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Our Bigoted Bicycles
I read the Times for the same reason I stare down from the top of tall buildings: Terrified fascination at what might come next. Here is a case in point:
But two years in, Citi Bike’s inroads have been decidedly uneven, with men far outnumbering women in using the bike-sharing system. A little time on Eighth Avenue on a recent morning, watching the stream of Citi Bike riders heading north past Pennsylvania Station and toward Times Square, was instructive. Man after man pedaled by, some in suits, others in jeans. From time to time, a woman on a Citi Bike rode by.
For the bike service, that is a problem.
It would be easy to dismiss this story for its very New Yorkish insularity. One of the petty obsessions of a self-conscious elite that have little impact on ordinary life. Yet it’s exactly these sorts of ideas that have a tendency to creep into daily life. Across the continent, in suburbs and medium sized cities, there are self-conscious petty elites eager to ape the manners of their Manhattan social superiors.
Biking in dense urban traffic is mostly an upper-middle-class affectation, something done to express simultaneous contempt for the private automobile and the humble bus and subway. There is the thin excuse that biking is healthy. It certainly is in areas with little traffic and clean air. It’s something of a stretch to argue that inhaling big gulps of heavily polluted downtown air, all the while dodging inattentive motorists, is an inherently healthy activity.
I’m old enough to remember seeing stock footage of Chinese cities before Deng’s great reforms. Every news story from that time was accompanied by the cliched image of thousands of Chinese riding around on bicycles. The general impression was of a lot of very poor people who couldn’t afford cars. Further proof, to any who needed it, that communism sucked. This was because way back in that distant epoch known as the 1980s seeing a cyclist in the downtown of a North American city was rare.
On spotting a two-wheeled unicorn the natural assumption was that the fellow was too young or too poor to afford a car or a bus pass. That adults with money, even a little bit, would willingly risk their necks in heavy rush-hour traffic was seen as madness. If people were looking for exercise there were things called gyms and stationary bikes. If getting from point A to B cheaply was the main issue there were slow but mostly safe buses.
Then came the environmental movement of the 1990s. The internal combustion engine was allegedly destroying the planet. Those of enlightened moral conscience were duty bound to oppose it wherever possible. The science of human-driven global warming was dicey then and hasn’t become any more plausible in the quarter century since. That hardly matters. The human need for belonging and transcendence, which traditionally has been expressed through religion, found its way into a sort of vulgate environmentalism.
This Greenista creed has naturally developed its own rituals. Over time it acquired a reflexive admiration for a limited form of asceticism. Thus the fascination with economically nonsensical activities like recycling and urban biking. In this light cycling has a particularly spiritual aspect. Any fat slob can sort trash. It takes a dedicated individual to sweat, swerve and cycle for the greater glory of Gaia. There is that special elevation that is felt in having suffered for your cause. That as a practical matter cycling impedes the flow of traffic, arguably generating more net pollution, is neither here nor there.
Think of the Left’s vision not as a practical program, which it is not, but as a vast vanity project for those comfortably divorced from reality. The Greenista creed has little appeal to those employed in farming, mining, oil extraction, manufacturing or the various trades. The Greenista is overwhelming a service worker, typically at the higher end of the income spectrum. They are those who do not sow, reap or build anything. Someone for whom things appears in stores to be purchased; the origin of those things attracting only a passing curiosity.
From that moral universe it makes perfect sense to worry about whether urban cyclists are showing the correct gender balance. Cycling isn’t about health, wealth or any practical value. It is about a peculiar form of moral vanity. The need to feel superior and moral without under taking any serious restraints or hardships in life. Others have died for their faith. The Greenista has the luxury of nagging, regulating and tweeting about social trivia.
Published in General
Better targets?
We have more of a right to the road the motorized vehicle drivers, cuz we’re having more fun than they’re having.
I understand Pope Francis is in favor of biking as a way to save the planet. He’s planning to issue an encyclical on the subject.
“For the man who makes his way by his own devices no day is dull and no journey without an abiding interest.”
H.W. Tilman, Snow on the Equator
Tilman was given a land grant in Kenya after WWI. He tried farming and a bunch of other pursuits before giving it up as a lost cause. He set off on what he called a push bike and crossed Africa from west to east on what has become the Kinshasa Highway. My might be called an early cycle cross biker. That would have been a great time to live if the bikes weren’t so damned primitive.
Yes, you are going 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.
Which should be an indication that the speed limit is too low.
Which should be an indication that you are going too slow to safely travel the same roads when cars pass you.
Decades ago, I began calling them the Rubber Pants Set. Stipulating all of the comfort and aerodynamic advantages cited above, I find it around here to some significant degree to be a pernicious, anti-car movement. Living near a Progressive Mecca, I’ve observed them a powerful political force.
Much of the road construction in PM has been simply to add not more full lanes, just bike lanes. Last week, I was behind a couple of RPSers riding in the middle of the travel lane, not the bike lane, side-by-side engaged in a full-time conversation, at a pace that, if walking, would be called a “casual stroll.” One even rode with his arms folded across his chest.
On weekends, the RPS roam the county in packs. Unless it has changed, state law requires cyclists to move single file to allow rear-approaching cars to pass. Not the RPS. They move along at their predetermined ride rate (many are clubs), and you simply follow until there is enough visible highway to pass the lot of them.
The last time I was in PM, I noticed almost none of the RPS using the bike lanes. Almost all were riding directly on the white line separating the bike lane from the travel lane. My cynical self felt it was a protest to the Town Council to more frequently use street sweepers to remove debris from the path of their narrow road tires.
They sometimes do Critical Mass rides, too.
There’s a couple of bicyclers (white, male, 30ish) that I sometimes see doing that on the county roads around here. I’ve never encountered them when riding, only when driving. My cynical self suspects that bicycling is not the important thing to them. I don’t like them.
Well, the whole point of biking is to be seen biking, and in order to be seen, you have to wear something so blindingly ugly that people notice. (i.e., “special biking clothes.”)
I often bike to work (about a 15 minute bike ride) in spring and fall. And when the summer weather permits.
Winter bikers are a danger to themselves and others. One early winter morning I saw one winter biker playing chicken with a snowplow. Basically forced the snowplow to come to a complete halt while he casually looped around him.
It was dumb, dangerous, and exactly what I’ve come to expect from winter bikers.
Also agreed on obeying traffic rules. Geez. The other day I saw one weave around cars that had come to a four-way stop and breeze through the intersection just in front the eastbound one turning north, and just behind the westbound one turning south. He never paused a moment, somehow sure that they’d yield for him.
He was lucky that time.
Ok, now I understand the special biking clothes.
Biking gear looks absolutely silly to me but I own some. City biking requires a risk taking mentality and or stupidity. Men fit that description with moving vehicles more than women.
I have all kinds of mountain biking clothes designed to protect the privates as well as body armor for downhill stuff. Bike sharing is cool and I’d do it if I was citified. Someone shared my bike right out of my truck a few weeks ago. 3000 dollar theft. Oof.
I drove regularly in Manhattan for the six years before I moved away last fall. Of course, there are some inattentive drivers. I would say that the bikers, though, were uniformly inattentive.
Why? As long as the service is making a profit, why does it matter if the riders are men, women, or ET?
Disparate Impact, Mr. Misogynist. It doesn’t matter the intent. If disparate impact is found, you gotta hang. Last month’s SCOTUS case, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. sez so. And once it’s true in any one Protected Class, it’ll soon be true in all.
If someone wants to push it, it’s buh bye, Citi Bike…
Playin’ by Obama Rules now, Doc. Everywhere.
I’ve been run over my 2 cars that blew red lights. I know, third time’s the charm, but I do not road ride anymore.
Being killed by a car should be gender neutral. The feminists should rejoice that it’s mostly men who will die on their bikes. Many of those guys ride like self-absorbed idiots with suicide wishes. I think most are liberals too.
Sorry, that’s just wrong. There’s a lot of people that bike to and from the subway station. My son does this and it takes 40 minutes off his commute each way over walking to the subway.
It makes a lot of economic sense. Where I’m at (San Francisco) a parking spot costs about $500/month, and another $120/month in bridge tolls. That’s over $7,000/year not counting gas and tickets.
Within a minute-and-a-half, you’ll know
Insanity, Thy Name Is Bike Messenger
If this is a way to cull the herd, at least there’s that.
/just kidding!!! joking! why so serious??
No, what makes economic sense is to fix foolish tax and spending practice, not hand out more favors for more artificially created protected groups.
Eric Hines
I think the comments on bicycle clothing were made in jest. You doth protesteth too much.
I’m a casual bicycle rider, and only recently started riding again. I drive a mountain bike with fat tires. In the dense urban parts of Alaska there are a moderate amount of sidewalks and bike paths to go along with the roads. Nothing like the Pacific Northwest, (e.g. Seattle), though.
In Fairbanks, hard core bicyclists here do complain about the drivers. For awhile there was one guy who had organized slowdowns where bicyclists obstruct a busy road to make their point. The local paper editorialized against it, and after a few weeks of this, finally published, on their front page, a car running into such a protest with bicyclists and bikes flying all over the place. I don’t think the event they were showing occurred in the U.S. Anyway, the protests stopped. I think they figured that all it took was one wacko, and that Fairbanks has some.
Fairbanks, like a lot of Alaska, has a problem with people with revoked licenses still driving. They often are people at the bottom of the economic scale who have little else to lose.
That picture was bound to give someone some ideas.
One hard core bicyclist told me he first came to the state with an attitude, which he displayed on the streets. Then a friend told him that Alaska has a lot of people who are armed. That sobered him up.
On the bicycle touring list we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the clothing. One of the disadvantages noted by many is they sometimes make interactions with people along the way more difficult.
Also, many bicyclers have noticed that they seem to get a lot more respect from motorists when they are traveling with panniers. We speculate that it gives them an aura of seriousness that other riders don’t have. Even when I’m not touring I ride with one pannier that has all my rain clothing, extra tools, tire pump, spare tubes, lunch, etc. That way I don’t have to decide what to take with me. Maybe that’s why I get along well with motorized traffic – for the most part.
I don’t have a good side-view photo of my touring rig, but there is a three-quarter view here.
CaptainPower, the speed limits on roads are set by the county. They determine what speeds are appropropriate for motor vehicles based on the safety of the drivers as well as those who may live adjacent to the roads. A 30 MPH speed limits is the law on that road. There is no justification for the behavior of drivers who exceed that limit by more than 20 MPH in order to pass me on that road.
Al Sparks, I will assume your comments on my statement about cycling clothing is also meant in humor. However, I do get tired of hearing comments by non-cyclists about the gear I wear. In truth, I get tired of people feeling the need to judge the choices of anyone which do not directly effect them. I no longer race, but all of my rides are training rides at output level I used to maintain when I was racing. Being appropriately attired for the sport is as important as being appropriately attired for any activity at which you participate on a professional or near professional level. One could play baseball or football in jeans and tee shirt, but wearing the appropriate attire for the sport allows you the physical freedom to move at your greatest efficiency, and, in the case of football, provides a measure of safety that most intelligent people consider appropriate. Cycling is no different.
In what state? Here in Michigan there are U.S. highways, state highways, county roads, and township roads, to say nothing of city streets. These categories aren’t quite that distinct, because I know of one county in which the county highway department takes care of state highways, and the financial responsibility for paved township roads is split 70/30 between township and county. But the United States has been known to pressure states regarding speed limits on state roads, and states have been known to resist that pressure. It can be complicated. I don’t know of any place where the county sets the speed limits on state roads, but given all the other complications I’d hesitate to say it doesn’t happen. Hence my question.
When I quit wearing a helmet for a few years as a protest against the safety-mania of the Clinton administration, I’d get all sorts of unsolicited criticisms from people. It’s a character building exercise to learn to ignore them. And it’s good for these people to learn to be ignored.
Al Sparks, I ride a 15 pound BMC Team Machine and, likely, travel at double the speed you do on your panniered bike. We ride with different purposes in mind. I do not see that having panniers on your bike entitles you to any more respect than anyone else on the road. You are vehicle like all other vehicles.
California, as I understand it, has a law requiring drivers to give bicycles a 4′ clearance when passing. That seems a reasonable measure. Even when riding in the shoulder where it is possible to do so, I have had drivers pass me close enough that I was nearly hit by their mirrors.
As a racer I learned the essential skill of maintaining a line. It has always been my assumption that that is the safest way to ride the road. If a rider maintains a predictable line, a driver can make appropriate allowances for that rider and pass safely. There are obviously far more unskilled, untrained riders out there, and, unfortunately, all of us end up being targets because of them.