Pavé

Is Janette Sadik-Kahn unaware of the Classics? I woke up this morning and learned that the NYC DOT thought that cobblestones were dangerous and the few remaining in DUMBO & Vinegar Hill need to be removed. They'd be replaced with new ones that apparently are of even height and bicycle friendly. I can understand blaming bikes for a lot of things, but cobblestone removal makes no sense. Cyclists love cobblestones. Specialized named a bike after one half of the name of  a famous bike race involving cobblestones. People pay money to go on tours of these cobblestones. Gravel grinders have been the coolest type of thing for which people buy too much gear, write about on bike fora and never ride (kidding!).

I've only ridden in New York like one or twice. I don't really know much about it. I mean, I don't really know much about New York in general. However, I have actually ridden on those cobblestones. They're not dangerous, but aesthetically valuable.

Or, perhaps this is part of a sinister plan to pit the preservationists against the cyclists.

I mean, isn't the problem plaguing cyclists of New York people driving in bike lanes, running over people who rides bikes and then the police failing to prosecute the bad drivers?

The pictured cobblestones above are actually in Savannah, GA. They love their cobblestones and have no plan to get rid of them. Read more!

Wingnuts in Victorian Houses

Maybe bikes like this should be kept off the roads.

I can't take credit for finding this, I found it on the very well-designed K-Wall Blog, but I thought others should read it. Or, if you don't want to read the article, this is a brief summary:

This man in San Francisco named Rob Anderson hates bicycles. He's a bitter and unemployed political muckraker of little popularity. None the less, he was able to halt San Francisco's plan to expand their bicycle infrastructure by suing them because the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the environmental impact review. Conventional wisdom is that increased bicycle infrastructure will encourage more people to ride their bikes and therefore reduce the number of cars on the road. The few cars, the few pollutants in the air. Mr. Anderson believes that cars will never leave the road and that developing more bicycle infrastructure will cause more traffic jams. More traffic jams, he says, means more idling cars wasting gas and expelling pollutants into the air. He prevailed in California's Courts and San Francisco is being forced to do the environmental impact review, and they are doing it very slowly.

Now I'm all in favor of environmental impact reviews for most things, but from what I understand, SF's plan was to roll out more bike lanes, a traffic matter. From my little bit of experience with municipal government, we don't need to do this type of impact study if we change traffic patterns. Further, the logic makes no sense. If you clarify who is where on the road, traffic will flow better and more safely for everyone.

However, the big thing is "Why is the WSJ legitimizing this guy?" I mean, there are some pretty obvious reasons, but it really vexes me that they're handing out new talking points for people to oppose/hate bikes. Read more!