BIKE: Car-Free World newsletter | Jan. 12, 2004

[Michael Bluejay]

Car-Free World
alternative transportation news & views

Jan. 12, 2004
Email Us <http://BicycleAustin.info/email.html>  | BicycleUniverse
<http://BicycleUniverse.com>
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Tips: Michael Shackleford, Roger Baker, Michael Zakes
Editor: Michael Bluejay
Contents
>From the Editor
BicycleAustin moving to BicycleUniverse <#fromeditor>

Welcome to WizardOfOdds subscribers <#wizard>

Unsatisfied reader <#unsatisfied>

CAMPO Update: we won <#campo>

More translations of BicycleSafe.com
 <#bicyclesafe> . 
General
Speed Kills <#general>

Cheating red lights <#redlights>

Screw the Hummers <#hummers>

The Party's Over <#party>
. 
Regional
VEGAS: Pedicabs to be banned <#regional>

U.S.: Cyclists for Dean <#regional>

U.S.: TEA party <#tea>

U.S.: Janklow won't take responsibility <#janklow>

AUSTIN: Sprawl mania <#sprawl>

AUSTIN: CAMPO decides not to raid bike/ped funds <#campo>
. 
Classifieds
Bikes for sale <#ads>
. 

Car-Free World, a publication of and ©2004 by BicycleUniverse, covers
alternative transportation, especially bicycling. No, we're not naïve enough
to think that everyone can do without a car, but we do feel that people
could certainly use cars a lot less, which would result in cleaner air,
fewer deaths, stronger communities, and a better quality of life.

CFW is published sporadically, and may be discontinued at any time without
notice. We currently have over 800 subscribers. Here are links to subscribe
<http://BicycleUniverse.com/list/> or unsubscribe
<http://BicycleUniverse.com/list/> .

Articles are by the editor if uncredited. Articles by others may have been
edited for grammar, clarity, conciseness, superstition, or just for the hell
of it.  

 
Bikes for sale in Austin
Girls' Schwinn 24 Frontier, $99.  21 speed mountain bike. Berry. Like new.
923-7050.  a='cisimon'; b='yahoo.com'; document.write('');
document.write(a+'@');document.write(b); document.write('
<mai');document.write('lto:'+a+'@');document.write(b+'>
')cisimon(at)yahoo.com11-03

KHS Flite 500 road bike, $400. Excellent shape--ridden less than 200 miles.
Shimano 105/Tiagra components, Rolf Vector wheels, 56cm Reynolds 520 steel
frame. Call 472-8604 or e-mail
a='bdfitzpatrick';b='yahoo.com';document.write('');document.write(a+'@');doc
ument.write(b);document.write('
<mai');document.write('lto:'+a+'@');document.write(b+'> ')
bdfitzpatrick(at)yahoo.com09-03

VooDoo Bokor mountain bike, $450. Deore XT components, White Industries rear
hub, Judy Rock Shox fork, Sugino 900 cranks.
document.write('krsbrns@');document.write('yahoo.com') 8-03

Send us your bike ad and we'll post it. Ads are FREE for individuals and run
for at least four months or until you tell me to remove it. Please keep it
to four lines, don't write a novel. :)

Used inventory at
Waterloo Cycles
Waterloo ships to the 48 states for $40. Just click to order.
ATB/Mountain Bikes
$169 Nishiki Pueblo 19"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?169,Nishiki%20Pueblo%2019%22>
$199 GT Palomar 20"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?199,GT%20Palomar%2020%22>
$219 Trek 830 14", w/24" wheels
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?219,Trek%20830%2014%22,%2024%22%20whe
els> $369 Haro Extreme Comp 19.5"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?369,Haro%20Extreme%20Comp%2019.5%22>
$399 KHS Montana Comp 19"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?399,KHS%20Montana%20Comp%2019%22>
$399 Diamondback Response 14"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?399,Diamondback%20Response%2014%22>
$449 Diamondback Response Elite 20"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?449,Diamondback%20Response%20Elite%20
20%22> $549 Kona Lava Dome 20"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?549,Kona%20Lava%20Dome%2020%22> $699
Cannondale F400 21"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?699,Cannondale%20F400%2021%22> $699
Kona Sex One 20" 
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?699,Kona%20Sex%20One%2020%22>
Hybrid
$179 Univega Activa 200 17L
 <http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?179,Univega%20Activa%20200%2017L>
$269 Sun Marathon 17L
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?269,Sun%20Marathon%2017L>
Road Bikes
$ 99 Alpine Sporten 15"G
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?99,Alpine%20Sporten%2015%22G> $149
Maruishi RX-3 21" 
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?149,Maruishi%20RX-3%2021%22>
$399 Specialized Allez 53cm
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?399,Specialized%20Allez%2053cm> $499
Giant OCR3 small 
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?499,Giant%20OCR%20Small> $499
Specialized Sirrus 58cm
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?499,Specialized%20Sirrus%2058cm> $599
Diamondback Expert 58cm
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?599,Diamondback%20Expert%2058cm> $599
KHS Aero Turbo 54cm
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?599,KHS%20Aero%20Turbo%2054cm> $699
Bianchi Campione 54cm
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?699,Bianchi%20Campione%2054cm>
BMX/Kids' Bikes
$99  Schwinn Aerostar
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?99,Schwinn%20Aerostar> $129
Diamondback Impression
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?129,Diamondback%20Impression>
Clearance!
$950 $599 Kona Caldera 20"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?599,Kona%20Caldera%2020%22>
$1050 $629 Kona Muni-Mula 21"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?629,Kona%20Muni-Mula%2021%22>
$1700 $999 Kona Explosif 18"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?999,Kona%20Exlosif%2018%22>
$1500 $899 Kona Mano Mano 14"
<http://WaterlooCycles.com/orders.html?899,Kona%20Mano%20Mano%2014%22>

Inventory as of Oct. 5, 2003. All bikes subject to prior sale, limited to
stock on hand, not responsible for typographical errors, prices may change
without notice, batteries not included.

Easy Street Recumbents
Recumbent bicycle sales, service, and rental for Austin. Free Urban Cycling
classes <http://urbancycling.com>  with your purchase of a bike.

click to visit
 

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10,000 dead and I'm still paying $1.79 for unleaded.
 
>From the Editor
 BicycleAustin moving to BicycleUniverse

Austinite Jeremiah Isaacs got into the holiday spirit
     I'm starting the process of moving most of the content from
BicycleAustin.info to the new site, BicycleUniverse.com
<http://BicycleUniverse.com> . Most of the content on BicycleAustin is
useful to a much larger audience than Austinites so it makes sense to have
it on a general domain.

    This follows the same path as the newsletter, which went from "Austin
Bike News" to "Car-Free World" nearly two years ago. But someone
unsubscribed from the newsletter not too long ago, saying the reason was
that they'd moved out of Austin. That was disappointing because I've taken
pains to make Car-Free World interesting and relevant regardless of where in
the country (or maybe even the world) they live, but evidently not everybody
has noticed, or at least agreed. Anyway, the new domain is part of the
strategy of making clear that this stuff is for everyone, not just
Austinites. 

 

Welcome to WizardOfOdds subscribers

    As part of a cultural exchange program (it's actually what marketers
call a "cross-promotion", but "cultural exchange" sounds so much better),
Car-Free World was recently advertised in an issue of The Wizard's News, a
newsletter about Vegas and gambling, published by The Wizard of Odds
<http://www.wizardofodds.com/subscribe/> . Basically, they mention my
newsletter and I mention theirs. Their recent plug got us a bunch of new
subscribers. So welcome, gambling people, hope ya like it.

   So what are we all about? Are we so crazy we think that everyone can give
up their cars? Hardly. We just think that cars are used way too much, and
that that overuse has profound negative effects on our society -- air
pollution, isolated communities, danger in getting around, wars over oil,
economic enslavement (drive to work, work to drive), and corruption of
local, state, and national governments. (Cars, oil, and roads are big
business, and the desire to make money wins out over the greater public good
time and again.) 

    Those are the obvious problems with cars, but some are not so obvious.
America's obsession with the automobile means that we have a car culture,
which introduces its own downsides. For example, at-fault motorists who
injure or kill others are less likely to face penalties if the victim was a
pedestrian or bicyclist. Hard to believe, but the facts speak for themselves
<http://BicycleAustin.info/justice> . I can already hear a thousand mice
clicking this window closed, but the truth isn't always pretty. Our job is
to point out what's actually happening, even it's unpleasant. But we try to
balance it with a fair amount of humor and interesting stories, so that the
newsletter doesn't degrade into one big sheet of pessimism. Hopefully you'll
like it. Our next reader didn't...

 

Unsatisfied Reader 

    We don't please everyone. This came in in response to our recent article
about the lack of justice afforded to cyclists and pedestrians
<http://BicycleUniverse.com/newsletters/2003-12-05.html#justice> . J. C.
Bateman, Jr. writes:
Mr. Bluejay, 

    You are too strident. You misrepresent and distort the facts when it
comes to bike vs. car incidents. I had a problem with your wee-weeing and
mischaracterizations on the old Bike Austin forum, and that was the reason I
withdrew from it. Perusing the few issues of this newsletter that somehow
have found me, I don't see that much has changed. I deplore such actions as
critical mass rides and feel you are much more in that camp than in mine...
i.e., just a guy who doesn't wear lycro, who rides his utilitarian garage
sale find Peugeot for short trips to HEB, the library, and etc., who holds
no adulation for nor gives a squat what Lance is up to (although I am glad
he won the Tour thingy again), and who, for sure, doesn't care to hear from,
or be involved with, a group of narrow minded, bellyaching, totally hostile
anti-car, bikers. Who, I might add, have alienated my once friendly attitude
toward them by their obnoxious road behaviour, primary among which is their
impeding traffic flow by arrogantly riding side by side (I travel Shoal
Creek frequently, and even though there is a bike lane, countless times I
have been held back by idiot bikers riding two, three abreast) and by riding
at night *without lights*! I hate that! If a biker gets smushed by a car at
night and they weren't using lights, then it's partially THEIR OWN DAMN
FAULT. -- JCB
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that nighttime cyclists without
lights who get hit are at least partially at fault, I don't know why you'd
think I'd feel otherwise. As for injustice in general, as I said in the
newsletter, the facts about the lack of justice in car-bike collisions are a
matter of public record. If you have a credible source that takes a contrary
position I'd love to see it.

By the way, I don't ride at night without lights or multiple-abreast to the
point that it blocks car traffic, nor do I ride on Critical Mass any more,
if that makes you feel any better. Even if I did I'm not sure that would
mean that it's okay for at-fault motorists to be unlikely to face penalties
when they recklessly maim or kill pedestrians and cyclists.

By the way, as I write this I've just gotten word of a local cyclist who was
beaten within an inch of his life and then left for dead last week. --Ed.

 

Update on CAMPO's raid on bike funds
Short answer: we won. Bike/Ped projects are preserved, at least for now.
More details are in an article below <#campo> .
 

More translations of BicycleSafe.com
Fans worldwide continue to translate our BicycleSafe.com into their local
language -- or in some cases, into their local roadway style. Aussies and
Brits ride on a different side of the road than most other countries, so we
now have new British <http://www.3kingdoms.net/bikesafe.htm> and Australian
<http://www.bikesarefun.org/bicyclesafe.html> versions of BicycleSafe.com.
 

back to contents 
General
 Speed Kills 

The Wisconsin State Journal
<http://www.madison.com/wisconsinstatejournal/opinion/64161.php>  points out
that everyone is focused on the danger of drunk driving, while speeding is
potentially an even bigger problem.
Yes, "everybody does it" - or at least 71 percent of licensed drivers,
according to the American Automobile Association. Nationwide, 13,713 died
last year in accidents caused by speeding. That's about 400 more fatalities
than were caused by drunken driving in 2002.

Moreover, while the number of drunken driving fatalities has fallen 37
percent nationwide in the past 20 years, the number of fatal accidents has
been rising steadily in the 22 states that have raised their speed limits to
70 mph or more since 1995. Safety experts say the risk of death in a crash
doubles for every 10-mph increase in speed.

Some Western European nations have already recognized that speeding can be
just as dangerous as drunken driving. In England, for example, the
government launched a campaign: "Kill your speed - not a child." It also
installed lots of roadside cameras to photograph and tickets speeders.
(Alas, photo radar is illegal in Wisconsin.) The result of the British
campaign: a 50 percent reduction in speeding-related fatalities. (full
article) 

 
Cheating Red Lights

    While motorists scream and rant about the fact that some bicyclists run
red lights (while ignoring the danger caused by other motorists running red
lights), many of them think it's perfectly okay to find ways to cheat red
lights themselves. WIRED magazine's Gadget Lab
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/gadgetlab/20031202.html>  gave a gushing
review to a black box that can change the traffic signal from red to green.
The fact that the device is illegal didn't temper the writer's excitement
over the product, other than to caution readers to try not to get caught
using it. 
With the MIRT (Mobile Infrared Transmitter) on my dashboard, traffic lights
yield to my every whim! I jacked it into my cigarette lighter, hit the big
green button, and the just-turned-red light on East Grand Avenue switched to
green. I yelled "See ya later, 5UX0R5!" and rolled past confused, powerless
commuters.
    In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote a short piece for WIRED a
few years ago. But mine was about household batteries
<http://michaelbluejay.com/batteries.html> , not breaking the law.

 

Screw the Hummers 

    How do you express your frustration about Hummers, those behemoth road
machines that are the ultimate testament to wastefulness and consumption?
Well, one way is to take a picture of yourself flipping off a Hummer, and
sending it to FUH2.com <http://www.fuh2.com/> . I'm not sure it would make
me feel better, but at least that option is available to those who want it.

 

The Party's Over 

    We've been warning about the end of cheap oil for a while now. (Best
estimates are for a permanent price surge some time before the end of the
decade.) Ever since transportation activist Roger Baker
<http://bicycleaustin.info/planning.html#rogerbaker>  turned us on to this
idea many years ago the evidence has continued to pour in. The latest is an
excellent piece in the U.K.'s Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1097622,00.html> , a
condensed version of which appears below.
On Thursday, the government approved the development of the biggest deposit
discovered in British territory for at least 10 years. Everywhere we are
told that this is a "huge" find, which dispels the idea that North Sea oil
is in terminal decline. You begin to recognise how serious the human
predicament has become when you discover that this "huge" new field will
supply the world with oil for five and a quarter days.

     Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource
upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it
because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in denial.

     Oil itself won't disappear, but extracting what remains is becoming
ever more difficult and expensive. The discovery of new reserves peaked in
the 1960s. Every year we use four times as much oil as we find. All the big
strikes appear to have been made long ago: the 400m barrels in the new North
Sea field would have been considered piffling in the 1970s. Our future
supplies depend on the discovery of small new deposits and the better
exploitation of big old ones. No one with expertise in the field is in any
doubt that the global production of oil will peak before long.

     The only question is how long. The most optimistic projections are the
ones produced by the US department of energy, which claims that this will
not take place until 2037. But the US energy information agency has admitted
that the government's figures have been fudged: it has based its projections
for oil supply on the projections for oil demand, perhaps in order not to
sow panic in the financial markets.

     Other analysts are less sanguine. The petroleum geologist Colin
Campbell calculates that global extraction will peak before 2010. In August,
the geophysicist Kenneth Deffeyes told New Scientist that he was "99%
confident" that the date of maximum global production will be 2004. Even if
the optimists are correct, we will be scraping the oil barrel within the
lifetimes of most of those who are middle-aged today.

    There is one possible solution which no one writing about the impending
oil crisis seems to have noticed: a technique with which the British and
Australian governments are currently experimenting, called underground coal
gasification. This is a fancy term for setting light to coal seams which are
too deep or too expensive to mine, and catching the gas which emerges. It's
a hideous prospect, as it means that several trillion tonnes of carbon which
was otherwise impossible to exploit becomes available, with the likely
result that global warming will eliminate life on Earth.

    We seem, in other words, to be in trouble. Either we lay hands on every
available source of fossil fuel, in which case we fry the planet and
civilisation collapses, or we run out, and civilisation collapses.

    The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and
the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our
lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our
problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the
streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given a choice between
a new set of matching tableware and the survival of humanity, I suspect that
most people would choose the tableware.

   In view of all this, the notion that the war with Iraq had nothing to do
with oil is simply preposterous. The US attacked Iraq (which appears to have
had no weapons of mass destruction and was not threatening other nations),
rather than North Korea (which is actively developing a nuclear weapons
programme and boasting of its intentions to blow everyone else to kingdom
come) because Iraq had something it wanted. In one respect alone, Bush and
Blair have been making plans for the day when oil production peaks, by
seeking to secure the reserves of other nations. (read full article)
 

back to contents 
Regional
 LAS VEGAS: Pedicabs to be banned

   To the delight of local taxicab drivers, Las Vegas is moving to ban
human-powered pedicabs. Cabbies cite the pedicabs as a "dangerous nuisance",
a claim I find ironic since I can't count how many times a taxicab nearly
ended my life early when I biked around Vegas last year. And it's really
hard to imagine the threat posed by a vehicle that moves, at most, seven
miles per hour. (full article)

    By the way, I saw some similarities with Austin while in Vegas that kept
me from being homesick, like seeing two black men arrested and in handcuffs
for bicycling on the sidewalk.

UNITED STATES: Cyclists for Dean

   While we're not really bowled over by Democratic presidential candidate
Howard Dean, he certainly has some bicyclists behind him. A group called
Cyclists for Dean <http://www.cyclistsfordean.org/DeantheCyclist.html>  is
actively campaigning for the former Vermont governor, noting, among other
things, that Dean's introduction to politics was his work as a citizen in
getting a bicycle path built in Burlington.

UNITED STATES: TEA Party

    TEA-21 is the federal legislation that funds surface transportation
projects, and Congress is currently working on a new version. While few
details are available yet on the direction that Congress is headed, we can
make a safe prediction: Lots of money for highways and little for trains,
bikes, peds, and everything else. We can also expect environmental
considerations to be cast aside when there's a road project that lawmakers
want to build. 

    Environmental Defense has a form on its website allowing visitors to
send a message to Congress <http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/tea21/>
asking for some sanity in how federal transpo dollars are allocated. And the
Washington Post has some more background on the issue
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64878-2004Jan8.html> .

 

UNITED STATES: U.S. Rep. Janklow won't take responsibility for killing a
motorcyclist 

    U.S. Rep Bill Janklow (R-SD) was recently convicted of second-degree
manslaughter for speeding through a stop sign and killing a motorcyclist. We
covered the interesting circumstances surrounding his arrest in our Sept. 3
newsletter <http://bicycleuniverse.com/newsletters/2003-09-03.html> . At
that time we pointed out Janklow's long history of speeding, and his
unethical act as Governor of reducing the severity of speeding convictions,
helping spare himself from losing his license.

   The trial showed Janklow acting consistently with his past: a man who
refuses to take responsibility for his actions. When our children misbehave,
often our most fervent wish is that they simply acknowledge that they did
something wrong. Even though the damage has been done, it pacifies us
somehow if they own up to their mistakes. Why don't we expect the same of
adults, especially elected officials? There was no doubt that Janklow
recklessly killed the cyclist, so why didn't he own up to it? During the
trial he argued that it somehow wasn't his fault that he recklessly killed
another human being (because he was disoriented from being hungry) and even
after his unanimous conviction he's asking the judge to set aside the guilty
verdict. 

    Janklow certainly has his apologists. A ridiculous editorial in the
Madison Daily Leader
<http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1302&dept_id=181990&newsid=10637612&
PAG=461&rfi=9>  employed copious amounts of passive voice to carefully avoid
any specific statement that Janklow had done anything wrong. They bemoan,
quite passively, "the terrible tragedy" that ended Janklow's career, without
mentioning that Janklow himself was responsible for that tragedy.

 

AUSTIN: Sprawl Mania

  A recent survey showed that Austinites are overwhelmingly opposed to
suburban sprawl and that they want growth to happen in existing areas rather
than far-flung and often environmentally sensitive areas.

    Then we see that all the neighborhood associations want to limit
apartments, duplexes, and the height of buildings.

    Maybe people don't get it, and don't realize that these goals are
incompatible. You either have a dense central city, or you have sprawl. If
the growth doesn't happen in the burbs then it has to happen in the urban
core. But the citizens apparently think it's okay to oppose sprawl (and the
congestion, pollution, and higher taxes that goes with it), while at the
same time opposing plans to fit more people into existing neighborhoods.

   You can't have your cake and eat it too, but that doesn't stop people
from trying. A recent example was the opposition to the Villas project on
Guadalupe, opposed by the neighbors and vilified by the same progressive
lefties who also decry sprawl. Okay, the Villas definitely pulled some
questionable political strings to get their project built, but the project
itself is exactly the kind of development that's an alternative to sprawl.

    In fact, there is one neighborhood association in Austin that welcomes
increased density. What's different about them? It's the West Campus group
(University Area Partners <http://www.universityareapartners.org> ), where
most of the property owners are investors who don't actually live where the
denser housing will go. They want denser housing so they have more units to
rent out so they can make more money.

    A reader, Howard Lenett, makes some observations about sprawl:
In today's [Austin-American] Snakesman we find a letter from an reader who
writes that "this is Texas," the land of plenty of room, and how dare these
intellectual liberals from up east come tell us to live in urban centers. We
need to raise our kids in "quiet" suburbs with lots of fresh air and room to
play. He even goes on to mention how Texas parents don't want their kids
learning to play stickball on the streets in front of high rise buildings.

 I guess he doesn't mind hour and a half waits in traffic, polluted air, and
paying higher taxes for more police and medical services to his suburbs. And
of course he doesn't mention anything about keeping his racial purity, but I
imagine he wants his kids to play in a homogeneous suburb where they are
safe from all but the right kind of child molesters.
 

AUSTIN: CAMPO votes to preserve bike/ped funding

    In the last several newsletters <http://BicycleUniverse.com/newsletters>
we'd warned that CAMPO was planning to raid funds for bicycle and pedestrian
projects and spend it on car-oriented projects instead. We set up a form on
our website so you could email CAMPO members and ask them to not do that.

    Amazingly, we won. Sure, hundreds of you wrote in, but that doesn't mean
that CAMPO had any obligation to listen to us. Politicians, especially local
politicians, frequently vote in direct opposition to what the overwhelming
majority of the public feedback says. But in any event, this time we won.
Bike/ped funding is safe, for now. Pat yourselves on the back for doing your
part to demand transportation-related fiscal sanity from our leaders.

    Below are some of the comments sent to CAMPO using our mail-in form.
I'm a member of Austin's Urban Transportation Commission. When you total all
funding of local transportation, bike/ped projects receive less than one
percent of the total. The 15% set-aside in this one category of federal
funds provides roughly half that amount. Touching it in order to build even
more roadways is an insult to the claim that your group is promoting
alternative transportation.
I design bridges for a living. I also believe strongly in the benefits of
increasing mixed-mode transportation. One might presume these two facts
place me in a personal quandary on the CAMPO 15% Bike/Ped funding issue, but
in fact this issue seems pretty straightforward to me. A little goes a long
way when you are designing and building bike paths, striping roadways for
bikes, and building sidewalks. It only goes 3/4 of a mile if you transfer
the funding towards FM 2769. It's miles and miles of safe routes to schools
and places of work for the bicycling and walking public vs. a 45-second long
stretch of FM roadway. We need more roads, but not at the expense of
bicyclists and pedestrians. Please keep what little funding that is there in
place. 
Please think about the bigger picture. Cars are so stupid. So, so, so
stupid. Not that I don't drive a car. I do. It's just that if it's too easy
to drive a car, none of us will ever get out of the habit. It's already way
too easy for car drivers. Please think in a new way and don't throw money
away for projects that ultimately threaten the well-being of your children,
your grandchildren, and generations to come. We are not in that great a need
that we need to be selfish about these poor people who will come after us.
While many of the roads through Austin are pretty hostile towards cyclists,
even those with bicycle lanes are often quite rough. If cyclists and
motorists are to ever get along they need to work together which would be a
lot easier if cyclists had their own lanes so they weren't seen as impeding
traffic. Additionally, there is a growing concern over the obesity of
America's children. It seems as though sending children to school on
bicycles and encouraging physical exercise would help combat this problem.
However, to do so the routes must be safe. Please dedicate more time and
money towards making Austin a bicycle friendly city.

 And a letter from a reader in Wisconsin:
 I understand a bit about your money problems. We fought 10 years to get
$325k for the Fox River Trail, which counts 250,000 a year now.  Right after
that, The Green Bay Packers asked then-Gov. Tommy Thompson(R) for $9.5
Million to re-do the parking lot at Lambeau Field, and There Are No Bike
Racks There Either!  Then they asked for $4.2 Million to re-do 1 mile of
street in front of the stadium.  They got the money in less than 24 hours.
Ain't it wonderful? Still no bike racks or bike lanes near the Stadium.

John Trester, bigmouth and pain,
Green Bay Wisconsin


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That's all, thanks for reading!

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