We need physical changes in infrastructure and culture, and we get three feet legislation and education, are you serious?
We must, with due reverence for the ghosts of transportation past, finally lay to rest the gospel according to John Forester. His ideas were simple, stubborn, and fundamentally flawed. Let us recap his ideas: bicycles are vehicles, like cars (yes, they are, according to John), that the road is has the potential to be a sanctuary of orderly vehicular flow (because bicycles are vehicles like cars), and that education alone will shepherd the unwashed masses to this truth. The latest incarnation of this nonsense—the magical “three feet” campaign, a bureaucratic chant inspired by the roadie's sky daddy, John Forester. This well-intentioned absurdity ignores the concrete reality of our streets and the steel reality of physics.
Bicycle educational programs promoted by national US advocacy organizations are, upon inspection, amended derivatives of Forester’s original texts. In fact, they would still be using his branding if he hadn't told them to stop when they edited it to be slightly more sane (I assume).
This is from the Bicycle League of America:
The safest way for cyclists to ride is by positioning themselves in the middle of the road, often called “Taking the Lane”. (Because bicycles are vehicles, like cars)
That’s pretty scary and I don’t know how that is an effective campaign— for people who are sane.
Does “taking the lane” look like what urban cyclists are doing in ANY part of the world that has cycling as an accessible mode of transportation?
Even with slight tweaks, the foundation remains— a weltanschauung that has US cycling advocacy trapped in a cycle of ineffectiveness. An endless loop of explaining rules to cyclists and motorists and pretending our shared infrastructure is a rational space that simply needs a better explanation and better PR. When will the gaslighting end? A bicycle is not a vehicle —like a car. Pointing to the emperor and saying he is naked is not a confession of inferiority; it is a declaration that he is, in fact, naked, because I can see him naked in front of my face. Forester's theories are naked. My bicycle is not inferior for not having an engine, just as I am not inferior for not having a penis, and my cat is not inferior for her retractable claws. Difference IS. The failure to architect our world around this plain fact is a failure of imagination and moral courage. Of course, you'd have to actually ride your bike daily to understand that you have a paucity of imagination and are possibly engaging in amoral activities. Asking people to take the lane is nonsense, that's not education, that's a prayer to sky daddy and I’m an atheist.
Our existing narrow roadways were not designed for the delicate ballet between a two-ton vehicle spotting a 115-pound cyclist, decelerating from thirty-five miles per hour, and then gliding smoothly into another lane. Why does that even seem like a reasonable maneuver to you just because your bro said it? Like my god. Then you are useless, absolutely useless.
I will describe the average driving condition where this 3 feet fever dream would occur: The driver’s reflexive jerk of the wheel, the indignant horn from the queue now piled behind, the screamed obscenities born of a culture that equates velocity with virtue. In New Jersey, they will curse you for merely obeying the speed limit, to then slow down and “move over” is an act of social deviance. This is not JUST about human impatience that seems to intensify when one is in the driver's seat. It is about physics. Most travel lanes are not wide enough to contain a standard automobile and a three-foot buffer alongside a bicycle. The maneuver is, in most daily contexts, a geometrically impossible fiction.
Recently, many blogs and podcasts have claimed that the Forester way is not the way, and in the next breath explain how they need signatures for the "Why do we need infrastructure when we can just explain?" bill.
The three-feet campaign is ridiculous. Why are we demanding that humans perform like tanks and for infrastructure designed for one purpose to serve magically another? Why are we mistaking legislative incantations for systemic change? It is a costly fantasy. It is time we stopped circulating the scriptures of Forester. And it's time those of us in advocacy stop being polite, to that guy, all of "that guys."
