Rob Anderson is not happy about the proposed bicycle plan for the city of San Francisco. The Wall Street Journal reports that he went to court to put the brakes on the plan claiming the city needs to do an environmental impact study first. A judge agreed. Here’s the upshot:
Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It’s an “attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy,” he wrote in his blog this month.
Utter nonsense.
But I’ll grant him that political correctness of the annoying kind does sometimes play a role in bicycle politics. Annoying isn’t something people riding 40-pound contraptions want to be among people driving 4,000-pound contraptions. For example: Critical Mass. I’m not a fan of this behavior. I think there are more productive ways to call attention to how generally unfriendly America’s streets are to cyclists.
I think change will far more likely follow from the biking community setting an example of good citizenship on the road. And high gas prices help, too.
Related: John, at Cycling in Wichita, covers the situation in New York City.