Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 96: John Forester & Vehicular Cycling

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

THIS. IS. CYCLING!!!!!!!!! *kicks u into traffic* Not Just Bikes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/notjustbikes BicycleDutch as mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/c/BicycleDutch Sources for Nerds: A Historical Perspective on the AASHTO Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities and the Impact of the Vehicular Cycling Movement: http://tooledesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/TRB_Paper18-05962_HistoryofAASHTO_BikeGuide_TRB_rev.pdf Archive of John Forester's site: https://web.archive.org/web/20190225013436/http://www.johnforester.com/ Fifty Years of Bicycle Policy in Davis, CA: http://groups.dcn.org/dhrg/3-authors/BuehlerThesisFinalDraft.pdf/document.pdf Archive of Bikeway Planning Guidelines, 1972: https://web.archive.org/web/20080216022317/http://drusilla.hsrc.unc.edu/cms/downloads/BikewayPlanningGuidelines1972.pdf   Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Our Merch: https://www.solidaritysuperstore.com/wtypp Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 40178 Philadelphia, PA 19106 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Yeah, we're going to do this thing where he just starts. Yeah, usually he doesn't even tell us No, who just start recording all of the slurs that you were saying is still in there. Oh My son, I didn't say any slurs. I just said the word slur. You said the word slow. Well the thing is The s word yes, it's because listen, I have spent the last two days fighting barstool bros and My my average for you. Yeah, they keep posting like listen I I'm sometimes self-conscious about my weight and how I look in pictures my profile. I look good as fuck dude I'd fuck me. I would fuck me And yeah, hello Liam. Yeah, I'm I'm sexy man. It's not that's not my fault

Um all right with that with that a wonderful Self-confident opening. Yeah, normally we don't have that. Yeah, shall we begin? Yeah, we can begin. Okay Welcome to well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go. I am Alice I'm the person who is talking now. My pronouns are she and her. Yeah, Liam

Yeah, Liam deep in the process of fighting our fans as well Because you know what? Stop one statue Yes, that's me. I do like that someone tweeted the WTYP fight a fan competition Maybe we do a giveaway. Good idea. You get the chance to fight me That's pretty tight. Hi. I'm Liam Anderson My pronouns are he and him and we have a guest. We have a guest. Yes, indeed. Hi I am Jason Slaughter from Not Just Bikes and my pronouns are he him and in Dutch that's hi and hem

Oh, okay. Are you recording? No, you know what? I'm not even gonna make the joke We have to we have to avoid the normal slate of Dutch jokes today There might be some Dutch listeners Jason you personally owe me five hundred dollars for the 2010 World Cup loss All right, that makes sense Now what what you see on the screen is a man in high vis on a bicycle On some sort of contraption. Yes. I'm a contraption known as a bicycle I mean, I'll buy it. What what what is a bicycle wait until you hear about this? Well, it's a thing that you you sit on and there's wheels and you pedal and it goes

Oh, I don't like the sound of that. I don't think I'd enjoy that a soul You should see bras is bras has calves the size of cantaloupes That dude it could could jump a wall And then and then you see behind him is a very large not actually very large by modern standards Actually not large at all a pickup truck and then also we see a speed limit 45 sign here And I just noticed there is an additional person on a bicycle on the sidewalk. Yeah, yeah, it's looking at that sidewalk I Don't know where I take my chair. I guess I just go in the street

Like I I know that I would wipe out because it looks like he's just pedaled past them Is this gravel here next to the sidewalk man looks like the gravel driveways Yeah, I would I would absolutely eat shit and break my mouth wide open. Yeah, I would take a taxi Yeah What we're gonna what we're gonna talk about today is vehicular cycling and John Forester and the movement Therein Yeah, this is the this is the band from numtaz episode really really you titled that like a like an 18th century

Treaties in which well, there's your problem discusses vehicular bicycling It's right up there with Leviathan, honestly But first we have to do the goddamn news Is it the cheese collapse did we do the cheese collapse like everyone was yelling on this Doesn't look like a cheese collapse. It's in the know. This is a really big cheese collapse in the notes This is a fertilizer factory in Winston Salem, North Carolina It is North Carolina, right? Yes, North Carolina

It's where Krispy Kreme is and where Wake Forest University is because Wake Forest University moved out of Wake Forest and moved to Winston Salem But kept the name so a fertilizer factory in Winston Salem caught fire on Monday It's now Friday when we're recording this. It's still burning It's your proper ammonium nitrate fertilizer factory, you know the one that causes the explosions this one did not blow up I'm not quite sure why I assume it's because they didn't attempt to fight the fire. They just let it burn out Yeah, and sort of letting go to the fuel oil factory next door Which is confusingly placed next to the orphanage. Yeah, exactly Got an orphanage. They got a nunnery right next door as well

I mean they've run the the the fuel cars right by chop and Philly. That's true. Yeah And then so this is this this was eight about 500 tons of ammonium nitrate here That would cause a pretty sizable explosion if it had exploded. This is right You know, you see some industrial buildings around here, but this is right in the middle of a residential neighborhood Something like a one mile evacuation order That was lifted. I believe this morning. It's now down to one eighth of one mile So rounds rounds to perfectly safe. Yeah, so far has not blown up. So I assume it's fine Maybe it's very poor quality fertilizer. Like you would think

A little microcosm of the like you have to go back to the office thing if this thing is still just smoldering and it's like You can go back to your house. It's probably fine. Probably fine Don't breathe in too deep though. Yes um in other news The cheese aisle collapsed at the Oregon Avenue Yeah, um, yeah, the next person the tag is in this. Uh, he's got to get the wall. I didn't hear about this. Tell me more

It was it was the day before Joe Biden went to visit this cheese aisle as part of his build back Bessa program um And and and right before he was able to do that build back cheddar I That's um, I was trying to do something with breeze because of the bay and I couldn't I couldn't get that so yeah No, you did it Liam. Good job. Yeah. Yes. I I've become the very thing I sought to destroy Very very good. She's shot the hell up You know, it's pronounced powder

Well, he said underneath 30 layers of blackface I'm gonna start mispronouncing things like this just for further annoyance. Yeah, the guy's called Vincent van Gogh Oh, well I'm not gonna be triggered Don't lose a one cup about it and then send me 500 dollars to make up for my losses I want I want to be clear that I know it's fun. Who I just you know, don't respect, uh, dutch as a language You gotta work on your uh Yeah, uh, so this is funny the people that originally posted this the philly plane dealer

Actually dm'd us on twitter To say people keep tagging you In this place we made and we and I actually set back like yeah, like here's here's just the tags from today like we know So, uh shout out to the philly plane dealer, I guess, uh, I don't know their politics They'll get mad at me. Oh, they're in south philly. I assume they're terrible Yeah, so anyway, go go go down to oregon avenue, uh and support me so they can rebuild No, go and go push on push on the acme dude acme sucks ass Push on the caution type they've they've set up. It's always so expensive

They never have the shit you need like I do. I fucking hate chopping an acme. There's one right near my house uh for those of you who don't know I live in north philly and uh There's one right near my house and it just it fucking sucks all the time But they do have beer at that one at least Well, that's good. Did they beer yours ross? Um, yeah, they have beer at the uh, oh, yeah They probably inherited. Yeah, they inherited that liquor license exactly Grandfathered in uh, actually if you want a real good experience Go to the trader joes at 22nd and market. No. Yes. Go there. No there

Bring a sword Uh, you will need it What is that to say? I mean every time I see that place there's like a line It goes out and around the parking lot and at the building and on the market street And I don't understand you can't even shop there because if you miss something the line goes through the entire store So you only have one chance to pick stuff out of there for shopping. It's a place to have a tactical experience Yeah, yeah, it's actually you know what I learned the other day. Uh pico has two employee only surface lots Uh in between, you know where the pico building is and then the trader joes and how there's two surface lots there

Yeah, those are just pico employee lots. Really? I like you can just park there and go to trader joes if you're a pico employee Wow So I I don't know what I'm gonna do with this information, but I guess I'm gonna go pico I'm not fucking getting a job at pico. I can't answer the phone right now dude. I'm recording That's the guy from pico trying to call you All for you a job. He's trying to head on you. Yeah, I don't know. He's not like even a good Like what's a good grocery store in philly? That's the real question I think you have to go to like the fresh grouser on 56 to get like a good grocery store. That's worth going to

The Audi it no the Audi's fine at whatever 43rd and chestnut Uh, welcome back to philly talk where we're just talking about podcast. It's a podcast about supermarkets Actually, I like the giant at 23rd and arch. I can tell you about my local avert hind I don't know what that is. I don't know what that is Some kind of freak dutch supermarket. There's also jumbo that's pronounced yumbo Yumbo yumbo. I like that Personally personally as as a scott. I love to go to big tesco Um, yeah, some of my favorite shit to do. Yeah, I had a nice tesco metro around the corner from where I lived in london

And uh, that was where I did all my shopping exciting shit Uh, the call was to let me know that I brought my girlfriend's sister's laptop back from the dead Uh Don't contact me about tech. I'm not having a good day with it Uh, uh, the there's a giant now on Delaware Ave. Roz. You could just bike there All right, I'm not gonna bike to Delaware. Why don't you why don't you go to the acme on gray's fairy, dude? That's a good one. All right. Well, I guess they fixed the bridge to you Listen, I'm a woman of some patience, but not infinite patience

Uh, uh, so bikes You can use the bike to get to the grocery store now if you'll look at the diagram I've dropped here Okay, I have a video about that. What what's everyone's experience here with bikes? uh Me and you biking home from the bar at 2 a.m. After my ex-girlfriend fell asleep and wanted let us sleep at our apartment and then Biking home in the rain. Oh, that one and chafing so bad I threw up in the shower the next day because I was in so much pain. Jesus dude. I'm fat That's that that's a full body chafe. I guess that was uh, that was before uh,

Philly's bike sharehead was actually because it was wind tunnel I was actually throwing up because I was violently hungover and uh, same difference But you're throwing up chafed is the thing my my experience with bikes is uh, my dad tried to teach me to ride one And much like everything else in my life. It got too difficult and I just decided I didn't want to do it anymore So I've ridden a bike with training wheels on I've never ridden a bike without training wheels on in my life All right, please do not use this information to own me Well for me, I mean, it's it's not just bikes. Um He said the thing I I get it. I did it right. I got the I got the name of the channel in there

Um for me, I don't know I I didn't ride bikes until I got desperate Because the streetcar in Toronto was so shit that I had to get to work some other way And I went and bought a bicycle and that was when I was like, I don't know 28 or something Um But that was like it and then I didn't do it for a while now. I live in Amsterdam. So I ride it every single day Ah My experience I guess with bikes is uh, you know, I I use it for most of my trips

I would say here in Philly unless it's like raining or snowing Or it's way too cold. Um You know, it's a lot of it's a lot of it's on-street biking I had a bicycle commute that I did for a while out to a job in media, Pennsylvania And I did a good 14 miles of vehicular cycling each way because the thing is about you justin is that you don't you don't fear death Right, you're gonna go so I have I have I I have I have certain amounts of fears of death Actually, I have significantly more fear of death than I did back then in college

You're still going you're still going to like catholic valhalla, right? Whereas me, right? I I think I would cycle if I lived in Amsterdam, right? I would learn because I would want to yeah Yeah, because I have to because I want to be a statuesque blonde woman with like one of those like curvy bikes And just like riding that shit over cobblestones and high heels like it's no big deal I would do that if my if my city provided for that kind of aesthetic cycling I would do that instead the kind of cycling the Glasgow provides for Is you are nudged out of your cycling lane into a brick wall by an hgv at like 60 miles an hour

Sounds about right. That's exactly why I didn't cycle when I lived in London I did actually cycle from the train station to work when I lived in when I worked in Cambridge So that was another bit of cycling Dreaming spires. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was it's pretty dodgy down Well, it was at the time down by the station. I don't know how it is these days But once you get in the center of town, it's all you know, pedestrian You still have to watch for those those buses And the nerds. Yes the nerds

So I I guess this means I'm the I'm the person with the most experience doing the horrible kind of cycling We're going to talk about today. I think that's probably true I mean, I did some in Toronto, but I mostly stuck to like I only cycled in the areas where they made the protected bike path and I didn't cycle really at all Outside of that as much as possible. Anyway Yeah, Roz is familiar with with uh, I I do love your your stories when I come over Uh, and I tell you how I was almost assassinated. Did you tell me how you were almost assassinated? Yes Well, I'd say the worst part of that commute was like the last mile on Providence road

Because it was mostly all low speed roads Until that last mile where you had Providence road. It's like a two-lane road You know, it's signed for 35 miles an hour and everyone does 70 Um, that sounds about right. You're just there's no shoulder and you're just sort of crammed over there at the edge You know, because it's also dead straight. So it's like I have no excuse to not let people pass Um, I'm so happy you don't work there anymore. Jesus Christ. I only did it twice a week I took the train over other days. Yeah, I know because I I drove you to the train Yeah, because I had to drive out the fucking king of prussia build the train to king of prussia

I there's some difference of opinion on that but that's outside of the uh, that's a purview Yeah, outside the scope of this podcast Yeah So, uh Bicycles, they sort of shop around the 1810s. Uh, you get your early push bar bicycle your dandy horse, right? That's just you know, it's a piece of wood with two wheels I know there's like that there were rich cells like a homophobic slur. I know a lot of dandy holes It was it's so funny to see those. Well, I guess drawings from back then because there's these rich dudes

in in these fancy dress going around on these like These pet things like bikes without pedals like the kind of things that two-year-olds cycle on today. It just looks so ridiculous This was the most dignified way of getting around at that point. Oh, yes. Yes by uh, by the 1860s, uh, the type of bicycle we now call a penny farthing was developed That's someone with the big wheel still in use in shoreditch I Every once in a while. I I see someone there's like a group of a couple guys in the city who ride penny farthings On the skokal river trail and every time I see them. I'm like these chocolate fucks

That's why ross carries around a spear gun. Yeah um You look they're they're even like modern penny farthings like they have like modern composite frames and crap like that Like racing stripes. It's a racing penny farthing Penny farthings super legara um, and then um, and then by the uh, 1880s you see sort of the First recognizable modern bicycles with the two wheels that are equal size

You got the the chain and the pedals, you know, you got all this crap. Yeah whoops We accidentally invented one of the most efficient methods of personal transportation as a joke One of the most efficient methods of locomotion of living beings period It's pretty shocking. Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is the problem with nature is they couldn't figure out how wheels work Evolution has just never done those those dumb tigers. Yeah Imagine imagine just in the jungle and you see the first wheeled tiger. Yeah doing a fucking mechanized advance towards you I think Yeah, we would not have evolved. Let's learn to flick

And this is the rover here that's pictured. This is the one that was invented in coventry in the uk Now a shitty place to cycle nice, uh springs on the seats I should say I've walked two miles today in the freezing cold and i'm eating dinner because it's my first chance to do So i'm not intentionally freezing jason out so that everything he says is followed by a solid five seconds of dead silence I am doing it on purpose. Yeah, we knew that Sort of the in the 1890s bicycles are very very popular This is sort of the first golden age of cycling right as they called it You know because everyone's using bikes to get around

Uh, you know bicycles become popular. They're cheap. They're very easy to learn so and so forth They were very popular with women actually. Oh, yeah, it's an early implement of feminism It is an early implement of feminism because women could now Leave the house Without the company of their husband and travel long distances very easily And they had those step through frames for the dress Oh, yeah, absolutely It's like one of the two terrors of the victorian man the bicycle in the postbox because she can fucking

Mail she can write letters to anybody including like other dudes without you knowing about it without her having to talk to anybody And then she can she can go and cycle off to meet them and get fucked by them whereas previously previously like You know the the the giga chad the next village over has to have like a horse and that's like a limiting factor She's she's mailing a a deraga type of her ankle I am so hard to stop Cannot wait to see you at the next counting ball A deraga type is like an insulting daguerreotype

daguerreotype, excuse me I was I was I just watched a telegraph joke. So now now Bicycle usage, uh, sort of it starts to taper off in the early part of the 20th century though And that's because some of the stuff we did to streets, right? Ruin them. Yes. Yeah, fuck them up This is dock street in philadelphia In 1906 you just said that like you were a native of here and I am so proud of you It's for you philadelphia. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you raz. That's like when I say toronto Yeah, the second tea is silent. Otherwise they they hurt you. Yeah

You know, I watched cp 24 and uh, sort of squint to see what's happening up in the corner It's like disassociated When it's up in the little little tv in the bar and you're trying to yeah, the news the goddamn news Yeah, and there's too much text. You're overwhelmed. It's great Fantastic, just sort of let it wash over you True canada has happened to me when I start calling it glasco, which I will never do Let's go Yeah, like glasco or like different rhymes with tesco

Yeah I have a useful Instructional drop here of how not to say the name of my sissy from the movie the thomas crown affair Glasgow Glasgow That doesn't that doesn't feel real Because it isn't I don't even know where I am man

Philadelphia for your sins So You're pretty honest real street. You have uh, you have um, you know, you got horses and carts You got a distinction between the sidewalk And the cartway right the cartway is the roadway the sidewalk is the sidewalk, right? But the the cartway is sort of you know, the carts go there But you can also walk there. You might not want to because it's full of horse poop, but you can do that Yeah

Yeah, this is an amazing thing like um, the fact that you could walk anywhere you wanted and the sidewalk was there So that you didn't have to step in horseshit. It wasn't like you had to walk in the sidewalk. It was there for your convenience And there's no like marked crossings, right? But in the later stages of this you do get some like traffic signals, right? Like fucking boards that you swing out that likes I stop and go, right? I think the first uh, documented like Formal traffic control was on london bridge. I think in like the 1600s Uh, or the fire, um, they uh, they they separated it into two-way traffic. Wow. Um, yeah uh, that was that was um But uh, I guess the first separation though was the sidewalk in the cartway ancient roman cities had that

Um, you know, it's it's been been there for a long time That's because they're marked crossings because they had like stones that you could step over the tracks So you wouldn't get like Shits on your sandals while you were trying to cross the street. The street was literally an open sewer Yes, that's also true Um, well then we we developed this thing called a car and cars go fast Um, this is I believe I don't know what to think about those. Yeah, this is I think michigan avenue in chicago um

And you you you know, you start doing lane markings. You start doing traffic control devices like traffic lights, you know I I like this left turn only lane here because they they have you turn left before the island here and also this Arrow is very Yeah, yeah, I I do love these old streets though. Like they don't have any lane markings. You just kind of it's still a free for all South philly now today So no, no, it's how illegal what you're doing is Um, but with with these the mass produced automobile, of course, everyone's driving fast Uh, that means the automotive industry invents the concept of jaywalking

Uh, they have to kick all the people off the street so people can drive the car faster This is not a thing in the uk So yeah, like jaywalking is when you you cross the street not at a marked crossing, right? Yeah Yeah, and it's so funny when um when I first moved to the uk and I was working in cambridge I used to like wait for the lights and I remember one of my co-workers said you cross the street like a canadian That looks like a star Like the little green guy to show up. Yeah, absolutely There is uh, I I have only been yelled at for jaywalking once it was in jimfarp, pennsylvania

Um, and I was like you expect me to walk all the way down Like 500 feet that way and walk off 500 feet back everyone Everyone jaywalks didn't jim thorp. Anyway, it's it's a tourist town. Fuck off I couldn't figure out what the guy was yelling at me for for like five minutes until he and then oh jaywalking I I forgot that was a thing. Oh, not a real frog. Got it. Okay. Yeah You know this jaywalking thing is it's it's an american thing But it it kind of has culturally come to canada like where i'm from in ontario canada jaywalking is not a law Like there's no law against jaywalking, but everybody thinks there is

Um, and and you'll sometimes get drivers who will like enforce it by leaning on their horn to teach you a lesson or something But it's not illegal to cross the street anywhere. You want that giant like billboard like warning you of the dangers of of um Of jaywalking at all, right? Oh, yeah That was in in kebab. Yeah. Yeah, so apparently it is uh, well actually i'm not sure if it's illegal in peck I know it isn't like new brunswick or some other lame province like that, but um, but One of the one of the urvings was like no, no, none of this I need to run a pipeline through here So so during this during this period there's lots and lots of traffic accidents

Most of them are fatal because the cars have no safety devices whatsoever Um, they run down pedestrians. They run down cyclists. They run down Mothers with baby carriages. They run down nuns crossing the street orphans, you know everything Well, actually you got that in there and uh, and and they um, they Basically sort of becomes less popular during this era because it gets more difficult to do It's more of a like leisure activity and less of a like mode of transportation, right? Yeah, because you don't want to die And this is uh, there was some

Before this era, there was some consideration for separate bicycle infrastructure But one thing that's going to be very relevant to our story is Britain from about 1937 to 1940 There was a provision in the ministry of transport's uh, uh grant codes that to build an arterial road Local councils must include nine foot cycleways on both sides of the road. Damn, right? That's that's not a bad idea. Oh, it's a pretty good idea. Yeah. I don't think they have that anymore No, no, I'm not seeing a lot of nine foot cycleways Yeah, well, a lot of them are still there. They're just overgrown. No one maintains them

Actually, it's like stevenage has a whole bunch of them apparently. I don't know I've never been to stevenage. I've just been through the the station on my way to cambridge White enough I think they built 280 miles a road with these nine foot cycleways on both side And some of them were very high quality done by people who you know considered The implications of having these cycleways. How do you treat intersections stuff like that? There's not really any formal design guides and the others were like the local council was like, all right Yeah, we'll pave something whatever. I don't give a shit. Um, and those were really bad ones Yeah, I remember reading this stat. I think it was on that blog a view from the cycle path

He's a British guy who lives in the Netherlands now And he had some stats that said that There were more people cycling in the united kingdom than the Netherlands until like 1974 or something like that. Oh, wow That sounds about right Um, you got I mean a lot of those a lot of those old villages are very well set up for cycling just inherently Um, we got a we got a return We got to be transfer this shit. Oh, it's like, uh, Philadelphia has the uh the highest mode share of cycling of any major u.s. City despite having barely any cycling infrastructure

Blow me new york. Yeah Is that just because like shits close together there? Everything's close together. The streets are very narrow Northeast. Yeah. Yeah, the streets are very narrow. Um, honestly, there's parts of the city where I You just shouldn't drive you could theoretically but Like, uh, it's it's it's very it's much easier to get most places with a bike Especially like south Philly. Yeah, I wonder if Glasgow is like this before we ran an enormous motorway through the middle of it Yeah, that's a bad idea Oh, but Glasgow has that nice like circular, uh subway that you've had, um

Since forever it never did anything else What we should do is take the trains out and you can just cycle through it just underground You on the rails. Hell yeah, don't do that. Um, be like cycling hyperloop a cycle loop So someone someone proposed that in london for abandoned underground tunnels And the issue being there's not that many of those and they don't go anywhere useful They don't form a useful network. You think if they went somewhere useful, there'd be underground trains in them. Yeah, that's a good point I could cycle You know 500 feet from Aldwych and back

Yeah, you can you can go through like an old continuity of government bunker, right? That'd be pretty fun though. That would be fun so Surprisingly who comes out against this cycleway plan it was the british cyclist touring club Right. Why? Because they knew these cycleways weren't great. They weren't going to be very well maintained But the main thing was it seeded the main roadway to cars. They couldn't bike on the street anymore This is this is still a particular like a thing of the british cyclist to this day

It's like you don't have to like negotiate around the traffic because you are the traffic. Yes, and it's like yeah Fair enough like in principle. Yeah, you have as much right to be there as a car Yeah, but if you try and cycle defensively like you are a car What actually happened is you were turned into fucking chunky marinara, right? Right? And the other thing is this is uh, this is a touring club, right? So this is sort of an enthusiast group a guys who loved to bike fast, you know, they're They're all on the penny far things. Let's say to chap hop. Yeah, exactly. They're going they're going uh, they're They're sort of our proto lycra guys, you know

Lycra before lycra, they like Lycra, yeah Um So but they're not necessarily people who you know, they just want to relaxing bike ride to get where they're going They're they're mostly people who are going pretty fast, you know, they're cycling in like big groups. They're doing they're almost racing, you know, but You know, so This is this is going to be a theme

um Now, so this this sort of program dies off during ww2 because britain had more important things to do like Almost joining and then uh beating the germans uh The fun thing is that like We had fuel rationing until the 50s. I think We had a blackout that like you couldn't have fucking lights on your cars and shit

Except like the really heavily dimmed ones and and yet and yet we fell in love with the car And we stayed in love with the car even maybe because we associated bikes with the like The hardship of wartime and so as a consequence, we all figured like oh once the war is over, you know, you You live more americanly you get to drive your big car to your like, you know, subdivision house In the meantime or not even in the meantime Over the next like in parallel. Yeah Um and and probably jason can speak on this better than i can in in the netherlands They did what everyone else did which is redesign streets to be for cars

And then there was this huge backlash because the cars kept killing kids And uh as was happening like i just doing something about dead kids. That's Big difference. That's the big difference. Yes. Yeah The thing was like this was happening All over the world that you look at accident statistics from the 70s just about anywhere and it was like that's where everything peak Um, and there was the oil crisis too at the same time. Um, and and the netherlands they happened to turn that into action to you know start uh making their Their streets less car friendly in north america. We got right turn on red

I forgot that was only like I came out of the oil crisis, right? We got right turn on red. That was a fuel economy thing. Yeah You're only gift of civilization a right turn on red right turn red. That's what we get. Thank you. Jeremy Clarkson. Yeah, I was gonna say Right the the thing is was when i've read this this history of this stuff, um You know a lot of well a lot of people just don't know shit about this But even people that read a bit about it They think that you know all these kids were getting killed there was the stop the kindre moored movement And suddenly everyone was like, oh, yeah, we shouldn't stop killing children. We should

We should stop killing children and they suddenly we shouldn't Yeah, that's a school reopening right there Yeah, we got emily oster on the pod the truth of the matter though is that like when you look at the You know the the city council votes to like not run a highway straight through the center of amsterdam That these things lost by like one or two votes. It was not some unanimous thing It's not like everyone here was like, oh kids are being killed by cars and cars are destroying people's houses So let's stop doing this most people were still like no, yeah, okay. That sounds like a pretty good idea It's all right, and then there was just barely enough people to stop it. They were like fistfights and stuff

Riots there was oh jesus. It was crazy. There's there's video online of like people literally having fistfights over Some people here in de pipe closing off one of the streets, which now is Love to give her de pipe. Yeah, it's literally the pipe. Yes Anyway Taking my romantic vacation to the pipe I have my honeymoon in de pipe. Yeah, it's a nice neighborhood nowadays. What's so nice downtown, but I You like going to the european. Yeah, it's a very silly country. Oh, it absolutely is You should hear them speak

um Now now Jason has done several slides here explaining some of the theory of Cycling especially as it applies in like places like the netherlands as opposed to what we'll discuss later Uh, so let's go through those. Yeah, do you want me to take over here? Oh, yeah, that's a good idea You be just do this. Yes Hello new rods Congratulations, you've been promoted Welcome to uh, well, there's your problem. It's a podcast with slides

So here is the this actually comes out of portland this first one. Uh, this is the type of cyclists. Um, and, uh This is the idea that there's basically four different types of cyclists. There's my ntp Eftj. Yeah, exactly. Capricorn It's the mires with touch active service Oh Mercury rising So we have our strong and fearless the people who are willing to get on a bicycle like they just love cycling They just they'll bike no matter what

Then you have your young justin young justin young ross. I don't know if dropping soon Can I go fling myself into a highway full of trucks exactly like pocket? We're doing this And then there's the enthused and confident. I think this is probably what I was when I was younger Um people willing to bicycle if some bicycle specific infrastructure is in place. Um, I'm not that anymore I got kids so now I'm probably the interested but concerned People willing to bicycle if high quality bicycle infrastructure is in place. Hey, that's me. Yeah, I think so I think but to be honest I think that's most people and then there's the no way know how people unwilling to bicycle even if high quality bicycle infrastructure is in place. Um

No, I actually think that the real number of people that are no way know how is Very very small, but I can understand that if you've only ever grown up in the us This is a perfectly reasonable position to take because I think I would have had this position Uh, when I was in my early 20s, I would have been like there's no fucking way. I'm getting on a bicycle. Are you kidding me? I'm not 12. It's a one way to get to death town. Yeah. Yeah Yes, I grew up in a very car infested city called london actually I gotta say some of those cycle super highways are pretty pathetic when they were first implemented And well, my hometown doesn't even have that

So the idea here is that there's these different types of cyclists and there's only They're they're going to only cycle in certain conditions. So there was this Thought originally that the strong and fearless was less than one percent. These are some of the the statistics that they got from interviewing actual people in, you know, berkeley, portland, edmonton And some made the 50 largest metros in the us So you can see here that the vast majority of people are in the interested but concerned And I think that's probably realistic I think the no way know how again is probably a bit bigger like

Then it then it really is if people were exposed to it more I think all of this kind of shifts as you're exposed to it more I think even more people become strong and fearless as they get used to it. But um, this is the idea Yeah, I mean once all your friends start biking you might start biking too. Yeah, exactly. It's a just exposure Peer pressure. It's all about cycling. It's literally the only reason why anybody cycles is because of peer pressure It's true. Yeah So this is statistics. They're a bit ancient from 2007. Um, that I pulled from a view from the cycle path But this is about cycling in the netherlands and the the graph on the left here shows the

You know, love this is all in dutch I love to feed straighten And tell feets written per putzoon that I and I'm not gonna try This offends me in two different ways. One is a speaker of english and one is a speaker of german You think dutch is annoying and then you learn german and it's so much worse. Yes. Do you like compound words? German does more compound words than dutch but I can see one of them there. There's what like Feets verb plat singing and nar motif. Anyway, that fuck you tail. Yeah I think I have here in the notes. Liam's gonna give me shit about this being in dutch though. Yes. There you go

So anyway, the first graph here is showing how This is across the entire country of the netherlands. This is not just the big cities This includes small towns rural areas everything else and it shows by age How often people ride on average each day? And so you can see that pretty much everybody of all ages cycles here, uh, at least occasionally So you get into like the the younger kids they cycle quite a lot and then as they get into your working age You're down below about one cycle trip for per day and as you get older it goes up and

I mean this this is what I see here in the netherlands is that There's everybody cycles here. It's not just, you know, some 20-somethings Clad in lycra or fearlessly Barreling down the street. It's literally something for everyone and the other pie chart here is interesting too because What they found is that only 16 percent now. This is the entire, uh, country the the the big cities are much higher than this but only 16 percent of people here cycle to work and The bottom one there is is 18 percent to school. So What you find 22 percent spent their time cycling for something called boudge shopping

Boudge shopping. Yeah, you know what that was that's actually the topic of this podcast grocery shopping We did I am so I love I love to shuffle my boots. Yeah So vinkland and boudge shopping Is shopping and grocery shopping? Um, and you can see it's 22 percent the like And this is another thing that's really interesting about the netherlands is because when you talk about cycling in other countries Everybody's focused on the the commute. It's right getting people to cycle to work. There's lots of people here who Drive to work take public transit walk to work. Um, and they still ride bicycles

And I think that's what's interesting because if you looked at this from like the like mode share point of view that they talk about in the us Only 16 percent of people ride a bike to work. So that would be the bicycle mode share but It's interesting because this is like uh born out in other forms of like Uh transportation engineering, especially here in the united states You have like whole systems like commuter trains are geared exclusively to the nine to five work commute Right. Nothing else. Right. Yes. What was it that you struggled with all that? Was it vre? Not vre that like only ran

Uh, Virginia railway express. Yes, it ran trains in the morning into town. They ran trains in the evening out of town Um, it was horrendously inefficient because in order to do six trips in the morning. They needed five train sets Um and five crews and then I did six trips in the evening with that same That's and there was a split shift in the middle which must have been miserable for the people working there um That's always been sort of sort of my thing with uh, just like Except, uh, you know exclusive of the trolleys Uh, which run basically 24 hours and I guess

Used to run basically 24 hours. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I I'm still getting used to the new normal Uh, I I always think about this with like even getting the fucking maniac Which is what five miles from us if that is like impossible Just based on oh, we've stopped running the trains at 9 30. Yeah And it was the same thing with um with the go train in toronto when I lived there many years ago Um, it's it's better now although there's still some lines that run exactly like what ross was talking about You know, there's four trains that come into downtown then they sit there on the most expensive land in the country Uh for the day and then the four trains go back to the suburbs

Um, but you could certainly do this with like commuter suburbs in london where I grew up in southeast london Yeah, the only the only borough of london with no tube stations And so like if you wanted to do anything in the city that wasn't work Uh, you know, get a fucking night bus back Exactly like, you know, take your life in your hands Because if you if you want to take the train back home, then you better be ready to like leave whatever you're doing at 9 p.m Yeah, that's the thing that really pisses me off is like I used to work in king of prussia And for those of you who are not familiar, it's 12 miles outside of philadelphia

and I had to take three incredibly shitty buses on 76 and my commute was what like an hour and 15 minutes or something And it was and then like getting home. They just stopped running the buses basically So they were on 45 minute or an hour Headways and it was just like Okay, I can only take a I can only take a car this fucking sucks Like I don't want to do that the last vre train out of washington d.c. Union station was at 650

That's absurd I'm not I'm not hanging out with my friends at the uh 9 30 club. I can tell you that much You're getting fired for leaving work too early. Yeah Yeah, I used to do the reverse commute from london. This is london uk not london, ontario canada To cambridge, which is cambridge uk not cambridge ontario canada And I used to go the reverse commute, but I could still get a train back at you know, uh 12 30 a.m Now that was the milk run that went to like hatfield and stevenage and everything and had every single Drunken kid that would go to cambridge because it was more exciting than where they lived

but you could do it um and You know at least anyway What I find with this cycling discussion that's so frustrating is that if you look at this there's so many Types of trip that people do on bicycles in the netherlands And it's not just about work like there's lots of people here lots of people who will drive to work But they will still go visit their friends by bicycle. They will do their grocery shopping by bicycle They will do everything else by bicycle. It's just the work trip Or you know if they go on vacation outside of the netherlands that they'll drive

And oh go ahead go ahead. No, it's all right. I was just gonna say and that's really lost in the discussion whenever it happens anywhere else That's a really good point too because like now and I understand that you know I'm talking about a specific set of jobs, but like with the professional class moving To you know work from home possibly forever or at least hybrid Like that I feel like we have to sort of deemphasize that to a point Yeah, because like you're right like people do other shit not just Going to work

Well, I was just working on a video and I actually mentioned this in my houston video too that There's this national travel survey in the united states where they look at all car trips and the average commute I think it was 16 miles in the united states But something ridiculous like 45 of all car trips in the united states are four miles or less Or three three miles three miles or less Which is ridiculous. That's like five kilometers And that's 45 of all trips and that's in the us where the cities are designed for driving and the trips are still that short It's ridiculous. It's bizarre

But the thing is like you look at it and it's the same thing in in you know in my hometown london ontario, which on my channel. I usually call fake london to Fake one so that it's clear which one i'm talking about because I have lived in both But in fake london like there are so many trips that I would take if if You know, they may only be one or two kilometers, but walking there Socks and cycling there is a death wish. So of course you're gonna drive, but it's stupid That's exactly my experience with getting to rod. So Roz and I live on opposite sides of philadelphia now

I like Getting there on public transit would be It's it's not that long of a drive, but it's very long on public transit Because I just don't happen to be in a transit quarter and that fucking sucks Right because like I want to I want to get drunk with my pal, but I can't And this is the thing I find in the netherlands is that um The and the the thing that's really remarkable about the cycling is that cycling infrastructure is literally everywhere Absolutely everywhere and and I'll get into a couple of it in the slides here, but

You can go anywhere you want by bicycle And there's lots of trips that you won't do by bicycle because public transit will be faster faster take the train It might be faster to drive whatever, but there's just a ridiculous number You could do it if you wanted if there's any trip you want to you can do it And so if it's if it's like five or six kilometers or less then i'm guaranteed going to cycle it because why wouldn't I Oh, yeah um We should keep moving. Yes, we should keep moving. So let's talk about right hooks. Yeah

so This is one of these things where We'll get into it with vehicular cycling But this is one of the things that people talk about with vehicular cycling is that you're These bike lanes they say are dangerous because as soon as you get to the intersection You're going to get hit by a car Fine. So this is this is the recommendation of how to cycle The vehicular cycling way to avoid getting a right hook a right hook is what you see there the traffic

Right to be the traffic a right hook is what you see here on the wrong side here on the left Is that this person is in the bike lane they're going straight through and this driver cuts them off Right, this is something that happens all the time. So the vehicular cycling a recommendation is when there's a car There you should slow down let the car go first you go to the left of the car And you go around it and this is how you avoid the right hook Now admittedly if the infrastructure sucks, this is good advice, but again, this is like It's putting all of the emphasis here. It's all of the responsibility on the person cycling Like this driver is just doing driver stuff and you got to do something special to avoid it

So something special that makes you act like you're driving a car Except if you were in a car, they wouldn't just smash into you if you're going forward they would you know heal but anyway So if you go to the next slide, you see how this problem is solved in the Netherlands now This one is a relatively new junction near where I live And this is a little bit Bigger than they typically are because there was lots of room here But what you have here is a cycle path a feets pub if you will that's about

Two or three meters wide And the road is on the left and what you see here is you're looking straight in and then the bicycle lane curves to the right At the junction so there's a junction there where it curves right after that that big post and the reason it does that Is because if somebody is turning right into that Into that street They can turn and have their car stop there out of the way of traffic and they can clearly see anybody cycling So this is the done for the same reason to avoid the right hook

But this is the right hook solve in infrastructure This is not something that you need instructions on how to do, you know, nobody needs to be taught how to deal with this You don't have to go through classes And anybody and anybody can do it whether they're 80 years old or whether they're six years old They can figure this out, right And the other thing here to note is that the cycle path continues It doesn't drop down to the level of the road. This is what called a continuous sidewalk or continuous bike path The cars go up

So in order to turn right here You have to go up a little speed bump to the height of the sidewalk And you have to do a very tight turn so you have to go quite slowly And then you have a very clear view of anybody who's coming on a bicycle And this is right here is the example of how to solve the right hook through infrastructure Instead of trying to teach everybody who will ever ride a bicycle some special thing you have to do Yeah, you do stuff that like requires people to not think about it. Yes I fucked that up that does not require people to think about it. Not that like

fucking empties your brain and you just like You must achieve a zen state Yeah, you know the hierarchy of safety controls eliminate the uh eliminate the problem Exactly Exactly and this has become like water And then merge into the bike lane And this is what they call uh I I don't remember the dutch for but it's basically like self-explaining infrastructure

Like nobody needs to teach you how to do It's probably like self-explaining infrastructure. Yeah, well it is infrastructure, but uh, I don't know See how fucking I I I have your number the Netherlands So anyway, you can move to the next slide that that's an example where there was awful lot of space to do it properly This is from a video By bicycle dutch who anybody who's interested in this should go check out the bicycle dutch youtube channel. This is called Junction design that the cycle friendly way or something like this. It's a it's a video. He's had for like 10 years

This is an amazing video because he steps through exactly how to turn a u.s. Infrastructure infrastructure intersection into A dutch style intersection. So the top here is what they do in the u.s. And canada all the time So the bicycle lane is coming in there from from the right Then you have this like green thing with dotted lines where the cars can cross through Then you go straight through In between lanes of traffic And then the cars can turn right without right hooking you

But of course formalization of the vehicular cycling method Literally, it also confuses and infuriates everyone by nemesis is um the intersection at south street and 33rd Because that and like every single time i'm like i'm i'm i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna be killed i'm gonna die Yeah, these are brutal when there's a lot of car traffic because you're basically you're forced to cross the car lane and Hope that the people turning right will see you Yeah, yeah, and and then the bottom shows the exact same like profile the same amount of space But done in a dutch typical dutch dutch cycling junction and Basically every major junction in the netherlands is like this like this is not a strange thing

It's not only in a few big cities. This is freaking everywhere. This is standard Design code all across the country and has been for decades. So they're everywhere. So here the bicycle path continues It continues to be curb protected the entire time The cyclists go through and they have this island this little traffic island that I think bras can circle He can john madden it. Yes, there you go And and the as a cyclist you can turn right here And you never have any interaction with cars at all if you go straight through you do But the cars have to turn on such a steep angle that when they turn they are

It is much easier to see anybody who's cycling. So you just get a better angle of of Intersection between the car lane and the bicycle lane and again This is such a simple thing, right? Like it's just a different Putting curbs and concrete down really simple thing to do um But you know the top is still being built all over north america like as if nobody's heard of this dutch infrastructure that's been around for 30 years They actually just repaved the one at south street and 33rd and the main difference is that they remove the green paint

Oh, that helps why that's good, dude people from penn cycle like oh my god, like if even even Because I think part of this is also uh at least partially the the Oh poor people don't cycle Bullshit nonsense, but like a ton of people cycle In and out of that specific area because that's where the hospital and all the rich doctors are and they cross the bridge And they want them to die too now apparently And I know we say penn to lenda asked uh mockingly, but uh, I don't like the doctors to live Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I can recommend that

So um The this bottom thing the the one thing you'll see sometimes in north america these protected intersections are starting to pop up in various places In the u.s. And in canada, uh, however, they're almost like Cargo cult infrastructure. They kind of look like this, but they don't act like this And there's actually a lot of details That's not worth getting into here about where the stop line is and and the signals timing So like there'll be bicycle lights that go green first for cyclists so that they get ahead of cars And there's there's all these these details

There's actually a really good website called protected intersection dot com that a guy in the us has put together About how to do this properly and he's got every little detail that should be done in order to build these properly But anyway, there are a bunch of details But this really is a simple simple concept and it doesn't take up any more space Then a typical intersection does like they put them here Literally everywhere even in strange shaped intersections. You'll see this this uh concrete island Um, it's all over the place and it just makes such a huge difference Hmm and we can see this done wrong on the next slide

Oh good Yep But I love I love I love bike gore. Yes This is terrible. Yeah, so this first picture On the left here was taken by an urban planner in waterloo, ontario, canada, which is where I went to university university waterloo um This is northfield drive there for anybody interested in swinging by to see this horror show This is insane like this is a highway on ramp and they've just done this green strip of paint

Right through the center of it And if you look far in the distance, you can see that there's like a semi tractor trailer coming through here Like this isn't literally insane and it's it's the same kind of like Theoretical supports is painting like a rainbow flag or black lives matter on the street. Yeah We just don't get it. It's like this isn't cycling infrastructure. This is cycling awareness You should uh, you you have access to cycling Well, this is this is the this is the whole you know, we built all these bike lanes and nobody uses them

I guess we shouldn't be building bike lanes Yeah, you sort of uh, you like you you you build it to check the box. You don't build it to work Right. We did that stop fucking showing up to the planning meetings. Yes, exactly So this was put in place about three years ago and immediately it was Everybody who rides a bike was like you've got to be fucking hitting me And it was in the news and it was a big deal and and this tweet went viral and They've done absolutely nothing about this in the last three years It's still exactly the same and stuff like this is still being built all the time

Yeah, and the one on the right here is in florida You know florida is the flattest state in the united states It has pretty good weather most of the time And nobody rides a bicycle there and it's entirely because of well, you're looking this shit. Yeah Yes, this shit exactly Also, it's much more comfortable to bike in higher temperatures than it is to walk Just because you get the air on your face. So even when you know, like 95 degrees out in florida 100 humidity You at least got the air streaming on your face

You feel a lot better and you can get an e-bike and you can or you can just ride slower and like enjoy the the breeze Yeah, this is There's every every single time I get some jackass coming on my channel and saying well The only reason they cycle in the Netherlands is because it's flat I'm like lord is just as flat as the Netherlands is Um, or sometimes people will say because you have good weather there and they've obviously never been to the Netherlands because the weather is Like I thought the weather was bad when I lived in the uk. It is absolute garbage here

And you got and you got these sorts of treatments these sorts of treatments that like especially exits Uh, completely ruin a cycling experience. Like I there's uh, there's a Section like this in Philly at the university avenue bridge and as a result, it's completely unusable for cyclists No one can go there unless they have, you know, some kind of death wish Um, yeah, I mean I think this experience like death. Yes. I think this is surprisingly we've we've discovered the fifth type of cyclist So but I get people also when I talk about this stuff and I can't believe I've gotten myself talking about this stuff Because I hate talking about this stuff But apparently I've made myself a youtube channel about it

So let's talk about Highways here. So I get people saying that well, you know, we got to have highways. How are we going to get cyclists to go down the highway? and here is a highway junction on the left here in Rotterdam, which is pretty car-friendly city as far as dutch cities go because it was leveled In um, world war two and then they said let's build back like the american like when you read back Stuff like this When you read back from like the 40s 50s and 60s in the Netherlands, they

They just really wanted to do the american car thing. They thought that was just the Best shit around and there's so much stuff that was directly impacted by what was happening in america They even brought american traffic planners over I made this video about this plan yokenon, which was literally like let's just pave highways through every single city And dutch planning to become the joker So this here is a Huge highway junction in Rotterdam and if you look at that little green line, that's the way the cyclists go through it So and and you can see here on the right

This is what it looks like from the highway. These cyclists just stay at ground level That it doesn't change up doesn't go down. You don't have to do any grade changes at all You just cycle the fastest and most direct route kind of I mean you kind of have to go around that one cloverleaf But this is the way it is and then all of the highways are built over it So this is the way that you get people on bikes through a highway interchange Not by putting them right next to the highway exit You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna say this. Uh, I bet I'm I'm gonna hazard a guess that probably this bike lane

This bike way here has a higher throughput of people than the entire freeway interchange That is entirely possible Yeah, so we can move on to the next one here which This takes a little bit of explaining so you can see that the the general Dutch method of cycling is to keep cyclists separated from cars like as separated as possible So we saw that they have separated bicycle paths. They have protected intersections where they're separated They have the totally great separated crossings at those highway interchanges And this is another way that they separate car and bicycle traffic. So this is um

This is a great dutch word. This is the dutch concept of on flechren Which kind of means like disentangling So the way they do the traffic engineering in dutch cities is they have specific routes that people in cars are meant to take And then they have other routes that people in bicycles are meant to take And they do this on purpose. So there are maps available Online that will show you, you know, which way you should go on a bicycle Which way you should go on a car But normally you don't have to think about it much because the bicycle route is these is the quickest and most direct route

So this one on the left starting from the bottom. This is like a real bicycle ride. I did once You go out you turn left you go straight up you get to where you're going You can't do this in a car You can't do this route in a car because there are several sections in here where they have what are called modal filters where There is a do not enter sign or there's a curb or there's something that prevents you from going through ballard Sure, um that prevents you from going through with an automobile. So the The cars are meant to take A what's called a hoof net

And they will turn I know there's a lot of dutch here. All right, it's it's a dutch thing deal with it So if you're driving this same route in a car You have to turn right and go around and you can see that this route here on the left is longer for the car than it is for the bicycle Um, but this is the way that they keep car traffic from going absolutely everywhere because certainly Everywhere in canada cars can basically go everywhere Like every street can have a car down it and you can drive anywhere you want and when you're on a bicycle You have to take those same routes

But here the routes that a car will take and routes that a bike will take are totally different The one on the right is another example. So here is going from amsterdam's out south to amsterdam nord north And on a bicycle you take the direct route through the center of the city you take a ferry and you get there In a much shorter distance than if you take a car now a car would take the highway Which is a better way to go in a car But again that that blue route would not be possible in a car It would not be physically possible to do and that's on purpose

And this is exactly one of these ways that by doing this it means that when you're cycling Not only are you have protected bicycle infrastructure, but even if you don't there are very few cars around Because the only cars you're going to run into will be local traffic for those destinations Like there will be no through traffic at all So not only are you usually separated from cars Even when you're not the traffic is so light that it's okay that you're not separated from cars And this is the ultimate separation that you're never going to be Have a problem with a car because you hardly ever

Interact with cars at all when you're on a bicycle I know it's fucking mind-blowing It's just it's a more civilized way to do it Keep them separated by the offspring just all the time It's not subtle either. It's like it's a less nudge theory and more like fucking shove theory, but I really appreciate it Although I think that probably is the only way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah It is the only way to do it because And I've talked about this in previous videos that I've made

The thing was it didn't used to be like this And like it was shown in a few slides ago or near near the beginning that street was totally full of cars And of course it was because if you can drive why wouldn't you you might look out and say oh jeez It might rain on my way home. Maybe I should just take the car Right, but if you look at this and you think You know what it's going to be faster if I just bike and it's easier to park I'm just going to bike it and that is exactly the thought process that so many people make in the netherlands Because of stuff like this and it's all done on purpose

Next slide, please. That's why You know in netherlands bikes for everyone right, you know The the men ride bikes the women ride bikes people undetermined gender ride bikes Kids ride bikes rich people ride bikes poor people ride bikes It is crazy when you see like like 90 year olds riding bicycles thin people ride bikes fat people ride bikes White people ride bikes black people ride bikes a lot more near christmas Sorry I was just waiting for that joke. I was literally just like

You really slipped that one in I know i'm tired, but like god that took me a minute I don't even have the excuse to be tired. I'm just double apparently I really can't believe that it's a harmless christmas tradition Another fun one is even disabled people can ride bikes over there because you know, that's actually a really good point Those specialized bikes are they're expensive though. Unfortunately Yeah, they are there's a lot of alternatives though The you can get tricycles that are

Significantly cheaper. You don't have to have a hand bike But it is interesting. I see disabled people in the bicycle lanes every single day that i'm out every single day There are lots of people who use these bicycle paths for mobility scooters. That's like super common as well They have a little scares the shit of me in north philly is that like we have a ton of people like around Around my neighborhood where they're just they they are forced to ride the mobility scooters in the road and people blow by Yeah Sidewalks are very bad here in philly. Yeah, they just don't bother to maintain them and they're like, wow I can't believe that that person died. It's like

Really can't fucking believe it Well, because we have a system where the sidewalk is the responsibility of the jason property owner So, you know, if you have an un-maintained vacant lot of which there are many in north philly, there's no sidewalk there So the mobility chair doesn't work so well on you know, just dirt That is the absolute worst when the jason property owners are responsible for the sidewalk. It is cruel. It's ridiculous Like how is that not the responsibility of the city? I just I don't know. That is uh, that is an interesting thing about bike lanes is that pretty much every everywhere They do also sort of double as infrastructure for people who use mobility chairs or things like that

They do now. I'm another group of people who ride bikes are lycra guys Mm-hmm. Uh now Now and for a while at least here in the states They had a monopoly on it. You know, they actually have a different word in dutch for like A a racing cyclist and a a regular cyclist. They don't use the word. Yeah, so the like a regular person is lycra guy They don't say mammals um the middle-aged men in lycra for anybody new to that term um the uh The the term for a general cyclist is a feature Um, and that's like just somebody on a bicycle and the the term for somebody who's like racing cyclists is called a wheel runner

Which literally means wheel runner Um, and and there's this very clear distinction between them and actually there's sometimes Like the way that people hate cyclists in the u.s. Some people have issues with wheel runners They say they ride too fast and all this kind of thing But uh, you know, there still has to be that prejudice But it's it's interesting that they have those two different words for it because it's very clear which ones you're talking about You build the infrastructure for the featsers and and that's

Where we're gonna go right now to davis california in 1964 A fantastic place and time featsers. Yes Look at that featser. That is a that's a featser right there. I five ever seen one. So University california davis had a really big campus, right? They still have a really big campus Um, it's california. So the weather's nice all year round except when it's on fire But davis is far enough away from the fires that it's fine

Um, you know and the best way to get around on campus was on a bike, right and even in 1966 that was as obvious But if you lived off campus, uh It was difficult to bike off campus. There was more traffic in the city of davis There was you know, it was It started to become difficult But bicycle traffic itself was also a problem during periods between classes at uc davis The students would all almost simultaneously get on their bikes and bike to another location on campus

That meant intersections in in in the uh campus in the surrounding town could be blocked with as many as 200 bicycles a minute Jesus, I mean But that's you you couldn't do that with cars No, um, also in the 60s you started to get the the first like really high quality mass market bikes, right? We're talking we're going to Instead of like one speeds now you got a 10 speed. It's got a nice steel frame. It's it's it's comfortable to ride on It's fairly right lightweight. Um, these things are just really starting to come to market, right? so frank and eve child were a couple who had returned from vacation in the netherlands

in My mouse is not working 1964 um And they saw some of the concepts of separated bike lanes demonstrated there, right and they thought they made sense And those are still quite new here at the at the time. Oh, yeah, that yeah, that was like a very new concept They were just trialing All of the dutch people are like we want to be american

We want to drive big cars like you and then these two americans are like no the opposite of that. Yeah um So they thought these these made sense for the city of davis and they Formed sort of the small group of advocates. They prevented their idea. They presented their ideas to city council And they blew them off, right? Davis has too many bikes as it is Separate lanes would solve nothing in any way accidents occur at intersections mostly. So what would separate lanes do, right? um And their little advocacy group they call it the citizens bicycle safety committee

You know quietly but diligently sort of gathered signatures on a petition, right? They sort of the city council is writing illogical counter arguments to their policies, which is what city councils do Mostly they sort of built built up a coalition, right? To try and get this infrastructure installed the city council wouldn't budge So in 66 they sponsored their own slate of city council candidates And it turned out that people wanted something done about the bike traffic And uh, they won with their slate overwhelmingly Uh, nice. Yeah, bike bike republic. Yes

So at this point, there's no standard for bike lanes anywhere in the united states, right? Uh, in fact Depending on who you ask they were probably explicitly illegal um Bucket with a can't take a joke ross So, uh in davis they sort of experiment with several types of bicycle lane It's a pretty great success. Um, you know and and and and these Proofs so popular and so useful that by 1972 the whole town was connected with some form of cycling facility, right? I love that they were trialing this stuff in the 1960s. They were trying out different things and now

today in the 2020s We still have cities trialing things and trying them out and let's see if this works and i'm like come on guys That's about washington avenue. Yeah, it's about this. Oh my god. It's like all of this stuff has been done by now There's like research studies done need need more consultations. Oh, we'll get to how that happened You know davis california had a very strong bike policy through like the 70s and 80s They had separate bike paths. They had bike only streets design codes that required Greenways and any new housing development stuff like that

um Through the 70s and 80s davis california had a bicycle mode share of around 24 percent Which was am comparable or even exceeding the netherlands at the time. It probably was in the in the 60s Mode share is percentage of trips by any given type of transportation um, and you know, this is before Things like cargo bikes that made like trips to the grocery store very easy We're back to grocery stores again. Yes Ask you about wise markets. He's shouts us. He's carried away from the podcast

Um Now this is a bit of a digression, but you know in the 90s the engineers and to suit aggression on this podcast my god In the 90s the engineers who had designed and built all these excellent bike facilities started to retire They had all been avid bike riders themselves, you know, they designed bike infrastructure. They'd want to use um, you know, the standards reflected this but the successors were not so enthusiastic davis has since been sort of inconsistent with bike infrastructure And a bunch of nimbies began fighting to sever some of the bike greenways so they don't have to support people, right? you know

so that you know our planning is fucked up in this country, but Success in davis led to a broader movement to standardize and formalize designs for bike infrastructure in california And later in the united states as a whole Um, and this is going to be important here. This is a street called sycamore street Which has since been redesigned with a worse bike lane configuration That's nice. Yeah This this is a parking separated bike lane, right? So you got you got the bike lane

And then there's a line of parked cars and that protects you from getting hit by the moving cars, right? Um, this is one of their original experimental designs. Uh, they came up with a few Um, and they decided the best one was to have the bike lane on the other side of the parking next to traffic Because of reasons Genius level shit. Yes. Wow But um, we'll we'll we'll get to how that happened. I think in the next slide or maybe the slide afterwards But davis's experiments sort of uh spawned more interest in how do we develop standard cycle ways

For california and for maybe the entire united states afterwards Yeah, what if you just get your cycle infrastructure out of a book you implement it you do it and then you just you know Then it's done. Yeah, that's crazy. What if you just had a book you could look in To show you what the right answer was. Yeah, it's called the karan So it's actually called the crow manual. Yeah close enough close enough. Yeah Of course, you really got to get into the hadith for the like real deep shit That's where all the stuff is. Yeah. I don't know if there's been a hiddie thon bicycle infrastructure Not for the best of my knowledge. We can hit up a cleric. Yeah

Yeah Maybe it's time What are the standards for bicycle infrastructure in iran? What are the standards of bicycle infrastructure in mecca? Can I do tawaf on a bicycle of the sardis? I don't want you riding a boy on the south. Yeah Hi, it's justin So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to People are annoyed by these so let me get to the point. We have this thing called patreon, right?

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wtyp pod Do it if you want or don't it's your decision and we respect that Back to the show UCLA University of California, Los Angeles was ordered by the state legislature To research bikeway construction standards and the resulting document was called bikeway planning criteria and guidelines It was very ahead of its time and it was almost completely correct I only had time to skim through it. But you know, you can see like these sort of Dutch style intersections

That were sort of the recommended treatments pretty much everywhere, right And this is the us in 1972. Yes. And now we still see shit all the time where Some traffic engineer comes up with something like this and they're like, look what I just invented Like Jesus Christ guys Oh It's something that keeps being like reinvented because Like the nobody ever grasps that the reason why it isn't done is political rather than like Infrastructural, right? I think that is problem with history in the civil engineering profession. I think

Yeah, no one knows what happened that people got like goldfish memories Um history is not taught Uh history is not something you're supposed to think about You know, if you come up with this brand new idea that came up, it was actually from 1972 It happens constantly. Um, there's never been a vacuum train. Shut up. Yeah um You know, so this generally recommended protected bikeways adjacent to streets They provide designs with extra safety and intersections. They crib deliberately from

Developing design guidelines in the Netherlands, right? Um, there was a further study Which we'll reference later that was critiqued to the davis bike system that recommended some improvements to certain areas That they thought had been insufficiently designed like sycamore street. We talked about before You know, some of the sight lines were bad Um people parked too close to intersections. There were a little more crashes than you would expect Um, the lane was designed for one-way traffic, but actually had two-way traffic Uh, which they thought was a problem because it was too wide apparently

Um, and also no one cleared debris out of it Which you would think would be a problem you would solve by clearing debris out of it rather than changing the design But what do I know? Um Yeah, this uh this issue of the the parking protected bike lane like in that previous slide is actually pretty good But one of the issues comes up with the sight lines at intersections, but it's not that freaking hard You put a curb there so that nobody can park close to the intersection. It's really not that difficult, but for some reason May make this like out to be this this incompatible thing. I'm like, yeah, come on guys pour some concrete Intractable prop. Yeah, put a curb in it. It's you know, I I mean a curb is a project that takes a little longer than paint

But it's not like impossible that curbs do exist Um, yeah, but now we've invented flexi posts and so you know curbs are obsolete Oh my god. Well, you know, they they last a good, you know, two and a half weeks after you install them Um, I did see something about gorilla urbanism where you should just replace flexi posts at random with I'm sold on that let's do it I'll get the drill

Result of the study was the city of davis eventually swapped the location of the parking lane and the bike lane rather than Trying to fix the problems Of course And they probably did it because they needed to take away like free parking spots They took away a lot of parking for the initial system. I will say that they um, all right fair enough. Yeah, they had that. What did they do? Well, you know, they We'll get to that. Okay. Now this study. It was a ucla study Um, the design document. I mean was a ucla thing and it was not official policy of the california department of transportation

It was not widely accepted by traffic engineers at the time, but you know, it's a good start um In the meantime Other cities in california went ahead with their own bikeway schemes and they had varying degrees of quality one of which was The root of all evil in this world palo alto Yeah, when I uh, I worked for a company that was headquartered in palo alto. Oh, which one?

Well, it was called display link. You wouldn't know it, but uh, yes every tech company ever Um, I actually I lived in the bay area for for a short while But then I also when I was living in the uk I was working for a company based out of out of palo alto and I would have to go down there sometimes god damn it I hate that place So palo alto has always been a rich town Um, you know, it's like he's palo alto Hmm. Is that the part like near the university?

Wait east no, I'm thinking east. Oh, okay. I'm thinking I'm thinking I I'm confused. I don't know the geography of palo alto Yeah, forget palo alto. Just like let's pretend it doesn't exist. Yeah, exactly Happy are you know, it's uh, it's adjacent to stanford university As good weather it's flat ish You Hoover blowing fucks You think they'd have the money to build out a high quality bike network on the scale of davis's but instead they Tried to cheap out right so palo alto's bicycle network. That's an air quotes Um was a few painted lanes, but mostly designated side paths

And those side paths were just sidewalks They they were just the existing sidewalks Um Innovative yes And the city passed an ordinance To legally require cyclists to ride on the sidewalk instead of in the roadway And that that meant you were going pretty slow

Because these are narrow four foot uh sidewalks Palo Alto is a town with houses with garages mostly So there's drivers backing out, you know, you can you it's not it's not an ideal circumstance for cycling when You're forced onto a narrow sidewalk that it has lots of changes in grade. You can't go fast. You got to go real slow Which uh peak to the attention of our guy Hmm the subject of this episode a mere hour an hour and 30 minutes in John forester Inventor the super forester. Yes

So he's born october 7th 1929 his father was english navillus cs forester um Not familiar He wrote like a series of uh books about uh, some guy in a navy i want to say Oh, um the horn club? Yes Uh, okay, also mentored a roll doll Um roll doll needs the jews That too, yeah

Um, he took up cycling at a very early age. He was when he lived in london Uh, he he was one of the only kids who biked to his school Um, he was a great fan of the british cyclist touring club But i'd be probably far too young to join because his family moved to berkeley california in 1940 to get away from the blitz Hmm. Yeah Um, and he ascended he attended uc berkeley. He uh studied industrial engineering Um, which is sort of like layouts of factories mostly um

Preserve of the usley deranged. Yes um, I don't think they when I would I they didn't even offer it as a major anymore, uh when I went to draxel They had a lot of weird engineering where I went as a grad program So he you know, he became an american citizen 1951 He was an amateur bike racing guy. He was in the navy for a bit in korea Um, but he eventually settled in berkeley, you know, and this is back. This is back when berkeley was cheap Um, and he was uh, he was still biking. He was biking on roads in traffic With the very small minority of people who did so at this time who are mostly, you know

Young fit men of unlimited physical courage, right? Ross. Yes Um, and he gets into sort of the bicycle advocacy game when there was a set of regulations on bicycle construction proposed in 1972, right? and this was I don't remember what the the agency was if it was the consumer product safety something or other uh But the people who stop you like, uh throwing lawn darts into your kids eyes. Yeah, exactly This is it was intended to prevent defective or unsafe children's bikes from being manufacturers sold

but Because legislators were unaware that adults rode bikes and applied to all bikes Yeah, um, and that's stupid country Christ almighty, oh we put a man on the moon off that long ago Oh There were a lot of particulars here, which I didn't fully understand. Um, there was stuff about like, uh The handlebars having to have a certain shape. There was stuff about Reflectors that would have basically made it impossible to mount a headlight on your bike. Um, you know, but uh, also

The pedals had to be able to fall off for some reason. I didn't understand That's a good idea. It's always what I want when I'm cycling. I love I love the government so much And this all just made them all um what uh forester called them toy bikes That's uh, this is a phrase we're gonna come back to at some point. Um Now forester to his credit He took the case to a court Which didn't have jurisdiction over the regulations And acted as as acted as his own lawyer

Fool for a client and gotten most of the regulatory package overturned anyway Damn, yeah, I love this country legal genius So And he's still very suspicious of any separated bike infrastructure, right? And I think rightfully so in the case of palo alto And this is where he starts to embark on a campaign of stunts Oh, oh, we love we love a campaign of stunts. It's gonna be like the john 316 guy who died in that shootout with police or whatever what You you ever see from sports events from the 80s or 90s. I don't know. I know the john 316 guy

Yeah, it was I died in a either a shootoff a shootout or a standoff with police One of the two. I mean, there's some overlap there. Yeah So anyway, this is from this is from the man himself on his website, which can now only be accessed through the wayback machine To be a real crank to have a website at this point. Oh my god, it was um, it's so While cycling to work, I bumped into the early stage of this program of palo alto My route took me along middlefield road the intermediate north south route between the two major routes One day I saw new signs similar to parking regulation signs saying that bicycles must use the sidewalk I knew that english cyclists had beaten such regulations in the 30s. So I refused

After some days the police came along being detained I know my rats. I know my rats Also, he's he didn't die in a standoff with police He was convicted of multiple kidnapping charges following an incident in 1992 And it's now serving three life sentences in mule greek state prison. I beg your pardon Yeah, he apparently believed the rapture was coming in six days. It's like kidnapped a maid two guys What? All right, all right, go on after some days the police came alongside and I instruct and they instructed me nicely to use the sidewalk

I refused until they charged me with violating a municipal ordinance Uh, you can tell this was written before the adoption of tasers When I read the ordinance it also required cyclists on streets with bike lanes painted to turn left from the curb lane right So, you know turned left across traffic That seems like suicide. So I I went around to find a police car where there was a bike lane And turned left from the center of the roadway

Then I had two tickets that ordered me to violate the standard rules of the road I Hate that an essential function of society at like a sort of an outlet valve is tranks. Yeah. Yes. Yeah No, I I agree with what he's doing here This is why john forester is actually more interesting than you think because They there's a lot of stuff he does that you're kind of like yeah, okay, dude. I'm like nicely done. Yeah, that is bullshit So Bravo john

So there was a real trial not a traffic court hearing In which I prepared diagrams showing why movements in accordance with the standard rules of the road Were reasonably safe and within human ability My other diagram showed why the movements ordered by the ordinance Produced more car bike collision conflicts and required abilities that humans did not have like eyes in the back of the head We could regulate that You know tigers have spots on the backs of their heads That's the the full size. That's the one that always freaks me out because what the fuck what the fuck is a tiger afraid of?

Oh, I mean Well, now you got me thinking about that. I mean the thing the full side that always freaks me out is orcas, you know Are orcas apex predators? Yeah. Yeah, but they have full size. I like it Nature scares me a lot if that wasn't obvious I would stay home. I was convicted just the same But when the conviction was settled the city repealed its ordinance The city city council realized how it had ordered cyclists to endanger themselves and did not like that liability My dad what a case in federal court doing that once

So that's the official like well, there's your problem like Um Advice is be your own lawyer. It always works. Yeah, every single time every single time But but he he lost right but they did it anyway. But yeah, you still got the ordinance overturn now Many people this is the second stunt Many people including cyclists told me that I had greatly exaggerated the dangers produced by these bike lanes and their law I finally decided to test that theory I rode the middle field sidewalk at the same speed that I had regularly been using on the roadway

You'd mind he's a very strong cyclist probably going 25 miles an hour On this four foot sidewalk I figured that with my foreign knowledge of the dangers and my bike handling skills I would survive I was threatened by collision situations that I figured most cyclists would not escape Uh several times per mile Then I rode the sidewalk of oregon, which had four lanes at 35 miles an hour Okay, I guess he's a little faster than I thought damn that's fast

You just look around this guy's fucking like speed cycling at you I become one with the lycra the lycra looks like that This man has the symbiote, but it's lycra. Yeah, I think there were some 1970s cars that wouldn't have gone 35 miles per hour Yeah Roz's dad Chevy Nova Intending to turn left I looked ahead and there was a platoon of cars a long way away I looked behind and there was another platoon of cars a long way away So from the sidewalk I turned left across the roadway

I had missed that platoon of cars coming from behind me Or I had missed that the platoon of cars coming from behind me had a lead car in the number one lane far ahead of the others And I was cycling directly into its path Oh, the safety car. Yeah I was leaning for the left turn and could not turn right away from that car But I could tighten the turn to ride toward that car On the lane line between the two cars I'm a little confused what's happening here. He's he's he's

Kobayashi marooing this shit. He's turning into the path of the torpedo The two lanes of cars passed by me on each side I got to the center line Waited for the platoon to come to the other way to overtake me and rode to the curb where I sat down to think things over Covered in my own piss I mean probably you know was not wearing a helmet or anything and he was on a 70s racing bike and Jesus that was uh That's a close call Quite clearly these facilities and laws were at least as dangerous as I had initially figured and maybe more so

My middle field ride was done at normal road cycling speed The Oregon left turn from a sidewalk down a sidewalk ramp was done at walking speed Bikeway advocates have loudly criticized my middle field ride because I was cycling dangerously fast They don't realize that their criticism condemns their etiology I I love to deploy a sentence like they don't realize that their criticism That is brilliant. This is a fantastic guy you've discovered Imagine imagine him on twitter. Oh my god. He'd be a fucking great on twitter I know it would all be substack rats

Their criticism condemns their ideology their facility was extremely dangerous when used at the speed that had always been safe on the roadway 35 miles per hour on a bike. Jesus Christ. I'm not sure it does condemn their ideology, but I do kind of respect this man Yeah, no, I I Yeah, I mean I agree with a lot of his criticisms, but I don't agree with his conclusions The type of shit liberals say about marks. Yeah So forester wrote about his stunts in a local cycling enthusiast journal A lot of people thought he was crazy

But a lot more people thought he was on to something and he started to develop the philosophy of vehicular cycling, right? Here's some people cycling vehicularly, right? You are the traffic. Yeah, like the traffic pretend you're a car The philosophy of vehicular cycling is that cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles right He publishes a book called effective cycling in 1976, which is also the title of forester's education program And he started up the same time with I believe the league of american wheelmen um

That is a pretty cool name um But yeah, your cyclist is supposed to assertively use the road in exactly the way a motor vehicle would You know, if you got a left turn lane and it's four lanes over uh You better cut across traffic and use it. You fucking nerd There is an invisible car shaped box around your bicycle and you better fucking act like it Honest and then I went home and fucked your father's wife

So, um, it's it's some interesting concepts he put forward like the motorists superiority phobia Right, which uh So motorists in the motor industry loves words He loves to like, you know, you know, you're like getting into crank territory when you try to like psychoanalyze this shit Like yes, this guy who cut me off in traffic. He's not just an asshole. He he's exhibiting. He's an asshole. Yeah This man is exhibiting a superiority phobia Well, the motorist superiority phobia is that motorists in the motor industry are engaged in a plot To prevent cyclists from using the roadway by shoving them onto sidewalks side baths or dedicated lanes, right?

That's like only 70 true Yeah, maybe maybe 80. Yeah Um, then there was the cyclist inferiority phobia Oh, yeah So most cyclists are sort of taking the lane If you don't cycle 35 miles an hour straight down the middle of the lane, you are a fucking person You need to get on my level You're done. Yeah

This is this is the core of the philosophy of vehicular cycling is is everyone's a pussy, but me It's your you are bitch made use the whole lane and go like goes fast as a car Today we just call that ableist If your calves don't look like fucking two cantaloupes in a sack You have no business riding this bicycle The core of the philosophy is get good I still get I still get Fuckers commenting on my youtube channel who would say things like well if you can't handle it

You shouldn't be out there on a bike and I'm just like y'all fuck yourself. Honestly. No one says that about driving a car Never made the next up a year That's you know, I listen on highways. I am you become a different worse person Evil Liam has now taken the So you're you're the strong and fearless category been in a car Yeah So the cyclist inferior phobia Um

Inferiority phobia, excuse me is that most cyclists, you know They're afraid of taking the lane as we now call it because most people cycling education happened in childhood And that was primarily designed to keep them from being run over, right? Um, that's a good idea. By the way, it's the donkett run over The forester said the problem is that people have been taught to fear cycling in the vehicular manner They have been taught that obeying the traffic laws on a bicycle will kill them Are they've been taught physics? Yeah Your your problem is that you were taught how to ride a bicycle by someone who cared about you and didn't want you to die

Instead of being Barton a go gay I'm here to remind you that your life is worthless And unless you are cycling at 35 miles an hour, you might as well commit sepico To become a vehicular cyclist, you must first kill a cyclist in a bike lane Yeah, you earn your red light I Don't toss isn't gonna like this one

There's 300 vehicular cyclists hold up at a two-lane road Defending off tens of thousands of Dutchmen Our sheriffs will blot out the sun Then we shall bike in the shade I Gotta love these guys now So yeah vehicular cycling does tend to assume high speeds and a high degree of awareness and competency Um forester and the other vehicular cyclists did not ever expect cycling to become a mainstream mode of transportation

But also thought it was important to fight viciously for their right to the road, right? because They're like, no, no, there's not that many crazy people out there like us Almost sort of feels like a persecution complex, you know Stop psychoanalyzing We will kill we will dig up Freud's corpse and kill him This is this is something I threw in the notes here. It probably should have been later but and um

Forester did make some allowances in his philosophy like separate cycling facilities But he said every facility for promoting cycling should be designed for 30 miles an hour if not Okay, can somebody do it A Kilometers here because this miles is killing me. What is 30 and 35 and 50 kilometers now? Jesus Christ Yeah, I was I was about to say my top speed on a good day is

Probably 18 And that's going downhill I I I think we gotta like why aren't there guys attacking this guy from his own side like from the right as it were Why aren't there people going like oh only 35 miles an hour? You want to have like a casual bike ride. You're basically standing still Every every facility for promoting cycling should be designed for 30 miles an hour If not, it will not attract the serious cyclist and hence it will not be an effective part of the transportation system A facility a facility that is designed only for childlike and incompetent cyclists

encourages Encourages the toy bicycle attitude and discourages cycling transportation. This guy would have done great on twitter This guy executed to fucking Like elbows and knee strikes Right there on the scuco river trail just like with spears attached to his handlebars So sort of maximum gun if it fits Yeah, so e-bikes in europe are limited speed limited to 25 kilometers an hour And that's why no one cycles in europe

That's right. Exactly. John was right He failed us to attract the the serious cyclist Okay, so forester is very opinionated Now, yeah, really during this same time We start to um the american association of state highway and transportation officials starts to get interested in comprehensive bike infrastructure standards In the united states, right

Yeah, I got bored of being made fun of in the cannonball run movies and they decided to like do this instead That's a nice strode photo. By the way, I've not seen that one before that is that's a solid strode It's even got like those those fake old timey lights along the side. Oh, yeah So only one side is actually from the wikipedia article for strode Is it? Yeah So ash toe is this sort of weird non-government organization, which is composed of state government transportation officials We talked about them in traffic engineering, right in the traffic way back So six or something you guys love to have like something that a federal agency should do but then no one does

So it just turns out to be like a bunch of guys same with fire protection Fire protection building codes. Um, yeah, yeah We'll have a commission about it. Alice ash toe is at least sort of quasi government You know fire protection building codes electrical codes a huge amount of stuff involved with construction is is all run by basically private non-profits Composed of people who stand to make money off the standards um, sorry That international building code is very funny because it's only used in the united states

Um, I do love that one the world series. Yes Hey, the blue jays are a team shut up. So yeah ash toe though ash toe Publishes suck, but the book of standards for united states highways. That's uh, the green book The policy on the geometric like the movie. Yeah, exactly. No, this is a different green book No, shut up. This is this is a policy on the geometric design of highways and streets But in 1974 they released their first bicycle guide right and that was based on the recommendations of both the, um the study of

Davis bike lanes, right? Um, and um, I think it was there was something else. I forget what it was Um, but it was mainly that right and they provided policies for separation of bicycle and motor traffic at specific traffic densities Um, they they they recommended bicycle lanes. They did not like protected bike lanes But they didn't prohibit them They had things in there that are now considered modern infrastructure like Offsetting lanes at intersections. You had provisions for the two-stage turn, you know That's your bike box at the corner of the street, right? There's a bunch of open Hagen left. It's called sometimes. Yes

Um, what a lot of flavor You see it in my smile um They had a bunch of stuff that was uh, well ahead of its time Um, and forester was very unhappy with this um, and he Decided to write his own cycle bike in a bicycle transportation

textbook Called the cycle traffic engineering handbook Which is now just called bicycle transportation um And it looked like a textbook It quacked like a textbook What it wasn't really a conventional engineering textbook, right? It even said so in the introduction and so forester, you know, he spends a lot of his time

Not so much setting up engineering standards standards as ruthlessly critiquing Previous studies on protected bicycle infrastructure Ruthless critique of all that bikes. He is a marxist. Yes Um, some of it's dishonest some of it has uh, not great intellectual rigor There was I unfortunately was not able to procure a copy of this before I um before we recorded this podcast So I can't give a full expose on it There's a big focus in this textbook though on the safe and legal operation of bicycles

Rather than you know engineering, right? There's there's a lot of it which really seems to be mostly like blog posts Really, it's like where's the engineering part? It's like oh traffic engineers should just keep doing what they're doing and bikes should follow the rules of the road um God damn it john so

this This leads to a sort of information problem, right? There has been a whole bunch of studies that had been previously conducted that were in filing cabinets with various municipalities, right? um, but John Forrester's book was on shelves in a store near you So if you were a traffic engineer and you wanted to accommodate cyclists, but wanted to stay up to date on the literature There was only one easily available and up-to-date source to turn to which was the cycle traffic engineering handbook And it just happened to say hey, just do whatever you're doing. It's fine. We're all good all the cyclists are fine man

It's just go ahead. It's fine. I believe there are a couple couple chapters farther in the book about you know Some aspects of like sight lines and stuff like that, right? You know, but again, I was not able to procure a copy of the book um But your cycling advocates meanwhile there they were split on the vehicular cycling issue, right? And that's at best at worst, you know, you had a cycling community that was small and instiller, right? And so they were generally actively hostile to um bike infrastructure

You know, they sort of share the opinions of john forester here because these are again proto lycra guys um And you also had direct resistance from within the traffic engineering community There was a guy named howard munn who was a caltrans highway engineer um And he wrote a big paper for society of the american society civil engineers Which essentially said hey, it's stuff fucking 20th century. What are we doing building bike stuff? Right and um, yeah, fuck off with your penny falling. Yeah, and you have uh, yeah

Highway engineers think, you know, these highways are built for people who pay You know gas tax they're not for cyclists, right? You know, it's by the fact Cycle infrastructure is basically free Even the really high quality stuff compared to road infrastructure Yeah, I mean there's these stories that you hear quite often about like the history of how Copenhagen became so cycle friendly. It's basically because they were broke and it was back You know, it's not america So you can't just go borrow a whole bunch of money to do whatever the fuck you want anyway

They actually had to like come up with the money for stuff And so they started encouraging people to get on bikes because it was way to hell cheaper Yeah, literally 150th the price She built bike infrastructure. So they were like, yeah, we're totally fucking broke. Please ride your bike because we can afford that Yeah, yeah, it's um, it's it's incredible how cheap this stuff is like I your main your main blocks are You know in the united states at least it's politics That's that's the main problem. You know, you could if you if you remove the politics problem You could get a a full cycle lane system in the city the size of philadelphia for probably less than a billion dollars

Yeah, I saw once in years ago that was showing These various projects. I wish I could find this again these various projects in The u.s. Like there was a turnpike in new jersey And they were measuring all the price of them in Decades of the amount of money kopenhagen spends on all their bicycles bicycle infrastructure And so they're like this turnpike costs 35 years of kopenhagen bicycle infrastructure And you know this interchange costs 15 years of kopenhagen bicycle infrastructure. It's ridiculous Bizarre but people still you get this all the time too people in north america say

We don't have this money for the for these bikes stuff. Like oh my god. This is going to cost $300,000 for this bike project And we're like this just shows that somebody that has absolutely no concept of how much money is spent on car infrastructure There were people blaming the uh last week's pittsburgh bridge collapse on the mare installing bike lanes Spending all the money on bike lanes and I can tell you two things number one pittsburgh does not have enough bike lanes Um, number two those bike riders had it too easy for too long Number two the the bike lanes in pittsburgh are incredibly cheap and low quality They weren't spending very much money on them

Every time somebody's gone through and done the calculations I need to make a video about this someday about basically auditing all of this and saying you know A lot of the a lot of the infrastructure in the us and canada comes from property taxes too, right? Or sale local sales taxes and so If cyclists were made to pay their own way, then it's like okay. Tell me when I where did I get my refund? Yeah So in 1978

Caltrans was looking to develop a new bike guide and this would be an actual engineering standard They wanted input from cyclists So they asked the california association of bicycling organizations Um, and that just happened to be headed by one john forrester Oh, no, this guy. Yeah so Proto tweeting his proto lycra. Whatever better. It's a bio thing So he and some of his colleagues testified to say that, you know, all the stuff we had studied before it's clearly wrong

Here's all the reasons blah blah blah um, so The guide they came up with repere recommended no separate facilities whatsoever Just better education of cyclists and better enforcement of the rules of the road, right? um And then but at least you got right turn on a red Yeah And in 1981 ash toe revised its older bicycle guide

Um, and when they revised it what really happened is they didn't know they had one before Um, and they just based we found this in a filing cabinet So they based the new one largely on the 1978 cal trans guide Um, also recommending no separate bicycle facilities Um, unless As forrester suggested they were built to a design speed of 30 miles an hour Oh my god, jesus christ guy give it on So he just wants to go fast and he's getting older at this point and he's still like no

I have to be able to go 30 miles an hour. Yes, and he he is um, he he is uh what should we call this a lot of this information came from uh, I'm gonna list the sources in the description because they're kind of a lot of them kind of obscure This comes from like a long-term comparison of various uh ash toe policy guidelines and how how they were uh immensely um They held back by just this this set of incidents here But like you know at this point it's in the official engineering guide the engineers have spoken Separated bike infrastructure was bad bike lanes were bad vehicular cycling was good. It's science, right?

Oh, yeah, I mean it became part of the highway code in the uk at about this time, I think And you you reached this period in the 1980s in the 1990s where, um Vehicular cycling is seen as the only legitimate method of cycling, right? Um ash toe explicitly prohibits bicycle infrastructure Um, some cities try and install some bike infrastructure anyway Only on roads which which aren't state highways because they would not be allowed to install it on state highways These are very few and far between No one's doing research because the science was established by a guy

Uh named john forester Let me let me I one thing which should be emphasized to here is that he was not a um practicing traffic engineer or civil engineer. He was an industrial engineer um He just sort of came up with his own branch of engineering Uh just sprung fully formed from his mind um And we also completely ignore international examples of bicycle infrastructure because this is the united states

We don't learn from international examples ever for anything Uh Yeah, what I also saw in in some of the john forester discussions when I was reading up and reminding myself of this before the podcast Was that he also would would cherry pick statistics from other countries like the medlands or the uk And he would he would look at say crash statistics, but he's looking at at um, he's looking at for instance, um the number of cycling deaths that might happen when you know Almost the entire population all ages are cycling You know if somebody who's like 80 years old falls off their bike

They could very well die from a broken hip, right? so He's comparing that to the very very small number of Of of incredibly fit 20 something men who are cycling in the united states saying see look it's safer R.i.p. To your toddler, but I've built different Look and well then and this is this is something I still see today all the time when when people sometimes still Still people defend this stuff. They they love looking at um They they love looking at statistics and they get the denominator wrong, right?

So they'll do things like per capita, but like When when 80 percent of the population is cycling versus like 0.6 percent of the population is cycling You can't just divide by the number of people And it it's these kind of statistics that orister and some of these guys were using to just It was just nonsense. It was absolute nonsense And fairness the netherlands does have a huge cycling hazard that we don't have in the united states Which is getting drunk and riding your bike into the canal and drowning Although you know what you know, what's interesting is that uh, most of the people who

Drown canals are drunk tourists here because one of the things the netherlands does is right from when you're a child When you do your swimming lessons, you have to learn to swim in clothes And they do this whole thing where they throw you into the pool with all of your clothes on and and even Yeah, they initially started doing this as a prank And so you can go for your a b and c diploma and when you do your c diploma as a kid You literally have rain boots a rain jacket and they throw you in the pool and you got to get out Um, so every single kid in the netherlands will almost any of the kid that takes swimming lessons Any kid that survives this test

They aren't teaching you. Yeah survival of the fittest here, man It's john foreston. We're doing spotting shit once again Any kid in the netherlands says it's basically being trained to get drunk and fall in a canal Every kid in the netherlands has killed another kid by throwing them into the The very competitive system, but we think it works well for us, you know, it's called population control Leave your kids to die on the hillside like a Spartan's did it's fine. Exactly Malthus Malthus was dutch. Yeah, I think So, uh, there's not a lot of research in the cycling carrying being carried out in this era

Again, they're ignoring international examples You know, you have this sort of era where roadways are getting much bigger, you know People are widening roads everywhere suburban sprawl increases to bizarre levels. You know, this is when these these these You know, you're building McMansions They're like 5 000 square feet and they're like 40 miles from the city center It's like you can just drive there every day of fucking. Yeah. No, it's it's fine. I love to Always use my card for everything and never get a break from it in in 1994 There was some federal funding that trickled into

Bicycle infrastructure research, right and the federal highway and administration published A document called effects of bicycle accommodations on bicycle slash motor vehicle safety and traffic operations, right? So they're trying to with that famous wit for which the federal government is known. Yes So they they they undertook studies to determine the effect of the very small amount of cycle infrastructure that existed in the United States at that point Right and this document wound up concluding that there's three types of cyclists They call them group a b and c Ares, capricorn Uh and i and tj. Yes

So a is your confidence cyclists, right and b and c are basic and child respectively, right? I'm a basic cyclist. Yeah and group a which all cycle guides this point has assumed to be the default Proved to be about five percent of all cyclists Right that that makes it. Yeah The study recommended further study of accommodating these other users And uh forester was apopleptic, right? Yeah, how dare you call me a crank How dare you call me a small minority of people who want to ride bikes? Yeah

Said this policy assumes that the bc group will continue to be the large majority for home The entire system must be designed in effect. No, we can we can strengthen We can strengthen cyclists. We can teach them to be chads like me by making everything remain dangerous We can turn this child into a space marine cyclist In effect the fhwa advocates dumbing down the cycling traffic system to suit the desires of the least competent possible Jesus christ guy This guy takes ableism to a whole new level like Oh

Listen cycling is just it's me. It's the forester lane It's just for able-bodied white men in lycra. You got to realize that the dutch they're doing it wrong Um, this is our thing. Um, not yours Anyway, uh, follow my bar stool sports column. Um, shut the hell up I've been doing battle of these people for two days, man So, um, uh forester decides to publish a new edition of cycling transportation handbook, right? Now with a whole set of chapters with scathing criticism of the dutch cycle path system Which he said was unsafe it deterred cyclists through low speeds and indirect routes and it reduced cyclist competence, right?

um Okay, john and this was This was uh, one thing one thing about john forester is he never visited the nether ones I'm so surprised So what do you did have sort of the tide turning here? You know, there was actual research into preference into cycling how to improve it how what people actually wanted um in 1999 ashto dropped its outright prohibition on bicycle facilities Um, it was becoming harder and harder to ignore evidence from europe on the effectiveness and safety of cycle infrastructure, right?

um And another thing that influenced this was the formation of nakto, right? This is the national association of city transportation officials, right? Who were sort of a group of people who were very frustrated with the ashto standards, which also prohibited things like wide sidewalks bus lanes transit ways Yeah, all this stuff was basically explicitly illegal, right?

Yeah, and so as as americans all you could do is found a competing sort of private organization competing quasi government agency with the existing We're gonna have commissioners meetings about it. Yeah, I think it'd be funny if they just started having fist fights. Um That would be tight to do like that So they wanted more appropriate standards for urban streets and roads because before ashto would come in and say well, this is a nice tree lined quiet residential street Anyway, add six lanes and increase the speed limit to 60 miles an hour They get sound like the mob. Uh, there's a nice tree lined street. You got here. It'd be a shame if something would uh

Run us through through here. Yeah So this is uh, you know, they want to develop standards for transit ways bus ways neighborhood slow streets traffic calming and of course bicycle lanes um And this was sort of a risky move at the time because ashto says these are all highly illegal, right? Um, and what that highly illegal So and that meant that cities were opening themselves up to liability By adding these features

You could be sued for an accident that would occur on these non-standard streets Even if you could demonstrate that it was objectively safer than the standard the non-standard street was uh Uh, gonna get you thrown into court, right? It's the american way. Yes and this was um This this was something that was it was a big problem for a long time. I mean I hate to give it to him But one of the guys who was very good at breaking this uh, sort of situation was um, michael bloomberg

Yeah, um You know with the really big build out of um bike infrastructure in new york city and you know that and so on and so forth How does that hurt you to say ross? Well, you know Well, it wasn't quomo. Yeah, it wasn't quomo You know, it's been sort of slowly clawing our way back To the standard set in 1972 ever since There have been two further updates the ashto bike guidelines in 2012 and 2018 Um, they really softened the vehicular cycling provisions

um, and they they they will now allow A separated bike lane a protected bike lane. They allow it. It's so nice of them. They don't encourage it though Um, they have many specific policy recommendations against it But they do allow it thinking once again of the like very sort of shriveled up Wojak guy who's like healthcare please But he's asking for a protected bike lane Um, and you have uh Bicycling is becoming popular again, you know, it's becoming a more mainstream mode of transportation in the united states They're very slowly installing infrastructure everywhere

Of course, this is a terrible time to be building infrastructure because uh You just need so much goddamn public comment. My god, you know, everyone wants their parking spot And as a result that stuff that's being implemented is very fractured very disconnected You have traffic engineers designing this stuff who have very little cycling experience. Certainly don't bike themselves um And doing getting from one place to another sort of requires doing, you know, a bunch of illegal stuff if you're on a bike You know If you're if you're biking in american city that doesn't have a fully built out bicycle network, which is all of them

Um, you know, what's the thing you're supposed to do that's legal? The thing you're supposed to do that's implied by the lane striping and the thing that's yours you should do to remain safe Are three different things Yeah, that's absolutely true. That's absolutely true You have to make like how many of those decisions per minute. Yeah. Oh my god Uh, it's it's it's it's not good. I I think one of the one of the criticisms that forrester had about like, um You know these these separated lanes

being, you know unsafe um Because later in life he he sort of softened on the idea of the dutch cycleway system, right? um, that but One of the criticisms we had was that, you know, it would just confuse and disorient people and lead them to do unsafe things Because it's not necessary necessarily clear what you're supposed to do and the current fractured bike lane system Does that consistently everywhere? Yeah It's something that because we don't have a method of creating like

Out of thin air or even creating a comprehensive plan To install bike lanes bicycle facilities throughout a city You're you're kind of you're stuck um Yeah, so what the netherlands did here is in in the 80s mostly they created a bicycle design guidelines But what was really important here is that it was done at a national level So it was the these are the national standards and they had proper like facilities to put in. We don't have those Yeah, no shit. Yeah

And and the and like the nimbies it is it's so fucking ridiculous in the u.s. In canada that every time you want to put in bicycle infrastructure You need to go through a community engagement meetings and every retired asshole Will come out to these meetings that are held at 3 p.m. On a tuesday. Yep, and and they will Complain about it because of course they don't ride bicycles But in the netherlands it was just a national standard. So every single time a road was Built or rebuilt which you know happens every 25 to 35 years for any street It would just get the new updates and you see this

All throughout amsterdam You'll see stuff that was built in the 90s to one standard in the early 2000s to another standard in 2010s to another standard It got better and better as time went on But it just got built that way by default. So every time there was a new road resurfacing They were proper cycle facilities put in and then you basically get it for free because you got to rebuild your road Anyway, so if you rebuild it with the curb here instead of there It's just the same cost And that's the way they did it here and you're kind of seeing this in the u.s.

In massachusetts because they actually have pretty decent bike design guidelines that came out in i think 2015 And they're doing kind of the same thing that they do have the nimbies and there there's some There's still those American issues But but in general when streets are rebuilt. This is the standard the traffic engineers, you know check off this this this and this And it just gets rebuilt better. Yeah, and that's really the way it has to work we've a wonderful situation here in philadelphia right now, which is um, the uh Washington avenue, which is a main east west street

Is being repaved and they want to restripe it and they went through a community engagement process For fucking restriping They went through it twice. Well, I were going from five lanes to three lanes, right? They went through a community engagement process. They conducted surveys for two and a half years the community was Well in favor of the three lane option with the two protected bike lanes Um, then the pandemic hit and they decided this was the reason to do the entire community engagement process over again Which took another two and a half years leading to the same result

and um Well next week they're going to have a private meeting with some community leaders to give them an excuse to go with the five lane option with no bike lanes That's really despicable. Yeah, I just keep doing the study over again until you get the result you want Yeah That sounds familiar Yeah, so John Forrester died in 2020

Uh late 2020, I believe after a very long Fulfilling life of trying to make every every single cyclist, uh live by a sort of warrior's code The warrior code of And listen, it's it's it's three simple rules. Um Take the lane respect the emperor as a living god and expel the foreign barbarians. Yes. Yeah Checked out. I don't know. I it leads us to like some questions on uh Cycling in general like Like we we we we did all this

You know, and you wonder how many excess deaths are a result of just not going with the Yeah, the provisions that were correct in the first place like You know and you still have folks who say vehicular cycling is best and it's like Is this supposed to be a hobby or a means of transportation? Well, the the big issue with the vehicular cycling is that If you if you live in a car infested shithole as I have done in various times in my life And you're going to ride a bicycle then

Yeah, vehicular cycling is a good idea. Like you can't really argue with that But when it becomes like public policy, it's fucking stupid. Yes Yeah, I mean you can't you can't run a whole like uh infrastructure policy on the concept of get good Um, yeah, I can try and we have many many is Yeah, but this totally plays into the Canadian and american idea of the personal responsibility and you know, if everybody just followed the rules We'd all be you know, this is absolutely pervasive throughout north american culture Yeah, and I got two graphs up here. This is uh pedestrian and cyclist fatality

Rates in the usa um Versus all of europe From 1990 to 2018. I'll put a link to the study in the description You see that um, you know, since since uh cycling has become more popular in the usa. We've actually increased our per capita um fatality rate um And then on the other side we see cyclist fatality rate per 100 million kilometers cycled

um, and this is The first graph is 2000 to 2002 the second one's 2008 to 2010 the third one's 2016 to 2018 we've also managed to increase that relative to where we were um, and it's I don't know. It's it's It's bizarre. I guess this is in the united states. I guess this is mostly because our our road vehicles are so much more dangerous Um, yeah, I mean even if you looked at the 1970s vehicular cycling, um, even if it was a good idea then Yeah, and it wasn't but even if it was a good idea

Vehicles have gotten bigger vehicles have gotten more powerful Smartphones and distracted driving have increased substantially. There's a lot more traffic on the road today than there was in the 1970s That's gonna lock on to you and Like it's just the the situation out there on the roads is night and day different than it was in the 1970s So even if this was a good idea, which it wasn't yeah, it sure as hell wouldn't be a good idea How are you gonna bike through like a diverging diamond interchange? Or like a

Michigan left You know, um, what's interesting here about this this second graph you have um, the in the netherlands, um bicycle fatalities have increased I think it was two years ago. They increased for the first time since the 1970s And uh, when you dig into the data, it's entirely due to senior citizens on e-bike Wow At the only place the the bump came from but it came because what happens is that you get these Dutch people who have been cycling since they were literally three years old And they've been cycling all their life. They're very confident

But then as they get older their reflexes get slower and they're not as good as they used to be They can't keep up the 35 miles per hour that they did throughout all of their life like And now they get on these e-bikes that allow them to go like as fast as they used to well Maybe not quite as fast as they're 35 kilometer per hour in their john forester days But but then they they get themselves in trouble basically and so it's interesting because I've also seen people come along and say Well, you know bicycle fatalities are Increasing there were there were these new articles that more people died on bicycles than in cars for the first time In the Netherlands since forever ago

But yeah, it's entirely due to seniors on e-bikes But it that's interesting to me because that's a demographic that doesn't exist outside of the Netherlands basically or maybe Denmark that demographic You will not get an 80 year old on an e-bike in the united state Yeah, I mean, it's it's a it's a sign that like, you know folks are Using the system, you know, and you're starting off so much lower than everywhere else Yeah, it's true. It's kind of like that's something like that and it can influence the the overall numbers Sometimes the statistics fluctuate

Now now here's an interesting one is that we now have a cadre of Autonomous car vaporware guys, right? We want to ban non-autonomous vehicles from roadways So yeah was was john forester, right? to A cyclist Advancing towards an autonomous vehicle At 35 miles an hour the drawn katana gigantic fucking claymore

I don't know like I don't know what the ai of a self-driving car would identify john forester as because it would be Unlike anything it had ever seen before Tier one threats. Yes, it would be like this is clearly a military jet of some kind Yeah The only thing that matches the profile in the in the machine learning start running away Start driving away. I can't deal with this. This one just backs up. Yeah Like a horse Shit

Wow That was vehicular cycling. What did we learn? I am I was right to never cycle Um, I'm a pussy for not going 35 miles per hour. Yeah I mean you need you need to you need to go like like 50 miles an hour on your bike like uh get get uh Do you like that guy who broke the world's first cycling record and have like a a train? Right ahead of you as a blocker and ride on a wooden pathway in between the tracks and go like 65 Hmm

Um Yeah, um, all right, let's all let's all start vehicular cycling. I'm gonna go find The densest truck route I can find tomorrow. Oh, I'm going to thrust myself Well, there's northfield drive and waterloo Yeah, everybody take the line. Yes Take the lane everyone. What I learned is I do not regret leaving All right do a section on this podcast called safety third Shake hands for danger

Greetings. I like this. Well, there's your problem crew and possible guest All right, thanks. We'll guest I love the show and I especially love the marathon titanic episode I've used that one specifically get people into wtyp Since it's such a good listen on a really long drive keep up the good work When I was fresh out of school at 22 years old, I worked at the company that designed systems for the automotive industry Oh, no Since I studied something not engineering related. I had a lot of on the job training. That's an air quotes

also known as reading safety articles and patching a loose framework together to keep people safe As the lab manager, this also included some of the systems that qual- involved our iso and aec That's automated qualification tests, right? Hmm. One of the things you have to do when you develop the products for cars is test them in a crazy range of temperatures We were required to conduct testing from as high as 180 degrees fahrenheit to as low as negative 50 degrees fahrenheit, which Gee, what the fuck does tesla do then? tesla do then

Simply not do those things When you it's fine. It's designed for a range of 60 to 85 fahrenheit. That's fine for all of california Yeah, it's designed for anything california will ever see 72 degrees of sun When you have a For example a camera in the trunk of a black car on 115 degree day in out, arizona It can easily reach over 150 degrees if not more similar similarly in upstate new york or canada or russia where it's absolutely brick I

I think that means very cold. That means very cold. Yes negative 40 degrees fahrenheit is quite easily attained Anyway, they tasked me with getting a previously owned temperature test chamber working Getting the 240 volt high amperage outlet for the high temperature Was no problem. However, when it came to getting the total cold temperature testing working several issues popped up Because the system used liquid nitrogen in order to do the cooling. Oh, yes It required a liquid nitrogen Dwar day war Do you do or it's this thing here?

Okay, no, it's not dutch. I can't pronounce it. Yeah I was informed this came in a 1200 pound 230 liter doer Right The reason this is dangerous is that nitrogen gas is as simple as fixian that displaces oxygen with an expansion radio of 1 to 696 So 230 liters of liquid nitrogen can boil off to generate 160 thousand liters of gas

Enough to basically kill everyone in the office. If not more I do not spill But that would never happen No poor shadowing See below for an illustration of the big thick cold boy. That's that's right here, right? Break out of that Now the first problem came in the form of decisions made by management. Wow, I never would have expected that

That's a new for this one. Yeah Due to the size and weight of an uh and occurrence of earthquakes in the part of the world I was in The liquid nitrogen door had to be braced to the wall We were informed by the building engineers that this would require removing the wall Drilling into the steel girders from that form the skeleton of the building Then reinstalling the drywall Hopefully using a curtain to mitigate dust migration into our test lab now

That sounds like a job that's about like a weekend at worst, right? Um And I even said this would be about 17 000 dollars But during the meeting I'm barking at any price. That's yes That's that's probably a little more than I would think but probably fine If you're doing testing, you know, you want the good stuff During the if you're in a sort of situation where you have one of these lying around that's pocket change to you Yeah, well during a meeting I was told this was too expensive When I pointed out that 17 000 dollars was about what a brand new test chamber would cost that used electric heating and cooling

I was also told that was too expensive Then we just run the existing chamber using the liquid nitrogen and skip the safety bracing You just staple it to the wall. It's fine. Yeah, just put a put a zip ties zip ties Put a ratchet strap around it I objected but at this point in my career I didn't have the figurative balls to seriously put my foot down on safety I obtained in writing from the ceo that this step should be skipped and sent a Contemporary kimp contemporaneous email to myself noting that I had in fact objected always a good idea

You know that's shit right? Yeah Problem too is that this test lab really was not set up with ventilation Now the problem is that when the test chamber runs It circulates liquid nitrogen Into the chamber where it converts to a gas Taking heat away as it boils off Which is very effective However, that gas goes out the back and is supposed to go into some kind of piping to carry the gas away

In our lab, this was not possible So I had a fan blow air into the corner And mix up the nitrogen gas And a portable oxygen content sensor The windows in this building were locked after we were on the 10th floor, right? Now before we go, I want to state this is not the kind of safety conditions and procedures I want that I wanted or would put up with now years later But as a new grad being pushed along by industry veterans, I thought hey, you know, this is how it goes

Um, and this is embarrassing and you know, for anyone listening, you should never tolerate that kind of crap Your gut feeling is usually correct Mm-hmm the final problem that sets up our incident was that the uh door Slowly boiled off Uh, it would generate gas inside, right? Uh, that gas formed the pressure that actually pushed the liquid content out into the chamber There were two pressure relief valves installed on the chamber Uh, I requested on my orders that the first one be at 50 psi g. I don't know what psi g is

um pounds per square inch per PSI gauge PSI gauge Yeah, that could be it. I am the first one's at 50 the second one's at 85 This would ensure it never got too much pressure however on the delivery

At the time in question the company we brought in The company brought in delivered with an 85 psi and a 300 psi valve It's fine close enough. I needed the doer for tests and accepted it overnight the pressure built up well beyond 85 psi Because the valve was stuck due to the low temperature which you think they would have anticipated for a liquid nitrogen container, but uh What do I know? Um During a test we had a field engineer who we'll call tom even though his name is paul

I like that It was very keen to get his face as close as possible to the chamber window during the temperature pulldown Despite my repeated insistence that he not do that since he would basically be breathing in a ton of nitrogen and not much oxygen He brushed me off and continued which is always a good thing to do when the lab safety manager tells you to do something After about two minutes. He stood up rapidly began to ask a question and immediately passed out Not ideal On the way down his Rolex on his wrist wrist nice smacked the pressure relief valve Which immediately unstuck

went to full open Yo, if he died Oh my god began venting nitrogen gas into the room at around 200 pounds 250 pounds per square inch Hey, I I have a question and I know I the thing is there's no answer in the thing But I know in my heart and my question is what model of Rolex and the answer that I know in my heart is milgauss This is why I don't wear time bracelets Everything's coming up milgauss The oxygen content alarm on the other side of the room almost immediately being and screaming

Showing the o2 content was about 13 percent, which is well below the normal air percentage of 21 percent I immediately ordered everyone out and helped drag tom into the hallway Then went back in and attempted to stop the valve from blasting out nitrogen. Please. No, do not do this Do not do this Evacuate the building and call the fire department. Yeah, don't even do that. Just wait wait for it to dissipate Just walk away Change your name move to account in the woods in northern finland Get a bunch of like sled dogs

Just start carving shit go to live deliver some medicines to some children in remote village I Cycle away at 35 miles per hour Cycles away from the scene of extremely high Witnesses saw a fighter jet leaving the scene Let me tell you about v tall This is incredibly stupid and dangerous on my part continuing considering the low o2 content in the room Once I began to feel slightly woozy myself

I went to the other side of the room Grab the fire extinguisher and bash the window lock until the window was able to be low opened And ventilated the room with fresh air from outside using the fan Hell yeah After about one minute the pressure subsided and the room air returned to normal over the next 10 minutes I in turn as you'd expect from idiots received a scolding from my manager and from the head of hr For bashing the window out To which I to which I promptly laid into them with about the most anger

I've ever allowed myself to show at work Which included the sentence negligent safety process and a procedures to a level of criminal negligence Yep No considering someone could have been killed or injured worse by simply simply passing out in the worst place and hitting their head Now of course they wanted to charge me for breaking the window At which point I told them that if they attempted to punish me I would resign immediately and report them to the state osha office I've done it anyway, but yeah, yeah, they backed off in retrospect. I should have done that anyway

Oh, there you go. Thank you However about two weeks later. I got a job offer from a much better company that sells fruit And left transferring my safety responsibility as someone who as far as I know never made any safety improvements to that system I now I submitted a report with a lengthy list of changes Top of which was to abandon the liquid nitrogen system all together and buy an electric chamber And so it continued to be used literally as it was that day for years Down to the my same safety presentation that still had my name on it Oh my god, wonderful

The lesson I want to convey here is that safety matters and is worth threatening or indeed resigning over Stand up for what you believe is right when it comes to dangerous things because even if someone doesn't die They can still be seriously injured or sue you Luckily nothing like that happened in this case But it was very much a wake-up call to me and empowered me to take more of a stand on safety And not put up with management skimping on things that exist to protect workers Oh, yeah All the best and keep up the great show

Anonymous Fantastic. That was good. Safety third. That's a really good one. Yeah Don't don't die. Don't don't don't inhale a bunch of liquid nitrogen Well, the other thing well gaseous nitrogen, I guess but what what would happen if he had just uh got good That's true, right? Yeah, that's true. What if what if you just like move through the room perfectly dodging every nitrogen molecule? If they were all going 35 miles per hour, this wouldn't be a problem All right, that was safety third Our next episode is on the boston molasses disaster. Isn't there any commercials before we go

trashy teacher kill james bond 10 000 losses Lions led by donkeys Uh, do not eat youtube channel Uh, jason if they want more jason, where can they find you? What do you do? Not just bikes You can check out not just bikes on youtube or njb live if you want to see my bicycle live streams in the netherlands But i'm not just bikes on pretty much every platform. Are you going?

Are you going at least 35 miles an hour on these live streams? I am not going 35 miles per hour because I am new So if you want to see some weak shits exactly you want to see some handsy ass cycling That has john forster rolling in his grave You can come check out me rolling at an angular velocity of 35 I'm not for me Never stop john keep moving For every cyclist going under that speed I go one mile an hour faster It means nuclear power you just fucking use some to boil some water just hook him up to a turbine

All right, well That was a good size podcast Yeah, that was good I thought it would would be but uh, hey, that's vehicular cycling That would be the case. I mean if we had gone 35 miles an hour it probably would have been shorter Yeah, of course it would have been like 10 minutes long john forster was there hours ago All right Well, bye everybody. Bye everyone. Bye. Thanks so much