The Chris Moeller Archives

Sharing the road

The rights and responsibilities of bicyclists is an increasingly popular topic. In Des Moines, the city council recently approved a plan to add bicycle lanes along Ingersoll Avenue (near my home) over the objections of some of the commercial-area business owners who believe the change will hit them in their pocketbooks.

It leaves me stumped personally as to how the mostly-sandwich and coffee shops and retail clothing stores could lose business by making the thoroughfare more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly, while re-routing to the parallel-running Grand Avenue the race cars bound for the suburbs who currently use Ingersoll as a major east and westbound artery but would sooner have their tires punctured by city toughs than stop and browse retail along the urban corridor. Besides, green and sustainable urban development has been routinely found to benefit everyone in the community, unless, that is, you'd prefer to buy property in Jacksonville, Birmingham, or Houston than Portland, Seattle, or Burlington, Vermont.

I look forward to the boom in bicycle traffic and "bicycle people" in this nearby neighborhood, but it will be important for the bicyclists to remember that with their rights come responsibilites in sharing the road with motorists. While it's true, as many bicycle-rights advocates claim, that traffic laws came into existence solely because of motor vehicles (if we were all still on bicycles, they argue correctly, we would have no need for traffic laws), and while I feel that we're generally overregulated on the roads and that most law enforcement efforts seem to be directed directly and disproportionately at fining me and sending me back to "anger management" traffic safety class in December for excessive vehicle speed along wide-open, rural highways, it is imperative that bicyclists follow the very same rules of the road as cars and trucks, particularly in the city, where we're piled on top of each other like rats. Stop signs mean stop signs for all, and respect for the traffic laws by bicyclists will drastically increase the respect that motorists have for bicyclists as well.

Perhaps the greatest change that will evolve from increased bicyclists on the road is that we'll pare down the total number of laws in the current glut. Many are vehicle-centric, such as the law that says you have to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Much of the opposition to bike paths and bike lanes now seems to be centered on the proposition that bicycling is a frivolous activity engaged in mostly by tree-huggers, rather than the much-needed commitment to global sustainability that's going to be required to keep humanity afloat for generations to come. The goal should be the enaction of common-sense traffic laws that protect all road consumers regardless of the mode of transportation, as well as the abandonment of laws, like speed limits, that are almost universally flaunted, disrespected, and disregarded, and that serve instead to turn a nation of well-meaning, tax-paying citizens into incidental criminals forced to spend eight hours over two evenings in early December imprisoned in a community college classroom with a scruffy, middle-aged psych professor and a group of teenage derelicts.

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Pretty soon everyone will have a cell phone (and we won't need people to sell them). Pew Research has found that 85 percent of Americans now own at least one of the mobile communications devices. The widespread use of the technology has reached this extraordinary height after only 20 years on the market, catching on faster than cable TV or personal computers. But there are still a few hold-outs.

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New Jersey rock band Bon Jovi has been given the honor of performing the first concert in the history of the new Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band were passed over, having been the last act (and the final 5 shows) in the outgoing Giants Stadium in the same Meadowlands Sports Complex earlier this month. (Springsteen even wrote a song about the old girl.) The Deadspin sports website drops a little science on all of us in breaking down the conflict between Bon Jovi and Springsteen: Who does deserve this highest of honors?

posted by CM @ 12:05 PM