Phil Bronstein and the bike people
Phil Bronstein has a blog, and I of course found it endearing when he took on the Bike People the other day, blasting the advisory committee's recommendation to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to change the law to allow cyclists to legally "roll" through stop signs.
Bronstein's critical post on the subject earned him a blizzard---a total of 162---of irate comments, mostly from people who agreed with him in opposing the idea. Odd, however, that the Examiner broke the story---on the front page, no less---while the Chronicle's SF Gate, where Bronstein has his blog, didn't run the story at all. Until now I've been the only consistent critic of the bike people in the local media. Bronstein will be a welcome addition to the city's blogosphere, especially if he makes a habit of digging into other local issues.
Naturally, the SF Bicycle Coalition thinks it's a great idea.
Labels: Bicycle Coalition, Cycling, Media
posted by Rob Anderson @ 12:06 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
There are more benefits to use of the bicycle as transportation than just reward to the individual cyclist. Because the transport system is a continuum, negative aspects of this system can produce detrimental outcomes that affect everyone.
For example, air quality. The more bicycles used by commuters, the greater the quality of the air that everyone has to breath. Simple SFBC logic.
One would expect higher quality air if there were ten thousand commuters on bicycles, even better if
one hundred thousand cyclists. Imagine (if you will) ONE MILLION CYCLISTS! How pure the air we all breath would be!
There is a city with almost ten million bicycles, ten million! By SFBC logic such a city should have the most pristine air of any metropolis in the world. Simple math. One merely need Google "Beijing air charts" to find the true answer.
This can't be possible, more bicycles drastically decrease the air quality? "Heresy" the SFBC screams! Burn them at the stake!
These people have around throughout history, they put Galileo under house arrest for teaching that the earth moves around the sun. In Germany in the 1930s there was a movement against Einstein and his Jewish Physics. In current times these people want Creation Science in schools as the true alternative to Darwin.
So one could say you seem to be in rather good company Rob.
What's wrong with bicyclists treating stop signs as yeild signs?
Of course we should consider the impact on air quality if Beijing's bicycle riders were to switch to automobiles.
I have no problem with cyclists rolling stop signs as long as NO ONE is waiting. They should be chip chap churried by the law, however, if they blast a stop sign when a car is on the move.
This change of law makes perfect sense
The "rolling stop" proposal may or may not make sense. The problem for the bike people in SF is that so many of them have behaved like such jerks for so long---ignoring traffic laws, bullying pedestrians, Critical Mass, etc.---that many people reject the idea out of hand.
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