Anne Harris, author of the BICE study
Here’s a photo of Anne Harris, lead author of the BICE study whose conclusions Paul Schimek has demolished.
A reader has asked how the PowerPoint presentation with speaker notes may be viewed. They’re in the linked document — you just have to download it and have the necessary software. One of my comments on this post gives details.
My reaction is: none are so blind as those who will not see — or perhaps, cannot, in this case, Harris, in allowing herself to be represented in this way. She is standing next to an apparently abandoned bicycle in a bike rack — the rear wheel is obviously bent. In the background, in the street, two cyclists are riding through slush and snow in a bike lane, though the adjacent travel lane is completely empty. The photo appeared with an article in a physics journal (peer review, anyone?) describing the study as a “landmark study”. Another review of the study describing how its methodology failed is here.
What kind of garbage analysis is this?
You might as well suppose she likes brutalist architecture based on the building at the end of the street, and passively suggest that this makes her a fascist.
Jean-François: what you suggest would not be based on evidence! The photo she posed for is like an environmentalist’s posing, smiling, surrounded by the stumps of a clear-cut forest.
Yeah, much as I think the BICE study is junk, it’s not really fair to judge the work by the author’s photo and surroundings. Although I was pretty annoyed to see a fawning portrait of Canada’s environment minister illustrated with her on her bike on the wrong side of the road, I chalked that up to the photographer setting up the photo. I’m always very conscious of jarring details like that, but photographers and writers who aren’t experts in the field usually aren’t, and often the subject won’t want to argue and just wants to get the shot done. Looks like a chilly day for an outdoor photo at the best of times.
Fawning photo of Canada’s Environment Minister on the wrong side of the road. Lovely. No, no competent cyclist would destroy her credibility by posing for a photo like that. It’s worse than the one I commented on. But please show me where I can find the photo, because I can’t say that with certainty unless I can examine it myself. (Sometimes photos get flipped for artistic reasons, etc.)
Also, I’ve already published critiques of the BICE study.
The Catherine McKenna photo is visible here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cyclistsaredrivers/permalink/10153811827229940/ It definitely has not been flipped, as the stop line and stop sign show. But it was likely the photographer’s fault.
OK. Environment Minister shown on the wrong side of the street, wearing a helmet improperly tilted back like a sunbonnet and with a bicycle lock draped over the handlebars, for lack of any proper way to carry it or anything else, as would be essential on a commuting or shopping trip. Pedal under the arch of her foot. The bicycle is appropriate for utility riding, with fenders (though no front mudflap) and an internally-geared hub, but saddle too low, tiny, marginal rear reflector, no taillight. No tools, no pump. Probably no headlight either. No gloves even though the weather is clearly cool. Sorry — poseur. Perhaps the photographer chose the pose but whether or not that is so, no cyclist who knew any better and cared about her reputation would allow herself to be posed this way.
I like the part in that paper that says downhills are more dangerous. I guess bicyclists all need to move to Netherlands. Maybe that’s why it is safer over there?
Actually downhill riding does have a higher crash rate, due to the higher speed. The well-researched Bikecentennial 1976 study gave that result too. And yes, the flatness of the Netherlands is one reason (among others) that the Netherlands has a lower crash rate — as well as a higher rate of bicycle use. Downhills are more hazardous but uphills are more tiring and sweaty!
I wonder whether you have a better link for Dr. Schimek’s critique of the BICE study ready at hand. That link points to a number of slides without much on the context for them.
The speaker notes are in the linked document, and here’s how to view them:
Or any system: If you have a Google or Gmail account, click the gear icon in Google Drive, select Settings and click the Convert check box to convert PPTX files to Google Slides format for viewing and editing. To download the file in PPTX format from Google Slides, select Download As from the File menu and select Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx).
Or use software on your computer: download the PowerPoint or open it from Google Drive (by clicking on the down arrow icon in the banner which appears if you move the mouse pointer up to the top of the screen). Then:
* Windows: You need to have the free PowerPoint viewer, or PowerPoint on your system and have your browser use it as a plug-in if you are opening the file directly from the browser.
* Mac OS X: Information is here.
* Linux: Use LibreOffice Impress. This may not display perfectly but it will probably work well enough.
Mil gracias.
What’s the big deal? It’s same old same old, going all the way back to Ken Cross’s original Santa Barbara study in 197-what? 1971? Reduce conflict points and you cut down on accidents, across the board on skill level. Increase skill level and you cut down on accidents across the board on the number of conflict points encountered. The only problem is that increasing skill level is cheap to the government (but puts the burden on the cyclist) and cutting down on the number of conflict points is mind-blowingly expensive. Ergo, we either 1) tell everyone the solution is to increase their skill level, call that vehicular cycling, declare the problem solved, and go on to other things, or 2) shoehorn in cosmetic engineering changes that superficially look like they reduce conflict points, but don’t (more often than not, they make things worse), and declare the problem solved and go on to other problems.
Sound cynical? Just look at rapid rail and bus rapid transit in the sunbelt. These lines are getting installed without grade separations, with just gates or even just flashers, with trains and busses going 60 mph or more, and the number of deaths and injuries is increasing exponentially as the feds pay for the rolling stock and (in the case of BRT) the busways, but not the grade seps. If regional governments won’t pay to keep trains from smashing into cars (or the odd gas tanker), do you really believe they will think twice about those soft, squishy cyclists?
The only really substantive (passenger) transport system improvements are occurring in full-cost recovery (toll) systems. Pretty much everything else is a public relations exercise.
The problem with your “VC or bust” conclusion is that it assumes that the prevalence of driving and behaviour of drivers is not going to change. Yes we should train our cyclists better, but we should also train our drivers better, and increase the fraction of people on the road who are on bicycles, and maybe also change the whole paradigm of how we assign road space. Imagine a future where most “roads” are actually bike-only and only special streets have special “car lanes” for those weirdos who still drive. Separated bike infrastructure could be a step in that direction.
Where did Bruce reach a “VC or bust” conclusion? It seems that anyone who criticizes flawed bicycling infrastructure or flawed research which legitimizes it gets painted as an advocate for all cyclists to have only the option to ride on big streets with fast traffic. I know Bruce to have been an advocate for low-stress bicycle infrastructure for over 30 years. What he has pointed out here is that at present, cosmetic engineering changes rather than functional ones are the order of the day.
I should also add that Bruce’s has also vehemently, even obsessively and unfairly criticized John Forester, in print! Pivotal issue for me is Bruce’s interpretation of Forester’s statement that cyclists would be better off if nothing special had been done for us as advocating for nothing at all to be done rather than as pointing out that what has been done generally hasn’t resulted in real improvements. Let’s look at the bright side: there seems actually to be a convergence of opinion happening.
Well, yes. I do believe that in its practical effect, Forester’s call for governments to do “nothing special” (an undefined term that may have many meanings) has, in fact, resulted in government doing nothing, period. The things that I see Forester believing government should do that are “nothing special” are so wildly impractical, given what can be reasonably expected in terms of time, money, and public acceptance, that he knows, or ought to know, that it is tantamount to saying, “go away, leave us alone.”
As for Jean-Francois’s comment, I expect that the average skill set of motor vehicle drivers will continue the existing trend and decline relative to the skills needed to manage the urban roads network. Driver skills are flat to slightly down, but speed limits and the complexity of the infrastructure network are climbing.
I also think this will be true for cyclists. As I explained in my book, I think a lot of the “new bikeways explosion” is actually coming from the privatization of sidewalk space. For decades now, cities have been content to let sidewalks be their “non bikeways bikeway system.” But now, they are trying to regentrify older suburban downtowns and business strips. The feds are giving them what used to be Transportation Enhancement money to spruce up these strips and do “road diets”, which actually means cutting out a roadway lane, moving out the sidewalk, and adding parallel or angle parking.
But the that big, fat sidewalk is getting turned over to shops and restaurants. No width left for bikes and peds. The bikes get banned. So throw some green paint out behind the parked cars, make a two-way bike lane, and Volia! A hundred billion LEED points. I warned that if VC’ers didn’t start flexing their muscle a little to help protect the little guy on the sidewalk, the chickens would come home to roost (and start soiling THEIR nest in the process), and it’s happening. The most efficient thing VC’s can do right now is fight sidewalk bike bans and sidewalk privatization ordinances.
OMG finally!