San Francisco Ponders: Could Bike Lanes Cause Pollution?

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

San Francisco Ponders: Could Bike Lanes Cause Pollution?
City Backpedals on a Cycling Plan After Mr. Anderson Goes to Court
By PHRED DVORAK
August 20, 2008; Page A1

SAN FRANCISCO -- New York is wooing cyclists with chartreuse bike lanes. Chicago is spending nearly $1 million for double-decker bicycle parking. San Francisco can't even install new bike racks. Blame Rob Anderson. At a time when most other cities are encouraging biking as green transport, the 65-year-old local gadfly has stymied cycling-support efforts here by arguing that urban bicycle boosting could actually be bad for the environment. That's put the brakes on everything from new bike lanes to bike racks while the city works on an environmental-impact report.

(snip)

"We're the ones keeping emissions from the air!" shouted Leah Shahum, executive director of the 10,000-strong San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, at a July 21 protest. Mr. Anderson disagrees. Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It's an "attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy," he wrote in his blog this month.


(snip)

That year Mr. Anderson, who mostly lives off a small government stipend he receives for caring for his 92-year-old mother, also started a blog, digging into local politics with gusto. One of his first targets: the city's most ambitious bike plan to date. Unveiled in 2004, the 527-page document was filled with maps, traffic analyses and a list of roughly 240 locations where the city hoped to make cycling easier. The plan called for more bike lanes, better bike parking and a boost in cycling to 10% of the city's total trips by 2010. The plan irked Mr. Anderson. Having not owned a car in 20 years, he says he has had several near misses with bikers roaring through crosswalks and red lights, and sees bicycles as dangerous and impractical for car-centric American cities. Mr. Anderson was also bugged by what he describes as the holier-than-thou attitude typified by Critical Mass, a monthly gathering of bikers who coast through the city, snarling traffic for hours. "The behavior of the bike people on city streets is always annoying," he says. "This 'Get out of my way, I'm not burning fossil fuels.' "


In February 2005, Mr. Anderson showed up at a planning commission meeting. If San Francisco was going to take away parking spaces and car lanes, he argued, it had better do an environmental-impact review first. When the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the review, Mr. Anderson sued in state court, enlisting his friend Mary Miles, a former postal worker, cartoonist and Anderson Valley Advertiser colleague. Ms. Miles, who was admitted to the California bar in 2004 at age 57, proved a pugnacious litigator. She sought to kill the initial brief from San Francisco's lawyers after it exceeded the accepted length by a page. She objected when the city attorney described Mr. Anderson's advocacy group, the Coalition for Adequate Review, as CAR in their documents. (It's C-FAR.) She also convinced the court to review key planning documents over the city's objections.

In November 2006, a California Superior Court judge rejected San Francisco's contention that it didn't need an environmental review and ordered San Francisco to stop all bike-plan activity until it completed the review. Since then, San Francisco has pedaled very slowly. City planners say they're being extra careful with their environmental study, in hopes that Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles won't challenge it. Planners don't expect the study will be done for another year.

(snip)

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121919354756955249.html (subscription)

[phantom power]

1. "Cars will always vastly outnumber bikes." Hmmm...

Check your assumptions, Mr. Anderson.

[NJmaverick]

2. I guess one determined asshole

can make it hell for a million + people. Amazing and sad all at the same time.

[Throd]

4. Welcome to modern America n/t

[ZombieHorde]

3. Montana has bike lanes, I think that they are great.

[TahitiNut]

5. While I agree when it comes to "diamond lanes," I don't for bicycle lanes.

Diamond lanes are "chauffeur lanes" ... cramming the remaining traffic into less space and disrupting it more with diamond lane drivers merging and exiting. Keeping cars on the roads longer merely increases gasoline consumption. Where the alternative is NO CAR AT ALL (i.e. a bicycle) the net is far, far better.

[gratuitous]

6. This crank is sure garnering a lot of attention

Even on the local news here in Portland, they devoted a couple of minutes to this crackpot. To their credit, the station also talked to a professor of urban planning, who described Anderson's theories as so much poppycock, but just to air this buffoonery lends it a credence it doesn't deserve.

Yet he can hold up an entire city with unsubstantiated nonsense.

[AZ Criminal JD]

7. Good for him

Anderson is a man of principle which is more than some on this site can say. He served time in prison for refusing to cooperate with the draft during the Vietnam War. How many on this board can say they would do something like that? He is correct that bicycles can create many problems. I see them daily run though red lights, zigging and zagging around oncoming traffic. They will go as close as they can to people walking in a cross walk. Typical elitists who think the world is meant to serve them.

[tkmorris]

8. Bicyclists are Elitists?

I.... I really don't know what to say to this one. Your perspective puzzles me, I can only assume that some personal event has influenced you in ways that are not apparent against bicyclists.

[bean fidhleir]

9. No, he's right - about some cyclists. There are plenty who really are elitists

I see them all the time. They're generally the ones with the flash spandex and expensive bikes, zooming along as though the world will end if they get to their destination five minutes late.

Edit: which isn't to day I agree with whatsizname. I'm glad there are still people willing to stand up for what they think is right. Pity so many of them seem to be self-centered windbags who only come down on the right side of an issue (e.g. VN) by accident!

[question everything]

11. Cyclists have to obey traffic laws like everyone else

and should be ticketed if they break them.

However, if given their own lanes, then cars and pedestrians should not be crowded out.

And... when it comes down to it, a flesh and blood cyclists will always lose against hundreds of pounds of metal.

[bean fidhleir]

13. Yes, as a committed utility cyclist I'm well aware. I've also can't

count the number of times I've sat there at a light and had some putz in spandex and speedhead helmet whip by me through the light on his (it always seems to be "his") Waterford or Sachs as though he were competing in the Tour de France.

[tkmorris]

18. Well, sure

But the same could be said about certain drivers of cars, or of some truckers, or of just about any group you'd care to name. That doesn't change the fact that bicycling deserves support for a whole flotilla of reasons, especially in urban environments like San Francisco. A great number of the issues people have with cyclists stem from city planning trying to force bicycles and automobiles to share the exact same piece of real estate on the road. It is an inherently unbalanced equation, which results in far too many accidents.

The proposals the city is considering would go a long way towards alleviating these problems, and should not be opposed just because there are a handful of morons doing their 5 mile commute to work on $3000 carbon fiber racing bikes with Ultegra drivetrains and imported Italian saddles, dreaming they are Lance Armstrong on a mountainside in France while blowing through red lights and terrorizing pedestrians. I hate these assholes as much as anyone believe me, but that shouldn't result in me having to share the same asphalt with an Escalade while I pedal my battered ParkPre with the busted front derailleur to the local grocery store.

[bean fidhleir]

22. I agree with you, of course! My response to your earlier post was only because it

read to me as though you were denying the existence of elitist arseholes who ride bikes.

How sad and effed up is the idea that maybe the only people left willing to take a risk, be obnoxious, and push til the bitter end are the self-centered ego-trippers with so little sense of fitness that they'll happily oppose the constructive good?

[EFerrari]

19. How does someone who seems to ride an expensive bike become an elitist?

:shrug:

Did they get off the bike and tell you that only people in their class should ride expensive bikes?

That word sure gets thrown around a lot.

"Elitist" doesn't mean "people who own expensive things".

[bean fidhleir]

20. You have it backwards. It's the elitists who make sure they have expensive everything

It's part of showing that they're better than us.

It's like JSMill's comment about conservative views and stupidity.

[EFerrari]

21. Owning expensive things can be a demonstration of a viewpoint

but it isn't proof of that viewpoint.

My mom owns some nice things and she's the least elitist type I've ever met in my life. But it looks like you'd think differently if you saw her bike. :)

[bean fidhleir]

29. You're STILL getting it backwards!

I'm saying the expensive goods come from the elite attitude. All humans are mortal, but Felix being mortal doesn't mean Felix is human.

[EFerrari]

31. Well, no. Sometimes those things come from hard work, bean.

They have nothing to do with hating other people. :)

[bean fidhleir]

33. Are you making a joke and I'm just too dull-witted to get it?

Or do you really not grasp the point of my Felix example?

[EFerrari]

35. No, I am giving you a counter example. n/t

[bean fidhleir]

38. I find it very hard to talk about something with someone who resolutely ignores what I actually

say in favor of putting words in my mouth.

Humans all die because of being mortal. Mehitabel will eventually die. Is Mehitabel a human?

Elitists who own bicycles all own expensive bicycles. Algernon Braithwaite VIII owns an expensive bicycle. Is Algie an elitist?

[EFerrari]

39. But you cannot prove that elitists who own bikes own expensive bikes.

You resolutely are ignoring your own errors. Please don't give me credit for that.

[bean fidhleir]

43. Why don't you ask tkmorris whether I'm trying to do anything of the kind?

And please, study elementary logic. It's really disrespectful of you to accuse someone of ill intent when you don't have the basic tools to understand even the plainest formal examples.

[EFerrari]

47. I haven't accused you of anything, bean, just pointed out

that your syllogism is flawed.

That's pretty basic.

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. Did the same bellow, he got extremely defensive

By the way, we don't understand logic either.

:-)

[bean fidhleir]

52. My syllogism is not flawed. See whether you can get someone who actually understands logic

to publicly agree with you.

[EFerrari]

55. Okay. Maybe I should do that.

[tkmorris]

23. No, it's not the bike that makes them "elitist"

Plenty of people own expensive bikes who are NOT elitist. However, every elitist bike owner has an expensive bike. I wish I could figure out how to put a Venn diagram in here....

[EFerrari]

28. bean and I have gone around before and I suspect, at cross purposes.

There is very much a class of people here in my town that would ride bikes if it killed blue collar babies coming and going. That's what they do, their lives are sort of constructed around not connecting with other people.

But, when we throw the term "elitist" out like that, it really reminds me of the anti-intellectualism of the right wing "don't think, don't study" people. It is okay to succeed and to have things, imo. It's when you do it at the expense of others irresponsibly that we have a problem on our hands.

So, I guess I'm saying there's a very real difference between people who contribute to our society and who happen to be successful in material terms and people who contribute nothing to or only take from our society and who happen to be successful.

[tkmorris]

36. Oh I agree wholeheartedly

In the interest of being fair though I should point out that Bean wasn't the one to introduce the "elitist" term into the conversation, it was Bamalib. I suspect, at least on this occasion, you, I, and Bean are all in agreement.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. I ride an expensive bike

bought it at a half off sale... so paid less for it than I was willing to spend

It is lighter than its huffy cousin and serves me well

I guess I am an elitist

Oh wait, I don't wear spandex... I'd look silly in it... and my helmet is the most utilitarian one I could get for the best price

But for the bicyclist are elitist crowd... I am one. After all I ride an expensive bike.

Should I tell our friend how much we have ahem, SAVED in gas? Or the fact that I am in the best shape I have been in oh YEARS!

[EFerrari]

30. I bought a bike last winter and my puppy promptly ate

the seat, the pedals and god knows what else. lol

Talk about your badly timed purchases. I was really stupid.

She's got her teeth under control now, and I'm nearly ready to assess the damage and do replacements.

There are nice paths out here on the beach. :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. On the bright side your puppy is over that stage

the parrots still go after books, furniture et al... they just spent fifteen minutes in cage after going after books.

OIF

One of the culprits is 20+ the other is 16+

[EFerrari]

48. I used to call my George and Gracie my paper shredders.

lol

Paper, the blinds, the bookcases. That Gracie was always on the lookout for nesting stuff. Miss them. :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

53. Birds, they have a hell of a personality, don't they?

[bean fidhleir]

32. All humans are mortal, Nadin, but Felix being mortal doesn't mean Felix is human

The group of mortals includes the group human by definition ("all humans..."). But it is not necessarily coextensive with it. The group of mortals might contain non-humans, too, we don't know. So we can't tell from the information whether Felix is a human or a non-human. We don't have enough information.

All elitists own expensive bikes. Algernon Braithwaite VIII owns an expensive bike. Is Algie an elitist?

[EFerrari]

37. Do all elitists own expensive bikes?

You'd think they could have one of their people hail a cab. :P

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. Terrible exercise in logic

I guess it would never enter your little mind that some of us bought a more expensive bike because it has a LIGHTER frame and it will also LAST longer with proper maintenance

Oh and the cost of gas will not enter the equation either I guess.

By the way... what you just did is called a strawman

[bean fidhleir]

44. Why don't you ask tkmorris or someone else who understands logic

whether my example is correct. Alternately, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_undistributed_middle

Don't make yourself look a fool.

[nadinbrzezinski]

45. I understand logic... thank you

And that is a strawman.

[bean fidhleir]

49. You obviously do not understand logic, and it is not a strawman.

See if you can get someone who DOES understand logic to agree with you.

[nadinbrzezinski]

50. If you say so... by the way, using the logic you used... I can call you an elitist too

Gee golly... have a nice life

[bean fidhleir]

54. You think so? Try. Lay it out as a syllogism. You'll flop. But don't take my word for it,

actually do it. Show me I'm wrong. Please!

[KamaAina]

10. Perhaps this dunderhead would prefer to live here in Honolulu

where I discovered, to my chagrin, that it is perfectly legal to ride bikes on the sidewalk, except in certain congested business districts such as downtown and Waikiki.

he says he has had several near misses with bikers roaring through crosswalks and red lights

Pshaw! I've had several near misses with them whizzing past me right on the sidewalk! :grr:

We did pass an initiative to build bike lanes a while back, but they'll be years in the making (sigh).

[dysfunctional press]

12. in chicago, the joggers & rollerbladers feel entitled to the lakefront bike lanes...

and actually get annoyed at the bicyclists who unlike them, have the right to be there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. It is hawaii bra... and there is no public transport on the rest of the Islands

the power of the car selling lobby is unimaginable to most people off the Islands

I suspect the only reason Honolulu has a smidgen of one are the tourists... and you and I know service gets really bad once you get off tourist zone

[Lance_Boyle]

14. there is no question that on rural roads bicyclists create an increase

in emissions from the vehicles that must slow behind them, and then re-accelerate. The two most inefficient things an internal combustion driven vehicle can do are to slow down and to speed up. Bicyclists on rural roads cause more of both, hence contribute more to pollution than by riding off-road, or on bike paths. Nevermind that they haul their pedaltoys out to the rural roads on their behemoth SUCK-UVs...

[question everything]

17. Which is why bike lanes or trails are needed

This way each keeps to his/her own assigned lane - one hopes.

[Lance_Boyle]

25. Depends on your definition of "need"

Nobody commutes by bicycle out here - it is strictly recreational. I'm not certain that the bicyclists' "need" to take their recreation in this particular area is as important as the legitimate need of those of us who live out here to be able to get around without worse than necessary fuel mileage and worse than necessary pollution. Not to mention the increased accident rate that the recreational cyclists cause DIRECTLY (twisty roads, few passing zones, and bicyclists every quarter mile are not conducive to traffic safety).

Having to pass one bicyclist is nothing. Having to pass 2 or 3 is a PITA. Having to pass twenty or more individual bicyclists and packs of bicyclists (who seem terribly averse to the idea of "sharing the road" by at least riding single-file) in a fifteen mile stretch is downright ass-ridiculous.

Now, if they had to be LICENSED to ride these roads, and if the bike lanes/paths were funded through that licensure program, I could get behind the idea. But enforcement would be needed. Our local sheriff, for instance, won't even cite the organizers of bicycle races on our rural county roads for parading without a permit, and they place (unlawful) flagmen at intersections to hold traffic for 20 minutes or more!

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Funny, you just made the case of WHY you need those lanes

and paths....

Now you seem to have a problem with outsiders coming to your area of the world...

And yes some folks are a PITA and don't know how to share, but your post just made the case

[Evoman]

34. Yeah, but if you had one person riding a car (speeding and slowing down)

and one on a bike, wouldn't it be better than TWO people riding cars?

[slackmaster]

15. Demanding a critical analysis of a government plan?

HERESY!

[Javaman]

16. This is a prime example of a person with waaaaaaaaay to much time on his hands. nt

[taterguy]

41. You left out the best part of the article

"Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason
Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings -- because they are politically motivated to do so," he wrote in a May 21 post."

I'm sorry but the guy's a nut. People ride bikes for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with politics. And they tend to live much longer than suicide bombers.

[bean fidhleir]

56. No, actually he's right - some do ride for political reasons.

He'd be wrong if he said everyone rides for political reasons, but he was smart enough not to do that.

He's a kook for sure, but not a brainless one.

[DustyJoe]

46. Burrito Power

I could hazard that if the cyclist ate a few Burritos before biking, the major pollution would be methane emissions.