What the mayor doesn't always tell you about bike modal share

Part One of this Series. For Part Two - going beyond what was published in Cycling Mobility - focused on cycle training of immigrants to the Netherlands, click here.

Intro: For the fourth (and sadly, final) issue of Cycling Mobility, which has just hit the street, I wrote a long blog-style article which was edited down considerably into an opinion piece. This follows immediately below, though the version in the magazine is somewhat longer. It was originally titled by the editors as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" which I objected to as it had both nothing to do with gays and lesbians serving in the U.S. military -- and as some kind of word play it also did not describe accurately what this whole thing is about...
The whole thing starts with the opinion - part I - and follows with four parts originally intended to be sidebars/boxouts with the original text. In part I have added some clarifications or emphasized certain things [in brackets] based on the original text. - Todd Edelman, Slow Factory.

Reality...

As I walked in Copenhagen one night in December 2009, I joked with my companions that portraying it as a leading cycling city was so important to the mayor that he would pay cyclists to ride around so there were always bicycles on the streets [or even show a live CCTV video with computer-generated cyclists added]. 

Neither Copenhagen nor Amsterdam need to exaggerate how many people cycle there, or the percentage of cyclists as part of overall traffic. These figures are in hundreds of blogs every month and increasingly in mainstream media.

...or illusion? Frame grabs from "Protektor"(Czech Republic, 2009)

But as more people get on bikes in any given city, is it enough to simply publicise cycling’s share of journeys? I would argue that it isn’t. Instead, it is increasingly important to analyse how these figures are arrived at and what they tell us about cycling. It is more than a simple percentage: publicising cycling’s modal share should reflect design conditions, participants [e.g. ethnicity, ethnic origin, income level, gender...] and cyclist behaviour.

There are great infrastructure designs — the best are usually found in the Netherlands — and there is a lot of rubbish, and that includes high-density areas where cyclists are added to pedestrian space. Such shared use is normally the result of weakness; politicians are reluctant to take space from cars (either travelling or parked) due to pressure from motorists and the motoring lobby. 

I moved to Berlin in 2008, and my own street is a great example of how cyclists and pedestrians have been marginalised. Urbanstaße, in the district of Kreuzberg, was planned in the late 19^th century. In its early configuration, a tram ran along the centre of the street and wide outside lanes were shared by horse-drawn vehicles, cyclists and a few motor vehicles. Not many cars were parked on the street.

Until roughly mid-20th century: Facade – garden – footway (sidewalk) – trees/planter – multi-use street lane – double-tracked, centre-running trams [streetcars] – multi-use street lane – trees/planter – footway – garden – facade

Today: Facade – footway – bike path – trees/planter – car storage – motor-vehicle lane – motor-vehicle lane – narrow centre divider – motor-vehicle lane – motor-vehicle lane – car storage – trees/planter- bike path – footway – facade

By the early 1960s the layout had changed, and it is still like this today. Cyclists are now in the former pedestrian space and the pedestrians are in the former garden area. The pedestrian and bike areas are at the same level, so cyclists who need more space (for instance to pass each other) ride in the pedestrian space. In recent years cycling has increased significantly and this has put riders perilously close to facades and doorways. Many riders go the wrong way, and it seems most are unaware they are breaking the law. If challenged, they say that “others do it” as a way of justifying their own actions.

This is the worst of Berlin’s cycling mobility — it is at the expense of pedestrians and other cyclists. The best way to describe it is “cycle-colonisation”. In terms of infrastructure, the current situation is a layout created over time and without much thought towards anything but improving the flow of motor traffic. It encourages and facilitates bad cycling behaviour. Bike trips in such locations are low in quality and dangerous — or often simply annoying for pedestrians. Such car-friendly/people-ignorant street designs have led to an explosion in the number of bike salmon, the term coined by NYC Bike Snob to describe people who ride illegally against traffic. As the cycling renaissance gathers pace, it is important to remember that one-way streets created for cars, such as the main routes in Berlin on either side of wide and fast streets, will suffer from an increasing number of wrong-way cyclists.

Some examples of how authorities see who is actually cycling - From top to bottom: Berlin results strongly hints at ethnic origin and income level (e.g. central districts are wealthier); Bogota chart is nearly explicit about income level (e.g. Zona Chapinero is the Colombian capital's most exclusive district); Netherlands info is quite specific about ethnicity of both parents ("Autochtoten" means both or only parent born in NL). All three ignore gender (though other research from these authorities does not).

So who is cycling and who isn’t?

Cycling accounts for about 15% of journeys in Berlin, but that varies considerably by district, and is often dependent on residents’ income or ethnic or national background.

Let's look at two districts. Broadly speaking, Mitte is gentrified with middle- and upper-class people of European origin. Neukölln is more varied and is home to a high number of people of Turkish descent, among others. It is middle- to working-class, except in the south, outside the S-bahn ring road.

Neukölln has a 12% cycling modal share, but just who is cycling? Is it men, women or children, the better-off, those on average incomes or the poor? In the northern part of this district, there are a high number of bike-happy newcomers from Europe and Canada/USA who probably make up a sizeable proportion of the 12%.

We need to know what lies behind the figures. Is it Neukölln’s terrible cycling infrastructure, or the social status that some residents attach to car ownership? All of this needs to be taken into account when quantifying bike use.

Dr. Jekyll? ...

Who is paying the penalty?

I spent weeks looking for a flat in Berlin before I moved here. It was wonderful and initially liberating to be in a city with a fair number of cyclists. I was generally on a bike myself — but that meant I missed something significant. It was only when I was settled into my new home and brought my old and frail dogs from Prague that I started walking a lot.

Once on two feet rather than two wheels, I began to notice cyclists riding without lights, not using a bell, going too fast or going the wrong way. My impression is that Berlin is worse for this than other north European cities. Even when I was walking the dogs in the right place on the footway, I felt that we were threatened by cyclists. Walking Prague with its low number of bikes felt safer than doing so in cycle-happy Berlin.

We’re probably all familiar with poor behaviour by cyclists, but these people were misbehaving for four reasons, all of which which feed on the other:

• Bad infrastructure — as described
• Antisocial behaviour — some cyclists and pedestrians react badly because they are at the bottom of the pile due to poor street design. It is also a reflection of Berlin itself: people here respond in different ways to the freedoms they enjoy when compared with the social disciplines expected elsewhere.
• Sharp sticks but soft carrots — cyclists who misbehave can be fined, but enforcement is patchy. Most of the time these riders are ignored by the police, and other street users rarely speak out. There is no encouragement to behave better.
• Lack of training — few Germans over the age of 50 have had any cycle training in school. Likewise, many immigrants have little experience of cycling in cities.

The four points combine to affect other street users, including other cyclists. In my view such poor quality cycling should not be counted or represented in in any publicised figure for cycling’s modal share.

... and Mr. Hyde? Grabs from a promotion video for "Neber der Spur. Das Fahrradhasserbuch" ("Off the Track. The Cycle Hater's Book", published in Germany in early 2011) , which suggests that normal, peaceful people become aggressive when they get on a bike.

So what about your city? Most people will not know how many people ride bikes. It probably only matters to politicians at election time. On a personal level, what counts is that you and your friends can cycle.

Any number for modal share is, therefore, abstract. Not all cities count cyclists in the same way, even if they use the same mechanism. Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Waco — they are not on a racetrack in adjoining lanes.

The numbers are bandied about by mayors and city councils and their representatives. They use it for marketing. And experts pass the figures on.

Please don’t get me wrong — Berlin does have a few great examples of cycling infrastructure and education. Any hope of building on that is, however, dashed by the public’s collective reaction to bad cycling, usually expressed in the media. This backlash is too much for politicians to address within a term or even three.

But then why should cyclists expect more? Germany is addicted to the car, though some deny it. Nearly every cyclist stopped by police can point to a nearby driver doing something worse [if just because of physics]. Our politicians need to work with city dwellers to end the domination of the car and car culture. We have to remember that many of today's drivers are tomorrow’s well-behaved cyclists, and work out a way to manage that change. This is not some romantic ideal, but a realistic view forged in the heat of the debate over the energy shortages to come.

We need to be equipped to face the new reality — which will be with us not too many years hence. To prepare for this there needs to be significant investment in infrastructure and education, starting immediately.

Berlin, summer 2011 - Sign reads "Fight the Aggressive Cyclists. Consideration Takes Priority on All Our Paths" Photo by Steffen Zahn.

*****

For Part Two in this series, click here. 


In the coming days I will upload the intended boxouts/sidebars which further detail my arguments herein. Please join, follow or otherwise watch this space.... and have a safe and truly representative holiday!

NYC: Haiku Hi-viz! Commissioners' Conflicting Missions?

Old skool messaging...? The well-known(?) signage in Queens, NYC, by NYCDOT, 2007. Photo by Joe Shlabotnik.

Foreword: I lived in NYC from late 1996 until early 2000. 

Since Occupy Wall Street began, I was curious to see if any organizations, publications or blogs etc in NYC or abroad focused on sustainable mobility and better streets, or at least the major ones, would show support or even comment on, amongst other things, the actions of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. The lack of mobility choices of many of the 99% is clearly connected with the policies of the 1%, and, after all, what good is a public space if you get attacked by the state for being in it?

Time's Up! in NYC did respond, as did J. H. Crawford of Carfree.com (the latter with a video "Occupy All Streets!" linked below). But as far as I can tell no other groups etc. did (tell me if I missed something). 

What is keeping these organizations quiet? I knew that - just to name one example - in 2009 the Bloomberg Foundation donated 125 million dollars to a coalition including EMBARQ, and that within a year EMBARQ praised Bloomberg policy in a video without mentioning this funding (and in the meantime a deputy mayor of Bloomberg had been appointed to simultaneously head his charity (!).... and that, generally speaking, sustainable mobility professionals working in NGOs find it personally prudent to separate a friendly issue from a sticky one. At least a couple people told me privately to do this in my related blog comments, Tweeting and so on.

BUT I don't roll like that. For me it's about solidarity and sustainability. And I don't want to single out Bloomberg: As I write this the Portland police are evicting Occupy Portland - wonder how this affects the street cred - or whatever - of the mayor of that city famous for cycling (in the USA context.)

Recently in my gentrifying neighbourhood in Berlin, I complained to a friend and neighbour  - he is about 50 and has been active in local politics at a grassroots level and has lived in the same co-op since the 1980's - about all the anti-social cycling that happens in the somewhat traffic-calmed neighbourhood. He passively encourages it, and does not mind if the restored cobblestone pavements (sidewalks) are covered with trash.

He said "We made this neighbourhood so nice that we can't afford to stay in it."

***

Gritting and gnashing my teeth as I leave aside gentrification (!), the "stop & frisk" policy of the New York City Police Department, lack of city support for animal shelters, support of the abusive carriage horse industry, and, connected with Occupy Wall Street, the destruction of a library in public space,  arrest and harassment of journalists and pepper spraying of peaceful protesters -- all of which NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is ultimately responsible for, I, like many, appreciate what the NYC Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) has recently done for surface transportation safety in NYC, as part of the goals of PlanNYC, created by the Bloomberg administration.

Mike Bloomberg and his partner Diana Taylor, out for the evening, dressed in black. Photo from Business Insider.

Separated bike paths, bike parking, bike share (depending on its yet un-named sponsor) ... good stuff. Bloomberg's "lieutenant" in charge of this, the NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, is popular for good reason. Her personal style is well known, too. She dresses in black, like the night, when riding a bike.

Curious if Sadik-Khan wants a bike with a proper, full chaincase so she doesn't have to keep on begging people for extra rubber bands. Photo by Fred R. Conrad/NY Times.

Last Tuesday NYCDOT introduced a new traffic safety awareness campaign. "Curbside Haiku" is meant to "... draw attention to the critical importance of shared responsibility among pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists in keeping New York City’s streets safe."

New skool messaging?

One of the signs - also a woman in black! The signs are small. Very small, so that they won't distract drivers, says Sadik-Khan in the NY Daily News (but then how does the "shared responsibility" of motorists get "attention"?).

Indeed, why is the campaign focused on blaming the victims? It might be because the budget - sourced from drunk-driving fines - was so small that larger driver-focused signs were impossible budget-wise. It could be because this was not very long in planning, and the connection was simply a 2010 New Yorker mention of the artist John Morse's earlier haiku work in Atlanta. 

Why is the campaign biased towards owners of smart phones which can read the QR codes? Half of the images will be presented with a QR code only, but perhaps only 1/3 of people walking and cycling in NYC have smart phones.

And now a few more of the signs:

It is not clear if the intention is driver vs. pedestrian here, but if it is, comparing the aggression of a driver and a pedestrian is an absurd non-starter. An aggressive pedestrian might push and shove on the sidewalk, but what can they do (compared) to a driver, let alone a car? An "aggressive pedestrian" is most likely to be injured themselves, or possibly make a cyclist fall, but no chance of doing the same kind of damage as a driver.

The blame the victim thing seems to be artist Morse's thing. In the anti-Sadik-Khan New York Post he says "... think about the fragility of your body. You're just a human. You're nothing against these cars. Poetry underscores the harshness of this reality. That's why it has this power." 

This is strange because the NYCDOT seems to recognize this. It is why separated bike paths - the best insurance against cyclist injury and death in a city (and world) where most people are still not prepared to stay or be carfree - are being built in NYC. This makes me think that NYCDOT is confused about how it wants to handle this "power". 

Well, Ms. Sadik-Khan, if the bike lane is this dangerous why is it not a separated bike path?

You may have noticed the partners of NYCDOT in "Streetside Haiku". The Safe Streets Fund includes both the Toyota Foundation and the American Automobile Association of NY. While these groups have every right to be involved with driver behaviour, I am not surprised that they support this partial pedestrian and cyclist victim-blaming action. They also support the NYCDOT's free helmet programme, which uses statistics on helmet safety - e.g. "Wearing a [...] helmet reduces the risk of serious head injuries by 80%..." which I believe are quite exaggerated, and then tosses out hyperbole like "...helmets are a good idea for cyclists of all ages..." while - I am sure - never telling parents something like what is in the proposed label at the bottom of this advert.

Confusion within NYCDOT communications, while possibly chronic, is perhaps nothing compared to how its gains in subjective (real) and objective safety are at least partly offset by the dangerously passive behaviour in regards to safety by the NYPD. 

The situation is now being investigated by Transportation Alternatives (TA). On Tuesday it "... delivered over 2,500 citizen letters to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly demanding that the NYPD crack down on dangerous driving, and announced a comprehensive probe into how the department handles traffic crash investigations." The press conference video is here.


Stop & frisk is also, obviously, anti-freedom, so it works against the freedom increased by public squares and bicycle infrastructure. 

Another Bloomberg "lieutenant", Ray Kelly, in black! He is also quite popular. Some say he is a kind of general to Bloomberg's commander-in-chief.  Photo from Brooding Cynyx.

The NY Daily News story mentioned above reported that TA responded to the NYCDOT haiku action with:

Safe street designs. check,

But where is the enforcement?

It's your turn, police.

In the same vein, coverage in The New York Times "City Room" blog, comments were - by request - in the form of haiku. The most popular, by Steve in Brooklyn:

Drivers kill and maim

Hundreds die every year

Police ticket bikes

***

As you can see above Bloomberg (and his partner) plus his two commissioners most directly responsible for safety of NYC's surface transportation wear black often and very likely at night. They - like anyone - should feel free to do so. NYC - and all - drivers following reasonable speed limits should be able to see them. If they cannot see them, it is because they are driving too fast (and that the street might have too fast a speed limit or other designs which prioritize motorized traffic flow over everything else).

***

To be fair to the artist Mr. Morse (and NYCDOT), they did do one image and haiku I really like. 

Everyone is wearing a helmet, even if they aren't! Two Contests from Nutcase Helmets!

To celebrate the change in position on mandatory helmet laws from Bicycle Transportation Alliance  (BTA), in Oregon, USA, Nutcase Helmets is holding two contests! 

As the BTA will start to phase out photos of riders not wearing helmets in all publicity materials. BTA Executive Director Rob Sadowsky said "We've traditionally showcased people with and without helmets. In the future, it will only be riders with helmets."

PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST

People should send in a digital photo of themselves wearing a Nutcase Helmet. There have to be other - and only - helmeted cyclists in the photo. Whoever has the most helmeted cyclists in a photo wins the contest, and for every photo we receive with more than 10 helmeted cyclists Nutcase will give BTA 100 dollars. Also, it is okay to use Photoshop*.

*http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/03/good-news-from-over-there.html

SLOGAN CONTEST

This requires a bit of explanation: Scientific research provided the impetus for Nutcase's well-known slogan "I Love My Brain". We found out that people - not just cyclists - who do not wear helmets are self-hating, and that their most vicious malice is reserved for their "grey matter". This slogan has served us well by creating divisiveness among lovers and friends -- and we are proud that the magazines we place advertising in and retail outlets which sell our product don't seem to notice that! But we think it may be time for a new slogan to put on our helmets. 

There will be two categories: Short slogans and long slogans. Short slogans have to be six words or less. The long ones will not be on the helmets themselves; they will be represented by/linked from a QR code that will be on the outside of every Nutcase Helmet starting in 2012. 

Here are some examples of slogans created by our staff:

Short slogans: 

"Helmet-Wearers Think"

"Real Cyclists Wear Helmets"

"This Is Not Amsterdam"

"I Am Scared Of Spiders"

Long slogans:

"In the Netherlands, nearly 100% of cyclists killed on the roads aren't wearing helmets!"

"In modern professional cycle racing, nearly 100% of cyclists killed are wearing helmets."

Rejected slogans (staff-members were terminated, also for other activities):

"Think Rationally About Risk"

"I Love My Driving Helmet"**

"Safety Through Infrastructure, Not Armour."

"Proud Victim of Fear Mongering." 

See the Nutcase Helmets website for more info.

** Driving is safe

Slow Factory is a proud partner of this initiative for safety and hopes to see you in Vancouver for Velo-city in 2012!

How Do We Please the "American" God of Bike Helmet Compulsion?

From Capital Bikeshare in Washington D.C. Helmet imagery everywhere is bad enough, but showing bad fitting is pathetic (and I told them directly and indirectly many times about this photo).

Well, well, well...

You would think that they (Alta Bicycle Share, various govt. officials with the honourable and good intentions of implementing bike share, etc.) would have learned (a lesson in/their lesson in) Melbourne.

Capital Bikeshare in Washington D.C. is bad enough, seemingly not strictly requiring helmets but limiting liability of the operator if injuries are incurred by helmet-less users (helmets are not required under D.C. law for people old enough to use the bikes) See Section 26 of User Agreement in the previous link and their Safety Page. (This programme is partly funded by taxpayers; one wonders why people who ride collective public transport in D.C. do not have to sign a safety pledge about e.g. proper foot attire.)

Sadly, with the new bike share system in another USA right-coast city which opened last week, it gets worse.

NYC's bike share operator may be decided this month. Whoever the winner, given the high amount of helmet-wearing there, endorsement of helmets by Janette Sadik-Khan and Transportation Alternatives, and general victory of the "Everything is Good" Committee, I would not be surprised if the rules there also mandate helmets.

Draw a Line in the (left-coast Canadian) Sand against Helmetism at Velo-city Global 2012 in Vancouver!


Update - 9:44pm: @BrooklynSpoke Tweeted earlier this evening: "I don't think they will enforce helmet use. Seems like a way for Hubway to cover itself against litigious Americans." - This is clearly the case, but - as I mentioned above - why does collective PT not have the same conditions, and how about just using the pavement (sidewalk)? Compulsion is compulsion.

When someone yells at you from their car...

from System Comic.

This post inspired by "Road Rage in Holland?" on Workcycles's Bakfiets-en-Meer blog.

Carmageddon!!!

In El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula this upcoming weekend is something filling the brains of USA drivers (and their dependants) - with the possible exception of some New Yorkers and San Franciscans - with total horror but which I hope is making many others around the world laugh out loud: Carmageddon!

A three-day closure of an important rubber-tyred road vehicle link in Los Angeles. Sigh. I am from the West San Fernando Valley (what was once Owensmouth, then Canoga Park and now West Hills) and from before birth until around age 17 was driven over the hill - along with my older brother - between the Valley and West L.A. thousands of times.

First from my house to the maternal grandparents or the paternal grandma, then also to my dad's after the divorce, then - after a move - from my dad's to where my mom later moved closer to the Sepulveda Pass, which is what the San Diego "Freeway" - or 405 - goes through between these two main parts of L.A..

This was the real horror. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. My mother would come pick us up or my dad would drop us off almost every weekend. This is not quality time. Sitting. Sitting. Sitting. Stuck in traffic. Ugly. Ugliness. 

How nice it would have been to go by public transportation. If I remember correctly, my father told me remembers seeing a L.A. streetcar arrive from the Valley with snow on its roof in the pre-Freeway days, must have in the late 1940's.

http://sbb.filepool.ch

Yes... wonderful to do something a bit more constructive than sit strapped up over the years on the red vinyl seats of my mom's Volvo, the gray fabric seats of my father's Volvo, the synthetic something or other seats of my mom's Oldsmobile, and some VW's, a Ford, a Chevy plus whatever my grandfather drove.

http://sbb.filepool.ch

The great news is that after this final stage of construction the new regional railway vehicles over the Pass will have playrooms for children, similar to above. 

And then I woke up to reality.

SkirtGate & What happens at a Cycle Chic Bloggers' Conference?

Last things first. This guy seemed to have written that it was invite-only, but that was probably just cheekiness and then I DID receive a Facebook invite from a Catalonian. I did not go and am wondering what happened. We should know soon enough through the regular channels but here are my guesses:

* Building on their Manifesto, deciding punishments for activities such as illegal use of the trademarked Cycle Chic name and typeface;
* Teaching newbie Cycle Chiclets and the male version, Chucklets, about why identifying as a "cyclist" is a no-no but proclaiming that one is a "citizen cyclist" should be encouraged;
* Deciding on the minimum-quality body suitable for pixelation;
* Establishing rules on only photographing women on bikes from behind.

I am sure the story of Jasmijn Rijcken - the short-skirted Dutch woman on a bike stopped by a cop in NYC - came up repeatedly.  As various people from this non-sub-culture proclaimed this

          "Puritanism", and, more specifically....

... called the cop "Taliban-esque", I would guess that they are planning a short-skirt flash mob Citizen Cyclist tour in villages in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Or indeed in Saudi Arabia. I wish them luck with that.

But seriously....

In a follow-up to the Streetsblog entry mentioning Saudi Arabia, there is a discussion of this was a hoax or not -- some kind of viral marketing. In this entry Noah Kazis concludes that there is not, but others - sorry, no reference for it - think it is. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between: Rijcken was cycling innocently as pictured, did get harassed by some primitive, sexist police officer and then only later on did she and colleagues decide to make the most out of it.

There are plenty of difficult barriers for women to do any kind of cycling, and fashion - whether individual, or branded, globalized and trademarked - should not be another one. Cycle Chic (TM) and cycle chic are both great and fun, but my suggestion for the people involved in e.g. a related solidarity ride is to not just look in the mirror, but consider more good ways to use their wheeled, sartorial power to re-clothe the actual city streets in a fashion that directly addresses the needs of all women, or everyone.

The Ultimate Bike Helmet-related Letter to the Editor

OK, just kidding (sort of). The May/June 2011 Momentum magazine features "The Helmet Debate" by Elly Blue (four pages long), as well as two bike helmet buying guides, a separate short helmet review, a full-page helmet ad, a contest with a helmet as a prize, lots of nice photos of both helmeted and unhelmeted cyclists and also several letters regarding helmets, which were submitted in response to a request in the March/April issue. They printed/posted a short letter of mine. Following is the longer version from which it was excerpted (I sent it at the end of March and tonight I added some additional paragraphs).

Dear Editor,

Very detailed information related to your question of mandatory cycling helmets has been done by the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation. Beyond that, I am quite interested in the imagery of helmetism, i.e. how promotion and compulsion of cycling helmets are, perhaps, closer cousins then we think:

To start, nearly all urban cycling promotion organizations suggest that helmets are safer and implying or explicitly state that you are smart to wear one. This includes both the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Transportation Alternatives (NYC), the latter with their Biking Rules project, which irritatingly conflates their recommendations of helmets with laws for cycling. An exception is C.I.C.L.E, from Los Angeles, which had what I would call a very pro-choice helmets page, with simple, objective information and links (including to the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation). (Just added: That link is dead now, the C.I.C.L.E. website is in the midst of a re-design and the only new helmet link is typical of most other bike orgs. Will update if it changes back. Sigh).

Consider that most of the other local organization's publications and websites have helmet imagery which might support the view of the organization which created the page but often does not reflect the real helmet-wearing rate in their area and this is worse if the photos are more general, i.e. of how cycling looks in the city they work in.

I believe a good solution for that would be to determine roughly what helmet-wearing rates are and pick and commission photos of helmeted and unhelmeted cyclists to accurately reflect that.

Beyond that, cyclist pictograms in e.g. bike lanes in USA cities without mandatory helmet laws have helmets! As an illustration of a consistent approach to compulsion via promotional bombardment: Washington D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare website has a cyclist with a poorly-adjusted and thus useless helmet. And this from the company which runs that scheme. And that company's president. (I like much of what Alta does but just want to make a point about how helmet promotion can be both directly and indirectly connected with various initiatives.)

Added tonight: Capital Bikeshare sounds successful from all reports I have seen, however I am curious if all members have read the fine print in the contract, which requires them to sign a safety pledge (i.e. to agree to abide by recommendations on the safety page of the website, which of course includes wearing a helmet.) In addition, the contract says that Alta Bikeshare is "...not liable for any claim including those that arise from or relate to [...] failure to wear a bicycle helmet while using a Capital Bikeshare bicycle...".

What I find most troubling with all this is that while Washington D.C.'s helmet law only applies to children under age 16, users of Capital Bikeshare have to be 16 or over. The system is funded in part by taxpayers through Federal and local funds and because of this and also its design function it's a form of public transport. So while the D.C. government does not require helmet-wearing for people eligible to use Capital Bikeshare users via its democratically-created laws, it does require it via membership contracts for this system which it supports financially.

Perhaps someone with better legal knowledge can enlighten me about why there is not something peculiar about this.

On the other hand, B-Cycle - and I mention them because at this moment they and Alta Bikeshare are finalists in getting the NYC bike share gig - makes no mention of helmets in their membership page (at least in this one for Denver -- there is no statewide helmet law in Colorado for anyone). But to be fair to Alta, I assume there are other contracts in the USA which are similar to theirs, though I do know they will be doing something similar with their new operation in Boston.

At some point formal helmet compulsion becomes unnecessary when there is a never-ending barage of helmet imagery. (I am arguing that it does not matter if an org. which strongly promotes helmets say that they are also against laws to mandate it.) If people only see helmeted cyclists, they might not even ask if it is required to wear them or not. They will just assume so. I know that recently in NYC a police officer gave a ticket to an adult cyclist for not wearing a helmet, when actually there is no requirement to wear one, unless the cyclist is doing commercial activity. That is how crazy this gets. It might also be useful to compare how even a majority of opinions against mandatory cycling helmets in response to your query can compete against not just helmet company advertisements in Momentum, but all the other likely ads which have helmeted cyclists in them.

Finally, consider something else: If a serving politician promoted driving helmets they would be voted out of office (If they were running for election they would never win). Another: This is an issue of personal freedom, since helmet wearing - or not - only affects its user, and parents should be able to decide this for their children for the same reason. And one more: Required labels inside helmets do not clearly state under what kinds of crashes are simulated in helmet testing and their marketing is even less precise. I have a suggestion for this.

My accepted abstract for the last Velo-city in Seville, Spain, "Helmetism & Hyper-illumination" provides further information and references. I have a Facebook Page on the subject focused on Velo-city in Vancouver next year.

Kind regards,
Todd Edelman
Green Idea Factory
Berlin, Germany

Decade of Action for Road Safety: We are all "Steve"?

Today starts the "Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020", a collaboration between the World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners. The "Wear. Believe. Act" website, which is the official page of the campaign, is hosted by the FIA Foundation, which also supports the campaign's "Road Safety Fund". The Road Safety Fund - a legally distinct UK charity - is co-chaired by the Director General of the FIA Foundation (FIAf - the reason for the little "f" will become self-evident shortly). Confused? Well, anyway, before I mention the graphic above, I will explain why I have not included a link to FIAf: This is because none of the pages above link to FIAf, or - I really did look around - describe what it is.

FIAf "... established in 2001 with a donation of $300 million made by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the non-profit federation of motoring organisations and the governing body of world motor sport..." which came from - "well, finally!", you might be thinking - this link.

This partial obfuscation - intentional or not - on the rather professionally-done "Wear. Believe. Act" website - oh, and by the way the first WHO website mentioned above is supported by the World Bank - is consistent with the video which is the source of the graphic above.

The video is produced by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' (IFRC) Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), another partner of WHO. (The link to IFRC on the "Wear..." links page is dead), in support of the launch of the Decade of Action.



The video "...aims to give the viewers a different perspective on road safety by focusing on the hidden danger on the roads...". It is worth noting, first and foremost, that the video makes clear in gross terms that there are over 1.3 million annual road deaths, a statistic many carfree campaigners started to spread years ago.

So, when I first watched this I was pleased that that was mentioned (and it is included on the "Wear..." website, if less prominently).

The problem then is that the video goes completely and ridiculously overboard in two ways, the first I describe might not be intentional but the second definitely is.

Firstly, the reaction of fellow blogger David Hembrow to the video was "WTF was that all about ? All I know is that I'm now very very scared indeed, and am wondering if a Hummer would maximize my safety on the streets. I think they somewhat missed the point of their own message - i.e. that cars kill the majority of those 1.3 million people per year." This is so overwhelming it could just get people to turn off (and indeed the video suggests no solutions, just a link to the campaign website). In any case, this provides a segue to the second point, which is that the video says "we" created this system, and thus that we are all "Steve" (the sole character in the video, in multiple roles).

This is of course rabidly irresponsible, and - as my blogger friend says - misses the point about cars. By homogenizing responsibility, the message totally overlooks the fact the majority of victims are poor and in the Global South, the majority of beneficiaries in terms of ownership of companies is in the North, most people in the Global South do not have cars and are rarely in cars, that children cannot vote in elections and of course that a great many people in the Global South do note vote in free and fair elections (the last two points showing how creation of the system has been anything but democratic).

Now, back to the "Decade of Action..." - in the end of the video you will see that Youth for Road Safety (YOURS) is another partner (and they are supported financially from the get-go by Michelin).

The campaign mentions nothing - at least I could not find anything obvious on the website which is as far as the average person will go - about emissions or other direct or indirect effects of automobile dependency, from obesity to urban sprawl. Emissions is something that WHO deals with, as in obesity, so why are things not mentioned in the goals of the "Decade of Action..."?

In this clip, from BBC4 radio, the interviewer does her best with a good intervention with Lord Robertson, chairman of the Decade of Action for Road Safety, but at the end an essential fact is not joined up. (Robertson does everything to avoid it, a truly shameful and ultimately murderous act of deceit.) Can you hear what is missing?

That interview includes words by Ian Roberts, who paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2007 writing about the establishment of the GRSP - questions if Formula One racing (as a symbol, but it is also the raison d'être of FIA) can really be responsible for public health and proposes that "...it is time to establish a truly independent Commission for Global Road Safety that will put the daily toll of 3,000 road deaths before any commercial concerns."

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Related:

A 2009 article in the Road Danger Reduction Forum, based in the UK, serves as a good introduction to John Adams's fine work on seatbelts. The RDRF also today issued a press release about the launch of the "Decade..." (apparently Formula One race drivers are visiting 10 Downing St.)

Amend, based in NYC, supported by the FIA Foundation and with programmes in Ghana and Tanzania, has a poster for its "See and Be Seen" initiative:

(click on image to enlarge)

On the other hand, children in many cities in the North (and NYC) are now being told to play in the road, albeit a road calmed by various methods or philosophies. Do children in the Global South deserve less? Of course not... so do Amend and similar orgs. think that this "Don't play in the street!" warning from 1960's to 1990's era mothers (and fathers) is somehow the most relevant communication, i.e. enshrining - for a time - countries in Africa and elsewhere to this stage in transport development? Once automobilization gets established is it really hard to eradicate, as we in the North know so well, so why don't we help the Global South leapfrog to the next stage? (If FIA was supporing anti-malaria programmes there would be posters telling children to seal themselves in plastic bags.)

Seville: "Great is the enemy of good"

The People for Bikes website has a nice, short article about the recent very rapid increase in cycling mode share in Seville, Andalusia (Spain), location of the Velo-city cycling conference which ends tomorrow. The separated cycling infrastructure - Seville was awarded the UN Habitat Best Practice Award for it's creation - was cited as the main reason for this.

The bike mode share is about 7%. What is the breakdown regarding gender, age and income level?

I am also curious about this excerpt:

“Great is the enemy of good.” The city’s infrastructure emphasizes network connectivity, not perfection. It’s far from the polished bikeways of Northern Europe, but the protected bikeways of Seville are safe, convenient and get you where you need to go without interruption. 

First of all, I am happy to find out that most bike space was taken from car space.

But I don't understand how bike space taken from pedestrian space can be compensated elsewhere. After all, it's not like carbon and e.g. trees -- and how do pedestrians move in these spaces after losing space? Of course it is just political.

What is the lack of "perfection"? I would guess that the writer from People for Bikes was referring to what a Catalonian mobility consultant told me about: The two-way paths such as the one in the photo above - and this seems to be the most common design - which are narrow (two wider cargo/child-carrying bikes passing would need to veer into other space if available and of course if people are allowed to/want to ride side-by-side it is dangerous and/or illegal and one would constantly need to accelerate in front of or drop behind their travel partner.) 

Certainly this lack of perfection - and conditions are certainly not perfect in many Northern European towns or even the best of them - is less important if unwarranted by the great but still low 7% mode share - but what if demand increases further? Will there be enough pressure to, for example, make double lanes single and a counterpart added to the other side of the street? The example photo in the linked article has a two-way on a one-way street which looks a 3- or 4-lane motorized traffic canal with parking removed on one side for the bike stuff.

And regarding "without interruption" I would like to see an example of major crossroads. Hopefully some colleagues and others who are there can fill us in.

Last but certainly not least, do the citizens of Seville deserve less than people in Amsterdam, Copenhagen etc. ? Certainly not, and regarding budgets and politics the very important question that needs to be made is if infrastructure for motor vehicles is just as far from perfection there.

From what I have read and heard there are other things which help make Seville great. It is certainly always a bit nicer to cycle in the sunshine with a good meal of fresh food at the end of your journey.

Rita Hayworth's father is from Seville (from Rides a Bike).