Category: Biking Elsewhere

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A false choice

By James Corless
Campaign Director, Transportation for America
To pit the lives of people on foot or bicycle against the lives of people driving across our bridges – and they are often the same people — sets up a false choice. Transportation for America shares the concern of many members of Congress who believe we must be investing in the repair and maintenance of our roadways and bridges, but not at the expense of the safety of other users of the road.
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The True Cost of Commuting

From Life hacker
Your daily commute costs a lot more than what you pay each trip to the gas station. Personal finance blogger Mr. Money Mustache details the true cost of commuting, walking through how to calculate the time and financial burden of a "not too bad" commute, breaking down some of the most common misconceptions about what you sign on for with your daily drive to the office.
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They brushed off the potential commute, saying "Oh, 40 minutes, that’s not too bad."
Yes, actually it IS too bad!
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there’s $19 per day of direct driving and car ownership costs.
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After 10 years, multiplied across two cars since they have different work schedules, this decision would cost them about $125,000 in wealth
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Bicyclists Should Support a Dedicated Trust Fund

It amazes me how naive "professional" transportation folks are on the issue of who pays for the roads and how to "fix" the system.
By Greg Cohen President and CEO, American Highway Users Alliance:
"The second argument is that funding bicycle paths from the Highway Trust Fund is a diversion of highway user fees, since the fund is made up of tax receipts from motor vehicle users."
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"A relatively small user fee on these sales and on new tires could provide the dedicated funding that would keep bicycle infrastructure investments stable and growing, and eliminate the most persuasive objections from bicycling opponents."
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We already have a tax on our bicycles and tires the difference is our tax goes into a general fund while motor vehicle tax goes into a special fund just for "them" and NOT for emergency response services and police services that motorist use, that bit is paid for by what cyclists contribute to.
We would be all for a system just like motor vehicles, take our tax from the general fund and put it into a special fund.
You can see the problem, they want to double tax us and yet no tax "keeping up with inflation" increases for motor vehicles let alone start double taxing motor vehicles with a "use tax" plus a sales tax.
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What the Cycling Movement Can Learn from Occupy Wall Street

Excerpt from Streetsblog Capitol Hill by Angie Schmitt

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Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland attended both his local protests and it got him thinking about the parallels between Occupy Wall Street’s rallying cry — “We are the 99 percent” — and the 68 percent of city dwellers who say they would bike if they felt safe enough. He wonders if bike advocates could take a page from this phenomenon:

Let’s, for the sake of discussion, compare the “top 1 percent” with the last century of auto-dominated urban planning and its ongoing primacy due to the politics around transportation funding.

And many of you are aware that bicycling dominated American life in the late 19th century, only to be all but eradicated by the onslaught of the automobile (which, ironically, took over the “good roads” bike lovers pushed for). The dominance of auto-centric development, policies, and roads are what have led to the situation where we currently have only 0.6 percent of our fellow citizens who use a bicycle as their primary means of getting to work.

Outrageous right? The 68 percent should be marching in the streets! People deserve equal levels of safety whether they choose to drive a car or ride a bike!

To make change in America that’s not supported by corporations or the existing power structure (both of which apply to bicycling), you need people in the streets. It’s as simple as that. Conferences, summits, meetings with politicians, and new laws will only get you so far.

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GM ad urges college students to ‘Stop pedaling…start driving’

From Bike Portland:

General Motors’ latest ad campaign running in college newspapers throughout the country urges students to ‘Stop pedaling…start driving.’

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Image from GM website.

The newspaper ad features a guy on a bike ashamed that his “reality” involves riding a bike while a cute girl drives by in a car. “Reality Sucks,” says the campaign, “Luckily the GM college discount doesn’t.” GM’s website  continues the mockery of active transportation by featuring a woman on the sidewalk being sprayed by a passing GM vehicle.

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An image of the ad was sent to me by a source who saw it in the UCLA Daily Bruin  newspaper. The source is a professor at UCLA and he included this note (emphasis mine):

“Not only has GM violated the norms of decency with the use of this crudity in a student newspaper, UCLA’s Daily Bruin, it has violated the decency and courtesy appropriate of a debtor. GM, the company that required us taxpayers to bail it out in 2009, is now biting the young people who bear and will bear the environment and health damage of its gas swilling ways. While every driver in LA knows that the reality which truly “sucks” is the grid-locked, car-loaded, obesity-enhancing, stress-generating car-toxicity of simple commuting in this region. The company that helped destroy public transit in Los Angeles is now running a campaign to convince students who travel by environment-, fitness-, and efficiency-friendly bicycles that they are inferior to those who travel in highly discounted mini-trucks. Shameless, isn’t it?”

Yep. Shameless. But just more of the same from the auto industry.

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Bikepath-crazy in Clarksburg

[B’ Spokes: Please see our poll and vote for what kind of bicycle accommodations you want to see.]

from CycleMoco by MoBiker

The 1994 county master plan for Clarksburg  called for many bikeways in rapidly growing Clarksburg.  Check out the plan map .  But almost all of the bike routes called for by the plan for east of Rt. 355 in Clarksburg were shared use paths next to roads.  None of the roads, including brand new roads, were to have wide lanes or bike lanes.  That makes Clarksburg pretty unaccommodating to cyclists wanting to go more than 10 mph, avoid collisions with turning cars, or avoid dogs and small children (or children and small dogs?) for their sake if not for yours.   I guess planners had different views then.  There were comments like this:

Emphasize bike paths which are separated from streets and roads:  The recommended rights-of-way for arterial roads and highways in Clarksburg are intended to be wide enough to allow space for separate bike lanes.

Wow, they confused the term “bike path” with “bike lane”.  They actually mean bike path (the correct term is “shared use path”).

At least they’re consistent.  Having only shared use paths means bicyclists who prefer paths never have to ride in the road.  It serves one set of bicyclists very well, albeit with lots of hidden dangers.  But it leaves lots of other cyclists (those who don’t like to take the lane, anyway) in the cold.  MoBike has tried to steer the county towards safe bikeable roads as well as paths.

Jack Cochrane
MoBike

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