A question for Road Diet Fetishists; Since when was taking
away traffic lanes a useful endeavor?
Consider the reverse to see how foolish the will of the “Equal, But
Separate” crowd would be if more and more bikes lanes, and sidewalks, were
taken away to expand the number of motor vehicle lanes on a given roadway. The Fit would hit the proverbial Shan!
Sometime ago there was an article over at Argonaut Online
regarding commuting by bicycle. The
premise of the article was basically “Are the roads ready” for the commuters
expected to take on the endeavor. I see
it a different way. The roads are indeed
ready; it is just the condition of the road surfaces which are dubious, and
more importantly, the mindset of the people whom are to share said roads whom
are “Not Ready.” If Airline Pilots, and
Doctors, were let loose with the minimal training, and complete incompetence,
of the average road user (i.e. Motorist, Cyclist, and yes, even the
Pedestrian), the cries for someone to “Do Something!” would be deafening.
Consider the following;
Try expanding your minds, and taking Air Traffic, Marine
Traffic, and Railroad Traffic, as examples of how training (and workable
infrastructure) affects the whole. In
each discipline are vehicles of various sizes, with varying, but legal levels
of competency of the users, all utilizing the same, and finite,
three-dimensional space. Yet, all
function without daily catastrophes requiring the implementation of Air Route
Diets, Waterway Diets, and Rail Diets. Conversely,
for reasons which are not perfectly rational, there are incessant cries for
harmful, unfair, elitist vehicular Road Diets.
First, and central to their motives (as previously mentioned in Part I),
the advocates of road diets are only looking out for themselves. Don’t anyone ever forget that.
The logical course of action for the anti-motorist faction
(oddly, masquerading as share-the-road groups) would not be to remove vehicular
capacity, and infrastructure, but to work with all relevant agencies to see
that those vehicle operators, and infrastructure, are the absolute best in the
world. Right now, the opposite is
true. Vehicles are looked upon as
enemies by the faux “share-the-road” peeps (‘cause without a scapegoat they
have no evil boogeyman), vehicle operators are Satan, and since the road
infrastructure is so bad, let’s just do away with the whole thing and make lots,
and lots of bike lanes. Thus, the stage
is set, and the players are ready for the curtain to go up - Bicyclists blame
the motorists, motorists blame the bicyclists, pedestrians blame everybody, and
Officials sit on their bureaucratic backsides, ignoring the dangers, and lack
of a logically constructed infrastructure, all the while collecting paychecks
and pensions - On the taxpayers’ dime, of course!
Let’s look again at the aforementioned examples of Aviation
and Boating. While motor vehicles,
bicycles, pedestrians, and bureaucrats can’t seem to agree on any level of
on-road civility, a Cessna 152 can co-exist with a Boeing 747 on both air and
ground, and an aircraft carrier can co-exist on the waterways with a
sailboat. The thing aviation and boating
have going for them are operational training, workable infrastructure, and
self-preserving professionalism on a level not shared by users of our highways.
In short, it is the human being which
requires improvement, and training, to raise the level of skill, and safety,
upon the roads.
Another claim of the Share-The-Road advocates is “We need to
be more like Europe.” Uh, no, we don’t. Comparing American culture, and roads, to Europe is like comparing Apples to Dump Trucks. And, remember, in Europe,
the concept of sharing the road really does not exist. Case in point: All of the so-called “Cycling
Utopia’s” over there are a true, zero-sum game.
Bicycles won because motor vehicles lost, and Pedestrians won because
everyone else lost. Toss in cities,
towns, and a road structure which in many cases are only able to simultaneously
fit a Fiat, a Baguette, and an iPhone side-by-side, and one sees the reasoning
of the current state of European transportation methodology. Here in the Good’Ol US of A, we budgeted
quite a bit more room for everyone to move around, so road sharing makes
complete sense over here. That is why
road-diets, protected lanes, etc. are seen as an attack on motorists (they are),
and any resistance from said motorists are seen as an attack on cyclists
(they’re not). Basically, every locality
is unique, while people, and cultures, are not all the same, and the insatiable
urge by many to exclaim “We must be more like…” needs to stop. In my part of the world, Southern
California, it is indeed auto-centric. That is fact, and it should be, so deal with
it. We are not Amsterdam,
we are not Portland, and we are not New York City, so if you
want that, do us all a favor, and move there.
Cycling Advocates hate cars.
We get that. However, who made
you activists king over all of our lives and how we choose to live it, whether
in a car, on a bike, skateboard, or walking?
And, keep in mind, for every argument made for the elimination of motor
vehicles, roads, and lanes, a counter-argument exists for why they should not
only remain, but must be expanded to sensible capacity. Additionally, do not think for one second
that unregulated, wholesale illegal immigration (along with interstate
migration) has not had an impact on the amount of traffic on the roads – It
most certainly has! Last we checked it
was physically impossible to squeeze 10-gallons of water into a five-gallon
container without spilling a whole bunch.
The overflowing container is completely analogous to our overflowing
traffic, yet the Great Benevolent Bicycle Advocate thinks it is just peachy,
safe, and above-all, morally justified, to make that container even smaller,
still!
And, herein lays another problem: Not all cyclists are
activists. Now that the word “Activist”
has actually become synonymous with Bully (yes, it has), it needs to be
stressed to the general public that not all cyclists hate motorists. There was a time all Motorcyclists were
thought to be Outlaw Bikers, and so too, now all cyclists are seen as Activists. This is why we now receive a lot of the
outright nastiness from the public. And
from personal experience I can tell you this is not a lie. I went through the time of persecution of “There’s
one of those bikers” when I commuted on a motorcycle, and now I am getting it
again, only now I am now one of those stop sign-running, anti-car “Cycling Advocates.” Only this time, instead of being accused tearing
up the town and violating women, I am now accused of taking away road capacity
in the name of the Church
of Environmentalism.
