![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dc.streetsblog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/stranger.jpg\" "\\"stranger\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nImage: James Yamasaki \/ The Stranger<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Under the headline, \u201cOkay, Fine, It\u2019s War,\u201d Seattle\u2019s The Stranger blog this week published a manifesto \u201cof and by the nondrivers themselves<\/a>.\u201d They\u2019re sick of being called \u201cmilitants\u201d for caring about pedestrian safety, and they\u2019re tired of the specter of a \u201cwar on cars.\u201d<\/p>\n We heartily recommend that you read the whole thing, but here are some of our favorite parts. Like this, from the first plank of the manifesto: \u201cThe car-driving class must pay its own way!\u201d<\/p>\n For cars we have paved our forests, spanned our lakes, and burrowed under our cities. Yet drivers throw tantrums at the painting of a mere bicycle lane on the street. They balk at the mere suggestion of hiking a car-tab fee, raising the gas tax, or tolling to help pay for their insatiable demands, even as downtrodden transit riders have seen fares rise 80 percent over four years.<\/p>\n No more! We demand that car drivers pay their own way, bearing the full cost of the automobile-petroleum-industrial complex that has depleted our environment, strangled our cities, and drawn our nation into foreign wars. Reinstate the progressive motor vehicle excise tax, hike the gas tax, and toll every freeway, bridge, and neighborhood street until the true cost of driving lies as heavy and noxious as our smog-laden air. Our present system of hidden subsidies is the opiate of the car-driving masses; only when it is totally withdrawn will our road-building addiction finally be broken.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n They go on to demand better, more expansive transit, safer streets and sidewalks, and traffic calming. And this:<\/p>\n This antagonism [between car driver and nondriver] traces directly to the creation of the modern car driver, a privileged individual who, as noted, is the beneficiary of a long course of subsidies, tax incentives, and wars for cheap oil. But the same subsidies that created this creature (who now rages about the roads while simultaneously screaming of being a victim in some war) can\u2014and must, beginning now\u2014be used to build bike lanes, sidewalks, light rail, and other benefits to the nondriving classes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s the kind of manifesto we can get on board with.<\/p>\n After the manifesto, The Stranger goes on to report on the rising numbers of crashes between cars and cyclists, the violent anti-bike rhetoric being spewed by car drivers that are the \u201cvictims\u201d of some imagined war on cars, the massive disparity between funding for car infrastructure and everything else, and the heroes of the non-driver, beloved both for their advocacy and their tight asses. Read it<\/a>, read it all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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