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Quit Saying This Stuff

mtbjohn

Life in the Bike Lane - Tom Frady


I’d like to ask you nine loyal readers help me to delete a few tropes from the general argot in the debate about bikes vs cars, misinformation that is used over and over again to assert that cars take priority.  While I am both a driver and a rider, I will admit my bias might skew a bit toward cycling.  After all, this column (with apologies to the Eagles) in not called “Life in the Fast Lane”.


Let’s look at a few of the most common “pro-automobile” arguments that studies show just don’t hold up.


Let’s get the big one out of the way first.  “Cyclists don’t stop at stop signs and/or don’t seem to understand the rules of the road”.  Yeah, cyclists bend the traffic laws.  We’ve all seen it.  Studies show that drivers do, too, at a similar rate.  Speeding, tail-gaiting, rolling through stop signs, texting and driving drunk.


I’m not saying two wrongs make a right. I’m just pointing out that traffic laws may be the most commonly unheeded laws we have.  We drivers break them every day, without much thought.  Why then are bike riders portrayed as some kind of monster for rolling through a stop sign?


Nobody seems very good at not breaking the law.  Bike riders and drivers don’t break traffic laws because they are bad people.  They break traffic laws because they are people.


“But gee, Mr. Columnist, there just isn’t enough room for bike lanes without increasing gridlock.”   With extensive research (I asked Jeeves), I was able to determine that roads have been around for thousands of years, used by people, horses, wagons, and so on.  It’s been just the last blip in time that cars have gotten priority.  In fact, in the U.S., roads were first paved for bicycles.


Roads are now designed to move many cars through an intersection as fast as possible.  (Intersections are the most dangerous places for bike riders.)  Delay is bad, so let’s widen streets, add lanes, remove sidewalks and on-street parking.  The problem with that is it encourages more driving which calls for wider streets, etc.


The roads have been designed to allow cars to go as fast as possible and it seems to most people that removing a traffic lane will just clog up traffic for drivers.  But protected bike lanes can actually speed up car traffic (I recognize this is not always true), while generating more foot traffic/revenue for shops along the street and, most importantly, increase everyone’s safety.


And no, bike riders or even avid cyclists don’t want everyone to stop driving.  Cars are great.  I have owned a few.  But they are noisy, pollute and can be deadly.  As much as 70% of car trips are under two miles, a distance that can be handled on a bike or walking.


Yeah, well, you might say, drivers pay for roads, so they should get priority.  This argument is my favorite example of shallow thinking.  Have I mentioned that bike riders own cars, too?  Therefore, bike riders already pay the same taxes as auto-exclusive citizens.  Even if you don’t own a car, you are paying for roads through property taxes, local taxes, and the general fund.  Even in California, where taxes are relatively high, gas and vehicle taxes only pay for about 60% of road construction.  Some states are as low as 6%.


Redesigning streets is not a “war” against cars. It’s just acknowledgment that they don’t have to be the only thing on the road.  Our roads are already heavily tilted in favor of cars. Yet some drivers seem to hate the idea of being slightly inconvenienced so other modes of transport might be safer and more appealing.  Pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit users have been incredibly inconvenienced for decades, all so automobiles could get where they’re going a bit faster.

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Tom, As Rosanne Rosannadanna would say; "No matter what you do, there's always something". The idea that cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians will somehow be able to "all just get along" is an absurd notion. All motorists are pedestrians, many pedestrians are motorists, but few of either are cyclists. We all know the rules but few of us strictly adhere to them. What we need is an integrity metric. Persons and/or groups have integrity when it's known that no one is watching, they follow the rules and behave accordingly. I've been mountain biking on several occasions where trail signs specify "Dogs OK but must be leashed" and I have yet to see this in practice.

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