[SDCBC] Age to travel, and how to travel

[John Forester]

There has been considerable publicity lately in cycling circles for 
statements that the urban transportation system should work for a child 
of eight. The real issue concerns which parts of the urban 
transportation system are suitable for use by children of each age. 
Children can walk as well today as ever, I suppose. I suspect that 
traffic-safe walking requires no more skill that it did in the days of 
horse-drawn carriages. The problems with walking are that distances have 
increased greatly, and, for reasons either ill or good, we increasingly 
think of other dangers. Sidewalks are reasonable facilities for walking, 
and should be provided in many places where they are not. Now consider 
mass transit. I can remember when, no older than seven, I was first 
allowed to take the train to the station nearest my grandparents' house. 
First, I was escorted once or twice. Then I was put in care of the train 
conductor (guard, in English, and where I had an exciting look along the 
line from the guard's bay window). Then, by age eight, it became a daily 
trip on my own, not only to my grandparents' house but with an extension 
by streetcar (tram, in English) to Alleyn's School. Then, before that 
year was out, I took to cycling to school instead. And, when we first 
arrived in New York City, my brother and I, aged seven and ten roamed 
the subway system. I see no reason based on the transit system why such 
use of mass transit should be considered unsatisfactory for children of 
that age. Our concerns, apparently, have to do with other dangers and 
problems.

Now we come to what appears to be the crucial point, child cycling. The 
child is now placed in charge of a wheeled vehicle that is capable of 
much higher speeds than walking and, because of that and other 
characteristics, belongs on the roadway with the other wheeled vehicles. 
(Slow children's bicycles are typically allowed to be operated in the 
pedestrian manner.)  Because of these characteristics, the traffic on 
that roadway is organized to operate by certain rules, determined by 
considerations of safety and efficiency. Any cyclist needs, for both his 
own safety and for societal amity, to be trained in operating according 
to those rules. But, of course, the untrained child is unsuited for 
operating in roadway traffic. So what do we do? We complain about the 
urban transportation system instead of training the cyclists.

American society has got itself into a dilemma. The first horn is that 
America has long held that cyclists don't need training (a point pushed 
for decades by the motoring establishment), and if adult cyclists don't 
need training, then, quite clearly, training would be an imposition on 
child cyclists. The other horn of the dilemma is that American society 
believes that training cyclists in traffic-safe cycling is the way to 
lead them into much greater danger. Cycling must be so easy that even a 
child can do it, but to do it right requires extremes in courage, 
strength, and skill. So America, along with many other nations, thinks 
that it can vault over those two horns, like Mycenaean bull dancers, 
through a program of bikeway construction. But no practical bikeway 
system eliminates the need for operating according to the rules and with 
the required skill.
-- 

John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer
7585 Church St, Lemon Grove CA 91945
619-644-5481