Missouri bicycle educators publish article in prestigious Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal

Two Missouri bicyclists, researchers, and bicycle education experts recently published a paper about bicycle education in the prestigious, peer-reviewed ITE Journal. The paper, entitled Promoting equality through bicycling education, thoroughly covers the reasons for and importance of bicycle education:

Promoting Equality through Bicycling Education in the ITE Journal

While transportation professionals typically focus on road engineering, oft-overlooked elements are child and adult bicycling education programs. This paper focuses on such programs in the context of a complete and comprehensive approach to bicycle safety and an overarching goal of improving equality of access to public roads.

With the advent of such initiatives as Safe Routes to School and Complete Streets, the focus of transportation engineers is changing to include walking and bicycling. For example, a comprehensive eight-page illustrated report by Miller, et al. in the March 2013 ITE Journal described the present Dutch commitment to bicycling.

The numerous examples of bicycle-related infrastructure included an acknowledgment of the importance of bicycle education. Thus an essential complement to infrastructure is the need to promote soundly based bicycling education programs, some examples of which are discussed in this paper. They are presented in the context of the so-called five E’s, analogous to the four E’s of highway safety, to which has been added an overarching sixth E, Equality.

Authors are Martin Pion of Ferguson and Andy Cline of Springfield.  Pion wrote an article outlining the pair's goals and adventures in working to write the paper and work through ITE's peer review process over a number of years:

Martin Pion

I became a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in February 2012 with the idea of submitting a paper on the transportation subject I knew best: bicycle education.  I felt that it would be valuable to share some of my experience, acquired over 40 years, with professionals who are among the most influential in shaping the on-road environment.

The response to my first inquiry as to how to proceed, dated March 6th, 2012, came from Marianne Saglam, Communications & Marketing Senior Director. She was helpful, and has remained so, despite the repeated rejections of my subsequent draft paper submissions following ITE Journal peer review. I’m grateful to Marianne for the patience she has shown over the years.

Andy Cline

Below I’ve described the progress of this effort preceding the final publication of the fourth version of this paper, starting at the very beginning.

Read Pion & Cline's full paper here.