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I’ve also heard from a couple of people who say they’ve been commuting on bikes downtown for years and refuse to use the new cycle tracks. “There are too many stops and starts,” one told me. “I’ll stick to the roads. It’s faster.”

Cyclists who hate cycle tracks? What gives? Shouldn’t all cyclists support the new infrastructure?

There seems to be a few reasons for this. For one thing, it goes to show that cyclists aren’t a monolithic entity they are sometimes made out to be. There are all kinds of people who ride bikes for transportation, and they all have different ideas. That diversity is a good thing.

Beyond that, the existence of people who hate the lanes is also evidence of a schism in the cycling world that has existed for decades.

This is a generalization, of course, but many of the people who have told me they don’t like the new bike lanes tend to be more experienced cyclists who have spent years mastering the give-and-take required to successfully ride a bike among car traffic. They ride by sensing the rhythms of traffic, which gives them enough confidence to play alongside cars in ways that terrify newbies.

This style of riding has long been referred to as “vehicular cycling” or “bicycle driving,” and for decades has been touted as the key to successful urban riding. It’s main proponent is an American named John Forester and from the 1970s through until the 2000s, his book Effective Cycling, which encouraged cyclists to ride as if they were a motor vehicle and for other road users to treat them as such, set the tone for urban riding. Forester actively campaigned against building infrastructure for cyclists, saying the real problem was a “cyclist inferiority” problem in society, and a lack of respect for people on bikes. He was effective in many respects — our current laws that treat bikes as vehicles, give cyclists a right to the road, and the old cyclist mantra of “taking the lane” all came about because of Forester’s work. Vehicular cycling works for many people in many situations.