Bikes Move People too

This is a letter to the editor in response to:

http://www.thesuburban.com/opinion/editorials/no-to-a-congestion-tax/article_f9ed205a-2475-5336-9b90-4eea8914d2f3.html

Dear Editor,

Bikes move people too, and they do it cheaper, more sustainably, and with better health outcomes than cars do.  I pay my taxes and I want infrastructure for my transportation needs, and those needs include cycling.  No one said ´we have too much parking, so lets build Bixi stands and bike paths´. Before they were built, parking was already a problem.  We are spending billions on roads for cars while it is well established that Building Roads makes Traffic Worse

My taxes pay for things like 1.5 billion dollar Turcot interchange (without a cycling bridge over an eight lane highway), another 1.5 Billion dollars on highway 30 (cannot cross the St. Lawrence River by bike, 20 km. detour)  I have to cycle against traffic on highway 20 in Dorion because the bike path just ends at the end of the bridge, and that is the only way off the island to the west because the other bridge doesn´t allow bikes at all.  How about ensuring that bikes can use or at least cross these multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects?

Cycling is supposedly about 2% of trips, cycling infrastructure should be funded to say 2% of infrastructure, just as a matter of fairness to people who choose that mode of transport.  

Currrent funding isn´t even a tiny fraction of that amount, and and you´re blaming what little there is as ¨THE problem¨?  Cities do bike paths because, compared to highways and subways, they are cheap, and there is a huge deficit of cycling infrastructure, so it is really obviously popular.

It is widely understood and accepted that getting people to take more trips by bike is a good thing. Cycling is getting more popular, but it isn´t anywhere near as popular as it is in Europe.  Why is that?  Well, biking is far more dangerous here because of the lack of bike roads, and the inattention and illegal behaviour of drivers.  20% of bike commuters experience a traumatic event each year.  I personally know several people who either stopped biking because they got hit by a car, or ceased being brave enough after a sufficient number of close calls.   

As someone who sometimes commutes to work by bike,  I am often (almost literally) struck by how terrifyingly  thoughtless and uncaring some drivers are.  They whiz past me with 3000 lb vehicle at 60 km/h in a 50 km/h zone with inches to spare to avoid using the other lane when they clearly have no room and therefore no legal right to do so, and honk if I take the lane to discourage them from risking my entire life for 10 seconds of theirs.  While a large majority of drivers are conscientious, it only takes one in a hundred to meet a bad apple regularly during commutes.  When there is an accident, it is the cyclist that suffers serious injuries, never the driver. Proper bike infrastructure, separating cyclists and automobiles is the most straight-forward way to to improve bike safety and encourage people to use bikes.

The revenue from any congestion tax is over 99% about paying for roads for cars. That awful example of government waste, Bixi, has lost 60 million $ over ten years… less than 6 million a year, or less than the cost of 1 km. of roadway. While I wish you well in your anti-tax quest, blaming bike infrastructure when it is a completely negligeable amount on the balance sheet is just arrant idiocy that undermines your credibility utterly.