Andy has had a hot potato tossed at him and at all of us. Nobody likes to deal with such. It makes me glad I’m not in the advocacy business.

In response to your reply after my comment, my focus is on getting LAB to effectively fight this mandatory sidepath restriction going forward (including at the Summit), not on blaming staff for not doing enough previously. Still, I’m disappointed that LAB–which claims to represent over 300,000 cyclists–only managed to solicit 14,000 petition signatures opposing this provision.

Steve A and Khal have already explained why a blanket, arbitrary and capricious, bike ban is better for us than one rationalized on the spurious “bicycle safety” criterion of BLOS being lower than B, but I’ll add that this “compromise” ban would have almost no practical difference, compared to the original provision: Hardly any federal-land roadways with a BLOS of A or B have sidepaths, and bicyclists would still have ZERO recourse if the BLOS is C or lower.

Since this bike ban may soon become the law of the land, we should consider how it could most readily be defeated in the courts. A “bike safety” metric publicly endorsed by LAB certainly doesn’t help.

Jeff is plainly wrong to imply that this bike ban would not significantly hurt cycling in the DC area. It would legally prevent the National Park Service (NPS) from reversing its relatively recent and unjustified regulatory bike bans on the Clara Barton Pkwy (which used to be used for weekend time trials) and for the lower-traffic, lower-speed portion of the George Washington Memorial Parkway south of the City of Alexandria. Moreover, it would require the NPS to establish new bike bans on a host of DC-area roads, including Rock Creek & Potomac Parkway, all of Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park, Arlington Memorial Bridge and Memorial Drive, 14th and 15th Sts NW across the National Mall, and Independence and Constitution Avenues NW. It would most definitely impede my routine bike commuting trips into DC.

Once we have prominent and federally mandated bike bans all over our Nation’s Capital, it won’t be long before state legislatures across the U.S. will pass similar legislation.

Allen Muchnick
Arlington VA

2. Censorship on a comment as innocuous as Steve’s would create more blowback to LAB and further the possibility of point one happening.

3. I’ve done it myself, but to be honest, I’m too not sure that politically speaking, cyclists should wrap themselves in the flag of the Indians vs. British or blacks vs. whites, having heard that criticism enough from my Punjabi wife, who has been called names I won’t repeat here. However, being victimized, sometimes violently, is in the eye of the beholder–cyclists are often treated as separate and unequal by motorists and sometimes meet the same fate as other unwelcome minorities. Perhaps the labor movement is a better analogy. An injury to one is an injury to all. Or, perhaps, “The only force that can break the tyrannical rule of bad law is the one big union of all the cyclists” (from an IWW slogan).

keep the rubber side down, folks.

4. One can disagree with LAB on an issue while being part of it. Let’s not create the LAB equivalent of that GOP slur, “RINO”.

Over on John Allen’s site are some examples of where this bill item would hurt us. I think it is a difficult issue and it may well be we can’t fix it entirely and I don’t blame Andy for that–a difference of opinion is not a difference in principle, to quote Jefferson. The lesson here is we have to organize better so this doesn’t happen again.

I am a staunch supporter of cyclists rights to the road and have long opposed MSP and MBL laws. I applaud the League, America Bikes, and Adventure Cycling for standing up to this attack. However, I can only thing of a handful of roads nationally where this will even be an issue. How many federal roads have nearby pathways to begin with? I can only think of a handful nationally and the BLOS is likely high. GIven the contentious status and spending levels of this bill, I can’t imagine a lot of side paths being built along federal land in order to kick cyclists off the road.

In the DC area, which were told caused the problem, there is George Washington and Clara Barton Parkways- where cyclists are already banned from riding- and Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park. Beach Dr. would score highly on a BLOS and local and Parks Police would likely never enforce such a rule.

It is clear you all are simply looking for another reason to needlessly attack the League. Enough already. If you don’t like there work, stop complaining and organize your own group. The overwhelming majority of members and cyclists as a whole support their work .

The advantage is simple. Faced with a civil disobedience campaign, the blanket ban with no recourse will attract far less public support than a more “reasonable” restriction. Further, those that proposed the blanket ban should be revealed for what they are. So voters can act on that knowledge. So far, I have seen no names named.

Ghandi and King both would agree. Neither compromised on the basics…

I wrote to Udall on this–again. Hope he is still sympathetic, but the bottom line is we need more clout in order to fight these insults.

Uh…as for others on this list. Please take my advice at least this once–don’t form a circular firing squad.

As far as why I said such a ban is worse if it is BLOS based? What worries me is that this bill takes the concept of BLOS and viciously turns it against cyclists. I’ve often worried about such blowback. Rather than using BLOS as a planning tool to improve roads that were not built with multimodality in mind, it is here used as a pretext to ban us from roads with a less than optimal BLOS.

So rather than fighting an unjust ban that has no rational need or purpose, the Senators in question can claim that even bicycle planners agree these roads are not all that “safe” compared to riding on paths–but of course paths often have no safety parameters built into them. See John Allen’s examples.

Of course, this isn’t really about safety. Its about congressmen/women and their staffs having to slow down for a bicyclist. Too bad we could not have kept the discussion focused on such selfishness. Perhaps moving this BLOS down to a D or E will be sufficient for the sake of practicality, but until we have the strength to win these battles, we are going to come back with some serious damage and some less than thrilling compromises.

So rather than shooting at each other, I suggest we start hanging together. Or as this vividly demonstrates, Ben Franklin will be right: we will all hang separately.

You are also going to have to wrap your head around the fact that this isn’t a provision that we proposed, instigated, supported, wanted, like, endorse, or have accepted as final. And until you or I are one of the senior Senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee, we’re going to have to work with those who are. Like it or not, supporting the principles of vehicular cycling isn’t on their priority list right now.

Andy