Chasing the Dragon
“All Ages and Abilities” is no longer enough for one of the leading consulting firms in the Bicycle Infrastructure Industrial Complex.
In the mid 2000 the video game Guitar Hero was all the rage. Players used a guitar-shaped controller to “play” a number of hit classical and modern rock songs. The controller featured a set of colored buttons on the “fretboard,” a switch over the “soundhole” and even a “whammy bar” to match the set of colors and shapes presented on the game screen.
Guitar Hero was so popular that it was mocked in an episode of the popular television show South Park, entitled “Guitar Queer-O.” The episode focused mainly on Stan and Kyle who had become highly skilled in the game after playing it obsessively to the point to where they’d risen to local fame. Similar to a real band, they were discovered by a talent agent and offered a record deal but a typical drama ensued and tension arose between the two resulting in a split. Stan went off on his own playing for money in a bar. Growing unsatisfied with the trajectory of his career and his obsession with Guitar Hero, he spiraled into a new addiction: Heroin Hero.
Heroin Hero was video game which consisted of the player in first person view injecting a syringe into their arm while chasing a cartoon dragon which taunted the player demanding “catch me” in a high-pitched voice. The objective was to catch the dragon, but it could only be done if the player timed the injection of the syringe with the proper dose.
But the game was coded so that the player could never win.
Chasing the Dragon is a metaphor for actual heroin addiction and the cycle of unproductive behavior addicts go though.
In other words, the player will never catch the dragon and the addict will never be satisfied his last fix.
Chasing the Dragon can also be applied to the utopian desires present in much of bicycling advocacy and the never ending quest of the Saviors.
One of the promises from the Platitude-Driven bicycling visionaries and their extremists, the Cluster B(ike) activists is the idea of a “protected” bikeways for “all ages and abilities” sometimes shortened to “AAA” will attract “interested and concerned” or “would-be” cyclists.
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), one of the main authorities in the ideology write that an “all ages and abilities user” include the following:
Children
Seniors
Women
People Riding Bike Share
People of Color
Low-Income Riders
People with Disabilities
People Moving Goods or Cargo
The belief is that people belonging to one or multiple of these groups are not served by the current paradigm and that people in these groups are ripe for “Rescuing” by these activists. The non-cyclist groups are considered “would-be cyclists” and per these activists, they simply don’t feel safe cycling on current roads.
Other considerations such as “cycling just doesn’t fit my transportation needs because of weather/distance/time/etc” or a plain “I just don’t like cycling,” do not not exist as options in this vision. Nor do these activists consider their constant doom mongering such as insisting “traffic violence” as an “epidemic” play a role.
It sets up the ideology for an impossible set of goals. Much like the fallacious concept of “equity” the so-called “work” is never done in part because the anointed always create a new set of problems for which they can only solve. (“Vision Zero” and “Net Zero” carbon emissions suffer this as well)
Mighk Wilson in The Special Mode criticizes this folly in the context of “bicycling for all ages and abilities” noting:
We don’t design different types of pedestrian facilities for “beginner” and “experienced” walkers. We design pedestrian facilities based on their operating characteristics and legal requirements. We generally want those “beginner” pedestrians to become “experienced” as quickly as possible, because we know experienced road users are safer.
and:
We don’t have special lanes or facilities for beginner motorists.
We design their facilities based on their operating characteristics and legal requirements.
We generally want motorists to become “experienced” as quickly as possible, because we know experienced road users are safer. As with pedestrians, parents prefer to accompany their teen drivers or have them taught by professionals — especially in more complex driving environments — until they have shown they are competent to drive on their own.
Unlike with walking and motor vehicle driving, few parents understand the strategies of successful, experienced bicycle drivers, and often believe them to be unsafe. So they themselves stay with the untrained and inexperienced pedestrian approach to cycling, and teach their children to do the same. This inexperience has now been passed along for a few generations.
This approach is okay on quiet residential streets. But when used in busy commercial districts, it greatly increases the risk for the cyclist, due to all the turning and crossing conflicts with motorists.
Wilson argues the prioritization of trying to build bicycling facilities which caters to the “all ages and abilities” category over more nuanced approaches such as educational opportunities to empower cyclists.
Education, especially for cyclists, is regularly poo-pooed by the Platitude-Driven and Cluster B(ike) types due in part to their entrenchment in the Bicycling Advocacy Drama Triangle as Saviors along with more hidden motives such as being climate crisis hysterics and anti-car ideologues. These Saviors patronize the very people they claim to be Victims by insisting only their Savior “solutions” will fix their problems. These activists are both “Progressive”/ Woke patronizing racial minorities, women, and LGB as well. Saviorism is also addictive, per
.One familiar with such dogmas can likely understand then, “all ages and abilities,” or “AAA” isn’t enough.
Meet AAA+
AAA+ is a baby of Toole Design who are contracted to write “master plans” for governments and are a key contractor for “road diet” and “protected bicycle lane” projects. Toole are to these “protected” bikeway programs as Raytheon or Boeing are to the military industrial complex. Propaganda rag Streetsblog runs uncritical cover for them.
In other words, Toole are big in this space, they have a lot of “credibility”, and there’s little competition both in doing business and in terms of ideas.
It’s almost taboo to go against anything Toole says too. After all, you “care” for “all ages and abilities,” don’t you?
They recently published a post on their website called “Beyond AAA: Planning Networks for All Ages, Abilities, and Identities.”
They write:
While the AAA approach was a welcome and necessary shift for the industry, it does not inherently account for the various ways that peoples’ experiences can differ based on their identity. Over the past several years, Toole Design staff have been developing and applying an expanded version of AAA: the All Ages, Abilities, and Identities framework.
Insisting “studies show” but not citing such studies, they insist that black people are more likely to be stopped by police than white people and that “drivers1 are less likely to yield to people with darker skin.” Then they note that “gender-nonconforming people” say they “feel unsafe” cycling or waiting at public transit stops, that “patients and caregivers” face challenges transporting people or goods on foot or bike, and that “some communities may be uncomfortable or transgressive defying their cultural norms” while walking or cycling.
“The list goes on,” the Toole article continues invoking the concept of Intersectionality with, “many people have not just one identity factor that impacts their travel decisions but multiple factors that intersect.”
But both “All Ages and Abilities” and adding the plus to the end are akin to chasing a dragon. The effort is “never enough” and “the work” is always ongoing.
That’s all a feature though, not a bug.
Toole does not acknowledge that bicycles are vehicles and their operators are drivers too, instead treating cyclists as “pedestrians on wheels.” Ironically this is identical to how anti-cycling, largely motorists above all, also view cycling.