How about this one: amount of time stopped in traffic, unable to move? I notice that when I bike to work, my door-to-desk time is just about the same as when I drive. The reason, I think, is because I spend a lot more time sitting at stoplights or behind other cars when I'm driving.

How about "percentage of the population you think you're better than" or "percentage of the rules you think apply to you"? I'd be interested in seeing which group does worse in those categories, and I say that as a pedestrian/bus-rider, who apparently gets no respect in these sorts of pissing contests.

sounds like a cage match
good luck with that
i bet everyone hugs at the end

oh todd. don't be bummed out. i'm glad you're a ped/bus rider. as soon as i step off my bike i'm a ped too and i don't lose sight of that.

Just wait until next month's debate, tODD: Pedestrians vs. Pedophiles.

I don't understand why self-styled "libertarians" like John Charles take up the anti-bike cause. (Nor do I really understand why the media always has to include his perspective—as the Oregonian did in the *second bloody paragraph* of a story about bike parking this week—every time a bike story pops up.) I would think bikes are the ultimate libertarian vehicles: self-sufficient, individualistic, easy on the public purse, free of entangling foreign alliances...

Maybe there's something about freedom I just don't understand.

Zach: I actually thought his comment in that article was good. They had his quote: "I've never heard of a retailer actually choosing to lose convenient parking right in front of their stores for any reason, let alone replacing it with bike parking."

Then they spent the next ten paragraphs showing he was completely full of shit by being unable to find a single business owner who was opposed and some business owners who actually PAY MONEY to get the on-street parking put in.

Trading a parking place for a vehicle that can bring you 1-4 patrons in favor of parking for 20-50 does seem to make good capitalistic sense.

I guess my point is, why does "balance" always require a quote from these guys? Do they have credibility? I'm not saying they necessarily don't, just that it's not clear to me that they necessarily do.

For the same reason that "balance" dictates that any story about the gays contain a raving homophobe quote from a right wing Christian. Isn't "objectively" rad?

How about the issue of "envy" being a possible factor (though maybe not the most diplomatic word choice) when drivers grouse about cyclists who speed to the front of lines of traffic, etc? Bike riders don't have to pay in order to commute across town. Actually we benefit from it. We're in great shape and flush with endorphins when we get to work. They've got leftover road rage and fat asses from sitting in a car all day.

I think cyclists are justified in a superior attitude, obnoxious as it gets with "gear-head" types: our mode of transportation actually is superior in several ways. I'm biased as fuck but I'm just saying. Maybe John Charles would have some idea what he was talking about if he took more than a "recreational" spin around the block every few months. Most people I know who commute and otherwise get around on a bike have made a conscious choice, not only with their transportation but in other ways they live as well.

I can't bike to work. I'm too old, too fat and too emphysemic to ride twelve miles over the west hills. But I appreciate folks who do, because that's less cars on the commute routes. I try to be courteous to bikes and share the road.

wheels to wealth? this I must not miss.

any chance that misinformed chap from park rose (Craig Flynn) will be there to whine about all the federal funds alocated for bikes the city uses on---well---bikes? get it, Flynn? that's how federal funds work!

Any chance that misinformed fool named jragel will be there to whine about all the federal funds alocated for cars the city uses on---well---bikes? get it, jragel? that's how the city the works you over, works you over works!

Yeah Andy!

I am upset that the city keeps spending zero dollars of monies allocated for cars on bikes!

We need to fix that, glad you are on board!