Saturday, January 11, 2014

Walking makes them uncomfortable, too.

I've been on a walking jag the past year. Using your feet perhaps is the ultimate simplification. Yes, bicycling remains important to me, and I expect to enjoy more saddle time this year.

Ross is onto something here, and I like the 'tude.

The truth about bike lanes, by Theodore Ross

We cyclists seek a revolution in our thoroughfares

... Bike lanes, and the self-satisfied travelers thereon — need I point out that I have cycled to work over the Brooklyn Bridge for going on 10 years? — constitute a direct spatial challenge to the automobile. They confiscate valuable property from the car and redistribute it, in nigh-socialist fashion, for use by another mode of transport. Not much of it, in truth, but enough to spite those stuck in traffic. To be sure, the freeway will remain king of the road, and the fundamental symbol of America’s profligate personal independence, for the foreseeable future. The bike is nothing more than an irritant, a jab, a ploy to undermine the automobile’s authority by indicating the ways in which it falls short of absolute necessity. In so doing, however, a conversation might arise about how best to order our urban spaces, about population density and its discontents, air quality and poor health, and what impact dependence on private instead of public transport has on poverty and inequality. The bicycle proffers no remedies in this regard. But perhaps, through its annoyances, it can divert attention in a useful direction.

Previously: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Courtesy bicycle to the Hotel Silly (2010).

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