Or, how this latest complaint about bike lanes underscores the ridiculousness of all the others.
Photo by Eric Fischer, mad photoshop skills by Hilary Angus.
People who ride bikes are used to being denigrated. We take up too much space, we don’t follow the rules, we ride on the sidewalks, we don’t pay our taxes, we look like idiots. Or my personal favorite, cyclists are a**holes. All cyclists. Each and every single one of us.
Whatever the complaint and whatever form it arrives in, it will surely happen. If you ride a bike enough and are even remotely vocal about doing so, you will at some point be forced to defend the activity to somebody who just can’t wait to inform you that biking is, in fact, stupid.
But of all the criticisms I’ve heard levelled at cycling, cyclists, cycling infrastructure, and the very idea of a vehicle with less than four wheels, this one really takes the cake.
In a recent video clip from The Late Late Show with James Corden, Corden draws attention to a group of dismayed residents in the affluent resort city of Coronado, CA, who have just had it up to here with the bike lanes proliferating around their town. Their biggest complaint? Bike lanes are ugly. There is paint everywhere, lines and lines of paint intersecting around town all willy-nilly and lowering the property values. There is so much paint that, for one particularly distraught resident, this unseemly infrastructure is propelling her towards vertigo.
Corden’s response to the women’s complaints is exactly what you would expect: incredulity, frustration, and laughter. He isn’t laughing with them, he’s laughing at them, and he’s encouraging you to do the same. And you don’t feel bad for laughing, because it’s so utterly, blatantly ridiculous.
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But what of other bike lane opponents? What of the other, more subtle forms of anti-bike advocacy that in their subtlety are actually effective? The prevailing notion that bike lanes are infringing upon valuable road space, contributing to congestion, that cyclists are making the streets more dangerous with our blithe disregard for the rules of the road.
Why do we continue to engage in rational discussion with these arguments as though they too aren’t equally ridiculous? Because they are, they really are. Cyclists don’t pay taxes? Actually, we subsidize your parking space. We don’t follow the rules? Maybe not 100% of the time, but I’m just going to go out on a limb and say most drivers have occasionally broken the odd rule by speeding, failing to shoulder check, having a few beers before getting behind the wheel, or checking their phone while driving. The major difference between cars and bikes there is that when people on bikes break the rules they don’t tend to, you know, kill other humans.
I’m getting very bored of arguing with people who are unwilling to listen about why cycling is not the scourge of humanity. And I’m getting even more bored of entertaining their arguments as if I feel as they have even an ounce of validity in 21st century discussions of transportation. They don’t. These ideas are tired, these complaints are unfounded. Bike lanes are coming, and people are going to ride bikes in them. And not because they hate you or want you to be unhappy, but because biking is the way forward. So the next time somebody approaches me with any anti-bike sentiment in any form, I’m just going to laugh at them. I might even go over the top with it, wheeze and slap my knee and try to high-five them as if they too understand their argument to be a great joke. Then I’ll calmly pedal away hollering “Whoo, that’s rich!” over my shoulder as I roll down the bike lane.
Is that rude? Maybe. But hey, we cyclists are a**holes.
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Vulnerability scares the wits out of people. And anyone who’s ever seen a cyclist on a busy street knows the cyclist is dangerously vulnerable.
Bike lanes actually improve property values – here in Oakland the complaint is that they aid gentrification. The people in Coronado are, as Cordon says, idiots. Great editorial, Hilary. I’m going to try laughing hysterically next time too.
Having just spent several days in Salt Lake City, we were amazed to see bikers actually obeying the traffic laws.
Doesn’t happen here in Maryland.
Waltzin Matilda
Staggeringly unbelievable. I’m still not sure if the clips of people from Coronada were faked. If they are real, then those people are the saddest ever.
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