Stop with the Bike Lanes, Please! The Planet Doesn't Need Us to Save It Anyway!
The climate and sustainability cult is determined to impose bikes on us. I have nothing against bikes, generally speaking. They are vehicles, after all, and the streets can accommodate when everyone follows the rules. Mountain biking is just fine, too, although I'd rather ride a horse. There's just one problem; bikers, operating under the assumption every loves them and they're entitled, don't even pretend to follow rules, as any driver well knows. And, then, there are those bike lanes, which only make the problem worse when you do some big-picture thinking, that is to say when riders leave the lanes and ignore traffic lights as illustrated below.
I didn't expect Philadelphia to be a good example of anything, but it turns out I was wrong. Earlier in my career I did a fair amount of consulting on housing and railroad issues, both of which took to the City of Brotherly Love for a few years on a fairly regular basis. That's no longer the case but, once in a great while, I end up there for various reasons. The city seems to be governed by the worst sort these days with their Soros-financed District Attorney but still fondly recall wandering around Independence Hall and up Chestnut Street.
Yet, Philly isn't New York City where just getting in and out is a nightmare, everything is wildly over-priced and most of the day is spent waiting for something, including the key to the bathroom. Even Steve Cuozzo of the New York Post has noticed and I was intrigued to read what he thought about bike lanes:
I took a stroll through the center of town the other day…
There were no bike lanes to create traffic chaos.
No peddlers of junk merchandise crowding every corner.
Hallelujah! It felt like New York City of not long ago when common sense, not random disorder, ruled the streets.
Was I dreaming? No — because the city I visited was Philadelphia…
Philadelphia’s near-absence of bike lanes recalled the era when our own streets and sidewalks functioned as they were meant to: streets for motor vehicles, sidewalks for people on foot.
Philadelphia has about 20 miles of bike lanes; New York, its government in thrall to environmental zanies and cycle-advocacy bullies who shout down opponents, has more than 650 miles of them.
Philly motorists are spared the havoc wrought by the lanes in the form of congestion-breeding narrow streets and of cars forced to park in the middle of streets in order to create “protected” bike lanes.
But the greatest benefit is to people on foot. It took me three days to grasp that I could cross an intersection without a wrong-way cyclist bearing down on me, and to stroll sidewalks without fear of being sideswiped by heedless, law-breaking jerks on wheels — the norm from The Bronx to the Battery.
Well, thank trendy planners in love with 15-minute cities for that. Their excuse is "sustainablility,” one of those words that always means something along the lines of forcing everyone into cities, stopping growth altogether, or, at the very least, taking the car away. No fossil fuel for you!
But, as Cuozzo persuasively argues, filling a city with bike lanes and idiots riding them makes it less and less tolerable and a whole lot less attractive. This is the point made so fantastically by Jeremy Clarkson, who is a U.K. television personality and writer on automotive and travel subjects, although I don't approve his language, which only detracts from his important message:
I say bikes are fine but overdoing it is all about green virtue signaling and has zero to do with human safety or the environment. Enough already!
#Bikes #Bicycles #Climate #BikeLanes #NewYork #Philadelphia #London
No debates. We need to learn how to shout climate morons down.
Toronto, Ontario ( Canada ) has introduced chaotic bile lanes on major streets. Essentially by removing parking for businesses. " Near misses " between pedestrians and cyclists are increasing ( intrepid reporter data ). And they're surprisingly under utilized in Canada's winters.