Nothing gets me riled up like a good Joe Soucheray column. This time, he chooses to focus his ire on the planned installation of bike lanes along one St. Paul street.
What this means is that hypocrites who have a car or two in the driveway at home will now put on the Italian racing suits with jerseys that look like the labels on olive jars and turn Jefferson into a slogfest of starts, stops, bump-outs, speed humps and something at Jefferson and Cleveland called a pedestrian refuge, where, if you are a pedestrian, it sounds like you are stranded or given some sort of green card status until you can be rescued and brought safely to one side of Cleveland or the other.
He’s an asshole, obviously, but does he actually not understand that installing bike lanes will get cyclists out of the way of cars? Clearly not:
Kelly had her eyes opened to the project around Christmas. There was some event at church, and the traffic was all gummed up around Prior and Jefferson. Kelly discovered that the slowdown was caused by a bicyclist. She saw his small twinkling light as he struggled through the slush.
This, to me, sounds like an argument for adding bike lanes. But not for Joe—his argument is that the only reason people choose to travel by bicycles is so they can feel morally superior.
The logistics and demands of motherhood were not taken into consideration by the planners. The Colleen Kellys of the city, for whom Jefferson is a critical artery on their daily rounds, travel by automobile or SUV because you can’t get five kids, groceries and the stuff from Target onto a bicycle unless you live in maybe Thailand and are practiced at the art of balancing plywood on your head.
Right, because adding one bike lane means that Ms. Kelly will no longer be able to drive her SUV to Target.
I think Soucheray makes one decent point, though I’m sure he doesn’t realize it. I don’t think anything else in American cycling culture does more to dissuade the population at large from viewing the bicycle as a viable mode of transportation than the prevalence of riders in ridiculous, expensive lycra racing suits. See The Problem with Biking in America and Cycle Chic for more.
The original link is to a Google cache since the Pioneer Press has removed the article from their website. I don’t know why.
(via Hindsight 20/20)