Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel – Bike Wars

Last week on HBO, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel ran what can best be described as an informational piece on Bike Wars. The presentation is that the bikers are fighting for space against “everyone else”. There are some interesting specifics. 60% increase in bike commuting in 20 years. Increase in deaths per day to 2 per day.
It presents some interesting tidbits, but let is talk reality check time. This is a clash that has been a long time in coming, and it is one that is going to get one hell of a lot worse before it gets better. Car culture is simply too deeply ingrained into the American lifestyle and psyche.

In general, I think Real Sports does a good job of reporting, but this one, they muffed. Short version, the presentation misses some really obvious questions, and has the same fatal flaw that most discussion of cycling in the US does. There are three distinct types of cyclists that are currently on the roads and fighting this battle. Two of them are closely related, the third is another beast altogether. Recreational and transportation cyclists are the first two, while the sport cyclists are the other. By lumping them all together, it is trivial to paint all cyclists into a very bad light.

So looking at the Bike Wars piece, they spent a good bit of time painting a picture about cyclists behaving above the law and as hooligans. They are right, it happens. But they also focused on a couple of other bits. One, video footage of a cyclist hitting a pedestrian (who stepped into a traffic lane from behind a van, not in a cross walk). That accident occurs car or bike, so it is not a good indicator. Interestingly, those situations really aren’t addressed by many bike infrastructure designs used in the US today either.The other was a pair of fatalities in NYC’s Central Park, citing excessive speed. Absolutely a problem. The question to ask however is why cyclists are in central park riding at these speeds? They are being made unwelcome on the roads. They find themselves in a no mans land unwelcomed in either location and it becomes trivial to single out these instances.

So, before we get too far into the discussion of the specific instances, we need to understand the difference in usage, and why the question of differences in usage need to be addressed. This is no different than the discussion of cars and road designs, so we are not talking about a special case here.

In the story, there are a couple of major concepts to address that are to put it simply, ignored, or skirted around.

Cycling, in the US, is a term that is most often used to describe the sport side of the equation. For the most part, the casual recreation and transportation riders don’t enter into the discussion. Some of this is a numbers thing, some of it is a visibility thing. It all stems from road usage and location. Outside dense population centers, bicycles and their riders tend to be of the sport variety. They are travelling at speeds over 15 mph, sometimes in excess of 40 mph. They are ridden on roads that lack infrastructure, and are the prime examples of rage inducing ‘slow downs’. When you look at many of the road rage instances in the last year of car/bike conflicts, these are the primary protagonists, these suburban sport cyclists. They are also the ones frequently involved in car/bike interactions. In urban settings, the typical cyclist is no longer the sport cyclist. Speeds are lower and the nature of the riding is changed. Infrastructure is often mixed, which presents a huge challenge in itself.

I recently spent a week in Salt Lake City, UT. Great urban area, with a lot of good cycling infrastructure, and most of it, wasted. Why? The sport cyclists used the infrastructure to get out of town, while the in town transportation riders? Fully 3/4 of them rode on the sidewalks, for fear of the cars. I had to ask around, because it was driving me crazy seeing all these bike lanes with cyclists riding on the sidewalks right next to them.

There is a lot of effort being put forth to paint the cyclists as the problem, and to a degree, they are. However, the problem remains that to the average American, a road is for cars, and they do not respect any other users. Road rage is normal towards other cars, much less motorcycles, bikes, runners and walkers, yet we fail to place the ownership of this mindset where it belongs.

Cars are the problem that needs solving. Distracted, angry, fast, selfish driving is the norm. You don’t need to even consider bikes in this equation.

And then there is the next bit of conversation. They go to Copenhagen and Amsterdam where bikes have supplanted cars. They show all of the infrastructure, and it is great. It comes however, at the expense of cars. In order to support that infrastructure, they have reduced the car volume. There is the other bit. The parking situation, which they also focus on. Yes, there are a lot of bikes, many parked illegally.

Consider this however. In the US, most cars are single occupant. Imagine that many cars parked in a city. Now you understand why the problem must be solved, sooner than later. You cannot build enough infrastructure to support that many cars. That is the reality that Amsterdam and Copenhagen have both come to grips with. Unfortunately, our car first culture is so deeply rooted, that we need a piece of news to tell us that bikes are the problem and the cure all without once owning the reality that the car problem has to be solved.

So, while I think the piece represents a starting point for a discussion, Real Sports has presented a deeply flawed case that does more harm to the discussion than help.