Boy, howdy, isn’t THAT the truth!

Not long ago, I was sitting at my outside favorite Starbucks, discussing this very subject with a fellow who owns a regional transport company and one of his drivers.

Since my bicycle was parked right behind our table, the conversation worked its way around to the point where the driver said the classic “I don’t understand why we should spend money on bicycle stuff when we need to spend it on better roads and bicyclists don’t pay for the roads!”

I was going to launch into my regular response to that:

“I have FOUR cars and FOUR bicycles; I figure I pay my fair share. Besides bicyclists DO pay for the local roads they use if they buy ANYTHING and pay ANY sales tax.”

But the company owner beat me to the punch. He wagged his finger at his employee, shook his head and said “No, no. If we could get more people on bicycles on a regular basis, the money we’d ALL save on repairing roads, and the money the company would save on truck repairs (from bad roads), would more than offset the cost of trying to license bicycles.”

I kept my mouth shut.

In fact, the guy on the bike was sympathetic to the need for bike lanes, and he noted that he beat the Fox truck negotiating NYC traffic.

The anchors made it abundantly clear that they would not be caught dead on the bicycle, but that’s standard fare for local TV news.

The whole “war on cars” framing portrays the issue as a zero sum conflict–when it’s neither zero sum, nor necessarily a conflict.

You can create the perception of a conflict when you focus only on the costs, and not on the benefits.

In this case, the “cost” to drivers is that they have to adapt to the presence of cyclists and cycling infrastructure.

The individual and collective benefits of cycling have been listed innumerable times, so I won’t repeat them here. If NYC achieves it’s goals for increasing bike use, motorists will hardly regard it as cycling prevailing in a “war.” On the contrary, motorists will be the beneficiaries of reduced traffic.

But to be fair, one can’t ignore the mood that is sweeping the nation that cars = CO2 = “evil”. I’m sure that’s what Fox is (over)reacting to. To the average American, car = freedom (look at LA). We just need to politely teach our fellow Americans who like to watch Fox News that in places like NY and SF, bicycle = freedom.

This whole, “some might say” device is just a tactic to thinly veil the opinion of the reporter and/or the network. It means, “We–this so-called news organization–are saying there’s a war on cars, and we want our viewers to perceive this issue through that frame.”

The talking heads seemed very impressed that the reporter could do two things at once (bike and talk). Heck, if you can’t do two things at once, should you feel qualified to operate a motorized three-ton metal box through any area populated by cyclists and pedestrians? Seems downright irresponsible.

Where in the heck do they get this “War on cars” stuff? How in world do MOTORISTS become some sort of victims in this controversy?

Oh … wait … I get it: this is FOX news; blind supporters of anti-bicycle Super Righties (“REAL men drive 5 mpg SUV’s”) everywhere.

I wanted to grab that clown who was whining about the bicyclist who rode by, and wasn’t in the bike lane, spin him around, press his nose up against the delivery truck which was parked in the bike lane behind him and say “LOOK! Pinhead! YOU try to defy the Laws of Physics and occupy this space at the same time as this truck!”