San Francisco Forced to Prove Bikes are Environmentally Friendly

guest — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:59:54 GMT

The Wall Street Journal has reported on the proverbial stick in the spokes of San Francisco's efforts to move forward with a thorough bike plan that seeks to boost ridership by 10 percent by 2010.

Phred Dvorak's article reveals that Rob Anderson's lawsuit has forced the city to perform an expensive and time-consuming environmental impact review of the bike plan, which totals 527 pages and offers comprehensive maps, traffic analyses, and bike lane and bike rack proposals.

Writes Dvorak:

Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, (Anderson) 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.

Huh? The bicycle fantasy? But Anderson isn't done ranting about cyclists:

"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.

Anderson, who Dvorak reports hasn't owned a car in 20 years, is even planning to run for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors in November.

So as major cities such as New York , Chicago and Boston continue to make transportation by bike more feasible and safe, the usually progressive City by the Bay struggles under the bureaucracy required when one man demands that human-powered machines prove their environmental worth.

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San Francisco Forced to Prove Bikes are Environmentally Friendly