Free Us From Connecticut’s Bicycle Fascists!

April 3, 2008

The return of spring and its sun, warmth, and vegetation brings long-sought relief for Nutmeggers who hate winter. But the news isn’t all good. Bicyclists start to reappear on Connecticut’s roads around this time. And that means frustration for drivers attempting to safely navigate the winding, hilly, tree-lined roads of our suburbs and rural regions -- i.e., just about every adult resident of the state.

It’s difficult to quantify, but bicyclists (particularly the significant number who defy the state statute that requires them to “ride as near to the right side of the roadway as practicable”) have always posed dangers for themselves and the motorists attempting to maneuver around them. But the days when bike riders were primarily kids creating occasional traffic-safety problems are over. No, adult cyclists with far too much time on their hands have morphed into a hysterical, junk-science-spouting lobby, and nowhere are these twerps -- er, “advocates” -- more active than in Connecticut.

The Nutmeg State bicycle militant exhibits one of the most reliable indicators of the crazed ideologue: a neverending litany of the problems that will be solved, if we only embraced his vision.

“In many cities around the world,” sniffs the Hartford Courant, “residents use less petroleum, enjoy cleaner air and get more exercise by the simple expedient of using bicycles to run errands or get to work.” Richard M. Stowe of the “New Canaan Environmental Group” weeps that “biodiversity collapse, climate change and geopolitical instability” will continue if more people don’t get on bikes. Cycling can help beat the high cost of gas, many activists now opportunistically claim. More “bicycle lanes on bridges” would help stem the steady flow of young adults fleeing the Nutmeg States, claims Courant columnist Rick Green.

Nearly all of these claims crumble under serious scrutiny. For example, free-market environmentalist -- and avid cyclist -- Randal O’Toole observes that Europe does have “bicycle-friendly inner cities, but most European urban areas as a whole are nearly as auto-oriented as Los Angeles.”

Perhaps the grandest whopper cooked up by bicycle ninnies is that their preferred mode of transportation is a viable option for large numbers of commuters. According to the 2000 census, a pathetically small 0.18 percent of Connecticut’s workers commute by bicycle. That’s down a bit from 1990, and less than half the national average. Fifteen times as many Connecticut residents walk to their place of employment than use bikes. (As O’Toole notes, “Telecommuting is growing faster than cycling or transit riding, so if cities could do only one thing to promote less driving, telecommuting would be a better bet than cycling.”)

In a state with sensible elected officials, bicycle cranks would be allowed to exercise their First Amendment right to promote wacky schemes, and then politely ignored. But in the Land of Steadily Unsound Policy Habits, politicians at the municipal, regional, state, and federal levels cater to the cycling cabal, despite its miniscule membership. For example, in the late 1990s, former Rep. Nancy Johnson secured a million-dollar earmark for a bike path in Enfield that resident and taxpayer activist Jack Sheridan reports no one wanted. Connecticut’s cycling lobby has its very own bureaucrat: the “Bicycle & Pedestrian Coordinator” of the Bureau of Policy and Planning of the state’s Department of Transportation. (There’s a “Connecticut Statewide Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan,” of course.) Both state and municipal officials use tax revenue to promote “Bike to Work” days. Last year, West Hartford’s town council unanimously passed “a resolution creating a Bike Task Force and charged the Task Force with developing a Master Plan to make the Town a bike friendly [sic] community.”

During a recent interview on the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters heroically pointed out that only about 60 percent of the revenue from the federal gas tax “actually goes into highway and bridge construction.” The rest, she noted, pays for inefficient transportation pork, including “bike paths.” That’s also the case in Connecticut, which doesn’t have a “bicycle tax” that generates revenue for politicians’ spending on cyclists.

In a culture that’s growing increasingly infantile, it’s no wonder that a childhood activity such as bicycling is embraced by a group of ever-more-shrill adults. But there are good reasons why most of us got off bikes and climbed into cars as quickly as we (legally) could.

A wildly impractical transportation option for a place with the topography, weather, and demographics of Connecticut, bicycling is totally irrelevant to the lives of most Nutmeg State residents. It should play no role in government planning and expenditures, either.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and public-policy researcher. He can be reached at muskacolumn@cox.net.

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