Last night, I tried to have a rational discussion with someone on Twitter/X who disagreed with me.
And was quickly reminded why that’s a bad idea.
Admittedly, I eventually lost my cool. Well, only if you consider telling someone to “eat shit” before blocking them losing your cool.
I don’t take kindly to someone trying to tell me who and what I am, and what I believe, without knowing anything about me other than some point the disagree with.
Or maybe they just find my whole existence disagreeable.
But the gist of the conversation, with someone who described himself as an active bicyclist, was A) Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam, B) bike lanes allegedly slow traffic and hurt business, and C) this has always been a car-centric city and always will be.
Which is fine. He’s entitled to his opinion, just as I am to mine.
And he’s right, Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam. Neither is Paris or Copenhagen. Only Amsterdam is Amsterdam, just like only LA is LA.
But that doesn’t mean a city can’t change.
Amsterdam wasn’t always what it is today. In the 60s, it was a car choked, traffic clogged mess, until people got tired of the endless toll of traffic deaths, and began the “Stop de Kindermoord” movement.
That is, stop murdering children with motor vehicles.
That was the beginning of a total reimagining of the city that made it one of the most walkable, bikeable cities in the world today, where driving is usually the last choice when other options aren’t practical.
The same is true with Copenhagen, at roughly the same time and for the same reasons.
Yet despite the assumptions of those who so casually throw out “this isn’t Amsterdam” as if it’s a trump card, those cities are far from unique. In just the last decade, we’ve seen Paris reinvent itself to be far more walkable and bikeable, utilizing the concept of the 15 Minute City.
And in just the last few years, we’ve seen London transform to the point that bikes often outnumber cars in the city center.
Even my Colorado hometown took a similar journey.
When I was a kid, there were no bike lanes. The first bike path, along the river through town, was built while I was away.
But as the city grew from 10,000 people when I was in grade school, to 25,000 in high school, to nearly 170,000 people today, it continued to sprawl and be built around cars, with the inevitable traffic and congestion, until the people there said “enough.”
Today it is a Platinum Level Bicycle Friendly Community, according to the League of American Bicyclists.
In other words, it changed, because the people who live there wanted it to. Boulder, about 45 minutes to the south, took a similar path.
Maybe those cities are outliers. Or maybe the only reason Los Angeles, and other similar cities, aren’t like that is that the people haven’t demanded it.
Yet.
His second argument was based on a basic fallacy.
He made the case that bike lanes that were installed, then removed, in Playa del Rey because they slowed traffic, and there weren’t enough bike riders to justify them.
Which was kind of the point.
They weren’t installed for our benefit. Making the city more bikeable and a little safer was only an added bonus, brief though it may have been.
They were installed as a tool to calm traffic, intended to slow cars and reduce traffic flow because of the unacceptable level of traffic collisions and deaths in the Playa community.
And while it’s possible that they may have initially hurt local businesses, repeated studies have shown that retail sales and tax receipts usually increase within a year or two after the installation of bike lanes — and the people who initially fought the lanes often later fight to keep them.
That didn’t happen in Playa, simply because they were never given the chance.
The final argument is also based on a fallacy.
Anyone who lived here in the ’30s or ’40s wouldn’t recognize the car-centric city we have devolved into. Los Angeles once had the best transit system in the country, with every neighborhood efficiently served by the Red and Yellow Cars.
Those were the trolley systems that once ran down the middle of every major roadway. But they were removed to make way for cars, resulting in the overly wide boulevards we have today.
Before that, the city’s roads were built and paved to accommodate bicycles, prior to the mass production of motor vehicles.
And before that, it was a city of dusty roads and trails for horses and wagons.
So the city has already reinvented how it gets around multiple times. And we can do it again if a majority of Angelenos want it.
Then again, the two-third majority who voted for Measure HLA would seem to suggest they do.
But what do I know?
Someone else responded to my comments about traffic violence by posting a link to this piece, which seems well researched, with a professorial tone, refuting the idea that there’s an epidemic of traffic violence.
I won’t get into the whole thing now — or probably ever — except to say that it, too, is based on a couple of basic fallacies, which like a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, sends the whole damn thing off in the wrong direction.
The concept of traffic violence was never intended to suggest that there is anything intentional about it. Simply put, traffic violence reflects the fact that crashes are violent events, which can inflict violent trauma to its victims.
And like other forms of violence, the causes can be addressed, and the effects minimized.
As for the idea that traffic violence, or traffic deaths, are an epidemic, that isn’t meant to suggest it has suddenly become so. Violent crashes and traffic deaths have been epidemic ever since the motor vehicle was invented.
They have simply been normalized, accepted as just an unfortunate side effect of getting from here to there, largely thanks to an organized campaign by the motoring industry a century ago that shifted blame to the victims.
Traffic deaths have always been too high. Calling them an epidemic now is merely a recognition of the problem.
It’s kind of like if measles had always been around, and no one ever bothered to do anything about it. Then one day, someone pointed a finger and called the problem an epidemic that could be treated.
One last point.
The writer of this piece suggests that the solution to safer streets isn’t separating bikes and pedestrians from motor vehicles, but for everyone to focus on sharing the road safely and efficiently.
I used to believe that, too.
I have often said that if everyone obeys the law, and share the road in a safe manner, that crashes are unlikely, if not impossible.
But that fails to account for human nature.
People will inevitably make mistakes, and do whatever is most convenient for them in the moment, largely because they’ve always gotten away with it before. And will continue to get away with it, until they don’t.
Which is the whole rationale for Vision Zero, based on the idea that human beings make mistakes, and roads should be designed so those human mistakes don’t become tragedies.
If you disagree with that, that’s fine. We should be able to disagree without being disagreeable, and find a consensus that works for the majority of people, while protecting the rights of the minority.
That’s how democracy works.
So disagree, vehemently if you must.
But try to keep the insults to a minimum. And I will, too.
Photo by Joni Yung.
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Megan forwards the Meyer’s Brothers podcast, in which Danish actor, producer and screenwriter — and the Game of Thrones Jaime Lannister — Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reveals not only that he’s one of us, but that bicycling is his favorite form of transportation.
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Local
Los Angeles is building new connections to the Burbank-Chandler bicycling and walking path.
Andy Dick is one of us, riding his bike through the streets and sidewalks of Los Angeles after finishing a 50-day stint in rehab following a public drug overdose.
Streetsblog offers their usual outstanding list of bicycle and livable streets meetings and events. I know, I know, I should break out the bike stuff and repost it here, but I’m exhausted. Besides, they forgot to included our spokescorgi competing at the Winter Corgi Nationals at Santa Anita on Sunday.
The Long Beach Post says the intersection where a 54-year old woman was killed riding her bike on Saturday has been a serious safety hazard for years.
State
This is the cost of traffic violence. Pacific Beach, the site of a recent hit-and-run that killed a six-year old boy riding a bike with his family, is mourning another hit-and-run victim after a popular restaurant worker was killed while walking home from work early Saturday morning; before moving to San Diego, Qwente “Q” Bryant lived and worked in Long Beach for years.
A San Mateo surgeon makes the case for why the US should redefine ebikes to conform to the European definition, limiting them to kids 15 and older, while redesigning roads to prevent tragedies like the one that killed one of his patients.
The Marin County Bicycle Coalition calls on the county to reopen an abandoned railroad tunnel, and refit it as a biking and walking path.
National
Hawaii is joining the long list of states cracking down on ebikes, with one resident telling lawmakers it’s become a Wild West,” with little kids “zipping out around a corner on the sidewalk with some high-speed motorized vehicle.”
In a doubly tragic case of Texas symmetry, two 16-year old bicyclists were struck by drivers while each was riding with a companion; one suffered life-threatening injuries, while the other sadly didn’t make it. In the second case, both rides were struck by the driver, while in the other, the victim was hit so hard his GPS showed him flying off his bike at nearly 78 mph after the impact.
In yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a 37-year old Louisiana man faces a number of charges after critically injuring a 63-year old bike rider who had stopped to fix his chain — including his 4th DUI. In any rational world, he would have been off the road after his second. If not the first.
Boston bicyclists form a shovel brigade to clear a bike path, after the city doesn’t.
New Yorkers continue to ride their bikes despite freezing their asses on in the city’s historic deep freeze.
International
Road.cc considers the best reflective bikewear and bicycling gear.
Momentum offers ten “enticing” V-Day activities for bike riders.
Off-Road.cc recommends the best gravel and adventure bikes for under the equivalent of $2,700, along with their picks for the best bikepacking frame bags.
A disabled Ontario man who uses his bicycle as a mobility device calls on cities to rethink their rules regarding bicycles, particularly bans on sidewalk riding with no exceptions for disabled riders.
Beloved children’s bikemaker Frog Bikes is entering the British equivalent of bankruptcy, exacerbated by Brexit.
Speaking of Road.cc, they recommend the steepest, hardest and most fearsome climbs for your bike bucket list, and travel to Mallorca to see if it’s as good for bicycling as it’s made out to be. Spoiler alert: yes, it is.
An Aussie ebike seller was busted for using fake compliance stickers to indicate that the illegally modified bikes he offered weren’t.
Finally…
Now your bicycling sunglasses can see behind you, too. If you encounter your cycling idol riding on the road, leave ’em the hell alone, already.
And when you’re riding your bike with illegal narcotics shoved into your shoes, socks and pants, put a damn light on it.
The bike, that is, not the drugs. Or the pants.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
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