How to **** Off an Arrogant Pedalcyclist

Jim Yanik wrote:
> Autos pay for the roads,bikes do not.
> Autos move more commerce than bikes,too.

My city currently gets $0.00 per litre of gasoline in tax dollars, plus
a whopping $0.00 per car/truck/motorcycle/trailer registered. Yet it
pays for the streets. Some of my property taxes, it would seem, are
doing so.

And while internal combustion engined vehicles (trucks, mainly) do move
a lot of goods, the actual 'commerce' in places like Wall Street, Bay
Street, or The City depends a lot on bicycles.

In article .com>, Brian Huntley wrote:

> And while internal combustion engined vehicles (trucks, mainly) do move
> a lot of goods, the actual 'commerce' in places like Wall Street, Bay
> Street, or The City depends a lot on bicycles.

I wonder if a bicycle messenger using the commerce defense for his
violation of the vehicle code would go over well? I certainly wouldn't
buy that excuse from bicycle messengers any more than I buy it from the
motoring public.

On 17 May 2005 16:12:37 GMT, Jim Yanik > wrote:


>Have a car smack into a bicyclist at speeds 25mph or over and the cyclist
>loses every time. Smack an import into a big SUV or the reverse at 25 mph

Have a semi smack you at 80 from behind and you'll lose every time too.

In article >,
Zoot Katz > wrote:
>Wed, 18 May 2005 12:23:03 -0500,
>,
>(Matthew Russotto) wrote:

>>Not even the planners think they can figure out how to make taking a
>>bus pleasant enough to be an option most people will voluntarily take
>>over driving a car. So instead they try to figure out way to make
>>driving a car even more unpleasant. But the gap is too wide to be
>>bridged that way too.
>
>The more enlightened commuters, who after using rapid transit, wonder
>why they'd not done it before.

Describing a city bus as "rapid transit" is Newspeak.
--
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but certain accounting practices can
result in a fully-depreciated one.

Alex Rodriguez wrote:

> In article >, says...

>>Children are not licensed drivers. A licensed driver is supposed to
>>know the rules of the road and follow them regardless of what type of
>>vehicle he's using. If he's riding a bicycle, he's to ride on the road
>>in the same direction as traffic.

> No license is required to ride a bike.

I know that, but most adult cyclists also have a drivers license.

So you are contending it is OK for you and your wife to
effectively block the sidewalk by walking side-by-side while
ignoring anyone coming from the other direction?

I actually agree that the bike rider was wrong to stare you
down, and that he should have moved over to the road at
least to avoid pedestrians. However, I do have a problem
with people who think it is perfectly OK to walk side by
side down a sidewalk, hallway, store aisle, whatever while
they are talking no matter how much it may inconvenience
people they are meeting, or people behind them that are
moving at a more rapid pace. I have literally stopped on a
sidewalk when meeting groups holding a discussion while
walking and had then walk into me. It seems to me that
people walking in a group feel empowered to consume the
entire width of a path. Don't get be started on the three
and four person wide moving hallway meetings I see at work.

Ed

"Scott en Aztlán" wrote:
>
> My wife and I went for a walk this afternoon. The sidewalk was very
> narrow - only wide enough for my wife and I to walk side by side. As
> we walked, our son (who is away at college) called, so she took the
> call and was talking to him, not really paying attention to what was
> ahead. Presently, an older gentleman riding a bicycle approached from
> ahead of us. When he saw that my wife wasn't paying attention (and
> thus was not going to step aside to let him ride past) he came to a
> stop, then stood there glaring at us. As we passed by, he very
> petulantly began to ring his little thumb-bell repeatedly, as if to
> express his outrage that we didn't get out of his way. I turned to him
> and said "use the bike lane, ****head." Then we walked on, shaking our
> heads in disbelief.
>
> Why do supposedly mature adults think it's OK to ride their bikes on
> the sidewalk? Here's another couple we saw today on our walk:
>
> http://tinypic.com/539poy
>
> There's a perfectly good bike lane (or shoulder, as Brent likes to
> call them) not five feet from these lard-asses, yet they feel the need
> to endanger pedestrians on the sidewalk. Why?!?!?!?
>
> People like these give good, courteous, law-abiding pedalcyclists a
> bad name.
>
> --
> Life is short - drive fast!
> http://www.geocities.com/scottenaztlan/

Zoot Katz wrote:
>
> 17 May 2005 23:05:08 GMT,
> >, scud slave, Jim Yanik
> .>demonstrated its stupidity with this bull****:
>
> >
> >Autos pay for the roads,bikes do not.
>
> Everybody pays for the roads.

Last time I checked, road use taxes (i.e., gas taxes) were
actaully bringing in far more than were being spent on road
construction and repair. The "excess" was being siphoned off
to pay for things like sidewalks, bike paths, landscaping,
and mass transis. Last time I checked, bikes riders pay no
user fees for using roads, bike paths, or sidewalks.

> Autos destroy the roads. Bikes do not.

Big trucks and weather do the most damage. Several local
paths through the woods have been repaved more times than
the adjeacent city streets (although the streets definitely
need it). Despite the lack of cars, the bike paths still
deteriorate. Heck, popular mountian bike trails deteriorate
to the point they have to be rerouted. You can't blame that
on cars. In fact I wonder, don't you suppose that high
pressure bike tires actaully stress the road surface more
than most automobiole tires - at least in localized areas?

> >Autos move more commerce than bikes,too.
>
> Autos require subsides to offset their negative externalities.

OK, so we kill of autos...who's going to pay for your bike
roads? It is going to be hard to ride down the train tracks.


Ed

On Wed, 18 May 2005 16:41:49 -0400, "C. E. White"
> wrote in message >:

>Last time I checked, road use taxes (i.e., gas taxes) were
>actaully bringing in far more than were being spent on road
>construction and repair.

Last time I checked, those were not the only costs.

we have *much* higher road use taxes than you do and they still only
meet the lower end estimates for the costs of private motoring to the
economy. In Leftpondian terms, think in terms of lost tax revenue
from 40,000-odd dead citizens every year.

>Last time I checked, bikes riders pay no
>user fees for using roads, bike paths, or sidewalks.

Last time I checked, pedestrians don't either. It's a reflection of
the fact that some people use the roads by right and others under
licence, and of the fact that motorised traffic requires a
substantially higher grade of road than does human-powered traffic.

And in the UK, it turns out that cyclists are more likely than average
to be house owners, car owners, to earn above average income and pay
higher rates of tax.

We pay our road usage taxes and then leave the car at home. You
should thank us :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Brent P wrote:

> Wrong. On many levels.

> 1) I pay property taxes that cover more than the wear and tear I do
> to most of the roads I ride on.

Most locations don't depend on property taxes to pay for
roads. User fee's in the form of gas taxes are the primary
source of funds for road construction and maintenance. Maybe
if they actually used your property taxes to maintain roads,
they would cover your personal wear and tear on the roads,
but I doubt they cover your share of the maintenance if only
bikes used the roads, and they certainly wouldn't come close
to covering the initial construction cost. Around here,
gasoline tax money is routinely diverted to pay for bike
paths, despite many streets that are in poor condition.

> 2) Bicycles cause so little wear as to be unmeasurable.

Roads deteriorate whether they are used or not. Since bike
riders aren't paying user fee's like car drivers, they
aren't even covering the cost of age related deterioration.
And I am not at all sure the wear is unmeasurable. It might
be unmeasurable for one bike, but how about if there were
thousands of bikes? The pressure exerted by bike tires per
unit area or probably greater than car tires.

> 3) I, like most bicyclists, own motor vehicles. I've paid to use THREE
> motor vehicles on the road. I could recruit two friends to drive the
> other two if I wanted. Instead of taking up the space of three vehicles,
> I take up only the space of a bicycle.

Good for you, but if it wasn't for the cars and user fee
revenue that they generate, you probably would not have the
roads.

>
> > Autos move more commerce than bikes,too.
>
> So you promptly drive into the ditch everytime a semi wants to pass you?

My car can go as fast as a semi, a bicycles can't go as fast
as a car. It is difficult for me to run stop lights and
signs or gutter pass in my car. Cyclist do it all the time.

Ed

Brent P wrote:

> laughable. Bicycles don't require the thick, wide roads. Trucks do.
> Our road requirements are very small and easily covered by the taxes we
> pay. Once upon a time I calculated what a fair registration cost for a
> bicycle would be based on what I pay for my cars. Postage would practically
> double it. That means it would cost more to collect, it would cost
> government money, thusly they do not bother. Now of course you'd suggest
> a punitive tax, because your goal isn't fairness, it's eliminating the
> rights of others to use the road with the vehicle of their choice.

You seem to think that the registration fees pay for roads.
They don't. They pay for the bureaucracy that keeps track of
cars, so that the cars can be taxed by other government
bureaucracies to generate even more revenues to maintain
other bureaucracies. Roads construction and maintenance is
more than funded by gas tax revenues. If you aren't driving
your cars, you aren't paying to build and maintain the
roads. In fact, since many bike paths are actually funded by
siphoning off gas tax revenues, if you aren't driving your
car, you aren't even paying to maintain the bike paths.

Ed