I know a few women whom after riding in groups and learning (merely by example and within about 5-6 times), how to handle their bikes in traffic and become comfortable doing so, are now confident riders on their own.

They will be examples for others. It really doesn’t take much.
I think proficiency exams for kids would be a good start.
I mean don’t they like to rub-in-the-noses of their parents just how much smarter they are?

I agree that the survey seemed rather lopsided, but perhaps I’m different in that I expect *any* survey is going to be so biased so I was expecting it. If you’re paying for a survey, you’re going to tailor it to your own needs.

Did you really edit for brevity, or did you edit out my recognition of possible bias?

Here’s the gist of the article: Women are risk-averse. And those darn vehicular cyclists just don’t see eye to eye with us!

Why would those VC folks disagree?

Perhaps because they know riding on roads is _already_ safe. Even John Pucher, promoter of bike path nirvana, has shown that biking is about five times safer per mile than walking. With numbers like that, it’s just dishonest to pretend it’s dangerous!

And perhaps the VC people realize that most of the facilities people plead for are no safer than a normal road, properly ridden.

Above all, the VC folks have learned that by just following the normal rules of the road, and learning just a few bike-specific details, they get to ride safely wherever they choose to go, without searching out fancy facilities. They’ve experienced true freedom on their bikes.

It might be that if women (and men) were told that cycling is actually very safe, they would begin riding more.

Why would cycling advocates keep spouting the “bicycling is dangerous” message? Why keep saying “We NEED bike lanes and bike paths and green boxes”? Why imply that you can’t ride a bike until those things appear? Sure seems counterproductive to me!

Alta designs bikelanes for a living. Their survey that doesn’t even include secure parking as a reason to not use a bike for utility. Is the survey a good one?

Surveys have been saying this exact same thing for many decades. And since 1991, federal money has been POURED into building bikelanes through the federal enhancements program. Has that caused massive nationwide use of bicycles? Hardly. Nationwide data complied by the Gluskin-Townley group shows bicycle use declined continually, and substantially, from 1993 to 2007.

I don’t buy the “if you build it, they will come” argument. I buy the “if you go to a community that is predisposed to embrace cycling, and use multiple means to promote cycling, you’ll get more cycling.

My opposition to bikelanes is quite practical. I often say that 98 percent of all bikelanes give the rest a bad name, which is to say that most bikelanes are poorly designed.

There are so many ways that bikelanes direct cyclists and motorists to engage in unsafe interactions. Think about this: the government takes your tax money, then uses it to build something that makes you less safe. What are the ethics of that?

Bikelanes don’t make us safer, but they have been touted so long that they have that perception.

Note that not one word of this post addresses completely separated trails on their own right-of-way, such as rail-trails. Those, when well-designed, are far superior to bikelanes and sidepaths in both safety and pleasantness.

The notion that “no facility” means “nothing at all” or “no space for bicyclists” presupposes that bicyclists don’t belong in regular traffic lanes! This idea is highly detrimental to the idea that bicyclists are drivers!

A 12′ wide traffic lane, which are too narrow for safe sharing and so bicyclists are allowed to fully control, is a lot more space for bicycling than a 4 or 5 foot bike lane which is usually mostly, if not entirely, unusable due to inevitable accumulation of debris and rubbish.

Sam, thanks for bringing this issue up. Women are definately an ‘indicator species’ of how ‘bike friendly’ a place is. Is traffic calmed, are there facilities, is there parking and is there incentives to ride? All those could be improved in San Diego. And yes, as Portland shows, if you build it, they will come.

Larry, thanks for acknowledging my attempt at reconciling bike ‘drivers’ and the reality of built environment we face. I’ll just state again, bikes (or other human scaled transport: walking) is often not the design vehicle for which the built environment is scaled at.

LisaB, Keri, so yeah, that baseball trail head 2 miles away, or 6-lane road, IS an infrastructure issue. If every neighborhood or part of the city was like mine, old compact grid system with slow streets then people would feel more comfortable to get out there right of way. But since it’s not, we feel the need for extensive ‘training’ since it’s so ‘dangerous’ out there. Yes, lot’s of it is perception, so an extra bit of paint feels helpful. Even though everyone knows you really have to ride proactively to have the best chance out there.

And finally, Serge, I gained an insight in your comment that where you said that where the infrastructure is in conflict with bicycle driving ‘vehicularists’ might prefer to have nothing at all. It’s just that. The status quo should not be acceptable. Traffic engineering has for too long prioritized fast throughput as the ultimate objective of the road network.

And while I’m sure we all agree here that bad design should be called out as bad design, there is the uniqueness that is the bicycle is a dynamic piece of equipment. It can operate at ‘traffic speed’ on streets, or at ‘path speed’ on boardwalks. Therefore the right to use the road must absolutely be maintained, but also paths, side streets and other preferential infrastructure should be planned, constructed and maintained to encourage all users to get out there. We’re still missing a lot of the population.

One is the survey results. We live in a culture that is completely ignorant about safe cycling practices. It is a culture that has forgotten the primary rule of the road — first come, first served — replaced it with the false notion that speed has priority and reinforced that notion with fear. For decades, bike advocates have been creating a “common knowledge” that bike lanes are how we accommodate cyclists in the traffic mix. Of course uninformed people are going to say they want bike lanes! That’s what they’ve been told to want!

Furthermore, it’s far easier to supplant all the other reasons they won’t ride bikes for transportation with this one big external reason that someone else has to do something about before they even have to consider all the other reasons not to ride. IOW, the survey is worthless propaganda produced by a firm that makes money building stuff. Surprise, surprise.

…

The second issue is gender and vehicular cycling. Like Lisa B, I have taught vehicular cycling to many, many women. They get it, they own it, they ride like they mean it. All you have to do is explain why and how it works. They want to do the thing that makes them feel the most safe. With a little explanation and demonstration, they take quickly to how much safer it feels to control an 11ft lane than to be pinned in a little bike lane. Check out this blog post by one of my recent students, a lane-controlling Mom who ride in heals and carries her 5-year-old on the back of her Xtracycle: http://fouronaquarter.com/?p=188

So really, what’s the end goal? Is your object to try and trick uninformed novice women into riding by providing facilities they’ll think are safe, or to empower them to ride safely with confidence by providing education? What’s a better result?

Women are extremely receptive to education. They seek education when they want to do something new (be it tennis, painting, swimming, sailing, cycling…). The primary problem in this country is that cycling education has not really been tried in a sustainable and easily-accessed way. The basic offerings have gone from a 30-hour course that was too hard core to a 10 hour course that is so watered down it misses the mark on almost every critical level (while boring the bejesus out of the students). That makes it really easy for the infrastructure proponents to say education doesn’t work. They know damned well they’re being disingenuous, but the general public doesn’t.

Education is imperative for offering a person unfettered access to the transportation grid. It should be the foundation of any effort to promote transportation cycling. However, there are good applications for infrastructure. If you seek real solutions to help novice cyclists (and even veteran cyclists), focus on street connectivity.

I have no fear of riding on a six-lane highway, but will often ride an extra mile or two to take advantage of the quiet, shade and community connectedness I get on residential streets (it means a lot to me to exchange greetings with the mailman, a person walking a dog, a mom with a stroller… it’s a quality of life enhancement). Bike boulevards are one way to do this. Permeability between disconnected neighborhoods is another. Both of these solutions give cyclists access and choice. Oh, wayfinding (signed, navigable route systems) is also important, especially if you live in a city without an intuitive grid (as I do).

By comparison, bike lanes only take away a cyclist’s access — reducing space from 11 or 12 ft to 4 or 5 — and ability to control her space on the road for optimal conflict-free riding (cycletracks and sidepaths are worse, reducing efficiency and increasing conflicts). I’ve seen first-hand how bike lanes on busy roads reinforce fear in novices. The passing cars are too close and too fast. They’re not fooled, but they don’t know any better way because the bike lane reinforces the cultural notion that cyclists belong out of the way. Some think that’s the best they can get, some just refuse to get off the sidewalk and eventually give up. Many cyclists who are subjected to networks of bike lanes develop both a dependency and an inflated sense of danger because they face many more conflicts with cars than cyclists who control their lane. They’re trapped in a negative feedback loop. Bike lanes make all the things that plague us in the traffic culture worse!

Instead of concentrating on luring more women cyclists through symbolic trickery and coddling, let’s create empowered women cyclists through education. Empowered cyclists sell cycling with their confidence and enthusiasm. Empowered cyclists will change the traffic culture by refusing to yield their equity to the tyranny of speed. Isn’t that the world we really want to live in — one with an equitable, civil and cooperative traffic culture?

To the facility advocates who want to use women, I say: Don’t patronize me. I have the curiosity to learn to drive my bike well and the confidence and self-respect to take my place in traffic. Don’t take that away from me by painting a ghetto on the edge of the road and then say you’re doing it for women.

BTW, take a cue from the motorcycle industry. Look how they’re attracting women.