A bike guy: "Keep up the effort"
Rob;
Just finished reading your latest blog entry, ironically I suppose, after just finishing an 80 minute bike ride through the city and Marin. I, for one, appreciate that you spend your time thoughtfully providing lucid insight into the SFBC's anti-car efforts. In your blog, you often refer to 'our' injunction against the Bicycle Plan. Is there a broader effort beyond just yourself that has taken up the battle for the 90+% of people who use other forms of transportation in this city? On a side note, you have commented in the past about the largely overstated statistics supporting the biker movement. I have noticed that at the Embarcadero MUNI station where they have the bike concierge service, or bike lockers, or whatever it is, that they are rarely, if ever, more than half full (or half empty depending on your point of view). If biking to work were so enticing, these services would would obviously be more in demand. Just an anecdotal datapoint.
Keep up the effort.
Just finished reading your latest blog entry, ironically I suppose, after just finishing an 80 minute bike ride through the city and Marin. I, for one, appreciate that you spend your time thoughtfully providing lucid insight into the SFBC's anti-car efforts. In your blog, you often refer to 'our' injunction against the Bicycle Plan. Is there a broader effort beyond just yourself that has taken up the battle for the 90+% of people who use other forms of transportation in this city? On a side note, you have commented in the past about the largely overstated statistics supporting the biker movement. I have noticed that at the Embarcadero MUNI station where they have the bike concierge service, or bike lockers, or whatever it is, that they are rarely, if ever, more than half full (or half empty depending on your point of view). If biking to work were so enticing, these services would would obviously be more in demand. Just an anecdotal datapoint.
Keep up the effort.
Rich
Labels: Bicycle Coalition
posted by Rob Anderson @ 9:08 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hi Rob,
Just got your comment at sfcriticalmass.org. Actually, I had thought to get your input for that piece. It occurred to me that your opposition to the bike plan might be in part due to a negative reaction to Critical Mass. Any truth to that?
I think you misspelled Chris Carlsson's name as Carlssen in one of your posts.
H.
Both Critical Mass and the way the city tried to rush the Bicycle Plan illegally through the process are evidence of the arrogance of the bike people in SF. You folks do Critical Mass as a naked exercise in bullying the public just because you can get away with it. Hard to believe you think that it helps your image with the public. My sense is that if Critical Mass and the Bicycle Plan were on the ballot, city voters would reject both.
I think your characterization that Critical Mass bullies the public is pretty unfair, Rob.
I don't doubt for a second that there are bad apples on many of the rides who do just that, but it's unfair to paint the whole ride with that brush.
There's a lot more that goes on at any given Critical Mass than this contest of egos between jerks.
If CM was really out there bullying the public, you'd see organized opposition to it in every neighborhood it passed through.
Instead, when it passes through a neighborhood, many of the residents cheer it on.
It's a much more peaceful and joyful experience than the media would have you believe, and it's also not as ridiculous as it looks from the outside.
The "whole ride" is calculated to disrupt the Friday commute and city traffic in general. It's not "organized" opposition you should worry about but the many who stew in silence as they are stuck in traffic. You're convinced that people think you're adorable, but that's nothing but inside-the-bubble thinking. You suggest that the "media" provides the public with a negative image of Critical Mass, but in fact they mostly ignore the demo, which only benefits you folks. It may be a "peaceful and joyful" experience for you, but that's the point: it's not for the rest of us.
And then there's the fact that city taxpayers have to pay $10,000 a month in police overtime to babysit your not-always-peaceful demonstration.
If the whole point of Critical Mass isn't to screw up traffic, why not do it, say, on a Sunday afternoon, when so many people aren't just trying to get home from work?
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