Forester was one of the leading lights of the “vehicular cycling” method of cycling and had been a vocal critic of Dutch-style cycleways since the early 1970s.
Forester lived in Palo Alto, California. In the early 1970s, Californian cities such as Palo Alto and Davis started building Dutch-style cycleways, and Forester was an early and lifelong opponent of the system. He, and other cycle enthusiasts of the time, feared that the provision of cycleways would mean compulsion to use such lanes, slowing them down, and thereby killing off cycling.
Vehicular cyclists – or, as they are sometimes known, usually disparagingly, “VCers” – believe in “claiming the lane.” That is, the best way to be noticed by a motorist is to ride in the center of a lane, blocking it like a motor vehicle. “They have got as far as they have only because they are able to use arguments that mislead the public into thinking they are pro-cyclist.”
This elitism put Forester, and some of the other hardcore VCers, at loggerheads with those who wanted to see more “bums on saddles,” such as the bicycle industry and most bicycle advocates. Forester didn’t believe he had the impact others claim for him. In a 2016 Skype interview, I asked him whether he stopped the building of any cycleways? “Not really,” he replied.He added: “People assert that vehicular cycling is why local government didn’t install bike paths. That’s not true. Every election cycle since then there has been more money put into bikeways. They’ve been built, at a slow rate, but they’ve been built. You can’t stop ’em.
As Pucher and many others have asked, “If the measures used to make Dutch bikeways safe are so inconvenient, why do so many people use them?”
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