Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Possibly the dumbest thing I've ever read

This is ridiculous!!! And a judge agreed with their arguement. No wonder it's a joke that Bin Laden has offered to surrender on the condition that he's tried in a California court. I thought that San Fran was a hip and progressive city???


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121919354756955249.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I ride a bike, I am a terrorist.

God help the rest of America if even SF goes backwards like this.

Thank God I live in Portland.

Now I really have seen it all.
When I lived in SF I did note that it is
rather smug about its political correctness
but his logic is totally flawed. Having
better bike infrastructure and separating
cars and bikes will make the traffic flow
for each smoother. WTF. Facts?
He has none. Someone please kick
him off the bridge, or maybe Coit Tower.

He's old. He might die soon or some insane SF bike advocate will assassinate him.

The latter is more likely than most people think.
Kool aid down there is good.

It could happen and similar has.

Maybe dude gets in a car accident and either denounces his former ways or just gets disabled to the point where no one wants to listen to him andhe loses all credibility.

so i definitely don't agree with the guy, but his logic is based on actuality. the more idling and the more deceleration, the more pollution. if you separate car streets and bike streets you can quit it but san fran isn't exactly a simple landscape for that kind of solution.

Wow.

what if you can tarckstand like a mastAr?

so i definitely don't agree with the guy, but his logic is based on actuality. the more idling and the more deceleration, the more pollution. if you separate car streets and bike streets you can quit it but san fran isn't exactly a simple landscape for that kind of solution.

You crack monkey...youre missing the point and so is the old guy in SF.
The idea ISN'T that more and more people are riding bikes and the same amount are still driving cars. The idea is to get more and more people on bikes and out of ****ing cars and then there is less traffic, less congestion over all, and less pollution.
This old **** probably never rode a bike since 1961 and is pissed that he might loose some right like ******* smokers whine about not being able to smoke in Denny's.

enough people will have to ride bikes and decrease the amount of car traffic to offset the cars that idle or speed up and slow down more, if that even happens. i'm just highlighting the science behind his skewed view so that people don't overlook it.

the point that you're missing is that you have to do it right, otherwise biking won't be as safe as it should be and emissions won't be decreased as much as they could be.

the point that you're missing is that you have to do it right, otherwise biking won't be as safe as it should be and emissions won't be decreased as much as they could be.

Im not missing that point. That part is common sense. Everyone knows that ****. That's like saying promoting healthy eating will damage the funeral home business so we should encourage people to eat more garbage so theyll keep dying from heart disease.
Its a useless point.
Just promote more bike riding and good will come in the end.
Not everything is easy.

More bike lanes can't possibly slow down traffic that much more.

The bike lanes don't have to take up half the road. Just 3 feet in width is plenty to make riding a littler safer, encouraging more people to get on the bikes and leave their cars at home.

It is when cyclists ride WITHOUT the bike lanes that potentially slows down traffic, as cars have no dividing lanes and tend to be surprised by cyclists and must figure out how to get around the riders. Most people need to follow lines, need to be told what to do, etc. There will always be cyclists; bike lanes will bring more organization to traffic flow.

Old people shouldn't be allowed to blog! It seems like a lot of the problems stem from close-minded thinking that usually comes from someone too old to connect with the current world. Either that or they're just A**holes!

You crack monkey...youre missing the point and so is the old guy in SF.
The idea ISN'T that more and more people are riding bikes and the same amount are still driving cars. The idea is to get more and more people on bikes and out of ****ing cars and then there is less traffic, less congestion over all, and less pollution.

No you missed the point.

His argument is based on the assumption that more bike infrastructure will not decrease motor vehicle use much. Even a 100fold increase in the number of bike commuting trips is only a tiny decrease in the number of car commuting trips.

It's a reasonable question to ask even I think bike infrastructure should be increased regardless of the answer.

In isolated cases, he kinda has a point.

For instance, in Toronto, some new bike lanes were recently installed in my girlfriend's old neighbourhood, a neighbourhood in the vice-like grips of Italian and Portugeuse car culture. On her old street, for instance, her parents are the only people left who still have a tree in their front yard, everyone else paved over their yards to make room for, you guessed it, more cars.

Now, with one fewer car lane, it's completely gridlocked. A total disaster.

Maybe the city thought they would encourage the car-crazy neighbourhood to ride their bikes more often if the infrastructure was there. I hope they're not that stupid. Maybe they purposely picked a neighbourhood where bike lanes would be a disaster to engender hostility towards bicycle advocacy to avoid having to create more bike lanes where we really need them. I hope they're not that evil.

I'm all for bike lanes, but we have to be smart about it.

This guy is still a total ass, though. I hope he dies soon.

No you missed the point.

His argument is based on the assumption that more bike infrastructure will not decrease motor vehicle use much. Even a 100fold increase in the number of bike commuting trips is only a tiny decrease in the number of car commuting trips.

It's a reasonable question to ask even I think bike infrastructure should be increased regardless of the answer.

No I didnt miss that. As I said, that part is common sense and just stupid to consider if one really cares about air pollution (like this old ass pretends to).
Reminds me of the offshore oil drilling argument as a stupid answer to high gas prices.

Wasn't there supposed to be some earthquake that was supposed to drop SF into the sea? Is there anything we can do to help with that?

so i definitely don't agree with the guy, but his logic is based on actuality. the more idling and the more deceleration, the more pollution. if you separate car streets and bike streets you can quit it but san fran isn't exactly a simple landscape for that kind of solution.

sure, but where are your facts linking better bike infrastructure and more bike usage to more congestion
among automobile drivers? seems to me like good infrastructure and more bike usage means
fewer cars AND more congestion because bikes and cars won't be using the same pathway
at different speeds.

?

???

No I didnt miss that. As I said, that part is common sense and just stupid to consider if one really cares about air pollution (like this old ass pretends to).

Shall I count the fallacies?

Westlaw doesn't have the decision for the case--
unpublished at the superior court level. Maybe
removing car infrastructure would result in temporary
environmental impacts related to congestion--
which could be significant under Cal. law. I still
hold that in the long term incentivizing cycling
is better but these ******s probably effectively
killed the implementation by raising the spectre
of potential impacts. What a total misuse of the law
even if it meets the letter--not the intent.

Westlaw doesn't have the decision for the case--
unpublished at the superior court level. Maybe
removing car infrastructure would result in temporary
environmental impacts related to congestion--
which could be significant under Cal. law. I still
hold that in the long term incentivizing cycling
is better but these ******s probably effectively
killed the implementation by raising the spectre
of potential impacts. What a total misuse of the law
even if it meets the letter--not the intent.

That's exactly how i feel. :(

That made as much sense to me as the Ms. Alabama trying to answer a question.

I wonder if he realizes, more people commuting on bike = less cars on the road? Hmmm...

I can't find the images, but somewhere on BF are images of a street showing how getting people out of cars and onto bikes (or as pedestrians) allows that same amount of people to take up much less of the street. It should make intuitive sense as bikes are smaller than cars...

Getting people out of cars and into dedicated bike lanes will decrease the congestion of the roads IFF enough people use the bike lanes to make up for the decreased car lanes. That's why it's important for urban planners to carefully choose the locations of bike lanes in any city.

I hate it when people latch on to one effect of a cause and ignore the other effects or fail to weight them properly. Granted I had to do a bit of that in this post but I wanted to keep it brief.

This is ridiculous!!! And a judge agreed with their arguement. No wonder it's a joke that Bin Laden has offered to surrender on the condition that he's tried in a California court. I thought that San Fran was a hip and progressive city???


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121919354756955249.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I live in the area and this is really old news. But it seems people are missing the point.

The judge did not agree that idling cars make pollution. The judge stopped the project because our county requires environmental review on projects and NO REVIEW AT ALL WAS DONE. The city took the risk not to do one (because the case seemed obvious!), and Rob Anderson caught them with their pants down.

It is easy to wail about the ridiculousness of such a decision, but we take environmental review very seriously in California. If you notice, there is extremely little oceanfront building outside of Malibu, and our waterfront and wetlands tend to improve over time - at least around the Bay Area.

You could argue that the project was so worthy that it should not be subject to environmental review, but no one wants to open that can of worms. You do, and the next mega-power project or freeway that comes through says that they also want expedited review, and I assure you the vast majority of building projects are not bike lanes and wind farms.

So Mr. Anderson is a dick - and on the dole, which cracks me up. He is exposing the most irritating part of our legal system. But don't misinterpret what happened. Environmental review is a worthy process, and it was skipped. He called the city out, and the city will get it done.

But don't wish that the city could just ram projects through. That would be way, way worse.

. . . and NO REVIEW AT ALL WAS DONE. The city took the risk not to do one (because the case seemed obvious!), and Rob Anderson caught them with their pants down.


Rob Anderson most likely manufactured the specter of impacts in such a way that the City
wasn't able to use available exemptions to environmental review. The applicable statute
is the California Environmental Quality Act. It has several categories of projects that are
totally exempt from more than cursory review (see below).

A lead agency's use of a cat-ex can be overturned
where the potential for environmental impacts is demonstrated. Like any administrative
review process this can be abused. I fail to see a good policy or factual reason why
creating more bike lanes and bike infrastructure shouldn't be a cat-ex but what do I know,
I practice law and work with CEQA every day. I could argue on Anderson's side if I was paid
to but it is inconsistent with my values, and the underlying goal of CEQA which is to
try to encourage stewardship of the environment. Transparent agency decision making is a goal
as well, but this can be twisted to turn good projects into paper tigers that never get implemented.
Conjuring up impacts to force a good project into lengthy review is more about able lawyering not
the purpose of CEQA.

BTW I totally agree the city shouldn't be allowed to ram projects through. I just think the particular
project was a good one that overall had a minimal impact on the environment.

http://ceres.ca.gov/topic/env_law/ceqa/guidelines/15300-15333_web.pdf