John Forester

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John Forester (born 1929) is a cycling transportation engineer and a noted cycling activist who coined the term Effective Cycling and the vehicular cycling principle: "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles". In one case, Forester got into litigation against the city of Palo Alto, after he was cited for riding his bicycle on the roadway, rather than the sidewalk, which was where the bike lane was diverted at that point on the roadway.

John Forester is also the eldest son of writer CS Forester, best known as the author of the Horatio Hornblower novels.

1 Quotes
2 Bibliography
3 References
4 External Links

[edit] Quotes

On sharrows: "I offer the following two points. The first is that the concept of sharrows is theoretically impossible to properly implement. As I understand it, painting a sharrow on the roadway, say at milepost 1.53, designates the appropriate lateral position for any cyclist coming along the roadway and passing that milepost. That's absurd, contrafactual. The second point is that we have quite strict standards for bike lane markings, but despite those standards, in many places we have bike lane markings that magnify the danger, that are even praised for doing so. Required by ignorant politicians, designed by compliant or ignorant traffic engineers or bikeway planners, and painted by people who try to follow the design but often fail.

I fail to see better results from sharrows, except it appears that they are less harmful than stripes."^[1]

[edit] Bibliography

Bicycle Transportation (First edition, 1977; Second MIT edition, The MIT Press, 1994) ISBN 0-262-56079-8
Effective Cycling (First edition, 1976; Sixth edition, The MIT Press, 1993) ISBN 0-262-56070-4
Effective Cycling Program, Effective Cycling Instructor's Manual, the film Bicycling Safely On The Road (Iowa State University, 1978)
Effective Cycling, The Movie, (Seidler Productions, 1992)
Novelist & Storyteller, The Life of C. S. Forester, ISBN 0-940558-04-1 (biography of his father)