D.C. government workers were out on Pennsylvania Avenue in the last couple of weeks painting black lines over the white lines that used to define the avenue’s new bike lanes. The bike lanes choked off traffic and created serious congestion for thousands of cab, bus and car drivers who did a slow burn while an occasional lonely bicyclist enjoyed the new lanes and the middle boulevard.
The bike lanes were dumb public policy. They made a mess of the greatest thoroughfare in America , one of the few left in D.C. with relatively little congestion. The bike lanes were an example of the extravagance of a Mayor who seems determined to impose his cycling obsession on the rest of us. In a recent article in Men’s Health, Fenty was quoted as saying, “Any Mayor worth his election ballots must move people out of cars and into other modes of transportation.” The same magazine praised him for spending $7 million on bike roads and trails.
More profoundly, the bike lanes were dumb for what they symbolized–a sadly misguided attempt by the city government at social engineering. The city fathers have been trying for years to force entire generations of residents and commuters out of their cars and onto bikes, buses and subways. Anyone who has lived awhile in or around the District of Columbia has seen it first-hand.
New commercial development has swept over the city like a tsunami, restoring neighborhoods and adding millions of square feet of new office and residential space. But with it has come a stubborn refusal to accommodate the additional traffic generated by all of those buildings, attempting to squeeze out vehicular traffic.
In a fit of misguided liberal logic, the social engineers must have concluded years ago that the temporary pain caused by the increased congestion would eventually give way to a new paradigm of human behavior and an enlightened community with a minimum of single-car commuting.
The result has been disastrous. The city has produced gridlock on a gargantuan scale. Instead of reducing pollution, the city has increased it. Transportation appears far more inefficient and far more costly for both government and families.
The longer commutes have meant less time at home for many commuters and their families, estimated by the Council of Governments to be about 80 percent of the 700,000 people who work in the city. Granted, those who commute from Maryland, Virginia and other surrounding states have no electoral vote but they do contribute a lot to the city’s economy by spending money at DC shops, restaurants, and parking facilities.
DC has added insult to injury by turning loose on the city streets a band of renegade bicyclists who, thanks to the example set by the Mayor (WTOP.com November, 9, 2009), disobey traffic laws with reckless abandon, endangering both motorists and pedestrians. And it isn’t just an isolated few cyclists. It may even be a majority. Most bicyclists I see on city streets have no licenses, no lights or reflectors, all required by city regulations, according to the DC government webite. They run red lights, play dodge ‘em with pedestrians on sidewalks, skip in and out of lanes, and go the wrong way against traffic. They cross in front of cars to shift lanes or turn a corner, and they slip past cars in the same lane. Most bicyclists don’t use hand signals, except that one with the protruding middle finger, which indicates they’re going to cut you off.
The D.C. response is an ad campaign asking the rest of us to “share the road.” Here’s what sharing the road with cyclists means.
A few days ago my daughter was driving on L Street at 20th when she changed lanes to go around a car with emergency flashers on. As she did, so, too, did a biker ‘sharing’ the same lane of traffic. The biker suddenly started pounding on her car, yelling at her loud enough that a coworker walking to the metro heard him and came out into the street. As she pulled up to the traffic light at 20th, the harassment continued. The biker pulled up beside her, grabbed her partially open window and threatened to break it. He reduced my daughter to sobbing. She tried to calm the biker with apologies for upsetting him. His response: In a month, he said, there will be bike lanes and bikes will be as important as cars and you’ll have to give us the right of way.
The coward should have been arrested. But, of course, he had no license or any other means of identification on his “vehicle”. He was empowered by his anonymity and a misguided Mayor.
Cycling is a good thing, but like everything else, it goes from good to bad with excess and immoderation. Economist Robert Samuelson reminded us recently that clean energy is a noble goal, but it must be embraced with the stark reality that energy-efficient light bulbs, windmills, new appliances and bikes are not enough to meet future needs. We all must indeed share the road to energy efficiency, but with realism and responsibility.
