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The Right to Travel
by Human Power
Steven G. Goodridge
Cyclists and pedestrians have a
legal right to access every destination reachable by public
roads. This means that they deserve safe accommodation on
every road and across every intersection. Non-motorized
travel must not be prohibited except where controlled-access
expressways provide service that is completely redundant to
safe and efficient routes for non-motorized users.
Accommodation of cyclists and pedestrians must be provided
via safe, lawful and courteous behavior by other road users
and by appropriate engineering of roadways.
Anyone who has spent much time
bicycling or walking in America knows how it feels to be
treated as a trespasser on our streets. As the popularity of
motoring has grown, so has the belief among some Citizens
that there is no room to safely or affordably accommodate
non-motorized travel on public roads - at least, not on the important
roads. Motorists give us helpful advice: "Roads are
meant for cars, not bicycles." During road widening
projects, we sometimes hear that "there aren't enough
pedestrians here to warrant sidewalks or pedestrian
signals" or that "we don't want to encourage
pedestrians to walk here - it's too dangerous."
As traffic congestion worsens,
competition over road space grows bitter. "Go join a
gym!" the commuting cyclist may hear from a passing
car. "Get off the road!" is the standard line from
pickup drivers. Even town planners, roadway engineers, and
elected officials have sometimes sought to encourage
"people getting exercise" (as if that were the
only reason people might not drive) to stick to residential
areas and stay away from those roads that actually go
anywhere.
One of the things that walking or
cycling affords us is the time to question ourselves. If a
vocal segment of the population believes that non-motorized
travel on important roadways is obsolete, hazardous, and
rude, does that make cycling and walking irresponsible? When
city planners build "multi-use paths" and
sidewalks in some places, does that make it a crime to bike
or walk in other places? If one cannot drive a car, or
cannot afford a car, does this make one less of a human
being? If one owns a car but chooses to travel without it,
is doing so a sin, or simply crazy? Just what are the rights
of those who travel under their own power?
To answer these questions, we might
start with the first official document of the United States,
drafted over one hundred years before the development of the
automobile. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas
Jefferson expressed the ideals of liberty and equality that
would shape our government and public policy:
"We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness…That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed."
Jefferson did not imply that all men
are physically equal. Certainly some are stronger or richer
than others. What we believe he meant is that government
should treat all persons as equals without bias or
discrimination. This has interesting implications for
differences in travel mode. Furthermore, "liberty and
the pursuit of happiness" are established not just as
legal rights, but as "unalienable Rights" to be
given special respect when shaping our laws. Lastly,
Jefferson clearly states that government's primary charge is
to preserve these rights, and that when acting to do so must
have the consent of those it affects.
Constitutional law, which
encompasses legal opinions that derive from principles
defined in the US Constitution, allows us to relate the
concept of liberty to transportation policy. In American
Jurisprudence we read: "Personal liberty largely
consists of the Right to locomotion – to go where and when
one pleases – only so far restrained as the Rights of
others may make it necessary for the welfare of all other
Citizens. The Right of the Citizen to travel upon the public
highways and to transport his property thereon, by
horsedrawn carriage, wagon, or automobile, is not a mere
privilege which may be permitted or prohibited at will, but
the common Right which he has under his Right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Under this Constitutional guarantee
one may, therefore, under normal conditions, travel at his
inclination along the public highways or in public places,
and while conducting himself in an orderly and decent
manner, neither interfering with nor disturbing another's
Rights, he will be protected, not only in his person, but in
his safe conduct." - American Jurisprudence 1st,
Constitutional Law, Section 329, p. 1135.
Courts have found that the "The
right of the Citizen to travel upon the public highways ….
includes the right, in so doing, to use the ordinary and
usual conveyances of the day, and under the existing modes
of travel…." (Thompson vs. Smith, supra.; Teche Lines
vs. Danforth, Mississippi.) "Ordinary and usual
conveyances of the day" is subject to interpretation,
but given that walking and cycling are existing modes of
travel used for about ten percent of trips in the United
States (and outnumber motor vehicle trips world-wide) and
Americans purchase about fifteen million bicycles each year,
we can only assume that human-powered travel is included.
The Right to locomotion has
sometimes been used, unsuccessfully, as a defense in cases
where motorists have been charged with driving a motor
vehicle without a license. The argument that "travel
equals driving" sounds compelling, but because
incompetent or reckless operation of a motor vehicle is
dangerous to others, states can regulate motor vehicle
operation as a privilege. The courts strongly support this:
In City of Salina v. Wisden (Utah
1987): "Mr. Wisden's assertion that the right to travel
encompasses 'the unrestrained use of the highway' is wrong.
The right to travel granted by the state and federal
constitutions does not include the ability to ignore laws
governing the use of public roadways. The motor vehicle code
was promulgated to increase the safety and efficiency of our
public roads. It enhances rather than infringes on the right
to travel. The ability to drive a motor vehicle on a public
roadway is not a fundamental right it is a privilege that is
granted upon the compliance with the statutory licensing
procedures."
In City of Bismarck v. Stuart (North
Dakota 1996): "No court has ever held that it is an
impermissible infringement upon a citizen's constitutional
Right to Travel for the legislature to decree that ... every
person who operates a motor vehicle on public roads must
have a valid operator's license.... The legislature has the
constitutional police power to ensure safe drivers and safe
roads."
In State v. Davis (Missouri 1988):
"The state of Missouri, by making the licensing
requirements in question, is not prohibiting Davis from
expressing or practicing his religious beliefs or from
traveling throughout this land. If he wishes, he may walk,
ride a bicycle or horse…. He cannot, however, operate a
motor vehicle on the public highways without … a valid
operator's license."
The courts make it clear that not
only is the purpose of traffic law and operator licensing to
"increase the safety and efficiency of our public
roads" and "ensure safe drivers and safe
roads" but that walking and cycling are lawful
activities protected by and fulfilling the Right to
locomotion. In fact, one might observe that the preservation
of walking and cycling as safe and viable alternative travel
modes is essential if the states are to maintain the ability
to lawfully and effectively issue and revoke driving
privileges for the purpose of public safety.
Traffic law in every US state allows
pedestrians to walk along and across roadways, and allows
cyclists to travel on roadways in travel lanes as vehicle
operators, with the exception of some controlled-access
freeways that are redundant to the local road network. But
traffic laws are needed to regulate how cyclists and
pedestrians should behave in order to maximize safety.
Pedestrians and cyclists pose little
threat to motorists; most of the benefit goes to the
pedestrians and cyclists themselves. Cyclists who ride with
traffic and obey traffic signals fare better than those who
do not. Cyclists must be discouraged from operating on
sidewalks, and must yield at crosswalks, in order to protect
both themselves and pedestrians. Pedestrians are required to
use sidewalks or walk facing traffic in order to help
protect themselves from vehicle traffic.
Efficiency is the other major
benefit of traffic laws for pedestrians and cyclists.
Intersection controls and right-of-way laws improve the
ability of all users to share roadways effectively and keep
traffic moving smoothly. Some motorists have argued that
pedestrians and cyclists impede the efficient movement of
traffic. But pedestrians and cyclists are traffic.
Any mode of traffic has some effect
on the movement of other traffic. (Whenever traffic
conflicts create unacceptably poor levels of service for a
given roadway design, the prudent course of action is to
improve the roadway - not ban the public from using the
road. Adding roadway width or sidewalks is the most common
way to mitigate these conflicts to acceptable levels.) The
intent of traffic laws for pedestrians and cyclists is to
limit their impact to the level that is necessary for
their own safe and efficient movement as equal users in the
eyes of the law.
Some motorists have argued that
walking and cycling are inefficient or obsolete modes, and
should therefore not be accommodated on modern roadways in
the interest of increasing the efficiency of travel. There
are two major problems with this argument. First, what is
efficiency? Walking and cycling require less energy than
motoring, create insignificant levels of pollution, and are
much less expensive and time consuming than owning,
maintaining, and operating a motor vehicle for the purpose
of making short trips.
They also require less expensive
transportation facilities - per mile and per hour of travel
- than do automobiles, and do not require large areas of
land set aside for parking. Second, walking and cycling are
still practiced for transportation in the United States, so
they are not obsolete. The percentage of the US population
able and willing to afford and operate motor vehicles is
near its practical limit, which leaves millions of Americans
using other modes for transportation now and in the
foreseeable future. Cycling and walking serve a permanent
niche of road users who wish to travel independently
anywhere they want to go.
Walking is often an unavoidable part
of trips taken by motor vehicle, especially in urban areas
and activity centers. Furthermore, many people simply prefer
to cycle or walk, and having this choice is important to
their pursuit of happiness.
There are some roads, such as
controlled-access freeways, where all traffic that cannot
attain fast motor vehicle speeds (bicycles, mopeds,
pedestrians, horses) is prohibited. This allows these
roads to be designed with features that are beneficial to
high speed traffic (such as high speed multi-lane on and off
ramps) without having to provide consideration for
non-motorist travel. High speed freeways improve convenience
for motorists, but do they deny travel rights to
non-motorists? Not if alternative, safer, reasonably
efficient routes exist.
Since controlled-access freeways do
not provide local access to homes, businesses, and other
destinations, pedestrians and cyclists do not need to use
them in order to reach their destination of choice. But in
some areas, interstates are the only way to get from point A
to point B. In these places, bicycle traffic is often
allowed even on interstates in order to preserve the right
to travel. These are typically rural interstates with
low traffic volumes, in which the operation of a bicycle
across on and off ramps can be done safely without
inconvenience to high speed traffic.
In practice, the Right to locomotion
means that persons traveling by non-motorized modes have a
right to access every destination in safety and with
reasonable efficiency. This means that pedestrians and
cyclists must be accommodated on every road, at every
intersection, with only rare exceptions. Those exceptions
must accompanied by alternative access that is both safe and
efficient.
For instance, an underpass might be
provided for pedestrians and cyclists at a major
interchange. But in the vast majority of cases, the simplest
and most cost efficient approach is to enforce traffic laws
while accommodating cyclists in travel lanes and pedestrians
on sidewalks and crosswalks.
To preserve their constitutional
rights, pedestrian and cyclist traffic must be accommodated
by default when designing roadways, not considered as an
afterthought. Rather than having one network of travel
facilities for automobiles, another for human-powered
vehicles, and a third for pedestrians, the most practical
approach is to have one network - public roads - and
accommodate all legal forms of travel as safely and
efficiently as possible on or along each link and across
each node.
Expressways designed exclusively for
motor travel are useful for transportation efficiency, but
are acceptable only if they are completely redundant to the
network of roads accessible by all. Likewise, off-street
greenways for non-motorized travel can be quite pleasant,
and sometimes provide useful shortcuts, but they have their
own significant disadvantages and must not be used as a
substitute for the right to travel on roadways. Roadways are
the only facilities that go everywhere, allow safe and
efficient movement, and are open around the clock.
Some have argued that the low number
of cyclists and pedestrians found on many roadways makes it
unnecessary to design those roadways with human-powered
travel in mind. But it is primarily the number of motor
vehicles on a roadway, not the number of cyclists or
pedestrians, that determines the importance of designing the
road to minimize conflicts. On streets with low volumes of
traffic moving at relatively low speeds, a motorist can
share a narrow right-of-way with a cyclist or pedestrian
with minimal inconvenience or danger to either party.
Lateral movements can easily be made
by the motorist, or occasionally, the pedestrian. But as
motor traffic volumes and speeds increase, the presence of
other vehicles makes it more difficult for motorists to move
laterally to pass cyclists and pedestrians within a narrow
right-of-way or between narrow lanes. Without room to pass,
the motorist must follow the cyclist at reduced speed
waiting for a safe opportunity to pass. Another
all-too-common result is that the overtaking vehicle
operator violates the right-of-way of the overtaken traffic
or forces pedestrians to abandon the roadway.
This is inconvenient, unsafe, and
unacceptable. Since walking and cycling are both legal and
inevitable on virtually every roadway, it is essential to
design roadways with careful consideration given to how
non-motorized users affect other traffic and how other
traffic will affect them. Better facilities such as wide
outside lanes and sidewalks minimize these conflicts.
The cost of better facilities should
be paid with funds raised from all Citizens, but a fair
share must be paid by motorists because it is the volume of
motor vehicles, and the preference of motorists to travel at
high speed, that makes the improvements necessary. When
motor traffic volumes are high enough to require facility
improvements, the per-motorist cost of such improvements is
not unreasonable.
Another common argument for limiting
human-powered mobility is that many or most pedestrians and
cyclists are walking for recreation - they don't need
to be using roadways important to motorists. There are two
problems with this argument. First, there is no hierarchy of
trip importance in government transportation policy or the
Right to locomotion. Many motoring trips on important roads
are for recreational purposes; for example, automobile
traffic jams frequently occur on holidays, long weekends,
sunny days at the beach, and at sporting events.
"Sports cars" and "recreational
vehicles" consume considerable highway resources but
are completely legal.
Discrimination against
non-utilitarian pleasure travel is not tolerated in a free
country. Second, it would be impossible to reliably
determine which road users "need" or
"ought" to be using the roadway for
"worthy" purposes without stopping to interrogate
each and every one. This would constitute unreasonable
search. We must conclude that surrendering our freedom would
be much more costly than safely accommodating recreational
human-powered travel on roadways.
Some motorists insist that they have
a greater right to use roads because they pay fuel taxes and
registration fees. But travel on public roads is free (with
the exception of a few special-purpose toll facilities). A
variety of funding sources - including property taxes, sales
taxes, income taxes, and fuel taxes - are used to pay for
road construction, maintenance, traffic law enforcement and
emergency services.
Government may distribute roadway
costs among Citizens in whatever way the electorate deems
fair, for example placing the greatest burden on those
Citizens who travel the most, pollute the most, require the
most expensive facilities, create the greatest danger to
others, or do the most damage to roadways. But under no
circumstances does this cost distribution or the fuel
efficiency of one’s travel mode affect one’s legal right
of way.
The most emotionally compelling
argument for the prohibition of human-powered traffic on
roadways, one that leverages the fears of many compassionate
Citizens and policy makers, is the premise that walking and
cycling in the presence of automobile traffic is unsafe. But
this activity is quite safe with responsible, competent
users on properly designed facilities. The vast majority of
collisions between motor traffic and pedestrians and
cyclists can be attributed to (a) illegal or incompetent
behavior by the motorist, and/or (b) illegal or incompetent
behavior by the cyclist or pedestrian, and/or (c) inadequate
facilities. Statistically, cycling on US roadways produces
fewer deaths per hour of exposure than travel in a personal
motor vehicle.
Children living in downtown
neighborhoods, where walking makes up a greater percentage
of trips, are usually less likely to suffer
automobile-related deaths than children living in suburbs.
Vulnerability does not necessarily result in fatalities
because competent roadway users compensate by using caution.
The most appropriate response to
unacceptable levels of pedestrian and cyclist crashes is to
improve the competence of all road users and improve the
roadways to better facilitate safe sharing. After these
efforts have been exhausted, if human-powered access to some
destinations is still not acceptably safe then it is
motoring that should be discouraged in those places, not
walking or cycling.
The safest facility improvements for
pedestrians on high-volume roadways tend to be segregated
facilities such as sidewalks and crosswalks. However, the
same is usually not true for cyclists. The operational
characteristics of human-powered vehicles traveling at
typical cycling speeds are much more similar to motor
vehicles than to pedestrians. Attempts at encouraging
cyclists to use sidewalks and multi-use paths instead of
vehicular travel lanes have typically resulted in an
increase in cyclist crashes while simultaneously decreasing
the convenience of cycling for transportation.
Despite the vulnerability of
cyclists in crashes involving motor vehicles, strategies
that increase the visibility and predictability of cyclists
operating on streets as vehicle operators have been shown to
improve both the safety and efficiency of cycling
transportation in the US better than segregation. And while
off-street greenway paths can offer useful short-cuts and
pleasant recreational opportunities for pedestrians and
cyclists, they are not an adequate substitute for safe
accommodation on every roadway and every intersection for
access to every destination.
State, federal, and local government
transportation policy affects the safety and convenience of
human-powered travel. These policies and their execution are
largely shaped by the often misinformed opinions of the
motoring majority and the interests of the transportation
industry. In recent years, the opinions of environmentalists
on how people ought to travel have been given increased
weight. Government programs and bureaucracies have formed to
determine how to spend an increasing amount of funding
available for non-motorized modes. But conspicuously absent
are the voices of those who actually use human-powered
methods to travel - especially those who rely on them.
It is a mistake to assume that those
responsible for building and regulating our transportation
infrastructure can or will best serve the needs and desires
of pedestrians and cyclists without the direct involvement
of such users. By default, government is more likely to
serve the interests of the motoring majority, and provide
for cyclists and pedestrians only what is easy to provide.
For this reason, those of us who travel by human power must
do our part to get what we want.
We must do what we can to educate
ourselves in the principles of traffic science and the
politics of transportation policy. Many of us also drive
cars, and appreciate the importance of accommodating
efficient motor travel. To defend our rights to travel as we
wish, we must draw upon all of our experiences as motorists,
cyclists, and pedestrians and actively speak out to our
elected officials, public servants, and society in general.
Only then will government policies affecting the Right to
travel by human power be applied with the consent of the
governed.
Copyright 2001 by Steven
Goodridge
This document may be freely
copied and distributed in whole or in part for any purpose.
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