The people's expressed entitlement of autos in the public domain is the major problem. These people always forget that the only thing that gives them preference is money and "potential collateral damage".
Here is a hierarchy of the publics' transportational proiorities, if fair access is the goal:
1) Support the vulnerable! Allow those citizens that need to use mobility vehicles to be able to use them along with;
4) bicycles_ nonmotorised > motorized. It is the electric motor that is the new drug.
5) legitimate business vehicles - trades, delivery etc.
6) the personal automobile.
I live in Canada. The list is absolutely reversed.
Every conscious, functioning and physically capable that demands electric assist for their non-discretionary travel is technically handicapped! The electric motor is the new drug.
I tell the teenagers riding their e-bikes that when they ask me why I don't use electric assist on my bike. is that I am not disabled". Even on greater than 10% hills!
> These people always forget that the only thing that gives them preference is money and "potential collateral damage".
You mean, the money that paved the road in the first place?
Look, even as a former EMT and truck driver, my position is that if you want that sweet sweet asphalt, you should contribute, (and more realistically, "Stop playing with your toys in the godsdamned street") there's a lot to be said for not being in the way of people who are trying to go somewhere or be productive. It's 2023. Some of us have to deliver fifty thousand pounds of milk at a time, we don't have the ability to wait for a horse drawn carriage from the 1900s.
You don't pay *fuel* taxes, definitionally. Though I'll grant that I have no idea how the Canadian infrastructure is paid for. And my point about bicycles being in the way of people who are trying to actually work still stands.
A lot of the economy is driven by the automobile industry, the oil industry and is made efficient by trucks. Remove it, and a lot of people won't have the jobs to pay the taxes to keep this infrastructure.
It is all nice and dandy, this laptop class talk about walkable cities, and cafes and people discussing Foucault.
But the service economy folks need to understand that for them to have a job creating power points presentations we still need a real economy, an industrial economy to pay for their luxury lifestyles and jobs.
Fuel taxes are paid via consumption. All roads are paid by citizens taxes, whether one owns and drives a car or not.
Too bad that your lifestyle ended up with you as a pawn to the marketing strategies of the Corporate Borg. Live in the suburbs; commute 20, 30, 50, 100 kms or miles a day... or comfort and convenience should be in the "Human Rights of Automobile Drivers"...
My "lifestyle" delivering gooda in a tractor trailer? Try 1000 km of driving every day. Of course, I'd love to stop. Heck, I'd love for all of us to stop. It'd be interesting to see how quickly people asked us to start again.
Remember what happened when the COVID authoritarians did when they designed some people’s jobs “essential” vs “non-essential?”
You’re doing the same thing here in terms of who gets to use the roads. Bikes aren’t toys, they’re vehicles.
You have no idea for what purpose or why someone is cycling on the public roadways. You are not “more important” than anyone one else on the road. It’s first come, first served, pull over if safe to allow passing and pass when safe. If you’re really a professional truck driver, none of this should be new to you.
Preachy badvocates ignore a lot
as they go about their self righteous
fear mongering ways.
But one fact glares, at least to me:
The tsunami of ebikes
descending on us proves that
if you remove all that nasty exercise
from bicycling,
Americans will ride.
All the infra,
all the scare mongering, and
all the tax $s wasted by the
Advocacy Industrial Complex
totally failed to increase
bicycle use for decades.
Max 2% Mode Share.
Infra didn't increase it,
didn't do shit for bicycling
but make it more hazardous.
NACTO failed.
CAlBike failed.
The LAB failed.
But cheap Chinese crap
dumped on our shores
put more butts on bike seats
than all of them combined.
Forget Mommy and Daddy
not letting little Johnny ride his
bicycle on the street.
Forget that they won't ride
themselves cause
"there's no safe place to ride."
Bicycle corrals at middle schools
are filled again-- with Ebikes.
Johnny will ride. All over town.
IF the little beggar
doesn't have to pedal.
Like his parents, Johnny is
fat and lazy. He (maybe not so
secretly) hates exercise.
He learned that from Mom and Dad.
And now they've discovered that
if Johnny wants to ride his ass off
Mom doesn't have to drive him.
To his friends house. The skate park.
The beach. Or to school.
Which means Mon can sleep in
or get to work with one less worry.
Except one: Johnny may be
terrorizing people on the sidewalks.
May be poppin' wheelies
through red lights.
May be riding barefoot
and helmetless all over town.
And that "E-bike"
they bought him on line,
without assembly,
without instructions,
without consumer warnings,
or even honest description of what it
actually is....
"Well, cool ebike you got there kid.
Does your Mom know it's a Motorcycle?"
Now suddenly, Surprise!
The bike biz cares about
Education.
The people's expressed entitlement of autos in the public domain is the major problem. These people always forget that the only thing that gives them preference is money and "potential collateral damage".
Here is a hierarchy of the publics' transportational proiorities, if fair access is the goal:
1) Support the vulnerable! Allow those citizens that need to use mobility vehicles to be able to use them along with;
2) increased pedestrian access; reduce pedestrian restrictions;
3) public Transit;
4) bicycles_ nonmotorised > motorized. It is the electric motor that is the new drug.
5) legitimate business vehicles - trades, delivery etc.
6) the personal automobile.
I live in Canada. The list is absolutely reversed.
Every conscious, functioning and physically capable that demands electric assist for their non-discretionary travel is technically handicapped! The electric motor is the new drug.
I tell the teenagers riding their e-bikes that when they ask me why I don't use electric assist on my bike. is that I am not disabled". Even on greater than 10% hills!
> These people always forget that the only thing that gives them preference is money and "potential collateral damage".
You mean, the money that paved the road in the first place?
Look, even as a former EMT and truck driver, my position is that if you want that sweet sweet asphalt, you should contribute, (and more realistically, "Stop playing with your toys in the godsdamned street") there's a lot to be said for not being in the way of people who are trying to go somewhere or be productive. It's 2023. Some of us have to deliver fifty thousand pounds of milk at a time, we don't have the ability to wait for a horse drawn carriage from the 1900s.
I pay my taxes.
ENDSTOP.
You don't pay *fuel* taxes, definitionally. Though I'll grant that I have no idea how the Canadian infrastructure is paid for. And my point about bicycles being in the way of people who are trying to actually work still stands.
A lot of the economy is driven by the automobile industry, the oil industry and is made efficient by trucks. Remove it, and a lot of people won't have the jobs to pay the taxes to keep this infrastructure.
It is all nice and dandy, this laptop class talk about walkable cities, and cafes and people discussing Foucault.
But the service economy folks need to understand that for them to have a job creating power points presentations we still need a real economy, an industrial economy to pay for their luxury lifestyles and jobs.
Fuel taxes are paid via consumption. All roads are paid by citizens taxes, whether one owns and drives a car or not.
Too bad that your lifestyle ended up with you as a pawn to the marketing strategies of the Corporate Borg. Live in the suburbs; commute 20, 30, 50, 100 kms or miles a day... or comfort and convenience should be in the "Human Rights of Automobile Drivers"...
and BITCH, BITCH, BITCH!
My "lifestyle" delivering gooda in a tractor trailer? Try 1000 km of driving every day. Of course, I'd love to stop. Heck, I'd love for all of us to stop. It'd be interesting to see how quickly people asked us to start again.
Stop playing with your toys in the street.
Grow up.
You are not the centre of the universe.
Remember what happened when the COVID authoritarians did when they designed some people’s jobs “essential” vs “non-essential?”
You’re doing the same thing here in terms of who gets to use the roads. Bikes aren’t toys, they’re vehicles.
You have no idea for what purpose or why someone is cycling on the public roadways. You are not “more important” than anyone one else on the road. It’s first come, first served, pull over if safe to allow passing and pass when safe. If you’re really a professional truck driver, none of this should be new to you.