Bicycle Colorado's Education Manager Responds to my Op-Ed
Frank J. Lehnerz
He then brings up Forester, and mangles his infamous, "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles." I didn't bring up Forester intentionally in my op-ed since he already lives rent-free in the minds of these people and there are far more approachable alternatives than suggesting Forester's books. Predictably, he mischaracterized Forester's legal and operational argument as a behavioral attitude, which sidesteps the actual point about predictability, rights, and duties under traffic law.
He insists the treatment of bicycles as vehicles as a 1970s ideological development from Forester, ignoring the long statutory history of bicycles being regulated as vehicles (ironic Bicycle Colorado is behind revisions and re-writes of several traffic statutes) well before modern bike advocacy or traffic engineering practices.
I get accused of relying on anecdotes while he implicitly defines “evidence” as only that which passes through activist-aligned academic channels. (As mentioned earlier, my article was intended for print publication anyway) Independent safety analysis and practitioner-based research such as those from people here or from the Cycling Savvy folks are effectively excluded from the record, while subjective comfort and perceived safety are treated as valid proxies for actual risk. Bringing up Marshall and his book too was interesting as Marshall is a degreed engineer but doesn't practice and spends his days in academia as a glorified activist.
He further claims that I failed to address health, sustainability, and broader urban mobility issues, despite the fact that I devoted multiple sections to those topics. These sections are simply not engaged or rebutted. He also accuses "vehicular cyclists" of ignoring land use and auto-centric design, despite my explicit discussion of practicality, climate claims, cultural preferences, and trade-offs.
It's especially interesting given his job title at Bicycle Colorado in that he frames education as a secondary or insufficient tool, while feelings of safety are elevated as the primary concern. This is no surprise as it reflects a core assumption of protected bike lane ideology: that safety is chiefly about emotional comfort rather than lawful behavior, situational awareness, cooperation with others, and conflict management.
As usual, emotional examples involving children or elderly riders are used to short-circuit critique. This framing substitutes sentiment for analysis and misrepresents what I actually argued. He further asserts that disagreement with protected bike lane advocacy is repeatedly reframed as indifference toward certain riders or a desire to force people to ride “a certain way.” This is an emotional maneuver, not a response to the safety arguments presented and had he made any genuine attempt to look at Cycling Savvy, he'd see they don't present a "this is good, this is bad," take but instead try to encourage people to understand the limitations and tradeoffs with each cycling behavior mode.
Finally, he presents his. flavor of advocacy as inherently virtuous, rather than as something that should be accountable to outcomes, unintended consequences, and opportunity costs.