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RE: Oilier-than-thou hypocrites (was: Blue A******s)
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jeandiva
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Oct 11, 2005 16:30 PDT
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Ya know, I admit it there are times I have to fly (can't figure a way to
ride a bike to see my family in Hawaii, sorry), I don't objectify others
who do, and I don't expect the government to fix it when it's so
obviously not in their best interest to do so.
As for bike lanes, I'm not going to persuade any John Forester
type-advocate that A. he's wrong about bikelanes or anything else to do
about bikes, or B. he's less green than anyone else on the planet.
Jym does a lot of good for a lot of causes, most of his travels are by
internet, and I certainly do not expect him to ride by bicyle 3000 miles
to prove a point. When Amtrak is cheaper to travel cross country because
it's well-funded by the government that should be falling over itself to
do so, then I might take Jym to task for not taking the train.
as to this:
"the excellent cycling facilities that already exist to the tune of
thousands of miles per county. "
can you give a comparison as to how many miles there are for bikes and
transit, as opposed to how many for private autos?
And if there is a disproportionate usage for bikes as opposed to the
number of facilities, can you analyse how many users are discouraged
from using those facilities through fear of traffic, congestion etc?
By the way roads rarely get widened for bikelanes. Certainly not in SF.
It's usually the sidewalks that get cut into to increase lanes for cars.
Tom Frost Jr wrote:
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jeandiva wrote:
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Perhaps Mr. Frost would vote to subsidize Amtrak! I would.
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TF: Me too! See the breakdown in the paragraph below of how I've done
so. If you're looking for an anti-rail whipping boy on which to unleash
your "oilier-than-thou" attack, you've picked the wrong person. For
that, try some of the incrowd of
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Transport-Policy .
I've visited the left coast three times. Both of the two times that I
did it with _my_ money doing the transportation-mode voting (1997 and
2001), I'm proud to report that Amtrak got my money, for both
directions. On the one left-coast visit on which Amtrak only got
intra-left-coast chump change from me because I motored out there and
flew back (1994/'95), that was my sister's money, not mine, doing the
voting. (She wanted her econobox car delivered to Marin County - which,
BTW, only required about 70 gallons of low-octane, compared to "_Jym_'s
120 gallons of high-octane if we use Mr. Baker's arithmetic below - and
she gave me a free plane ticket back here to Pennsylvania as part of the
deal.)
That's a 100% vote for Amtrak by _my_ money. However, I'm willing to
ignore my "excuse" for the 1994-'95 trip and call it 66.6%. That should
simplify the comparison to "_Jym_"'s breakdown that we're waiting for of
what modes _he_ votes for when traveling between his (whichever one that
is) and my coasts. Many of us know that "bi-coastal _Jym_" is pretty
voluminous in his greener-than-you-or-me scribblings on lists scattered
far and wide; so, I think it's only fair that we expect him to suspend,
as he often does, his claimed *Planck*ing of me and submit a breakdown
of his travel modes by percentage of intracontinental trips as I've done
above. Extra carbon credits are, of course, available to him if at least
some of his crossings have been by bicycle, as that would be almost as
long of an east/west start-and-end-in-one's-driveway ride as what I've
done north/south.
| | It might turn
out to be a great alternative if they keep on flying planes into
buildings.
Mr. Frost can also continue to wait for the answer from our government
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TF: Real cyclists dont wait for answers from the government. Rather, we
see, and simply use, the excellent cycling facilities that already exist
to the tune of thousands of miles per county.
| | as to why the use of oil/jet fuel in getting around the country is
encouraged and alternative methods are not. Could it be that someone in
our government has ties to big oil?
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TF: I think it's because organizations purporting to represent cycling
(with left-coast ones seeming to be the worst offenders - and what I've
skimmed so far on SFBike's website doesn't bode well for y'all) like to
sweep facts, such as the facts presented at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CyclistsAgainstBikeLanes , under the rug.
These pseudo-cycling organizations don't want to let such facts get in
the way of continuing to grovel for more firing up of the good-ol'
asphalt mixers to produce "space for cyclists". (As if such space
doesn't already exist!) Once this pork-for-Uncle-Tom-cyclists excess
pavement width has been added to the
previously-already-amply-wide-for-cycling transportational facility, all
that's needed is some well-placed paint remover when the right
bureaucrat gets in there a few years later, and voila, y'all have turned
a two-lane into a four-lane. Just one example of _you_ being the
"oilier-than-thou" ones, although I could go on.
- Tom willing-to-submit-my-environmental-footprint-for-review Frost.
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