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Just left a comment on that post....

Yeah, there is a thread/meme around on the internet/blogs that includes but is not limited to ideas like:

-Cycle groups have "failed" to bring about mass cycling. Only seperate infrastructure can do this.
-Cycle training is like Helmet promotion in that it suggests thst cycling is not safe without training
-"Vehicular Cyclists" are a cult like group that resist any and all attempts to introduse infrastructure on the dutch model
-Cycle training ameloriates the conditions of on road riding and as such collaborates with the maintainance of the status quo with respect the preeminence of the car.

Good summary.

The key thing to understand is that these sectarian disputes are an absolute waste of time. It is abundantly clear that there is a certain role for cycle training, giving people skills, etc., but also a role for cycle tracks where there is a *specific purpose *for them. My favourite example is Eagle Wharf Road, N1, where we wanted the street to be two-way, but it had been made one-way because of a historic rat-run problem from New North Road to City Road. In order not to reactivate that problem, a contraflow (westbound) cycle track was created to prevent drivers from turning into EWR to rat-run, which they would have done en masse if the cycle track had been shorter. This is a clear and specific purpose and a track was the only possible tool for the job there.

Also, where political conditions don't permit higher-order measures at the time, a track can be a stopgap. Pitfield Street, N1, has a track which we don't like at all, but which for the time being maintains the principle of two-way cycling there. We want Pitfield Street to stop being a one-way rat-run, but that is still some years off, unfortunately.

What doesn't work is to just assume that tracks can be used all the time without a specific reason. Chances are that if you do this, you will miss factors which would have been very material to your choice of measure in any given location had you given it more thought.

Likewise, all the rest of the huge toolkit available to planners and engineers is also there and plays by the same rules. Key to understand all these measures is their relative importance and the level of intervention if they are chosen. For instance, it is vastly more powerful to modally filter a network (introduce selective road closures that 'filter out' through motor traffic, allowing it only along the boundary streets, but permit cycling and walking everywhere) than to introduce a 20mph speed limit in the same network. Anyway, this gets incredibly complex if you get into it, and any kind of reductionism can only do it harm.

The ideological ding-dong battle between reductionists of different stripes is just silly nonsense.

For my self I will say that I became a cycle trainer as a response to my frustration with cycle campagining...

Where did you campaign?

The way I see it, we are just quietly helping those who wish to ride to do so as well as encouraging new generations. I only read Cyclecraft after about 30 years cycling in London and I could see, at once, the value of the advise therin.

For me it was similar--I had just joined the LCC (having cycled in London for about three years up to that point) and there was an article in the LCC magazine with a ten-point summary written by John Franklin. That was a major eye-opener.