I bought my place with that very prospect in mind. I can do my vital errands by bicycle on roads with very little car traffic. For roads with cars you need to be able to get the hell out of their way. Even My Harleys are fast enough for that.
Posted on 07/23/2010 11:17:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There is something profoundly wrong with a nation where more adults ride bicycles than children.
America might now be such a nation.
While kids sit at home texting their friends and slaying computer-generated monsters, a growing number of their parents and grandparents are clogging the roads atop a contraption that was once considered a child’s toy.
We will have accurate data when the 2010 census is complete, but there are already strong indications of bicycling’s rise in popularity. Fortunately for red-state America, the phenomenon is more common in urbanized regions along the coasts. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia recently gushed that the “2009 American Community Survey found that the number of commuters [in Philadelphia] who rode a bicycle to work rose from 4,778 to 9,410 between 2005 and 2008: a 97 percent increase in 3 years.”
Two odious ideologies fuel the popularity of bicycling: anti-obesity extremism and eco-lunacy. Pedal power, we are told, will not only make you thinner, it will reduce your “carbon footprint.” (It’s a Nanny State twofer.)
Already slim, or pursuing other means to lose weight? Like your SUV, and don’t swallow the discredited theory that man is baking the planet? Then obviously you’re an idiot. In 2003, BusinessWeek asked Andy Clarke, director of state and local advocacy for the League of American Bicyclists, to respond to the fact that 500,000 Americans commute by bicycle. The figure was “pathetic,” he snorted, “for a nation that should be smarter and wiser.”
Feeling themselves superior to their countrymen in both health and environmental consciousness, many bicyclists flout road rules. Last year, The Boston Globe reported: “On any hour of any day … bicyclists routinely run red lights, ride the wrong way on one-way streets, zip along sidewalks, and cut off pedestrians crossing streets legally -- even though bike riders are supposed to obey the same traffic laws as motorists. Sometimes, a bicyclist will do all of these things in one two-wheeled swoop. The city seems unable to stop it.”
Writing in the Rocky Mountain News, Arvada, Colorado resident J.M. Schell admitted that there was “a very, very good reason so many view those of us who are cyclists as rude, arrogant jerks. Most of us are.”
Recklessness and lawbreaking notwithstanding, Big Bicycle has attained the status of a lobby that cannot be ignored. “Bikes Belong,” an agitprop shop “sponsored by the U.S. bicycle industry with the goal of putting more people on bicycles more often,” boasts of “12 professional staff, 18 volunteer directors, and a $2 million annual operating budget.”
“Maximizing Federal Support for Bicycling,” a page on the organization’s website, explains that it spent $1 million on lobbying between 2002 and 2005, which ultimately produced “$4.5 billion for bicycling and walking in SAFETEA-LU, the … transportation law passed in August 2005.” Where did that money come from? You guessed it: the federal gas tax. (Four out of every ten dollars raised by the levy are diverted to non-highway expenses.)
Where did the dough go? To state and local pols, who gleefully commit drivers’ forced contributions to dubious bike schemes. “There’s never been so much attention from cities collectively for cycling as a mode of transportation,” the executive editor of Bicycling magazine swooned to USA Today in 2007. “Bike to Work” days and weeks are commonplace. “Bicycle planning” is providing lucrative jobs for bureaucrats eager to wield the coercive power of government to change commuting habits.
Remarkably, Big Bicycle was able to get in on Wall Street’s bailout. The National Center for Bicycling and Walking notes that fedpols’ 2008 rescue of financial firms included a rather unrelated perk: “Starting January 1, 2009, employers who provide bike parking, bathing facilities, tune-ups, or other support for bicycle commuting, can deduct up to $20 a month per participating employee from their own taxable income.”
Is bicycle-commuting a credible traffic-fighting tool? No, says Cato Institute scholar -- and avid cyclist -- Randal O’Toole. “I don’t think encouraging cycling is going to reduce congestion or significantly change the transportation makeup of our cities,” he said. “There really is very little evidence that any of [these efforts] are reducing the amount of driving. They’re just making it more annoying to drivers.” (O’Toole observes that telecommuting is far more common, and growing faster, than getting to work on a bike.)
Bicycles are wonderful, of course. For children. Only misanthropes complain about stopping or yielding to safely accommodate a couple of twelve-year-olds pedaling their way to the fishin’ hole.
For adults, bicycling has become a finger-wagging, revenue-pilfering, and increasingly obnoxious crusade.
I bought my place with that very prospect in mind. I can do my vital errands by bicycle on roads with very little car traffic. For roads with cars you need to be able to get the hell out of their way. Even My Harleys are fast enough for that.
This is praeteritio
I am safe and considerate and annoyed by joy-riders out clogging the roadways.
I guess that makes me a pompous ass.
Lance Armstrong would probably stay on the shoulder. He wouldn’t be chatting with his pudgy friend riding two abreast on a state highway.
I don’t hate bikes, just venting on the green holier-than-thou no carbon footprint dorks.
Good for you. My only complaint with bicycle riders is when they ride down the middle of the road. Let me explain. Where I live has a private road. Bicycle riders who don't live here, not that it matters, ride in the middle of the lane and won't pull over for traffic. This pisses me off.
“500,000 Americans commute by bicycle.”
For a while, in nice weather.
Not 52 weeks a year!
Obviously I was fit enough back in the day but I could never figure out where to put 1,000 lb’s of carpentry tools on a bicycle for the 40 mile round trip to work.
In the Portland Metro area, we are building new bike paths as we speak, even though we can’t afford it. The reason being that IIRC correctly, Minneapolis was recently named as the bike path capital of the US...taking over Portland’s # 1 spot. Can’t have that happening!
Have you ever driven down a road without a bike path, see a biker in your lane, and want to open the passenger door as you pass said biker?
Happens to me all of the time.
I guess you just don’t love Mother Earth enough! /s
In English please.
Political uncorrectness my man; you and I need to get with the program.
I’m sure you can haul hay and cattle and fertilizer with a rickshaw if you put your mind to it.
Pardon me if If I don't give that a try. A truck is better suited to the purpose.
Regards Bart.
To mention something by way of saying that you won’t mention it. You said you couldn’t comment on Mark Cavendish ... so why did you?
As long as I'm in confession mode; I really enjoyed cutting up tens of thousands of board feet of dead trees. I did. It was a kick.
It seems to me I didn't. The question remains. Who is he and why should I care? Now I have made a comment.
You have only reiterated what you had already made clear by praeteritio.
Knocking off a few fur bearing animals is also fun as well. I don't think that will get me invited to Greenpeace or The Sierra Club however. I'll get past that.
Whatever you say.
I am surprised that nobody has mentioned that when we ride to work (instead of driving), we are avoiding funding those loonies in a far away land who want to kill us all.
Just a week ago I saw an idiot on a bike run a Red light in front of a Ford truck. The truck driver had to throw on his brakes and swerve to miss the idiot. Idiots on bikes make great smears. Get your child’s toy off the road.
Well, all I can say was when I was younger I loved to bicycle. Now my knees aren’t so good, and I can’t, and I wish I could once again. I have a lovely park right next to where I live, and I would dearly love to ride through it. There is that sense of exhilaration I get from riding in the open air, unencumbered, and one with nature. It was the same feeling I got when young, and had motorcycles. Same feeling of freedom, as ephemeral as that may have been.
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