Dave Moulton writes:

Pro-cycling change is happening all over the US, and I believe it is partly because of this change that the non cycling public is kicking against it; people don’t like change.

This is probably true but I think it's more than just fear of change driving anti-bike hatred. I think there's an element of cognitive dissonance or outright denial. No one thinks oil is getting cheaper; consider then that our prosperity is built entirely upon it. It's scary to confront the likelihood that our Happy Days are limited. We are entering a future where everything but physical labor will get more expensive; any contraption that makes physical labor more productive (e.g. bikes), will serve us well in that future.

Big issues like energy aside, there's a personal aspect of cognitive dissonance: living a bikey lifestyle is cheaper, easier, happier and healthier. My commute is a bike ride through the woods. It costs nothing and makes me skinnier. I have a stronger heart than men half my age, despite a steady diet of donuts and beer.

I've run the numbers on this many times. By maintaining only one car my family saves about $6000/year. I burn 2500-3000 extra calories a week. And it's fun.

From my perspective, the only reason everyone doesn't live like this is because they are cognitively blocked from imagining the possibility. I'm not athletic or tough or outdoorsy. I just ride my bike to work. I've been told to my face that my lifestyle is impossible. Impossible! How then do I live it?

If I saw someone just like me living a better life for less money ... how would that make me feel?

Update, 1:15 pm PDT

Obviously not everyone can ride their bike everywhere all the time; some people have physical conditions that prevent them from doing so.

I also don’t mean to imply that non-bikey people are lazy; for the record I think all people are lazy, just in different ways. (For example: one of the reasons I ride bikes everywhere is because they are much easier to maintain than cars. I’m really lazy about getting our car serviced.)

I honestly believe that more people would ride their bikes more often, but fail to imagine their own lives ordered in such a way that it’s easy, convenient, or pleasant.

So this morning a guy yelled at me for signalling a legal lane change.

I made a (signalled, legal) lane change into the far right lane on a one-way street. Then I noticed that on the next block, this lane was closed for construction. So I immediately signalled a change back into the lane I had been in. I noticed the car that I had just changed in front of was immediately to my left (i.e. in my line of travel), so, while signalling my lane change I gave him a little wave-wave gesture meaning “you pull ahead so I can pull in behind you.”

At which point he rolled down the window and shouted at me: “You just changed out of this lane!” (For the record, he was driving an Acura, which I’m fast learning is the preferred car make of egotists with entitlement issues.)

I knew he couldn’t see the lane ahead like I could (cyclists have good visual command of the roadway, being up at SUV height and having no blind spots). So I said, as politely as I could while being yelled at, in traffic, with only one hand on my handlebars: “The lane ahead is closed, you fucking moron.” (OK, I left out the last part).

He dropped back (!) so I changed lanes in front of him. As we passed the obstruction I pointed at the lane closure and mimed “This is what I was talking about. You fucking moron.” I don’t know how well this translated, especially that last part.

But here’s what gets me: everything I did was completely, totally legal. Courteous, even. And we were all moving at the same (downtown rush hour) speed: about 13mph. There were a great many nonlegal, noncourteous things I could have done in this situation, including ride through the lane closure past the construction equipment, cut the guy off without signalling, or ride down the lane stripes. I didn’t, but got yelled at as if I had.

On my last few blocks into work, I tried to parse exactly what the Acura guy wanted me to do, and the best I can figure is “vanish from the face of the Earth.” Not just me, specifically, but all traffic between his present location and his intended destination. It’s just that I was on a bike and therefore a) unprotected and b) available for yelling at in a way I wouldn’t have been were I in a car. So he felt he could yell at me without fear of retribution.

So this reminds me of two stories.

Story the First

When I was in elementary school, all the teachers held the boys in my grade late one day. Someone, they said, had pooped in a urinal in the boys’ room, and we would all be punished until the culprit(s) stepped forward. No one stepped forward, so we were all punished. (I forget the punishment.) Indignant, all the fifth grade boys met at recess to find the bad guy, but again, no one stepped forward. While we were meeting, some of the popular girls came over and asked what we were doing, so we told them. They started laughing: because one of them had pooped in a urinal one day. (In thinking about it now, I wonder if she — one of the really pretty teacher pet types who teachers would never imagine doing such a thing, but who was one of the chief psychological tormentors on the playground — hadn’t done this particular deed to achieve just this effect: to get some boy(s) in trouble.)

A few days later, a couple of the more-troublesome boys pooped on the floor in the girls’ bathroom. The logic was flawless: if we’re going to be punished regardless of our behavior, we might as well do the things we’re being punished for. Of course, we were all punished again, but this time we knew who did it, and why, and we felt triumphant, not indignant.

So the next time you see a cyclist blow a red light, remember this story about fifth graders pooping, and my altercation with the Acura guy.

Story the Second

At some point in the 1980s, when systemic homelessness was a relatively new problem, I recall watching a talking head TV show about the subject. One of the panelists was a lady Reaganite, someone in the Phyllis Schafly mold. Hell, it might have been Phyllis Schafly. She offered no useful solutions to the problem of homelessness beyond, basically, “people shouldn’t allow themselves to be homeless.” When pressed about confounding factors like drug addiction or mental illness, she had no quick answer and kind of got flustered. She blurted out something like “if we quit feeding the homeless, pretty soon they’ll all go away.” The subtext was obvious: they would either clean up, or die. (This might actually be a workable solution, I dunno. This story isn’t really about homelessness, so lets don’t talk about that.)

Her “solution” to homelessness was exactly the same “solution” that many noisy anti-bicycle commentators (and I imagine Acura Guy) offer: ”couldn’t you all just vanish?” This is the de facto behavior of many drivers. They cut me off, hook me while turning, jump stop signs in front of me, refuse to yield right of way. They fail to see bicycles as legitimate traffic. They may (like Acura Guy) hold this view consciously, which is bad enough, but I have enough faith in humanity to assume most of the people who honk and yell at me won’t, when pressed, actually murder me.

But most drivers hold this view unconsciously, like the woman who damn near right-hooked me (i.e. turned right across my line of travel) this very morning at the Vermont/Capital Highway intersection. She wasn’t mad at me — she didn’t even recognize my humanity enough to hate me. I was not even worth looking for. These are the people that scare me, although they don’t make me nearly as mad. I have such encounters — which could quickly injure or kill me — probably two or three times a week. I’m still alive after commuting by bike in this city for nearly a decade, because I have to make the sad assumption that I actually am invisible, unless I’m directly in front of someone’s bumper, pissing them off. I’d rather have a motorist angrily acknowledge my existence than accidently kill me. Equal road access isn’t just an abstract principle; to someone on a bicycle it’s a matter of life and death.

In the “war” between cyclists and motorists (which I think is bogus, BTW, but let’s just play along for now), cyclists “win” if they continue to exist. Conversely, motorists will “win” when all the cyclists have either given up and quit riding, or died gruesome deaths in traffic collisions. These are not morally equivalent outcomes.

So the next time you hear a pro-cycling commentator bluster about equal access to the roads, remember this story about the lady Reaganite and homelessness, and my altercation with the Acura guy.

(A Quick Back-of-the-Envelope Calculation)

• P_g = price of a gallon of regular unleaded at the Chevron near our house = $4.22
• P_m = price of a gallon of Alpenrose 2% milk at New Seasons = $3.89
• P_r = price of a gallon (16 cups) of cooked white rice at New Seasons^[1] = $0.35
• D_fg = mileage of our 2008 Subaru Forester (standard transmission) during a typical week of commuting = 24.5 mpg
• E_g = energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline = 31,000 kcal (aka “calories”)
• E_m = energy equivalent of a gallon of 2% milk = 1952 kcal
• E_r = energy equivalent of a gallon (16 cups) of cooked white rice = 4256 kcal
• p = energy I burn in one hour riding my bike on a flat road with no wind at 15 mph^[2] = 704 kcal
• D_pg = my mileage if I could somehow consume a gallon of gasoline = (E_g/p) × 15 = 660.5 mpg
• D_pm = my mileage on a gallon of 2% milk = (E_m/p) × 15 = 41 mpg
• D_pr = my mileage on a gallon of cooked white rice = (E_r/p) × 15 = 90.7 mpg
• C_fg = cost to drive the Forester one mile = P_g/D_fg = $0.17
• C_pg = cost to ride my bike one mile if I could somehow consume gasoline = P_g/D_pg < $0.01 (greater than half a significant digit [$0.005]
• C_pm = cost to ride my bike one mile powered by milk = P_m/D_pm = $0.09
• C_pr = cost to ride my bike one mile powered by rice = P_r/D_pr < $0.01 (less than half a significant digit [$0.005]

Notes

^[1] Assumes 2 cups of cooked rice = 1 cup dry rice weighing 8oz
^[2] A pretty leisurely speed for me under those conditions, so I might actually burn fewer calories than this, i.e. get better “gas mileage”

The traffic dangers of cycling fatalities are offset at least 10 to 1 by the cardiovascular health benefits.

From John Pucher, via this video (around minute 23)

Update: Also: “For every hour you spend cycling, you add more than an hour to your lifespan.”

I have a few pet issues. Some people would call these pet peeves, but pretty much the only pet peeve I have is “beliefs that have not been clearly thought through.” One of my pet issues is an excuse for not bicycling I used to hear quite a bit. (For some reason people offer this less frequently — to me, anyway — as an excuse.) The excuse is something along the lines of “I’d ride my bike more often but I don’t want to expose myself to all those automobile pollutants.”

Which is kind of silly for two reasons:

1. The research doesn’t support it
2. It doesn’t make any damn sense

First, the facts. Most people have a skewed sense of both risk and exposure re: automobile pollutants. My reading (some references below) indicates that:

• "Gas-phase" (i.e. non particulate) pollutants are at least as high inside a car as outside.
• Fresh air controls or air conditioning have no effect on pollutant levels inside a car.
• Levels of particulate pollutants are higher outside cars, but the effect drops dramatically away from a high-traffic road.
• Cars produce the most pollutants when they’re idling or operating under light load — in other words, at rush hour, or in a parking lot.
• The more time you spend in and around cars, especially at rush hour, the greater your exposure.
• Children living within a third of a mile from a major freeway are more likely to develop asthma and other diseases, and have less-developed lungs.
• Airborne pollutants are lower in neighborhoods with higher residential density and mixed land use (exactly the kind encouraged by a city with lots of cyclists.)

Second, let’s think this through. Consider some other source of air pollution. A steel mill, for example. Where would you find more airborne pollutants emitted by a steel mill: near the steel mill, or inside the steel mill? Generally speaking, how would steel mill pollutants vary as a function of distance from the source? As a function of the duration of exposure to the source?

The explicit premise of the automobile pollutant exposure theory of bicycling avoidance is “automobile pollutants are bad.” The implicit premise is “being near running automobiles is bad.” From these premises we can reason that:

• The greater the distance from running automobiles, the better
• The fewer running automobiles you’re near at once, the better
• The less time, in total, that you’re exposed to running automobilies, the better

Given the premises of the automobile pollutant exposure theory of bicycling avoidance, if your lifestyle necessitates spending lots of time in or near cars (that is, driving everywhere), then you're actually maximizing your exposure to automotive pollutants. Moreover, communities that encourage frequent motoring hit you twice: first, because you spend all your time inside a car; and second, because the town has more freeways, more heavy traffic, more large intersections, more parking lots — in other words, more (and more frequent) exposure to automobiles in situations where they produce the most pollutants.

Finally, and this is the emotional appeal, imagine a scene. Imagine riding your bike down a quiet street, or a bike path, a good distance away from a major highway. Imagine taking a deep breath. What does the air smell like? Does it smell like fresh-cut lawns? Pine trees? Dead leaves? Wet pavement? Bacon and eggs from a nearby kitchen? Coffee roasting in the coffee shop? (That’s what my commute smells like.)

REFERENCES:

• International Center for Technology Assessment, “In-Car Air Pollution: The Hidden Threat to Automobile Drivers"
• Measuring Concentrations of Selected Air Pollutants Inside California Vehicles
• Commuter exposures to VOCs in Boston, Massachusetts
• Collection of links on air quality research at the Sprawl and Health website
• Health effects from car exhaust exposure can last a lifetime
• Automotive Exhaust Chemicals: disease causing effects

(Prompted by a post at the Bicycle Transportation Alliance Blog.)