Life sometimes imitates life.
There are people who approve of my obsession for bicycling;
“Good for your health.” You know, someone my age and all. It is good for my
health and even people who are not my age. Their approval of bicycling follows
a different route when it comes to bike paths.
Locally, the conflict appears regarding two separate paths.
City planners have put forth the idea of maintaining a current in-town street
as configured or eliminating the curbside lane and making it a bicycle lane.
Opposition to creating a dedicated bike lane has taken many forms and
arguments. One assertion is that drivers pay large sums of money to build and
maintain roads and should therefore be given the most suitable design. Another
argument says that people are too attached to their cars and having more bike
paths isn’t going to get people on bikes.
The tax on gasoline in Florida ranges from $0.274 to $0.0355
per gallon. My contribution, there fore is zero. I paid nothing for the same
trip. Of course, I do manage to save a gallon of gasoline at the current cost
of $3 something each.
My oft faulty logic tells me that I have a net positive in
the equation. Perhaps non-recreational riders could offer the fuel we save to
specific drivers. <shrug> Might be a few details needing to be worked out
first.
Just a silly rambling . . .
The other place where a conflict has arisen is in the
planning and construction of a bike path using the existing right of way
through a tony neighborhood. Resistance has come from the residents who seem to
believe that a bike path will open their community to an influx of bands of bad
people on Huffy and Roadmaster, fully suspended, mountain bikes and dedicated
to defacing and vandalizing their tranquil Village.
It is their position that a bike path already exists and an
additional or replacement path is unneeded or redundant. There is an
inconsistency in this assertion. The existing bike path is clearly designated
as being for the use of the community’s residents and their guests.
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