I would suggest a different approach. Granted, John Forester is a single-minded and sometimes combative advocate for "effective cycling" or "vehicular cycling." His motto is "Cyclists fare best in traffic when they behave and are treated as vehicles." His approach is the basis for the CAN-BIKE cycling courses and works well as many of us who have taken CAN-BIKE training can attest. If you follow that approach you will be safer than you would be on sidewalks, for example, or on multi-use trails or on some bike lanes, depending on how they are designed. The problem with his approach is that most cyclists are unwilling to ride in traffic and haven't taken the training that would give them the confidence and skills to do so safely. So to really increase the numbers of cyclists you have to make it more comfortable for them to bike by creating separated infrastructure which, if well designed, can also improve safety.

But for the foreseeable future cyclists will still need to use the streets to get around. I would like them to do so safely, so my response to Marty Morantz is that he and the city should be actively promoting cycling education, a la Forester, as well as building safe new cycling infrastructure. We also need to educate drivers about how to drive safely when there are bicycles on the road. And we need to educate everyone about how to use the new cycling infrastructure safely.

In short it's not either/or - we need both both public education programs and good infrastructure. Marty Morantz is not taking this seriously, he is only using the Forester reference as a red herring. Let's not buy into the false controversy.