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The War on Cars

@thewaroncars.bsky.social

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A podcast about the fight against car culture. Hosted by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek.

patreon.com/thewaroncarspod

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Brandon Doughan 🍶's avatar Brandon Doughan 🍶 @brandondoughan.bsky.social
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Saw a Cybertruck in a parking lot so I looked around for the owner. Found him and yep- total douchebag.

3 replies 1 reposts 47 likes

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David McCreath's avatar David McCreath @mccreath.bsky.social
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I’d never heard the term, but with my first 10-speed in 1978, I learned the techniques of “vehicular cycling” (take the lane and obey traffic laws, particularly) because there were no bike lanes in Ft Worth. It never occurred to me that someone was arguing for THAT over actual infrastructure. Wild.

4 replies 2 reposts 41 likes

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Kevin Gallatin's avatar Kevin Gallatin @kevingallatin.bsky.social
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I first learned about Vehicular Cycling from an elderly neighbor who never biked but latched onto the concept to prevent a bike lane from being installed in front of our houses. John Forester probably did more than any single person to suppress bicycling in the US.

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Design by Committee's avatar Design by Committee @dbc.bsky.social
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I can't get over how Forester's entire philosophy is "cyclists are scared, and they shouldn't be" while dismissing out of hand any safety improvements as "merely improving comfort". If someone is more comfortable, aren't they also less afraid? It's so ideologically inconsistent.

3 replies 3 reposts 24 likes

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Jesse Fuchs's avatar Jesse Fuchs @jessefuchs.bsky.social
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I never really grasped the argument of “vehicular cycling” before, because it was so reality-and-physics-denying I just couldn’t process it. John Cale’s “they’re driving gypsy cabs but they’re thinking like a truck,” pumped up by several orders of (quite literal) magnitude.

1 replies 2 reposts 14 likes

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Miles Grant's avatar Miles Grant @milesgrant.bsky.social
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We do a monthly community Bike & Brew for people of all ages & abilities - short fun ride & a bite to eat. Some Tour de France cosplayers showed up, were mad it was short, wanted a 30 mile ride next. I said no, this is to get families biking more, would they help support that? They never came back.

4 replies 3 reposts 29 likes

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Aditya Mukerjee 🦦 🏳️‍🌈's avatar Aditya Mukerjee 🦦 🏳️‍🌈 @chimeracoder.bsky.social
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Reflecting on this Calvin & Hobbes comic from 20+ years ago, which has been imprinted on my brain

5 replies 26 reposts 123 likes

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Doug Gordon's avatar Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social
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Some people say it’s just a philosophical difference. But Forester argued from a place of what he said were empirical studies and research to prove that vehicular cycling was safer than protected bike lanes. None met even the most basic scientific criteria and all have been thoroughly debunked.

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Doug Gordon's avatar Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social
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Vehicular cycling is a decent skill to have in places where there isn’t a lot of good bicycle infrastructure but a big part of the reason we don’t have a lot of good bicycle infrastructure is because of vehicular cyclists. As we will get to in part two, Forester had a big impact on this for decades.

8 replies 15 reposts 104 likes

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brooke bikes mke 's avatar brooke bikes mke @brookebikesmke.bsky.social
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I have been thinking of this episode nonstop. I have to do a bit of “vehicular cycling” because my routes to cross the Menomonee River aren’t great. And guess what? I hate it! I know how to do it. I do not enjoy it at all. I cannot blame others who won’t cycle because this is their option.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Ha. We were not shy about borrowing their format for this one!

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David Weiskopf's avatar David Weiskopf @weiskopf.bsky.social
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California will fail to reach its legally-required GHG reduction targets unless we reduce traffic by about a third. Fortunately, that is very, very possible to do: we just have to make our government actually want to do it.

1 replies 30 reposts 88 likes

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kilgore trout's avatar kilgore trout @kilgoretrout.bsky.social
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relieved the takeaway here is “bikes are not cars and need different infrastructures” instead of the patently insane idea that people on bikes should just pretend they’re in cars

7 replies 9 reposts 159 likes

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bettybarcode's avatar bettybarcode @bettybarcode.bsky.social
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Vehicular cycling is like railroadian driving. Instead of having limited access highways for motor vehicles, you'd have to straddle the tracks to go any distance & master various tricks to keep from getting creamed by trains.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Also, Copenhagen went all in on bikes partly because it was broke. Imagine!

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derek van vliet's avatar derek van vliet @derek.bike
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i’ve never heard of “vehicular cycling” until now and i will confess i’ve sometimes wished that i would be treated like any other vehicle on the road but it seems insane to me to force that fleeting wish on other people and extend it to the point where one would argue against bike infrastructure

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Thanks so much! We really appreciate it.

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's avatar @vermilionink.bsky.social
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TIL that John Forester was CS Forester's son, and that explains so much about the formative "stiff upper lip while biking on a 50mph road with a long line of angry trucks behind you" attitude of vehicular cycling. Biking to work shouldn't feel like heroically boarding a fire ship amid an oral exam.

1 replies 9 reposts 36 likes

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Sundance's avatar Sundance @sundancecyclist.bsky.social
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Another fantastic episode from the @thewaroncars.bsky.social. I am surprised that I am just learning about this topic. I am also not surprised that our collective lack of cycling infrastructure is in part to a cyclists...

made a meme that seems fitting.

4 replies 4 reposts 53 likes

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scout potato's avatar scout potato @scoutpotato.bsky.social
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I heard a lot of this in the late 90’s/early 2000’s when Portland was ramping up bike infrastructure. So many strapping men saying they’ll never use a bike lane, toughen up or stay home, read this bible on vehicular cycling. I wonder how many people they kept off bikes with their alpha bullshit.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Yes. In the book he says that traffic is a "well ordered dance" and says that cyclists who respect the rules will get respect in return.

2 replies 0 reposts 6 likes

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James Longhurst's avatar James Longhurst @jameslonghurst.bsky.social
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Particularly for the cash-strapped municipalities of the 1970s, the transportation policy that asked for the least intensive capital investment would win out. The 1970s “Bike Route” signage was a good example; no arrows or wayfinding or any alteration of traffic lanes. The absolute minimum.

1 replies 2 reposts 13 likes

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Dan Marshall's avatar Dan Marshall @danmarstp.bsky.social
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A good listen & a solid episode. I've heard enough car brained crap from "avid cyclist" to know that the damage caused by Forester's ideas. Vehicular cycling should be seen as a necessary adaptation to a murderous transportation system, not as a prescription for how the world should be.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Forester was an industrial engineer, not a traffic engineer.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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As @jameslonghurst.bsky.social told us, "one of the most important reasons [Forester's] philosophy won out so many times is that it asked cities for almost no funding. The cheapest option." And, yes, it meant avoiding political decisions that might piss off the powerful, such as taking parking.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Spoiler alert for Part 2, but we discuss Forester's advice on what to do if you're confronted by an angry driver. Needless to say, his advice is pretty wild and not universally applicable. A lot of what he writes does, in fact, assume that 99% of drivers will be calm and rational.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Yes, Forester advanced the philosophy that cyclists don't need bike lanes and mostly need to act like cars. He had a fair amount of influence that prevented/delayed the installation of the kind of infrastructure that would have led to cycling becoming a more mainstream transportation option.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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There's no question it's easier to accomplish what Davis did precisely because it's a college town. But it's also true that Forester completely dismissed the studies that came out of Davis, studies that had nothing to do with it being a college town and were just straight examinations of safety.

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Carfree PVD's avatar Carfree PVD @carfreepvd.bsky.social
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It's telling that the cover of Effective Cycling features a wheel-building diagram: something that is highly technical and only done by enthusiasts

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Among other sources for our latest episode, we drew on this interview Peter Flax did with John Forester. It's illustrative of Forester's worldview and attitude toward those who challenged his assertions. Worth a read! www.bicycling.com/culture/a322...

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Forester isn't at the front of the line by any means. That honor goes to the auto industry and related concerns. But Forester was massively influential and was the primary reason California's DOT and AASHTO kept protected bike lanes out of their design guide manuals for decades.

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Action Committee for Transit's avatar Action Committee for Transit @actfortransit.bsky.social
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Raise your hand if someone has given you advice about bicycling that was Vehicular Cycling Advice.🙋

4 replies 4 reposts 21 likes

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Tony Corsentino's avatar Tony Corsentino @notalegalrecord.net
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His ableism and chauvinism were extreme. His advice was applicable to everyone, provided that everyone is a fit white man willing to prove his self-worth through exertion and embrace of danger.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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And Forester was very much opposed to all bicycle lanes except in one particular case: a road with no intersections or driveways, so basically next to a beach or lake. It's right there in his book.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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We spoke with Peter Furth, a professor at Northeastern University for this episode. He and his colleagues would get all kinds of nasty emails from Forester whenever they challenged his research, so much so that they took to calling his philosophy "Invective Cycling," a play on the title of the book.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Thanks! Yeah, the fact that there is some truth in what he espoused makes it all the more maddening. And he was very smart and loved to argue, which made it all the more difficult!

1 replies 0 reposts 8 likes

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Places Journal's avatar Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social
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In Montana, thousands of identical white crosses mark locations of roadway fatalities. Photographer Chris M. Forsyth trains his lens on these crosses, each standing as a striking absence — a marker of death, tragedy & salvation.

"Safe travels," writes Joshua Mabie: placesjournal.org/article/in-t...

0 replies 1 reposts 3 likes

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Tony Corsentino's avatar Tony Corsentino @notalegalrecord.net
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Forester’s approach was the opposite of collaborative community building. His message was “It’s on you. Deal with the conditions you’ve been given.” It is unsurprising that cycling as transportation stagnated in unpopularity during the years his ideas held sway.

1 replies 3 reposts 31 likes

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Tony Corsentino's avatar Tony Corsentino @notalegalrecord.net
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I’m glad they’re taking on Forester, who I can attest was a nasty piece of work on the bike forums when challenged on his doctrines. His book has the character of a private obsession. It’s extremely idiosyncratic in its coverage of miscellaneous topics. I don’t think he cared for collaboration.

1 replies 4 reposts 31 likes

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John Stehlin's avatar John Stehlin @jstehlin.bsky.social
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Discussed this a bit in my book but the goal of vehicular cyclists was to advocate for and improve the skills of those who already cycled, rather than improve cycling conditions in order to attract more people or (even less) cultivate cycling as a way to build better and more sustainable places.

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The War on Cars's avatar The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Thanks for listening! We really appreciate it.

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John Stehlin's avatar John Stehlin @jstehlin.bsky.social
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A vehicular cycling advocate in Oakland helped file a CEQA lawsuit against bike lanes on Telegraph Avenue in the late 1990s, which was then emulated in the suit that stopped the SF bike plan from 2006-2010.

1 replies 3 reposts 21 likes

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Doug Gordon's avatar Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social
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Cambridge is a great example. It's done so much with physical design and legislative policy that, in many ways, makes it the envy of cities across the nation. Now imagine if it had started not four years ago but forty.

2 replies 10 reposts 63 likes