The plight of cyclists in the US
I was dismayed to see on Digg today an article entitled US Transportation Secretary Doesn't Consider Bikes a Form of Transportation. Surely this isn't quite true, I thought. Well, upon further investigation, it seems I was almost hopefully right. Turns out she merely doesn't think the surfaces used by bikes are remotely related to transportation...somehow I'm not feeling much better. In the context of the article, and for anyone who's been living in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) area recently, with portions of highways 36, 694, 35E, 94, and 35W out of commission this year, you'd think that the government would be doing everything they can to recognize and encourage the use of bicycles as an alternative to cars. It would seem that at least Mary Peters has yet to figure this out - sad for any official, a truly mind-boggling incompetency for a Secretary of Transportation. I guess all that can be said here is, "that explains a lot".
The guilty interview (PBS)
The Digg article again
My comment on such
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It sounded to me like she
It sounded to me like she was saying that spending on bike paths and trails is taking away from spending directly related to transportation infrastructure which I too would consider to be roads, bridges, tunnels, highways, etc. I also found it interesting that transportation money is going to bike paths and trails at all since my impression was, at least in Minnesota, that MnDOT was not responsible for the construction of bike paths and trails and that bike paths and trails were taken care of by the DNR like state parks and things like that. So if that is true on a federal level then misappropriation of funds could also be what she was referring to. Finally, if the ideal thing is for bikes and cars to share the road, wouldn't putting more money into roads enable better roads with wide shoulders and/or bike lanes to be built in place of ones where the shoulder is non-existant and/or crumbling away? Finally it seems like her overall point is that we're not spending the money where it could be best and most efficiently used and I think if you'd look at the usage rates of roads versus trails it would be clear that roads are used more frequently by most people and therefore spending on them would directly impact and benefit the most taxpayers.
I think this might be a
I think this might be a misinterpretation of what she's saying. By bike paths and trails, I thought she meant recreational paths for cyclists and not bike lanes that are actually intended for transportation use.
The Netherlands show the
The Netherlands show the example with bycicle lanes everywhere. It's clean, safe and keeps people fit. But maybe it's a cultural thing and it would not work anywhere else. Well, Paris just started to implement a plan called velib and it's already a huge success
despite many people having doubts at the beginning. Bicycles are available 24/7, free for rides of less than 30 minutes. There should be 1,451 stations velib by the end of the year in Paris with 20,600 bicycles.
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Let them look at the
Let them look at the Netherlands.
All roads have separate bicycle lanes here, there are lots of bicycle-only paths, and everyone watches out for cyclists (because everyone has used them)..