which is exactly what you want anyway!
So there’s one hack: Turn from Gorham Road into the left lane of Western Avenue.
Hack 2 – Lane Choice onto the Quarter Mile
Continuing backwards, what about the lane choice onto Gorham Road?
This decision is like the last one. You’re going to spend less than 1/4 mile on Gorham Road (just over a minute at 10 MPH) before you turn left onto Western. So why turn into the right lane and have to change immediately?
Objections?
Granted, that’s a bit longer time spent in a leftmost lane than on Western Avenue. And that might bring up another objection, that motorists don’t expect bicyclists to travel in the left lane for an “extended” time. In”motorist time,” that may be about 10 seconds. 😉 But in our experience, visibility to people approaching from behind more than makes up for any surprise they may have. They still have plenty of time to see you and react.
If you are in a left through lane because you will be turning left shortly, try making occasional left turn signals. I think people are more patient if they understand why you are doing what you are doing. It may also be that they respect you more if they feel like you know what you’re doing. (And as a Savvy Cyclist, you do!)
Evaluating Convenience
I sometimes would still have had time to change lanes if I turned into the right lane here. But I don’t know that when I make the turn. And, whichever lane I choose, motorists behind me in that lane will have to change lanes. So it comes down to a balance of convenience: how convenient is which lane for me, and how many motorists will have to change lanes? Results vary by location, by time of day, and by what the traffic happens to be at that moment. But in this place, I don’t try to overthink it, and simply choose the left lane. The next and final hack makes that even easier.
Hack 1 – When to Turn Right onto the Quarter Mile
Here’s one I never learned until I took CyclingSavvy, even after I had been become a certified instructor with another national cycling program. I’ll frame it as a question:
Q: When would you not want to take a right turn on red?
Everyone makes right turns on red, right? Why wouldn’t you? Bicyclists don’t like delay any more than motorists do. (Consider how many cyclists don’t bother stopping at lights if they think they can make it through. And how many pass even a short line of stopped cars on the way there.)
Red Lights Create Gaps
The answer never occurs to most motorists, including me before I started bike commuting. But you may have noticed it if you’ve cycled in traffic for very long: traffic travels in packs.
And why does this happen? In urban and suburban areas, it’s because of red lights. A red light collects a line of traffic while it’s red. Then it turns green and the whole pack surges forward.
The flip side to this is that red lights also create gaps. While that light is red, the only traffic entering the intersection is turning into it from the left or right (as we are in this case). This is nearly always much less traffic. Therefore, there are gaps for as long as the light is red. And effectively longer, because you’ll have traveled away from the intersection!
So, a very basic hack that you can use at every signalized right turn is: Don’t turn right on red. Even if you are allowed to turn right on red, you may wish to wait. Waiting for your green guarantees that you will have a gap with very little or no traffic behind you (except the few that turn onto the road during that time).
Of course, if traffic is light, it may be fine to turn right on red once the initial pack is clear of the intersection. This is especially so if you have the sight distance to see that there is no more oncoming traffic for quite a while. That’s fine. This is a tool, not a hard and fast rule.
As I turn right from Clark’s Road onto the quarter mile segment on Gorham Road, though, the traffic from the left is coming around a curve, so it’s impossible to tell how long until more comes. And it will probably be traveling at the posted speed (or greater) by that time, maybe even racing a yellow. So I almost always wait for the green here.
Car behind you?
What if, you may ask, there is a motorist behind you who would like to turn right on red?
Well, you can simply move over and motion for them to go ahead. Whether you move depends on the geometry. In this case, the right turn lane gets wider, so I tend to stop at the extreme left side of it. That way, I leave room for a car to turn on my right. I’ll motion for the driver to do that if necessary.
Where the turn is more squared off, you may not be able to extend this courtesy. Moving to the right can put you in a position to be cut off by turning drivers when the light changes.
Summary
In this article, I showed a typical bike trip from my office to my dentist’s office around the corner. In that trip, I utilized two different CyclingSavvy stroad hacks. First, I chose to wait for a green light to make the right turn onto Gorham Road, to ensure that I could turn into a gap, and be well established on the road as I prepared to turn left onto Western Avenue. In many cases, I’m already pulling into the left turn lane before any traffic catches up to me!
Secondly, I turned directly into the left through lane, twice. In both cases, it was because it was a short distance to another left turn, so it was not worth starting in the right lane and then changing. Traffic turning behind me has a clear lane on my right to pass me in.
These two general purpose hacks are applicable on any stroad, in a great variety of situations. Having these tools in your toolbox will greatly ease the friction that you might otherwise experience on such car-centric roads. They are what makes you a Savvy Cyclist.
We are now in the time of short days and long nights, and so it’s a good time to talk about bicycle lights.
And there’s good news. Thanks to efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs), bicycle lights can be bright while drawing meager power from a small battery or generator.
Even better news — they won’t draw all the cash out of your wallet.
Like the horsepower race…
The trend can go to excess. Some of today’s bicycle headlights have product names like “Atomic”, and I kid you not, “Blinder” — only too true. Brighter, brighter, brighter… 200, 400, 1000 lumens. (The lumen is a measure of light output.)
The lumen war reminds me of the mid-20th-century horsepower race among big American cars. As in “my car is better than yours because it has a V8 engine with more horsepower!”
Why beam pattern matters
Lumens count light in every direction, but it matters in which direction the light goes. Any bicycle headlight bright enough to light your way should have a special beam pattern, like a car headlight, for at least four reasons:
Efficiency: There is no point in using electrical power to produce wasted light.
Clarity: Light thrown upward illuminates dust, fog, mist, rain, snow — washing out the bicyclist’s view of the riding surface.
Glare reduction: a headlight that spews light upward glares into the eyes of oncoming bicyclists, motorists and pedestrians. Stray light from a properly-designed headlight is still bright enough to reveal you.
Even illumination: a well-designed, shaped headlight beam tapers down in brightness closer to the bicyclist, avoiding a hotspot.
Good bicycle lights have shaped beam patterns
A good beam pattern looks more or less like this, if you shine the light at a wall:
Germany’s bicycle lighting standard recognizes this. Several brands of bicycle lights with a shaped beam pattern are available, meeting the German standard. Increasingly, the German standard is being adopted by manufacturers in other countries as well.
Still, many bicycle headlights being sold in the USA have a round beam pattern like the one shown below. These headlights cannot illuminate the riding surface evenly without glaring at eye level and above.These lights are appropriate only for off-road riding, and even then not when there is oncoming traffic.. Some lights do let you switch beam patterns.
Any bicycle headlight should throw some light to the sides, to render the bicyclist visible to cross traffic.
Aiming a headlight
For a shaped beam to work correctly, the cutoff needs to be just below horizontal. Check out this video of the beam from my headlight as I walk my bicycle toward my garage. The flat top of the beam slowly rises up the garage door.
Aiming a taillight
A taillight’s beam pattern is less critical. Drivers who can approach at speed will be directly behind you. Aim a taillight level and directly to the rear. As the video shows, you test aim by rolling the bicycle away from a wall. The center of the beam should stay in the same place. The taillight should throw light to the sides too, but need not be as bright there. The headlight and any side-facing reflective material will also be visible from the sides.
What about flashing mode?
A flashing headlight is useful in daylight and at dusk but should be avoided in full darkness for three reasons: 1) it’s difficult for motorists to judge your speed and location from a flashing light; 2) a flashing headlight announces that you are on a bicycle = SLOW. This could inspire motorists to violate your right-of-way. 3) an ultra-bright white LED on a flash pattern could cause a seizure in someone who is vulnerable them.
A flashing taillight also announces that you are on a bicycle, and that is a good thing for motorists to recognize when approaching from behind. It’s best to use a rapid flash pattern for the taillight. If you have two taillights, you can use one on flash mode and one on steady mode.
Good bicycle lights for daytime use?
Some bicyclists, especially those who ride on rural roads, use lights during daylight hours, to be more visible. To be noticed, lights have to be much brighter during the day than at night. Any light used for both day and night should have a different mode for each.
You might ask “isn’t the round beam pattern better for daytime use?” Well, no. To make a shaped-beam headlight work as a daytime running light, re-aim it a bit higher. A shaped-beam headlight also generally has a wider beam pattern than one with a round beam pattern, making it stand out for drivers farther from straight ahead.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/taillight-aim-wide.jpg356702John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2022-11-11 13:09:052022-11-11 22:18:18Aiming for good bicycle lighting
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.”
Concerned about Covid? There is information online about the Expo’s Covid Protocol. We are vaccinated, will be masked, and consider the risk acceptable.
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:
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!
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.png310594John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2021-10-28 17:56:592021-10-28 22:28:51Join Us at the Philly Bike Expo!
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!
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:
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 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.
Fast 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
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
When compared with other European cities, the number of crashes per million trips is encouragingly low. [6].
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:
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…
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. 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.)
[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.
[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.jpg395702Miguel Cardohttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngMiguel Cardo2020-08-07 11:55:282020-08-07 12:51:20The Madrid Model
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.
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.
There is, so he makes a left-turn signal with his left arm, indicating the desire to merge left to pass the bus.
He verifies that the driver behind him is yielding to let him move left before he does so.
He passes the bus with safe clearance, ready to brake and fall back in case the bus starts to merge out from the curb.
Once in the bus driver’s forward field of view, he signals to the bus driver the desire to merge back to the right.
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.
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.
The yet-to-be savvy cyclist:
Keeps far right as long as possible before reaching the bus, and does not check for overtaking traffic.
Does not signal to indicate the desire to change lane position.
Swerves out shortly before reaching the bus, again without checking to see if there is any traffic behind.
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.
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.
Merges to the right without signaling to the bus driver.
Merges all the way over to the curb, inviting drivers of motor vehicles to “share” an un-sharable lane.
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.“
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!
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 medical, and research facilities. I may well have been photographing a doctor or scientist. Brilliance in another 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.
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.jpg335536John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2020-06-08 09:55:062024-01-15 15:44:44Passing a City Bus Safely on a Bicycle
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
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 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.
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. 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.
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 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 subjunctive 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
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.jpg499700John Schuberthttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Schubert2020-06-02 12:55:222024-03-02 16:23:27Requiem for a Heavyweight-••-John-Forester-1929-2020
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.
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).
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! 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. 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.) 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.Similarly, 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.
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. 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. 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.
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.jpg373702Keri Caffreyhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngKeri Caffrey2020-05-30 09:00:022020-07-20 22:10:40Shared-Use Paths, Part 1: Etiquette
…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
Look 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.
In 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.jpeg744873John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2019-10-04 09:00:202020-07-21 23:26:25A Philadelphia Bike Lane Learning Experience
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.
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.
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.
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.