Bicycles is for kids

Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Bad

         **June 3, 2010**

         There  is something profoundly  wrong with a nation where more adults ride bicycles  than children. 
         America might now be such a nation. 

         While  kids sit at home texting  their friends and slaying computer-generated monsters,  a growing number  of their parents and grandparents are clogging the roads atop  a  contraption that was once considered a child’s toy.
         We  will have accurate data when  the 2010 census is complete, but there are already  strong indications  of bicycling’s rise in popularity. Fortunately for red-state  America,   the phenomenon is more common in urbanized regions along the coasts. The   Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia recently gushed that the  “2009  American Community Survey found that the number of commuters [in  Philadelphia] who rode a  bicycle to work rose from 4,778 to 9,410  between 2005 and 2008: a 97 percent  increase in 3 years.” 

         Two  odious ideologies fuel the  popularity of bicycling: anti-obesity extremism and  eco-lunacy. Pedal  power, we are told, will not only make you thinner, it will  reduce your  “carbon footprint.” (It’s a Nanny State  twofer.)

         Already  slim, or pursuing other  means to lose weight? Like your SUV, and don’t swallow  the discredited  theory that man is baking the planet? Then obviously you’re an  idiot.  In 2003, *BusinessWeek* asked Andy Clarke, director of state and   local advocacy for the League of American Bicyclists, to respond to the  fact  that 500,000 Americans commute by bicycle. The figure was  “pathetic,” he  snorted, “for a nation that should be smarter and  wiser.”

         Feeling  themselves superior to  their countrymen in both health and environmental  consciousness, many  bicyclists flout road rules. Last year, *The Boston Globe*  reported: “On any hour of any day … bicyclists routinely run red lights,  ride  the wrong way on one-way streets, zip along sidewalks, and cut  off pedestrians  crossing streets legally -- even though bike riders are  supposed to obey the  same traffic laws as motorists. Sometimes, a  bicyclist will do all of these  things in one two-wheeled swoop. The  city seems unable to stop it.”

         Writing  in the *Rocky Mountain  News*, Arvada,   Colorado resident J.M. Schell  admitted that there  was “a very, very good reason so many view those of us who  are cyclists  as rude, arrogant jerks. Most of us are.”

         Recklessness  and lawbreaking  notwithstanding, Big Bicycle has attained the status of a lobby  that  cannot be ignored. “Bikes Belong,” an agitprop shop “sponsored by the  U.S.  bicycle industry with the goal of putting more people on bicycles  more often,”  boasts of “12 professional staff, 18 volunteer directors,  and a $2 million  annual operating budget.” 

         “Maximizing  Federal Support for  Bicycling,” a page on the organization’s website, explains  that it  spent $1 million on lobbying between 2002 and 2005, which ultimately   produced “$4.5 billion for bicycling and walking in SAFETEA-LU, the …   transportation law passed in August 2005.” Where did that money come  from? You  guessed it: the federal gas tax. (Four out of every ten  dollars raised by the  levy are diverted to non-highway expenses.)

         Where  did the dough go? To state  and local pols, who gleefully commit drivers’ forced  contributions to  dubious bike schemes. “There’s never been so much attention  from cities  collectively for cycling as a mode of transportation,” the  executive  editor of *Bicycling* magazine swooned to *USA Today* in   2007. “Bike to Work” days and weeks are commonplace. “Bicycle planning”  is  providing lucrative jobs for bureaucrats eager to wield the coercive  power of  government to change commuting habits. 

         Remarkably,  Big Bicycle was able  to get in on Wall Street’s bailout. The National Center  for Bicycling  and Walking notes that fedpols’ 2008 rescue of financial firms  included  a rather unrelated perk: “Starting January 1, 2009, employers who   provide bike parking, bathing facilities, tune-ups, or other support for   bicycle commuting, can deduct up to $20 a month per participating  employee from  their own taxable income.”

         Is  bicycle-commuting a credible  traffic-fighting tool? No, says Cato Institute  scholar -- and avid  cyclist -- Randal O’Toole. “I don’t think encouraging  cycling is going  to reduce congestion or significantly change the  transportation makeup  of our cities,” he said. “There really is very little  evidence that any  of [these efforts] are reducing the amount of driving.  They’re just  making it more annoying to drivers.” (O’Toole observes that   telecommuting is far more common, and growing faster, than getting to  work on a  bike.) 

         Bicycles  are wonderful, of course.  For children. Only misanthropes complain about stopping  or yielding to  safely accommodate a couple of twelve-year-olds pedaling their  way to  the fishin’ hole. 

         For  adults, bicycling has become a  finger-wagging, revenue-pilfering, and  increasingly obnoxious crusade. 


         *D.  Dowd Muska ([www.dowdmuska.com](http://www.dowdmuska.com/))   is a writer, commentator and lecturer. He lives in Connecticut.*