As a middle aged man in lycra who enjoys riding road bikes fast for sport and is comfortable riding in traffic: That Forester guy sounds like a dick. One of the things that makes bikes so cool is that they come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, optimised for different use cases. Road bikes are cool, but so are mountain bikes, cargo bikes, fixed gear bikes, dutch style upright bikes, etc. And even if countless near death experiences while cycling around cars have made me feel comfortable (or complacent?) riding in traffic, I still appreciate good cycling infrastructure. People deserve to be safe and every trip taken by bike instead of by car is a win.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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I'd highly recommend the "well there's your problem" podcast (which is a YouTube-based podcast with slides) that jason (not just bikes guy) was a guest on.
I think in the beginning, guys like him were responding to what they thought was a real threat to their sport. If municipalities all started making Dutch-style good bike commuting infrastructure in cities, and kicked bikes off roads entirely, it would effectively kill the sport of road biking. You aren't intended to do high speed lycra-biking on those types of bike routes.
The problem is that he, and guys like him, rather than forming a coalition with other vulnerable road users to advocate for good bikes infrastructure and the right for cyclists to use roads, chose to sell out all other users to secure their own continued access to roads.
Obviously, as Jason points out this video, good Dutch bike infrastructure does not actually kill hobby biking, cause you can ride all you want on country roads and country bikepaths.
I agree. I live in a city and cycling for sport in the city sucks, regardless of whether there are bike lanes or not. There are too many traffic lights and traffic gets in the way. The good cycling spots are outside the city like you said and bike lanes are great to get out of the city and to those spots. Plus, I'd wager most people who cycle for sport also do a lot of other trips by bike too.
I also just want my loved ones to be able to get from point A to point B safely. That's way more important than my sport.
This guy was the guru of the "put a bicycle in the back of a truck to drive to the place where you will ride the bike" kind of cyclist. The bicycle is a sports item, not a mode of transportation for them.
I grew up in a city that has hundreds of miles of cycle paths, you could ride anywhere without ever having to ride on a main road, only the occasional first/last section to get to a house/shop. The nearest path to my old house was 150 yards down the road and when I was growing up before I started driving at 17 (mid 90's), we used to ride everywhere. It was about 8 miles from corner of the city to the other.
As I got older and relied on a car... I found myself missing cycling. So in 2017, I got a 21spd hybrid city bike... Alas, I discovered that injuries and post op limitations restricted me to at best... 5-6 miles and I was exhausted.
So in 2022, I got myself an e-bike. A Haibike Trekking with the bosch mid drive system. I can now ride with ease once more.
Alas... I also moved from that city with hundreds of miles of cycle paths a few months after getting it... Now I live near to the sea and mountains... and there are 2 cycle routes near me. One I can do a 9m round trip, it would be longer but for some daft reason they never finished the path around the reservoir and it's boggy and muddy for 5 months of the year or any time it rains in the other 7 months. The other route means riding about 1/2 mile through town to pick up the nearest path and then you've got about 7 more miles of pretty flat, open countryside next to a river... but also next to flood planes. So at this time of year, it can flood a section about 1/2 a mile long at the 2.5m mark (from my house). Oh and that first route, also floods long before you ever get to the reservoir restricting your ride to at best 4 miles in total there and back... it's only 9 miles without the flooding.
I can do an 8 mile trip to an estuary and add another 1 mile I'm on the edge of a huge forest... 2 further miles through the forest and I'm at the beach... making it a 22 mile round trip... But the stony, gravel roads aren't exceptionally suited to my city bike. I've bought reinforced tyres and puncture proof tubes... so maybe I'll give it a shot next year.
For now, it's unlikely I'll be getting much riding done until March.
Keep it up!
I was expecting to read Forester was killed by being hit by a car while cycling , but dude lived to 90.
Man I remember guys who I guess are his followers on the bike group against bike infrastructure. Its like the l33t git gud gamer bros.
I honestly don't understand it.
I'm in favor of teaching people how to use the infrastructure we have properly, but that's mostly to build demand for better infrastructure. Why would you stop at the first when we can have actually good infra?
Oh its so easy to explain. See if you ride a comfortable bike from one destination to another on infrastructure that makes you feel safer. Well then your not a "real"cyclist /s I mean sorta /s that seems to be the way they feel.
Very thorough and in depth but a bit long.
I don't know why more money isn't spent on bike infrastructure. My city has multipath ways almost everywhere so that bikes don't have to ride on the roads.
