Posts about Bike Hate

Does being car-shaped and having batteries make it more appealing than a bicycle? In downtown DC, being car-shaped would just make this bicycle hard to park, but in a place like Loudoun, it could bridge the gap between cyclists and drivers. It's great that a number of people in Loudoun and other very spread-out suburbs bicycle everywhere. But it's not easy for the average person there to start riding regularly.

For urban dwellers in dense communities, driving already has substantial hassles, especially parking, and there's a lot to reach from just a short bike ride. As I noted in my Washington Post op-ed, Capital Bikeshare got me biking a lot more. That was easy because I can reach a great many destinations with a one-mile bike ride.

If I lived in Olney or Chantilly, there'd be some, but far fewer. Running everyday errands requires traversing longer distances. Roads are engineered to be even less friendly to biking, and almost every store requires navigating a parking lot where people aren't expecting a cyclist.

Maybe a vehicle that's in between the car and the bike would give someone who drives everywhere an alternative that's not as intimidating. Hills aren't quite so difficult, but the driver gets used to pedaling and improves physical fitness. It's larger and therefore more visible to other drivers.

Being larger, though, it's also harder to pass. If these vehicles became more than the very occasional curiosity, will they change drivers' view of the roadway, or will they just become yet another source of angry conflict?

Newspapers are already replete with angry letters to the editor about cyclists riding on roads like Macarthur Boulevard that force drivers to wait instead of achieving any desired speed. Then there's the occasional column by someone who admits to wanting to actually assault cyclists because they get in the way.

It's easy to imagine the same conflict between drivers of motor vehicles and users of these pedal-powered cars. Drivers get irate if 2 cyclists are riding abreast; this car is always at least as wide as 2 cyclists. It can go faster than a bike, but still far slower than a motor vehicle.

If enough people drive both an SUV and a bike-car, maybe everyone on the road will just develop an appreciation for each other's point of view. First, though, bike-cars would have to go through a period of being a niche product for early adopters. Then we'll see if Loudoun residents continue to find them entertaining and fascinating, or if they turn into a nuisance, a point of conflict, and a punching bag for politicians who can't envision any kind of freedom other than driving a really large, high-horsepower car.

There are many parallels to Adrian Fenty, Michelle Rhee and Gabe Klein in the way people talk about Sadik-Khan (and Mayor Bloomberg) in the article. There are also many clear ways DC is different, besides the fact that cronyism was never a factor with Bloomberg.

For example, one of the aspiring mayoral candidates, Congressman Anthony Weiner from Queens, seems to have decided to ride a wave of anti-bike lane sentiment even though he once supported increasing cycling, including with bike lanes. Yet he changed his tune by the time he attended a dinner with Mayor Bloomberg last year:

"When I become mayor, you know what I'm going to spend my first year doing?" Mr. Weiner said to Mr. Bloomberg, as tablemates listened. "I'm going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes."

Here in DC, even amid a very contentious mayoral race, both candidates insisted they supported retaining the existing bike lanes and building more. Despite criticizing the 15th Street bike lane recently, Jack Evans also maintains he supports keeping it.

People can argue whether those sentiments come from heartfelt beliefs or from realizing what's politically unpopular to oppose. Even if it's partly or largely the latter, that means that livable streets has a political currency that leaders ignore at their peril. The 2013 mayoral race may well reveal whether that's also true in New York.

For DC (and Arlington), having small jurisdictions is a blessing; if New York were just Manhattan and Brooklyn, for instance, there'd be little political gain in Weiner's stance. He would instead be running for Nassau County executive, which would probably be a better job for him.

In any jurisdiction, though, there is indeed value in listening to communities and building consensus and support for a project. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer built broad support for an Upper West Side bike lane by fostering a dialogue over specific complaints and how to fix them. Sadik-Khan's first revolutionary change, pedestrianizing Times Square, had strong support from area businesses.

DDOT has been doing more listening of late, scheduling meetings on the Circulator, the Anacostia Streetcar, and more. Its livability studies in various neighborhoods have garnered broad praise from most neighborhoods.

Some people will oppose projects regardless. Others will complain they never were consulted no matter how hard an agency works to reach out. Despite well over 150 public meetings on the zoning rewrite, the same people showed up at the DC Council oversight hearing on the Office of Planning for the third year in a row to complain that OP wasn't communicating enough.

But with good community relations, these voices will be few, supporters more numerous, and aspiring elected officials will know that winning cheap applause by feeding on a fear of change won't ultimately pay off. Mayor Bloomberg, for his part, remains strongly supportive of Sadik-Khan and her initiatives.

The worst is a "Weblink" from Fox 5, which only paraphrases a few AAA talking points and then provides a direct link for its presumably-irate readers to comment to COG.

Newschannel 8 starts out by quoting an angry driver, but at least finds a few pro-lane residents as well.

WashCycle calls the Post's article the "best of the batch," at least including a detailed response from DDOT and noting that bicycling doubled in eight years. However, WashCycle writes,

I wish they'd have interviewed someone who could make the point that bike lanes increase cycling and cycling reduces congestion, so—as long as it's reasonable—bike lanes can reduce congestion; that Penn is massively overbuilt so it has room for bike lanes; and that even if there is a little added congestion it will be somewhat compensated by less pollution and CO2, improved safety and improved public health. But they didn't.

Tommy Wells jokingly Tweeted, AAA "likely lamented the big sidewalks too. [Pennsylvania Avenue] could have been 12 lanes wide."

AAA Mid-Atlantic is, as usual, taking the reflexively anti-bicycle position without really backing it up. But they don't need to to get in the paper; they've realized that if they just say pithy things, they get quoted. No need to actually argue whether the lanes will slow down drivers' commutes, which DDOT says even the traffic models say won't happen as Pennsylvania in this area is wider than it needs to be.

WashCycle also notes, have none of these reporters heard of WABA?

Also to kick off National Bike Month, in the grand tradition of columnists writing about thinks they have no knowledge of, the Examiner's conservative "Beltway Confidential" David Freddoso blasted the upper 7th Street bike lane which didn't even take away space from cars.

Freddoso's bio says he used to work for Robert Novak; apparently he's trying to follow in his mentor's footsteps in more ways than one.

Only the last item is actually about the passing distance itself. But even with a 2-foot rule, drivers still have to either get into the adjacent lane, or at least move substantially enough into that lane that they might as well move in entirely.

Many drivers think they can or should pass cyclists by squeezing through in the same lane. That's dangerous and illegal in most places. To pass safely, a driver needs enough room to move over to the adjacent lane, at least temporarily.

More worrisome is the attitude which we hear all the time from letter writers to local newspapers, talking heads, blog commenters, and even legislators, that bicyclists are lawless hoodlums not deserving of any protection from the law.

Yes, some cyclists break laws, and some cyclists ride very recklessly. Of course, many motorists break laws too, like speeding, not stopping at stop signs, not yielding to pedestrians, driving in bike lanes, assaulting each other, pedestrians, and cyclists, yelling at police officers, and more.

That doesn't excuse cyclist misbehavior, but it's also totally unfair to blame all cyclists for the dangerous actions of a few or the mildly illegal actions of many when drivers do the same thing. Most drivers generally act respectfully but do break laws in small ways like speeding, and a few drivers are really bad. Same for cyclists.

When a majority builds up and expresses incorrect and biased attitudes about a minority group, we call that out. If white people say that black people don't deserve the same rights or respect, we call that racism. If men say that women don't deserve the same rights or respect, we call that sexism. If straight people say that gay people don't deserve the same rights or respect, we call that homophobia.

This anti-cyclist attitude needs a name, too. These Virginia legislators aren't just misinformed and pigheaded, they're also cyclist-ist. Or something. I haven't seen a good name for this prejudice. Have you? Any ideas?

Update: Racism, sexism, etc. are of course far worse than cyclist hatred, and I don't mean to mean that oppressed cyclists are being mistreated as badly as ethnic groups once were and often still are. However, that doesn't make this attitude not a form of prejudice, and one worthy of being named and criticized, even if it's lower on the scale of prejudices than some.

WashCycle also has a followup from Montgomery County police to the report that an officer threatened cyclists for "being annoying."

Chief of Police J. Thomas Manger says that the officer, Officer Jordan, stopped them for "riding two abreast and impeding a vehicle whose driver was attempting to pass." Someone who was bicycling with that group claims they were not blocking any vehicles, staying as close as possible to the side of the road, and riding two abreast only when space permitted, or single file when necessary.