Yes, hit by a bus, again.
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Kill a cyclist, pay $110
Until the city lives up to its bike-plan promises, door-prize givers will get away with murder
BY Jonathan Goldsbie
What if I told you that you could kill a man — or a woman or a child — for the low cost of $110? No jail time. No criminal record. No other fines or fees. Quite a bargain, huh? And you may not even have to pay that much, if you successfully challenge the penalty in court. The offer is not gonna get any sweeter than this. I dare you, find a better deal. Kill a person, pay $110, move on with your life.
How, you might ask? Well, it’s obvious. Just pick someone whom society willfully neglects, whose life is considered unimportant and whose death is no big whoop, an unfortunate but forgettable consequence of modern society. A little collateral damage at the margins. Nope, not homeless people. They’re looking down on that now.
I’m talking about cyclists. Just open the door of your parked car into an oncoming cyclist and smack ’em into traffic. It might take several tries before you actually kill one, but keep at it. The police will be hesitant to charge you at first. And then other cyclists will get all uppity, and police will compromise with a $110 fine. Because that’s how much a cyclist’s life is worth.
Incidentally, it’s also how much a cyclist is fined for not coming to a complete halt at a stop sign. Or not having a bell. Or having a defective bell. Or riding in or along a pedestrian crossing.
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Bailout Bill Includes Bike Commuting Benefit
Remember Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer’s long-sought $20 per month tax credit for bike commuters, intended to extend a benefit to cyclists that motorists have received for decades? The measure ridiculed by North Carolina Rep. Patrick "Give Me Fossil Fuels or Give Me Death" McHenry? It didn’t make it into law last year, but it seems the bike commuting credit has found its way into the latest version of the financial bailout package. …
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Great Agenda Set-Up for Bike Form Mon. 10-06-08 at 6:00PM
Hi Bike Forum Folks. We had our last Bike Forum Planning Session yesterday folks from APL-SHA-OLC & CPABC and Boy do we have an exceptional agenda for you on Monday Evening. This is one Bike Forum you DO NOT WANT TO MISS. We laid out a List of Ten Topics that the Cyclists in Md. want to discuss and have answers from SHA/MDOT. Neil Pedersen-Administrator-SHA has been working with Stephanie Yanovitz-SHA Bike Coordinator and along with the rest of SHA Transportation Staff to fully answer all those important questions. Stephanie has worked up a very professional Power Point Presentaion(Bicycing Md. on Oct. 6, 2008) and Neil will present it starting at 6:45 PM at APL. We have a chock full agenda that will keep you busy for three hours asking and answering these very important questions. We will start going at 6:00PM with refreshments-Pizza-Veggies and Drinks(Complements of OLC)(No Food allowed in this wonderful very professional Parson Auditorium. We need to thank Jack Guameri from APL and chair of the Howard Co. BAHC Bike Group for the use of this perfect setting for so many of us to get together. And all the folks who helped pull this Bike Forum together.
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Dead right
A Fox 6 (Milwaukee) news report about motorist unsafe passing, a cyclist with cameras and his effort to increase awareness.
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C&O Canal bike trail traffic-free and gorgeous
[A wonderful article about the C&O]
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A few of us were veterans of weeks-long or even months-long expeditions in the saddle. Several others had barely been on a bike for years. Our bikes ranged from fancy wheels right out of the shop to tough old machines.
And we had 184.5 miles to cover — together.
Not a problem. There’s something about the C&O that makes these differences not matter.
Bicycling the canal, on a dirt towpath where mules once hauled barges, is like riding through a watercolor painting of nature all day long. Spring, summer and deep into fall, it’s like inhaling a passage from "Walden" and exhaling a verse from Robert Frost.
After splashing through the first dozen mud puddles, seeing the first of the turtles lazing on fallen trees in still water, and getting swallowed by the luscious greenery — as if we’d leaped into that painting — I knew we’d found our stride.
The C&O, it turns out, is an ideal proving ground for casual cyclists looking to push their limits. It’s long, flat and traffic-free, plus gorgeous.
Those same qualities engage dedicated cyclists, too, who can stretch the daily mileage if they want and speed a little faster through the same grand tapestry.
And what a tapestry. On one side is the broad, rushing Potomac River; on the other, the placid canal. Above, a canopy of leaves.
Along the way: 74 locks with massive wooden gates patterned on the designs of Leonardo da Vinci, 11 aqueducts and dozens of white brick houses where gatekeepers tended locks and gardens until the canal went bust in 1924.
The human imprint is frozen in time here. Nature is in motion.
Now herons, songbirds, snakes and the ubiquitous turtles make their living on the C&O.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way when people started carving the earth in 1828 to make a waterway for coal and commerce from the Allegheny Mountains to the East Coast.
They reckoned a canal stretching between Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River would beat the railroad in the race west. The railroad won — and so did the great outdoors.
Today, the C&O joins the recently expanded Great Allegheny Passage rail trail to give cyclists a 320-mile offroad route along sparkling rivers between Washington and the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
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