Philadelphia’s Proposed Bike Laws are the Product of Morons.
Dan U-A breaks down Philly’s proposed new bike laws. They are idiotic, developed by two morons, Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney, who obviously haven’t been on a bicycle since they were children:
As we all know by now, Councilmen Kenney and DiCicco have decided that the city needs new laws to regulate bicycles. These proposed regulations include:
1) That not only must you register your bikes- for a 20 dollar fee- but you must have a license plate on that bike;
2) Riding on the sidewalk costs you 300 dollars
3) Riding with headphones costs you 300 dollars
4) Riding without a brake costs you 1000 dollars.
And all of this is in the name of “public safety”. Right. And I read “Hustler” (obviously NSFW) for the articles.
Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, and this is not to excuse two needless deaths and a skull fracture caused by people breaking the law and acting like assholes, but my bet is that the number of car-related fatal collisions is astronomically worse. And as Dan points out, those fines are substantially lower than the fines proposed for bicyclists by Kenney and DiCicco. The fact is that the proposed legislation is an ill-thought out revenue scheme, by two councilmen desperately seeking to refill our practically-bankrupt city’s coffers.
If this was really about public safety, I’d expect to see Mr. Kenney and Mr. DiCicco proposing congestion fees, to reduce the amount of cars in our city. I’d see them proposing an ongoing drunk driving crackdown Thursday through Saturday. I’d see them enforcing the laws we already have, which could probably use a little tweaking, rather than trying to set up absurd new systems rigged to siphon the most money from bicyclists’ pockets.
I have a particular, and qualified, objection to the law against riding the wrong way down a one-way street and believe it should be amended in the following way. On arteries and major thorofares like east-west corridors Pine, Spruce, South, Walnut, Chestnut, and all of the numbered streets, biking against traffic should be illegal and rigorously enforced. But with the exceptions of Spruce and Pine, biking on those streets is treacherous and nervewracking, for bikers and motorists alike! The way a lot of bicyclists, including me, avoid that mess is by using the many side streets and alleys that criss-cross the city. And many of those, to deter motorists, change direction almost every block.
Streets like Naudain, Manning, and Delancey are godsends for bikers and we shouldn’t be penalized for using them. So perhaps council should come up with a bike-specific scheme for one-way streets that takes this into account.
I also have an objection to red light and stop sign rules, again qualified. Because bikes are powered by the rider, they’re most efficient when they keep moving, the same way joggers need to keep running to keep their stride. But unlike joggers, who can run in place at traffic lights, bikes, unless given the option of a rolling stop, must break their pace. And while I certainly don’t endorse launching out into oncoming traffic, if there’s nothing and no one in the bicyclist’s path, I think the Idaho stop, essentially a rolling stop, should be the standard. Bikes aren’t cars and shouldn’t be treated that way.
The same is true for “right on red”. Bikes flow into the traffic stream way more seamlessly than any car could: it’s almost imperceptible. In fact, to further incentivize bicycle commuting, I think bikes should always have right turn on red, even where it’s not permitted for cars.
Of course, in order to understand the common sense of these three proposals, you’d have to, ya know, spend some time on a bicycle in downtown Philadelphia. And it’s pretty clear that neither DiCicco nor Kenney have done that in a looooong time, because they obviously don’t understand the most basic benefits of choosing a bicycle over a car!
Adding “shit-for-brains” on top of stupid, there’s a loophole big enough to ride a bike race through. In order to be affected by the law, you have to be a Philadelphia resident. When you couple this with the fact that, according to a conversation I had with the Philadelphia Police Department last week, there’s no law requiring you to carry any form of photo ID in the city, it seems like it’s pretty easy to evade a ticket. “No officer, I’m just here for the weekend. I’m visiting my cousin who lives in Fishtown, but I’m from Arizona. ID? No, I’m afraid I left all that at the hotel. I’ve heard that Philly has a high crime rate and didn’t want to get mugged.”
So basically, the proposed laws: are based on faulty presumptions; try to tap bicyclists (typically not the wealthiest Philadelphians) as a revenue stream, while giving cars much lighter penalties; undermine the city’s efforts to become “America’s greenest city”; may end up throwing a lot of people out of work; and are probably unworkable anyway.
But then, no one every said Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco were Mensa members. CITY COUNCIL FAIL.
