Editorial turned rant

A further brief into the platitude-driven vision.

This is more of a rant that started off as a writing for something geared towards a long-form newspaper opinion piece. But our local rag only wants to hear and publish one position.

One of the hallmarks of bicycling advocacy especially in the United States is in some way to imitate places where bicycling has been seen as a success. Or in other words, places where they have a relatively high bicycling mode share. It makes sense in a lot of ways. Why re-spoke the wheel when there are other places that have achieved, or close to achieved these goals already? This, according to the cheerleaders on this side of the pond, more often than not driven by the platitude-driven vision, primarily has to do with the copious use of separated bikeways and thus if we build them here, then more people will choose to cycle instead of driving their cars. This amounts to something more akin to a faith-based statement than one derived from first-principles as it often ignores the various reasons people choose (or are even nearly forced) to use a personal automobile or other forms of transport. To note to their credit, they also typically advocate for slower speed streets as opposed to our relatively high speed limits on surface streets on top of a reduction of general-use travel lanes (incorrectly called “car lanes”) to accommodate larger sidewalks, landscaping, and bus or transit lanes. Such projects are often labeled a “Complete Street” too and this is a staple in new development and redevelopment projects.

These proponents have also tossed in the assertion that these separated facilities are often safer for their users and nowadays some even assert that cities with these types of infrastructure are safe for all road users - not just bicyclists. That’s quite the dubious claim which is more than likely bullshit than fact. Questions such as "at what cost," "compared to what," and "against what crash types" and other analysis of tradeoffs, downstream effects, or other principled thinking patterns are either unknown and often obscured when other people point out the fact these designs often either don't reduce some of the most common crash types OR they increase their risk. It's easy to find a complex academic study that proves otherwise however independent researchers such as Paul Schimeck, John Schubert, John Allen, and Patricia Kovacks, just to name a few have encountered significant defects in many of these studies. Because none of these folks are members of the great caste of Fiat Academia, their push backs towards these sham-filled studies are often ignored completely. This is, unfortunately, how The Science works these days though.

Another belief sold is that bicyclists are victims of "traffic violence" by motorist "oppressors," and that the space occupied by motorists must be "taken back" (ignoring the fact that everything they take for granted is also brought by these evil machines) and given to the people and that these people, if they're some sort of Prophet, offer the solution. This is peak utopian/unconstrained/platitude driven ideology (and that's before mixing in "Vision Zero", "X Equity", and "Net Zero" - all to be tackled in a future post or two) but it nevertheless drives many of the government (your taxes) supported endeavors and tangential organizations including ones related to the bicycle manufacturing industry (gotta keep selling new bikes after all), urban planning, environmental, and social justice groups. Fiat academia and fiat science drive much of the incoherence behind this vision too.

But that's not to say this vision is completely wrong, as there are times and places for dreaming, for separated bikeways, slow streets, general reductions on the need for automobile-dependency, etc. But the devil is always in the details! If there's one rule of thumb too it's to be at least slightly skeptical of anybody who derives their paycheck from selling even a sliver of this dream - especially if they're taxpayer or industry funded, even partially. Be even further skeptical if they are shielded from liability, or in other words, have no skin in the game. All need to fulfill their purposes and missions, and be sustainable (not in the green way) by continuing to bring in money. Despite all the cute marketing and emotional reasoning however, often the last person prioritized at the end of all of this are the actual bicyclists whether they're incumbents (who are often seen as heretics for even questioning some of the vision) or the folks who are not yet cycling yet are the much ballyhooed Geller "interested yet concerned" group. (all their other reasons for not taking up the activity be damned, though. Also the Geller’s groupings are bullshit - story for another post)

Yes much of this is harsh, but it's nevertheless something to keep in mind as people respond to incentives and should be kept in mind no matter how good their intensions are - which I’d argue most do indeed have such intentions and don’t wish for malice. Ideologues of this vision have ignored things in the past, often intentionally, despite being shown the way, only to be complicit in the preventable injuries or fatalities of bicyclists.

Those willing to think a bit past this surface-level analysis, aka the principled-vision thinkers, who may take their paychecks from somewhere else thus not having an obvious conflict of interest, also acknowledge other variables to the success of bicycling in these paradises: higher automobile operating costs (insurance, parking, registration, stricter licensing) but also the fact many of these European cities, especially their inner cores were laid out and developed long before automobiles were invented and therefore did not develop under the automobile-first land use policies that plague much of the United States. This is also true in Japanese cities where cycling is also extremely common although for some reason are seldom worshipped as European Cities are by The Elect. I suspect that has to do with the relative lack of actual bike-dedicated infrastructure in Japanese cities, but it could also be the language barrier as less Japanese speak English than residents of many Western European nations do and it's more difficult for a Westerner to embed themselves into Japanese society than it is into Western European thus the "cultural exchange" is more difficult. Even the post WWII "suburbs" in many Western European nations didn't always develop with the personal automobile as the centerpiece for mobility.

The United States is also the most individualistic country in the world , such cultural change to anything else will take generations and this cultural bug is that makes automobiles and the spaced out land-use policy not only highly popular but convenient for those who can take advantage of such system but even in developing nations, the notion of "suburbia" is taking off. Single family subdivisions are a dime a dozen now in Mexico for example, and are often planned out with significant level of incompetence and make many car-centric places Stateside looks comparatively okay. And actually some of the British "New Towns" which were planned cities built from scratch included networks of above or below grade bike paths that would be a dream for any US city to have. Yet they've seen very few bicyclists using them mostly because these cities serve as bedroom communities to larger UK cities so their residents commute out of town during the workday. Classic Central Planning failure!

Much to the chagrin of platitude-driven here, a common dream (at least now) for someone in the lower rungs of the working class here in the US is to aspire to own their own car. Chances are these advocates fail to see this just as they fail to see many other issues outside their bubble such as the fact that there are many positive benefits to personal automobiles that are ignored in leu of what's often leveled to hysteria over their negative aspects. Of course, as the Social Justice advocates often rightfully point out, this sort system prioritized towards private motorized transportation benefitted some groups of people more than others - especially in the past, and arguably some of the issues we see in today's society are a ripple effect from those eras. This isn't "Woke" to acknowledge although current fad in that domain is to obsess over identity (usually immutable characteristics) and abandon the classical "class-based" analysis but that's not for discussion here, at least today despite it's popularity among most in the platitude-vision crowd who desperately need a reality check. US Cities, although improving depending on the city, are also lacking in the dense, quick, and low headway public transportation systems featured in Western European cities. Attempts to imitate this here in the US, for example in the Fiat Feudalism capital of the USA - the state of CA , have resulted in slow, overpriced, boondoggles which have done more to pad the resumes of parasitic politicians and keep rent-seeking groups such as construction unions and developers happy. Again, the everyday person, whether they cycle or not, is dead last on their priority list.

There's also a realization that bicycling is form of transport only for short to medium trips for many people, which in fairness, can replace many short, low cargo, single occupancy car trips. There are also issues with lack of secure racks at destinations, silly cultural expectations at the work place, hills, climate, etc. Dedicated bicycling enthusiasts, and I count myself among this group and presumably so do many platitude-driven visionaries, find many of these challenges over-rated or even moot with the correct equipment, proper mindset, and time. But again, assuming this fits everybody else's individual circumstances is an exercise in magical thinking. This is where much of the platitude-driven vision becomes something akin to what Rob Henderson calls a "luxury belief."

Where does this leave the principled-vision folks? Well they’re only human as well but they’re greatly aided in not typically having their paycheck or incentives covered by taxpayers, industry, or other complexes that elevate the platitude-driven visionaries. They must however find ways to stay conspicuous and relevant in a domain which is openly hostile to such heresy. That’s one of the objectives of this Substack. Clowns, frauds, charlatans, and parasites be damned.