Stu Bykofsky’s Temper Tantrum
Oh dear. Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky is having a temper tantrum about bicycles. Let’s take a look and see if we can count the inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and mistakes in his latest “when-I-was-a-boy-we-ate-wool-and-we-liked-it” freakout.
JUMP ON MY handlebars. Let’s go for a ride.
Almost guaranteed to be a fiction: in all probability, Stu didn’t ride a bike anywhere.
In September, the city surrendered one of two traffic lanes on Spruce and Pine streets in Center City to cyclists.
What kind of a perverted quota system gives 50 percent of any city street – designed for cars – to bikes, which account for 1.2 percent of Philadelphia commuters?
Philadelphia gives all of TWO streets -out of a network of THOUSANDS- this kind of access for bikes. TWO. Stu’s freakout is based on a presumption that cars take precedence over bikes.
Kenney would dramatically hike fines for illegal biking. DiCicco wants bikes to be registered, like cars.
At a time when the city is BROKE, why does Stu want Council to adopt a policy that has been determined to be unworkable, and which has been repealed everywhere it’s been tried? Why is he trying to cost the city money?
Cyclists showed up at City Council howling like scalded dogs. They want nothing changed – except they want more and more of the roadway. What’s needed, they said, is “enforcement.” (Should we actually get enforcement, I predict they will be crying about being “singled out.”)
Lie. We don’t want more and more of the roadway, we want our bike lanes and our access. We don’t want to risk death to bike to work.
Let’s license adult bikers as we do motorists, to assure that they are competent and know the law.
No details about how this is to be accomplished, of course. That’s because it can’t be. You’re talking an enormous new bureaucracy in a state that is fairly hostile to big government. And over at Philly Bike Insurrection’s Facebook page, Su Shulman makes an even better point:
[Y]our definition of parity seems less about equal treatment and responsibilities than about subjecting bikers to laws that were designed to limit the damage that cars bring to a city. Registration, insurance, traffic laws and parking fees were created because cars are dangerous and consume valuable space. Everyone can surely agree, without being accused of having a morally superior attitude, that bikes are significantly less so.
Stu keeps ranting:
Let’s put more on the table. If you want parity with cars, how can you not agree to be insured? Last month two people were killed by cyclists. That was rare, but if we get more cyclists, as seems to be the city’s wet dream, we’ll get more injury and death.
A) Bicyclists don’t need insurance because bicyclists don’t typically kill people. Stu cites two deaths: what he leaves out is the comparison to deaths at the hands of drunk and reckless drivers. This is deliberate, because Stu knows that bikes are way safer than cars when it comes to pedestrians, and he knows that if he showed how many people are run down every day in Philadelphia, he’d look like the disingenuous idiot he is.
B) Many people who bike to work do so not out of preference, but because they can’t afford a car: just ask the immigrants who work in the city’s kitchens. So what Stu is proposing is, in effect, a regressive fee that will affect the poor more than it does anyone else.
C) Stu proves the lie to his claim that he’s “for cars sharing the road with bikes”, with snide remarks like “the city’s wet dream”. if anyone wants “nothing changed”, it’s Bykofsky, who can’t imagine a Philadelphia with fewer cars and more bikes. But as someone who spent a lot of time in Amsterdam and in Montreal, I can tell you that it’s possible, and makes for a much healthier population. Amsterdam is set up specifically to encourage biking and walking, with separate traffic signals and lanes for the cars, the trams, the bikes, and the pedestrians. Pity Stu is so small-minded… but then, you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.
No more parking anywhere you want for free. Like cars, you will park only in designated areas. You will feed a meter or pay for space on a rack, in a lot or garage.
Here, Stu erupts in a petulant and jealous rage. Earth to Stu: the reason we meter cars and make them park in garages is because they take up A LOT of space. Bikes do not. Don’t like feeding the meter? Buy a fucking bike you lazy old man.
Again, I’ll cite Sue Shulman’s comments from facebook:
[B]ikers would gladly pay for parking, if the city made any effort to provide some (instead of making us lock to car-related infrastructure such as meters and parking signs.) We would happily pay for the square footage our bikes take up for a price proportionate to that devoted to a car space.
Furthermore, I want to know how Stu expects to enforce all this? There’s no way it can be done: first you’d have to implement a city-wide licensing system for bikes (at a time when the city can barely keep the libraries open and is losing events like the Dad Vail regatta). hen you’d have to make people participate, which would take countless police man-hours, in a city that just dealt with another average weekend:
On Friday alone, a man killed his mother with his bare hands, two home invasions resulted in slayings and a feud between two barbers ended with fatal gunfire, according to police.
In separate incidents on Saturday, two babies, neither of whom was a full year into life, were taken to area hospitals with serious and suspicious injuries. One of the children did not survive, police said.
And that doesn’t even take into account riders who take the train into 30th Street Station and Market east before continuing to work on their bikes: unless Stu’s proposing a statewide registration system, the licensing would only apply to Philadelphia residents, constituting two tiers of enforcement.
In short, it’s not gonna happen. It’s the printed fever-dreams of an angry old man who writes like he’s got a bad case of constipation. And, as if to put the lie to all his concerns about safety, Bykofsky lets the cat out of the bag. Here’s what it’s all about:
(Special note to Mayor Greenjeans: Added revenue!)
Stu knows what this is all about: generating much-needed revenue for a city that can’t meet its obligations, and flailing around anywhere to get it. He just doesn’t want to say so, because that would make for a much shorter column, and the guy’s got a word count to worry about.
Did I mention that your bike must have a horn or bell, brakes, a rear-view mirror, front and rear lights, all of which will be tested annually in a city-licensed bike shop? You will wear a helmet and reflective tape for safety.
Don’t forget the streamers on the end of the handlebars, Stu. Or a deck of cards on the spokes for that neat-o keen motorcycle sound.
The next paragraph I’d like to have sympathy with:
As already is required by law, you will stop at red lights and stop signs, signal for turns, ride on the right and in the same direction as traffic and stay off the damn sidewalks.
…because YES, riders should use turn signals, ride on the right, and go with the flow of traffic.
But it’s equally clear that Bykofsky doesn’t understand the concept of the rolling stop, its wide use among bicyclists, and how requiring bikers to obey the exact same laws as cars is a bad idea. One of his commentors gets it though:
I don’t know about you guys but I would not want to be behind a bicyclist who is following the rules of the road to the letter. You want to be stuck behind someone who can only go up to 15-20 miles per hour? I think not. You want bicyclists to stop at all red lights? What are you going to do when you have 5 or 10 of them at the light and there is no room for you to go around them when the light turns green? Be careful what you ask for.
Stu just doesn’t get that in Philadelphia’s 400-year old streets, where two lanes are crammed into space meant for one lane, cars can’t even get up to the 25 MPH speed limit, creating a maze that bicycle riders have to navigate. Couple that with all the drivers who use the bike lanes as a place to double-park or a passing lane, and throw in the people who slam open their car doors without looking for oncoming traffic and the city’s potholes, which have been known to break car axles, and you’ve got a situation where bicyclists get forced onto the sidewalks, fleeing injury or death.
Stu continues that because the police don’t have the time to enforce the laws, “If we want enforcement, give it to the Philadelphia Parking Authority. We’ll get enforcement out the wazoo.”
To which I respond, “How?” If bicyclists don’t have licenses or license plates, and there’s no city ordinance requiring the general public from carrying identification, how’s the PPA going to enforce this? It’s a joke!
Can we be real? Bicycling is good recreation, good for the environment and for the waistline, but it will never be a serious mode of transportation in and around Philly. Bikes will always be bit players.
And here we have the old standby, “failure of imagination”. In other news, man will never walk on the moon, people will never be able to fly between continents, ordinary families will never be able to afford computers (much less find space for the damn things), the steam engine was a bad idea, and a band made up of session musicians like Jimmy Page would go over like a lead balloon.
The fact is that if bicycle travel was subsidized and supported the way automobile travel is, bikes could easily dominate inner-city travel. Once you take into account traffic jams, the limited maneuverability of cars, the stop-signs and stop-lights, and the pedestrians, a bike is WAY faster than a car in the city.
Stu may think that “bikes will always be bit players”, but that’s not the truth (warning, pdf) as a few minutes of research demonstrate:
Bicycling has increased at an impressive rate since 2005. In three years between 2005 and 2008, bicycling doubled at counted locations (including all Schuylkill bridges and two intersections). Bicycling increased 104%, or roughly 35% a year. Prior to 2005, bicycling was increasing at a slower pace, roughly 6.1% a year, and it took fifteen years for bicycling to increase 98% between 1990 and 2005. Since 1990, bicycling in Philadelphia has increased 300%.
The same study shows that while only 1.2% of Philadelphians commuted by bike in 2006 (well before the gas shocks of 2008, which substantially increased the number of people finding alternate transportation to work), that’s still 11,000 daily commutes. The same study also found that “Between 2006 and 2008, the total number of bikes per hour counted on five Schuylkill Bridges (South, Walnut, Chestnut, Market and Spring Garden) jumped 40%. One of the most dramatic increases in bicycling occurred at the Spring Garden Bridge, which had a 95% increase in bicycle traffic since 2006.” Bit players? Hardly, Mr. Bykofsky. And since I’m irritated with you, let’s jam a few more FACTS up that snout of yours, eh?
According to a 2007 report by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission cited by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, “61% of Delaware Valley bicyclists surveyed use bikes for utilitarian purposes (commuting to school or work, work –related, social visits and errands)”. So much for the “recreation” nonsense. According to Managing Success in Center City: Reducing Congestion, Enhancing Public Spaces, a report issued by the Center City District, “Bicycling is faster than driving, walking or taking the bus across Center City”. So much for biking “will never be a serious mode of transportation in and around Philly”.
So there you have it: on all counts, Stu Bykofsky is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and then WRONG AGAIN about bicycles and Philadelphia. He has no credibility to write about the topic, and as a result no one should pay his worthless temper tantrum of a column any mind whatsoever.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Yeah, not only that but it’s not just in Amsterdam…virtually ALL of urban and small-town Holland have major infrastructure set up for bicycles. I won’t bike here…everybody tries to kill me.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
My favorite part is “What kind of a perverted quota system gives 50 percent of any city street – designed for cars – to bikes…”
No, Philadelphia streets were designed for horse-drawn carriages. Evolve, Stu. Evolve.