If you’re a cyclist rolling your eyes about the headline, it must be Amsterdam. The Dutch haven comes up so much in cycling policy and infrastructure arguments that it’s just boring now. It’s a super trump — simply yell “Amsterdam!” and you win. Or lose.
I was nearby once at The Hague, visiting a friend on a long layover. As we drove from the station, he slowed his car down so much, so far back from a cyclist and didn’t pass it even though there was so much room that even I, as a much bullied pedaller, fidgeted a little. He noticed and said, “This is how it is here. Cyclists get priority.”
Los Angeles is perhaps the diametric opposite of the Netherlands in this regard, but is working almost aggressively to change the idea that car drivers own the streets. In the last two months the city has rolled out its Mobility 2035 plan with hundreds of miles of bike and bus lanes, as well as signed up to Vision Zero, a committment to reduce traffic deaths to zero by 2025.
After being away two years, I came back to quite a few changes. The notoriously-bad-for-cyclists-route CA-19 has separated bike lanes, and there are either bike lanes or “sharrows”, shared lane markings, in many more locations. On a recent ride, I noticed that a sprawling city in the San Fernando Valley — all part of the Greater Los Angeles area — had bicycle sensors to trigger the traffic lights. (You need to have experienced the loneliness of being stuck on a quiet lane at an otherwise busy intersection with a red light staring unblinkingly at you, round after round, to really appreciate this).
Road closures
Recently in the Los Angeles Times, political columnist George Skelton tackled cycling in his column Capitol Journal. Apparently he had been forced to change his weekend plans because of road closures for the cycling leg of the Ironman triathlon. “What set me off about bicycles was being tortured by about 2,000 of them Sunday at Lake Tahoe,” he wrote, not dramatically at all.
Skelton proposed that cyclists also pay for the roads they use, perhaps with annual registration fees.
The idea that cyclists don’t fund roads and therefore don’t deserve them is so tired and factually incorrect, that even the comments on the article didn’t flare into savagery as they are wont to do.
In fact, a 2013 study by Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Canada, found that motorists actually have roadways subsidised for them, underpaying by $166 (Dh609). Non-driving cyclists whose vehicles cause very little wear and tear to roadways overpay by $252.
This is also because, contrary to the commonly shouted argument at traffic lights, American roads are not paid for by car drivers alone through car and petrol taxes, but from a general fund, filled from sales and property taxes. So unless you’re a homeless cyclist who never uses money, you have every right to the road.
Once car drivers get used to the idea that cyclists are here to stay, they may find that they’re rarely delayed by them as much as they claim. As many commentators on Skelton’s article observed, the problem is entitlement. Being delayed by traffic jams is par for the course. Being stuck behind garbage trucks or street sweepers — it’s what happens. But lose 30 seconds behind a cyclist, and it’s rage. “Get off the road!” “Get out of traffic!” “Find a bike lane!”
That last one was shouted at me not so long ago. Find a bike lane? I’m trying, dear car driver, I’m trying.
Gautam Raja is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, USA.
