“We can only liberate our rivers and our seeds and our food, and our educational systems, and redefine and deepen our democracy, by first liberating our minds and decolonizing our minds.” —Vandana Shiva

– apocalypse: a disclosure of something hidden from the majority in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception; the lifting of the veil.

– control mythology: the web of stories, symbols and ideas which define the dominant culture’s sense of normal (including limiting our imagination of social change) and make people think the system is unchangeable.

Bicycling in the United States suffers from a failure of imagination.

Failures of imagination usually grow out of a sense that the current situation is unchangeable. Cultures often create such a sense of inevitability inadvertently, but in some cases it’s due to an intentional effort by some to maintain the status quo. Usually there is a control mythology maintaining that sense of certainty.

The Bicyclist Control Mythology can be described thusly:

A significant number of motorists either will not tolerate sharing roadways, or are so incompetent as to be unable to see and avoid hitting bicyclists who are plainly in front of them in the lane. This control mythology is promoted not to keep bicyclists safe, but to support the belief that bicyclists sharing roadways cause significant delay to motorists. Underpinning that conviction is the belief that bicyclists are second-class road users. This control mythology presumes that motorists need to be changed in order for bicyclists to be safe, but cannot be changed. Since the motorist cannot be changed, bicyclists must be moved out of the way for their own safety.

By insisting bicyclists must be segregated away from motorists in order to be safe, bike advocates are operating under the bicyclist control mythology and inadvertently reinforcing it.

The dominant bicycle advocacy faction takes the position that bicyclists must be segregated into special facilities in order for significant numbers of people to feel safe when cycling. Many of them also take an adversarial position against the motoring public; often demonizing auto users and pushing to restrict motorist mobility for the sake of bicyclists. What they do not realize is that by insisting bicyclists must be segregated away from motorists in order to be safe, they are operating under the bicyclist control mythology and inadvertently reinforcing it. Segregating cyclists actually makes motorists happier, because they believe they no longer have to “worry” about us being “in their way.” Segregation makes motorists feel good (though they’d feel even better if they didn’t have to pay for those bikeways), but usually at the tangible expense of bicyclists.

Of course the segregationists will debate this. They believe (or at least they claim, based on extremely weak evidence) that segregated bikeways, separating motorists and bicyclists with paint or raised barriers, improve safety and are the only mechanism by which cycling can be significantly increased.

This debate has been dragging on on internet forums and elsewhere for years, and I’m not interested in rehashing it here. Instead, I am interested in discussing values.

The segregationists have taken an adversarial stance towards motorists. Since the majority of adults are motorists, this makes for a foolish political strategy. Liberated cyclists do not see motorists as the enemy. They are our fellow citizens. Yes, they are using machines which cause harm to our communities and to our environment, but they are simply behaving the way the culture expects them to, and to demonize them is to make ourselves look like fools. Only a very small percentage of the motoring population gives us trouble.

If you take all the things we normally talk about — unsafe streets, a lousy environment, education that’s not working, health-care — everything we know is that none of those are going to get better without a social fabric existing in a neighborhood, a city, a community. The idea that more programs, more money, better leadership, more expertise, is going to create a different future… It’s not; and the only thing that’s going to create that is a deeper sense of connectedness, social fabric, community, citizens thinking this place is mine to create. — Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging

Nature’s biological forces constantly work towards integration. Integration is the basis for harmony. Segregation inevitably means “I’ve got mine; you’ve got yours.” It leads to suspicion, not cooperation. That is no way to build community. The more you are segregated, the less you understand the behaviors of “the other,” and the more they become “strange.”

One could say that by directing cyclists to the margin between the roadway (for vehicles) and the sidewalk (for pedestrians) we have been marginalized. Margins aren’t necessarily bad. In nature they are where lots of things are happening. Sudden, surprising things, like a flock of birds bursting out of the forest into the meadow. Or a car pulling out of a driveway. The cyclist doesn’t want lots of things happening where he’s traveling. He wants as few hazards and conflicts as possible, and wants advanced notice of them when they do occur. Let’s use that margin for better things, such as wider sidewalks for pedestrians, or wider, landscaped buffers between the roadway and the sidewalk.

Before I get into the comparison of liberated cycling versus segregated, note that I am not criticizing trails or paths in independent rights-of-way. I believe such trails are valuable to communities for a number of reasons. First is to serve as a place for novice adult cyclists and children to get comfortable operating their unfamiliar machines. Secondly, they provide pleasant places to ride, without the noise and pollution of auto traffic. And lastly, they can improve connectivity in some suburban areas; in some cases reducing trip distances for cyclists.

Segregation advocates constantly point to The Netherlands, with its elaborate network of segregated bikeways as their ideal. But our cultures are different in one very pertinent way; in The Netherlands cycling by adults has always been seen as normal, while in the United States it has been considered strange since at least the end of World War II.

In the 1920s the Dutch bicycling mode share was 80%. Even at its bottom, cycling had a 15% share in most Dutch cities. The past four or five generations of Americans on the other hand have been raised in a culture that sees cycling as frivolous; a toy for children or a sport for adults. In most American cities the bicycling mode share has been below 1%. That has resulted in a culture that no longer understands cycling, but still believes it does.

This critical difference means that bikeways have different meanings in The Netherlands and the United States.

A bicycling system is not just infrastructure. It also depends on effective laws, competent and caring motorists, and competent cyclists.

Because they’ve always seen adult transportation cycling as normal, the Dutch have built a system intended not merely to separate cyclists from motorists, but to give cyclists priority at intersections and special legal protection in the case of a collision. They have also continued to train cyclists and motorists thoroughly, because they hold order in high regard. The desire among both the Dutch politicians and Dutch traffic engineers is to provide the best possible physical and legal environment for cyclists. So a segregated bikeway in The Netherlands means a place that is well-designed and respected by motorists. It is to be used by normal, competent cyclists, and the laws are written to favor them. Dutch cyclists are also highly respected on roadways without bikeways because they are both seen as normal, and generally predictable and competent.

Even so, in many cases in Europe the segregated bikeways have poorer safety performance than cycling in mixed traffic on the roadway.

While accident risk for a cyclist in mixed traffic did not seem to increase to any great extent with growing flows of conflicting motor-vehicles, the same condition increased the risk for cyclists on cycle tracks. In mixed traffic, the risk per cyclist seemed to decrease with an increased number of cyclists; on a cycle track, the risk seemed independent of the bicycle volume. … Intersections between carriageways [roadways] and cycle tracks are particular locations where infrastructure design often creates problems. Lack of conspicuity of vulnerable road users is bound to make such situations worse. — from Safety of Vulnerable Road Users, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1998

The culture creates the system, not the other way around.

Because our American culture has long seen cycling as frivolous and no longer understands it, our engineering community has done a poor job of designing and maintaining bikeways, and our legislative bodies have crafted laws which either do nothing to improve cyclist safety, or actually degrade it. Motorist training is laughably scarce.

Cyclist training in the United States has suffered from elitist or inept leadership. Training for adults has been boring and poorly marketed, while training for children has been based mostly on fear and helmet promotion.

So a segregated bikeway in the United States means a place that can be designed to minimum standards, left mostly unmaintained by local governments, and disregarded by motorists. It is to be used by strange, fearful, or incompetent cyclists. The laws become meaningless or confusing since legislators don’t understand the hazards and conflicts of cycling. American cyclists are relatively disdained on roadways because they are perceived as strange and unpredictable.

The culture creates the system, not the other way around. American bikeway advocates are attempting to take a short-cut; trying to build a system that will change the culture. One need only look at the anti-cyclist stories burning across the Web to see that isn’t working.

As American cyclists our first goal must be to be seen as normal and predictable. The solution to that is quite simple. Be polite to motorists. Be predictable, which means behaving the way other law-abiding drivers do (which includes controlling a lane when it is warranted). Be reasonably conspicuous. And dress like normal people; not Tour de France wannabes.

Key to achieving that goal are the values of trust, cooperation, and nurturing. The vast majority of motorists treat competent, liberated cyclists in a safe and polite manner, and if we increase the number of competent, liberated cyclists, motorist behavior will only get better, since cooperation breeds more cooperation. So we must trust motorists to do the right thing.

Expecting motorists to do something they don’t normally do, and which isn’t necessarily in their self-interest, is a set-up for failure.

It’s much easier and more realistic to trust someone to do what they’re already doing and what’s in their self-interest. In the case of roadway cycling this means motorists already routinely scan ahead for other road users. Expecting motorists to do something they don’t normally do, and which isn’t necessarily in their self-interest, is a set-up for failure. In the case of bikeway cycling this means motorists taking the extra effort to scan their blind-spots.

Some segregationists take an elitist stance, believing some cyclists cannot or will not learn. If we nurture and trust cyclists we can encourage them to become competent and confident roadway users. In this matter the cycling community has failed in two disparate directions. It has failed to reach out to novice riders; those who have no interest in becoming club riders. And the club riders themselves assume they’re already competent and predictable.

Try showing up at the typical club ride or bike shop with a bike from a big box store and you can expect barely hidden ridicule. Most clubs also have no effective strategies for helping people improve. Their approach tends to be rather Darwinian.

I quit doing local club rides about ten years ago because their own behaviors had deteriorated to the point that the stress level made riding with them very unpleasant. Stories from other cities lead me to believe those problems are not unique to my area.

At Bike-Walk Central Florida’s recent First Friday ride, a young woman showed up at the last minute on a low-end, single-speed cruiser bike. We welcomed her onto the ride and kept the pace low enough that she could stay with us. Evidently she didn’t “get the memo” that roadway cycling is a dangerous activity and only for those fit enough and outfitted with high-end gear. Now she is receptive to taking the CyclingSavvy course (after she gets a new bike). A month or so from now she’ll be willing and able to bike anywhere with safety and confidence, and she won’t need to wait a decade or more for the government to build all the bikeways she “needs” to get around.

Compare that to how segregationists believe they are nurturing cyclists. The following is an account from a cycle-track-riding reporter for the Montreal Gazette. Montreal is known for its many miles of cycle tracks.

“I was no longer simply watching out for traffic or an occasionally inattentive fellow driver. I was now embedded in a circus. Pedestrians moving at one speed, cyclists at another and cars at still another, and each of the performers moving to a different set of rules and in different directions. Not that I didn’t enjoy some of the thrill. But sometimes I just want to get from Point A to Point B without the high drama. That means without riding on the de Maisonneuve bike path downtown. One of my colleagues was hit by a car last year while cycling on The Path. The inherent danger, or inherent extra danger, on The Path is that the two cycling lanes in the centre of the city are headed in opposite directions, she pointed out. So a driver turning left from de Maisonneuve has to watch out for cyclists coming from the west and from the east. And watch out for pedestrians, of course, and other cars.”

My experience using a cycle track in New York City was similar to that of the reporter’s. His “solution” to this problem — shifting to a parallel street without a cycle track — is quite revealing:

“I’m happy to say that now, I’ve found my own enlightened path to work. … The right-hand lane of René Lévesque is wide enough for a parked car and for me and my bicycle, even with both panniers filled, so I stay out of the lanes of moving traffic.”

He has left the obviously hazardous conditions of the cycle track, only to put himself at risk for other more serious and unsuspected threats.

The right lane he refers to is only wide enough for a parked car and its open door. This untrained cyclist mistakenly believes riding within the door zone of those parked cars is a safe option. He has left the obviously hazardous conditions of the cycle track, only to put himself at risk for other more serious and unsuspected threats. Dooring is the primary cause of cyclist fatalities in large cities.

Controlling a lane in mixed urban traffic is much less stressful than what he reports from the cycle track, and it also reduces the actual number of conflicts and threats. To lead or force unsuspecting people into such a choice is unethical to say the least.

Training frees and protects the cyclist by enabling her to manage and minimize the hazards and conflicts as they arise. Segregation confines the cyclist, limiting her choices and forcing her into manufactured conflicts; conflicts which do not exist for the liberated cyclist.

Many years ago I took a try at Tae Kwon Do, spending a few hours per week at a local dojo. The Master was more-than-a-little full of himself. One day he sat a bunch of us students down and posed the question: “If you were given a choice between only food or freedom, which would you choose?” The answer was easy to me. Choose freedom, because you can then get food on your own. The Master wasn’t buying it. Perhaps he was just being argumentative. Surely choosing food in the hopes you could later gain your freedom could not be a better choice.

This is the choice being presented to cyclists by the bicycle segregationists, with “food” being replaced with “safety.” You can have the freedom of the road, or the “safety” of segregated bikeways.

Perhaps if your dictator is both benevolent and competent you could accept the choice of safety (or food). If he’s competent but not benevolent, you’ve got a serious problem. You’ve also got a big problem if he’s benevolent but incompetent.

Am I being heavy-handed using the term “dictator” as a metaphor for bicycle segregationists? Perhaps. Certainly they don’t have anywhere near that kind of power, but we’re seeing mandatory use laws being passed in a number of states. It’s a common sequence: advocate for bikeways; motorists get upset that cyclists don’t “stay in their place;” mandatory bikeway use law is implemented. So segregation becomes not merely a preference, but the law of the land. That’s not quite dictatorship, but neither is it headed toward freedom. We are at risk of moving from being free, to being socially confined (bike lanes), to being physically and/or legally confined (cycle tracks and/or mandatory use laws).

What cannot be argued is that a bikeway can’t improve safety for cyclists on streets without them.

This might not be so bad if the segregated facilities actually improved safety, but they don’t. This topic is of course one which has been debated ad infinitum in many cycling forums. I’m not going to bother to resolve that argument here. But what cannot be argued is that a bikeway can’t improve safety for cyclists on streets without them. As was made clear by the story of the Montreal reporter, a cyclist not trained to recognize and manage the risks of cycling might fare well if he or she travels on a well-designed, segregated facility, but could run into serious trouble on streets without them.

“Fine,” you might say, “let’s get busy building those bikeways.”

How long will that take? How much will that cost? The City of Chicago just committed to building a single mile of cycle track. The project will cost $3 million. Multiply that by Chicago’s 17,000 miles of highways and arterials and the bill will be $51 billion. And that’s just Chicago. If Chicago spent $100 million per year on cycle tracks it would take 510 years to “make all their streets safe for bicyclists.” Simple math shows even bringing the cost down to $300,000 per mile means 51 years to complete the system. Under that extremely rosy scenario, ten years from now 80 percent of Chicago’s streets will still lack “safe accommodation.” So untrained cyclists who must use those streets will be out of luck for quite some time.

What’s more, at least a third of cyclist/motorist crashes happen on low-speed neighborhood streets which won’t get such bikeways. Training, on the other hand, helps a cyclist everywhere. With effective training a cyclist can use those quiet local streets when desired and possible, and use the arterials where necessary.

The beauty of training is that the more people you train, the more trainers you can enlist, and more normative the new behaviors appear. So it’s a positive feedback system that gains power and momentum. A trained cyclist can travel anywhere, immediately, instead of being limited to bicycle-specific infrastructure.

A typical six-lane arterial like the one getting a cycle track in Chicago carries about 60,000 car trips per day. No doubt the segregation advocates would be thrilled if the cycle track stimulated cycling to a 20 percent mode share; 12,000 bike trips per day. If it’s a round trip that means it serves 6,000 cyclists. So 6,000 cyclists get to “safely” use one mile of arterial each day.

How about we try this. Pay 200 Chicagoans $50 per hour to teach 25 ten-hour traffic cycling courses per year. That comes to $2,500,000 ($12,500 for each instructor). Each instructor can teach five students per class, which is 25,000 students. Since people don’t believe cycling training has value, let’s pay them to take the course; say $50 each. That comes to $1,250,000. Total cost: $3,750,000.

Which sounds like a better deal? $3 million to give 6,000 cyclists access to one mile of arterial, or $3.75 million to give 25,000 cyclists access to 17,000 miles of arterial?

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” But with segregated bikeways it is not “temporary safety,” but the illusion of safety.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” But with segregated bikeways it is not “temporary safety,” but the illusion of safety.

Of course the average person cannot even imagine cycling on arterials, since he or she is convinced it’s not possible to do so safely. But what if they heard a number of stories from people who say, “I was just like you; I used to keep to the sidewalks and trails. I didn’t think it was possible, but now I do it all the time and it’s fine. In fact, it’s really cool.”

Effective stories spread and grow exponentially.

We can liberate current and potential bicyclists from their fears and from the inherent hazards of cycling near the edge of the road or on the sidewalks. We can liberate them from the belief that they can only bike safely on paths and on streets with bikeways. We know we can because we already have.

If we can show a woman in her sixties, who only a couple years ago was afraid to bike on a two-lane, low-speed collector street with bike lanes, how to be safe and comfortable cycling on four- and six-lane arterials…

If a young father, who initially started cycling to save money (from high gas prices) and began by cycling on sidewalks can, in a couple years, be confident enough to teach other cyclists how to bike on the road…

If we can show a young mom how to bike anywhere she likes, confident that she can safely transport her children on her bike as well…

If we can show a seventy-year-old man, who previously only transported his bike to a local trail on his SUV to ride, how to be confident enough now to bike to the grocery store, to church, and to any other destination…

…then we can teach most adults to get around safely and confidently on our existing roads.

Liberated cyclists are the new order. We are not trying to stop “progress,” we are freeing people from the oppression of the bicyclist control mythology. There is no us-versus-them. There is only us-versus-ourselves, and our self-limiting beliefs. Come join us. We’ll have fun together learning how to be safe on your streets today. We’ll show you how to get motorists to do what you want them to do (because they already want to do the right thing). It’s easy. Or you could wait ten years or more for the government to give you some poorly designed facilities that force you into manufactured conflicts and don’t go where you need to go.