Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Fishman Makes Waves in Atlanta

Last month Charles Fishman lectured a packed house at the AT&T auditorium about what we can do to ensure the safety and reliability of our water supplies. Known for his timely and incisive journalism with books such as The Walmart Effect and most recently The Big Thirst, Fishman did not disappoint.

First, some fun facts about water:
  • Campbell's Soup operates a factory in Illinois that uses enough water to supply a city of 155,000 residents. Only 3% of it goes into the soup.
  • Bottled water is one of the most common items sold in American grocery stores. Americans spent $10.6 billion on bottled water in 2009, something that flows out of our taps for almost nothing.
  • It takes a lot of water to cool our electric power plants, and electric utility companies account for half of all the water consumed in the state of Georgia. The average household in the U.S. uses 100 gallons per day, but our indirect consumption based on the amount of electricity we use adds another 150 gallons.
  • Antiquated distribution systems in the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County lose 15% of their water through leakage.
Charles Fishman is a great explainer, and this talent comes in handy for a subject as complicated as is our relationship with water.

Viewed on a global scale, water is a resource so vital that countries will sometimes fight wars over it. Fishman cautions us to think locally, where so many critical opportunities and solutions await our discovery.

But first we must overcome inaccuracies in our conventional wisdom about water that inhibit our ability to enact sensible water policies. This starts with the way we pay for it.

Fishman posits that we recently lived through a golden age of water, when we never had to think about water in its apparently limitless abundance. Most municipal water utilities have been happy to charge their customers only to defray the costs of treatment, distribution and disposal. The water itself was free.

Throughout this golden age we assumed that the water itself had no economic value. Amidst the regional "water wars" involving Georgia, Alabama and Florida we now know this to be false. Many regions of the United States are grappling with similar concerns about the adequacy of their water supplies, especially as we face the intensified effects of global climate change and extreme weather events.

So, water is priced too cheaply. Like all vital natural resources our use of water ought to bear a cost significant enough to spur its conservation.

Consider how higher gasoline prices spur the availability and popularity of fuel efficient automobiles. When was the last time you had a casual conversation with your friends about the price of water, the same friends who always know which gas stations have the lowest prices?

This applies not only to municipal water supplies. Most electric power plant operators withdraw vast amounts of water from our rivers and lakes and pay nothing for it. More in my blog, The Water-Electricity Nexus.

All of this matters out of our concern for our health, for economic development, and for the environment.

Fishman said we need to "tap" into our emotional attachment with water to develop new and innovative solutions. He calls it Smart Water and provided several examples.

Orlando, FL is one of several municipalities that has banned the use of drinking water for irrigating lawns. Time for us to re-learn the art of rainwater harvesting and graywater recycling!

Most of his examples come by way of the private sector, where business leaders are finding that conservation and water efficiency can be cost-effective business strategies. It has to go beyond the purview of the steely-eyed capitalist and into the consciousness of the public and our elected officials.

We currently spend almost as much for bottled water as we do for our public water infrastructure, which sorely needs to become more flexible in the face of weather extremes caused by climate change. The $10.6 billion or so that Americans spent annually on bottled water could go a long way to assure that our municipal water systems are safe, secure and environmentally-sound.

We clearly can afford it but so far lack the will.

Fishman's lecture could have tackled much broader issues concerning our relationship with water, such as the privatization of public water supplies and the contamination of supplies by agricultural pesticides. But he wants us to focus on the issues we can best address at a local and regional level.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

The NRA Steals an Emmy




Wayne LaPierre may not have accomplished his aims during yesterday's NRA press conference, but his performance achieved something even more remarkable. While telling us that the best way to stop the senseless violence in our schools is to fill them with armed "good guys," LaPierre conjured the working-stiff ghost of Archie Bunker.
As a lifelong fan of the 1970s TV sitcom All in the Family I remember the episode when Archie, brilliantly played by Carroll O'Connor, gave an equal time appearance on his local TV news program. For those of you too young to remember there once was a time when anyone could voice their opinions on TV, at least before President Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.
Anyway, Archie Bunker had an answer to the big public scare of the time, which was the hijacking of commercial aircraft by armed assailants. A flop-sweating Archie stared doe-eyed into the camera and explained that each passenger should be given a gun as they boarded their flight.
If everyone on the plane were armed, he reasoned, no "bad guy" would ever think of pulling out a weapon. Upon safely arriving at their destination, passengers would simply surrender their guns as they de-planed.
Case closed!
If Wayne LaPierre fails in his quest to defeat proposals for even the mildest forms of gun control, as he has done so deftly throughout his years as president of the NRA, he should at least be awarded one of Carroll O'Connor's Emmys, for proving to us that the spirit of Archie Bunker is alive and well.


- Thanks for reading, and stay in touch!

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Loving the Brain Bucket

Photo courtesy of Belle Helmets


As an avid recreational cyclist and frequent bicycle commuter, I would never dream of swinging my leg over a bike without wearing a helmet.
Bike helmets work. I have a few that I've worn over the years bearing the unmistakable signs that they served their intended purpose: cracked and scraped where my skull would otherwise have borne the damage.
That said, wearing a helmet is a personal choice that should not be forced upon me or any other adult. Those who impose helmet use on all cyclists impose a double standard of safety and needlessly impede the popularity of bicycling.
We should take note of the dearth of bicycle helmets in Europe. There, the widespread use of bicycles is largely fueled by pragmatism. In many cases the bicycle is the simplest, cheapest, easiest way to complete a desired trip. That includes one's attire.
Europeans rarely bicycle in anything other than their street, school or business attire. The bicycle helmet has not part in it.
In the same way, Americans would hardly find it convenient to wear a crash helmet while driving our automobiles, although one could doubtlessly complete a thorough search of the research literature and "prove" that widespread helmet use would reduce the number of head injuries from automobile accidents.
After all, helmets are entirely acceptable to NASCAR.
Some personal choices, stupid as they might appear, should not be legislated. Light up a smoke and think about it.

Monday, September 24, 2012

NEW BOOK: The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

As a long-time fan of professional bike racing, I read Tyler Hamilton's new autobiography with some preconceived notions shared by many. Doping among riders has been part of professional cycling's long history almost from it's beginning, so why all the fuss now? It's part of the sport: always has, always will.

Second, any meaningful story about the events of the past sixteen years cannot avoid featuring cycling's star character, Lance Armstrong, who continues to face serious efforts to prosecute...or as he says, persecute. Aren't such efforts meaningless and in fact detrimental both to cycling as a sport and to Armstrong's many charitable efforts? It's water way, way under the bridge, so what would busting him now accomplish?

Thirdly, given Tyler Hamilton's long history of cheating and coverup, why should we believe anything he has to say now? To that point, Daniel Coyle proves to be an effective co-author.

Having already written an outsider's account Lance Armstrong's War with Armstrong's cooperation, Coyle possesses valuable familiarity with professional cycling without the emotional stake held by those who are also fans. He already had a rough outline of the sport's history with doping, and Tyler Hamilton provides the hard-to-obtain details from an insider.

Coyle took care in selecting which of Hamilton's anecdotes to include in the book, corroborating wherever possible the accounts of other witnesses. Each chapter is extensively footnoted, including many incisive comments by one of Hamilton's former team mates, Jonathan Vaughters.

So, yes, the book's accounts are credible.

The Secret Race explains why doping as practiced within professional cycling in recent years is a serious problem, and it has destroyed many lives both figuratively and literally. More importantly, it points to the cycling's only hope for meaningful redemption.

This is a story about the deeply in-bred culture of bad actors who control the sport: the team owners, coaches, sanctioning bodies, sponsors...and Lance Armstrong. Bring the bad actors to justice, and younger cyclists may once again believe that they can race clean and still win.

The Secret Race weaves together all the significant doping scandals of the past 15 years. Although the publicity surrounding this book is driven by the interest in Lance Armstrong, the book exposes a sport-wide culture where doping was expected and the infrastructure to support it was easily accessible to the best riders. The pressure to win and the money riding on the outcome meant that cheating was/(is?) almost inevitable in pro cycling- especially given the ineffective testing standards during Hamilton's day.
Hamilton: They've got their doctors, and we have ours. Ours were better than theirs.
Andy Hampsten, the American who rose to professional cycling's elite ranks after winning the Giro de Italia in1988, eventually found himself out-muscled by nobody competitors who suddenly transformed themselves, turbocharged by the new blood booster called EPO.
In the mid eighties, when I came up, riders were doping but it was still possible to compete with them...bottom line, a clean rider could compete in the big three-week races. EPO changed everything...all of a sudden whole teams were ragingly fast, all of a sudden I was struggling to make time limits... As the 1996 season went by...everybody knew what was up, everybody was talking about EPO, everybody could see the writing on the wall.
Many have a blasé attitude towards athletes' use of performance enhancing drugs, because "it was a level playing field; they all doped." That would be fine if all athletes have the same access to the new technologies and the same protections from being caught.

For years I believed the Lance Armstrong story, about a genetically gifted athlete who beat his cancer and then dominated the sport of professional cycling mainly by training harder and smarter than his competitors. His physiological talents and his professional work ethic cannot be denied.

But the Lance Armstrong myth, on which he created an enormously successful commercial brand, only partially explains his success with cycling. Lance also proved to be more ruthless, better-resourced, and politically cunning than his competitors. The difference is Lance had a story-book narrative that appealed to the general public and therefore sponsors and industry hacks. Protection from within the UCI sounds ridiculous - which is what Lance counted on - and most people would never believe such a thing.

Example: another powerful doping method that came in vogue among cyclists in the late 1990's involved the harvesting of a one's blood prior to a big race and then re-infusing it either before or during the race. Lance retained the services of the notorious Dr. Michele Ferrari, and paid Ferrari to work only with him.

That left most of his closest competitors seeking the services of the equally-notorious Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes.
Problem is, Dr. Fuentes sometimes suffered from organization lapses, in in numerous instances re-infused the wrong blood into his clients.

Tyler Hamilton was busted in 2004 after a doing control test detected traces of someone else's blood in his. While Hamilton now admits to accepting illegal transfusions of his own blood, he was only caught after Fuente mixed up blood supplies from various clients while the blood was being processed in his lab. Bad luck for Lance's competitors who did not have their own personal doping service!

Ironically, one possible side-effect of taking EPO is an increased risk of certain cancers, including testicular. There is strong evidence that Lance did a lot of EPO before his cancer diagnosis in 1996.

This book provides a valuable cautionary tale even for those who are not fans of professional cycling. Tyler Hamilton was in effect a made man, working within a league of organized crime.

As Daniel Coyle writes in the book's prologue:
He pointed to the crook of his elbows, to matching spidery scars that ran along his veins. "We all have scars like this," he said. "It's like a tattoo from a fraternity."
Or from a gang.

The book describes acts of collusion, intimidation and conspiracy by prominent members of professional cycling representing the athletes, team management, commercial sponsors and governing bodies. Most of all, it recounts many instances of their omertà, or code of silence.

The corruption of professional cycling grew out of an environment dominated by hypercompetetive characters, large sums of money, powerful enabling technologies and weak independent oversight.
Jonathan Vaughters said:
This is what happens when there’s no auditing. It’s a larger fabric of the way people behave in a corrupt culture...there’s a cheat-or-be-cheated mentality. You have the UCI in a position of promoting the sport and regulating it. There’s no way they’d have done a good job. And then along comes a guy like Armstrong who’s a great story and is going to drive all this interest in the sport... “Why kill the golden goose?”
We find the same conditions present in other corrupt parts of our society, inside and outside of sports.

Wall Street, anyone?

UPDATE: The US Anti Doping Agency has investigated Armstrong and plans to make public its dossier of gathered evidence before the end of the year. USADA, which has already banned Armstrong and stripped him from his victories since 1998, is acting beyond the eight-year statute of limitations normally applicable within the framework of the World Anti-Doping Code. USADA is nonetheless proceeding against Armstrong, because the law states that the eight-year statute is invalid in cases where the accused influenced the witnesses who could have testified against him, concealed proof or lied under oath. USADA will try to prove that this has happened in the Armstrong case.

See also my previous post, Our Dope(r) Culture.

Thanks as always for reading and please stay in touch!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Bicycling's Unspoken Rules of the Road

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. One can almost hear Aretha's back track while listening to that tired story about bicyclists needing to obey the traffic laws.

A recent NY Times op-ed by Randy Cohen (If Kant were a New York City Cyclist) raised a tsunami of criticism from cyclists and noncyclists alike. Cohen, who for many years edited a weekly column about ethics in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, expressed a point of view I find to be spot-on.

Critics are bristling at the thought of excusing law-breaking cyclists, under any conditions.

Apparently Cohen's biggest mistake was to cite Kant while he debunked longstanding beliefs held by many. Who reads Kant anymore?

So let's set that aside and talk about matters of safety and respect.

Over the past 22 years I have bicycled over 71,000 miles, mostly on the streets and roads of Atlanta. Despite the challenging conditions here for biking I have done so accident-free and thus feel I know something about what a cyclist can do to avoid collisions with other vehicles.

We can all agree that respect for cyclists is a good thing, both in creating safer conditions on the road and in obtaining specific legal and infrastructure accommodations from the powers-that-be.

But I disagree with the conduct some insist are vital for cyclists to gain that respect, and I furthermore think such respect may be overrated.

In places I know well such as Atlanta and New York, many road users pick and choose which laws to obey based on a their needs, preferences, the effectiveness of local law enforcement and (hopefully) common sense. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and it has stood the test of time!

I vividly remember my high school drivers ed (yes, it was decades ago), when a NY State Trooper addressed my class by telling us that that the police do not issue speeding tickets if they clock a speed less than 6 miles over the limit, or on interstates if the speed is less than 65 in a posted 55.

Great, we budding drivers thought, permission to break the law!

And it's not just speed limits that we are flaunting. Texting, rolling stop signs, double parking and unsignaled turns are just some of the many infractions frequently practiced by a broad swath of motorists. I frequently see police cruisers doing it.

Meanwhile we have our anecdotes from witnessing bad bicycling behavior. Motorists love to cite this as a frequent bone of contention.

But what thinking person concludes that cyclists break the laws any more frequently than noncyclists? Where, then, does this obsession with cyclist misbehavior come from? 

But first a word about safety.

Indeed, scofflaws of all stripes can make bad decisions...dangerous decisions. But who predominantly suffers for these bad decisions? HINT: if you are encapsulated in a steel-and-glass-and-plastic can, you usually are not the one most at risk of harm.

This is where bikes and cars occupy different ethical grounds based on their potential for harm. Put another way, we need a stronger appreciation for the benefits of placing ourselves under conditions that mitigate the consequences of poor judgement.

When you see a cyclist doing something patently stupid, imperiling themselves or (more rarely) others, don't hate on cyclists. Instead think to yourself, Oh, good, at least that bonehead isn't driving a 4,000-pound Explorer.

Conversely when I see the driver of an Explorer proceed through a red light at a deserted intersection, I am heartened. Why idle unnecessarily (wasting fuel and polluting the air), because the local jurisdiction hasn't properly maintained their traffic signals?

Which brings us back to these solemn exhortations for cyclists to obey the laws, flawed as they are. Is it really so outrageous to say that many of us, cyclist or not, are scofflaws of necessity and habit?

This discussion needs more candor. Without it, we risk setting double standards of behavior for bicyclists and motorists which perpetuate the bicyclists' relegation as second-class road users.

Which brings us to the value of respect for cyclists. Motorists frequently complain about bad cycling behavior, but is this really the source of their contempt?

I am not so sure and would like evidence to the contrary.

"But these here cyclists are lawbreakers" is a convenient but not entirely honest justification for the attitudes of some motorists who have yet to overcome a stronger feeling that cyclists don't have any business using their roads. To them, cyclists irritate not for their lawlessness but simply because they are there.

Here in Atlanta we have spent over two decades tirelessly advocating for safer conditions for cyclists. Our progress--while fitful--has accelerated dramatically over the past three years. Why?

It has less to do with us gaining some added measure of "respect" from the non-cycling powers-that-be than it has from the fact that we have new friends in government (City Council, State) who are themselves bicyclists.

Our numbers continue to grow. Time and tide are in our favor and will gradually replace the older authority figures with those who get it. Perhaps patience more than respect is the bicycle advocate's best friend.

As always, thanks for reading and stay in touch!

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Atlanta: Fit to be Tied



The good news is, Atlanta-area voters have spoken. Sadly their voices were tinged with fear, paranoia and pessimism.

It is a pity they rejected the transportation referendum (TIA,) because we badly needed it. The business community, politicians from both parties and grassroots community groups strongly supported it.
Supporters of the TIA understand how Georgia currently ranks 48th in per capita spending on transportation, and planners predict that Metro Atlanta will become home for an additional three million people over next 30 years.
However they were bested by an equally diverse coalition of opponents, each with their own agendas. Although the majority of the tax revenues was to be spent on transit and other non-roads projects, it did not satisfy the Georgia Sierra Club's anti-roads stance.
The Georgia NAACP opposed it, because they claim that GDOT has not been using enough minority contractors. They have demanded that Obama's Department of Justice investigate this.
Most importantly the Georgia Tea Party tapped into a vast reservoir of anti-government sentiment, especially against GDOT and MARTA. Voters could not be convinced that there are legal provisions in place to assure that the tax would expire after ten years, and that the proceeds would be spent as promised. 
These opposition organizations say that the results of this vote creates a mandate for a "Plan B," despite a clear disinterest on the part of the Georgia Legislature to reopen this subject. This would raise the possibility of reopening past debates about the state motor fuel tax, current budgeting restrictions on MARTA and regional governance of transportation in Atlanta. 
I hope that they are right but am not betting on it. It is a lot easier to whip up constituents to vote "no" than it is to recruit them into a cogent transportation reform movement.
The Georgia Tea Party, Sierra Club and NAACP can take a well-deserved victory lap. Then they need to get busy. 
They have earned themselves a mountain of work that they now own.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

The De-Bikification of Beijing

Pity, the citizens of Beijing. Obsessed with the status symbols of consumer culture, they are furiously ditching their bicycles for cars. They will soon get what they asked for, and they won't like it.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Miracle on Washington Street

A few weeks ago, road cyclists received a miracle. It was on February 27th to be exact.

On that day, a Georgia Senator--one who previously said that we need a law to keep bicycles out of the way of motorists--became an advocate for bicycles!

At a Transportation Committee hearing the week prior, Senator Butch Miller and several co-sponsors offered SB 468, which would ban the currently-legal practice of bicyclists riding two abreast on Georgia roads and instead force them to ride single-file.

To their credit, leaders from Georgia Bikes! worked to maintain a constructive relationship with Senator Miller. They sought compromise and got one.

Miller accepted their watered-down amendment which substituted the outright ban of two-abreast riding with a vaguely-worded requirement for cyclists not to impede the normal and reasonable flow of traffic.

While the amended bill raised a host of questions about enforce-ability and other unintended consequences, Miller could rely on the fact that the same kind of vague limitation on cycling was already on the books in nine other states. Surely its passage into law would allow him and SB 468's co-sponsors to claim a win on behalf of their motorist constituents.

With the bill passing unanimously through committee and apparently destined for a vote in the full Senate, Miller told Georgia Bikes! the following Monday that he would not pursue passage of his bill and would instead work with Georgia Bikes! on the implementation of a Complete Streets policy. Complete Streets policies emphasize that public roads should be designed for moving people, not just automobiles, and should include facilities that improve safety and access for transit users, pedestrians, and bicyclists of all ages and abilities.

Some characterize Miller's intentions as always in keeping the interest of cyclists foremost, claiming that he rides a bike himself.

Oddly, he never mentioned that about himself during the hearing as he faced a long line of citizen-bicyclists criticizing his bill. For a two-term Senator, one would think Miller would have seized the opportunity to establish his credibility with this assembly of bicyclists.

As I described previously in this blog, Miller repeatedly acted in ways that seem to belie his stated intentions. Would bicyclists expect any more from someone who leads the Georgia Automobile Dealers Association?

Beyond the potent persuasive powers of Georgia Bikes!, what could account for Miller's dramatic turnaround? How did the discussion shift so dramatically, away from getting bikers out of motorists' way to developing streets that are conducive to non-automobile transportation?

For now it's best to leave the sleeping dog lie and celebrate the fact that we are not all riding in a line.

And to Senator Miller: thank you for seeing the light. I hope to see everyone at the GA Rides to the Capitol.

- As always, thank you for reading and stay in touch!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Georgia Senate Taking Bikers for a Ride

UPDATE: Senator Butch Miller will not pursue passage of SB 468, preferring instead to work with Georgia Bikes! on the implementation of a Complete Streets policy over the remainder of this and into the next legislative session.

I'll post here again when I learn more about this welcome and unexpected turnaround!
As SB 468--the bill which originally proposed to curtail two-abreast bicycling in Georgia--sailed through the Senate Transportation Committee last week and makes its way to the Rules Committee, confusion reigns over the future of road cycling in Georgia. For cyclists, our remaining options are very limited.

Georgia Bikes! has published its current advocacy position on its web site. Thankfully, they have negotiated with Senator Butch Miller for the removal of the bill's language regarding two abreast bicycling. Instead, the amended bill contains this curious provision:

Persons riding bicycles and electric assisted bicycles shall not impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic and on a laned roadway shall ride within a single lane.


Depending on who you ask, this could mean a lot, or nothing. Some point to the fact that similar language is already on the books in Colorado and seven other states, and that the results have been inconsequential for cyclists. After all, they say, this simply places into the law what we cyclists normally practice using our own judgement and common sense.

As written, however, it is vague and does not explain what normal and reasonable means. Thus it raises two risks:
  1. It will create confusion for all concerned parties and is impossible to enforce consistently. One can easily imagine the same confusion among law enforcement officers. Gosh, Officer, we didn't realize that the traffic behind us wasn't normal and reasonable.
  2. In future cases of automobile-bicycle accidents, this could provide a means for motorists to avoid responsibility when they otherwise would be found to be at fault.
Senator Miller has no supporting accident data, case studies for similar legislation, or any other evidence to support his claim that SB 468 will "improve safety." Its true purpose is to satisfy motorists who do not believe in sharing the roads with cyclists. Georgia's Senators get plenty of phone calls from angry constituents about troublesome bikers on the road, so it is an easy avenue for the politicians to score points. 

Georgia Bikes!, while continuing to work "in good faith" with Senator Miller, states that they are not actively opposing the current amended version of SB 468. They are holding out hopes that they can extract further concessions from Sen. Miller.

Senator Miller and SB 468's co-sponsors want to demonstrate to motorists that they have acted to get bikers out of their way. Georgia Bikes! is finessing their way into a compromise which could leave us in a legal Twilight Zone.

This Bill now has plenty of momentum in the Legislature and stands a good chance of becoming law. Georgia Bikes! other option is to fight to kill this bill. Under the current political conditions at the State Capitol, they would probably lose.

Activists not associated with Georgia Bikes! has started an online petition opposing SB 468. I still don't know what the right course of action should be.

All I know is, Georgia's roads are littered with loose screws.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Georgia Bikers, Fall In Line!

Two steps forward, one step back. Progress in certain places often ratchets ahead, avoiding a path of continuous gain.

As for the state of bicycling in Georgia, it's more like one step forward, two steps back. Yesterday I responded to an urgent call from the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition for bicyclists to attend a meeting of the Senate Transportation Committee at the Georgia State Capitol.

They met to consider SB 468, a bill that would require bicyclists to ride single file in the presence of other traffic. Specifically, cyclists must ride single file if there are approaching vehicles within 300 feet of them.

The bill's primary sponsor is Butch Miller. He explained that the bill is a response to the many concerns about safety that he and other Senators have heard from their constituents.

With respect to the 3-foot passing law that the Georgia Legislature passed last Summer, Miller said, motorists now find themselves stuck behind packs of cyclists, sometimes prompting them to make unsafe maneuvers...even to cross the double yellow center line to pass the cyclists. By Miller's reasoning, a prior law designed to safeguard cyclists necessitates new restrictions on the same cyclists, because motorists, after all, have jobs to get to.

Seriously. He cited this matter as a threat to the economy.

None of SB 468's cosponsors are cyclists themselves, and all expressed amusement/befuddlement with spandex cycling attire. I wanted to ask whether any of them were hunters.

Interestingly, Butch Miller is also the Chairman of the Georgia Automobile Dealers Association. Steve Gooch of Dahlonega acknowledged the importance of cycling to the North Georgia economy (e.g., the Six Gap Century) but insisted that something be done about the safety issues presented by cyclists riding on their two-lane roads.

One of the Senators asked how it is that a bicyclist can discern whether an oncoming vehicle is within 300 feet. Miller suggested that the bicyclist use a mirror.

Miller insisted that he does not wish to rush this legislation and did want to hear from all parties concerned. He accepted a "friendly amendment" that limits the new single file riding rule only to two-lane roads.

The Committee heard from seven cyclists and cycling advocates. No one spoke in support of the bill.

Then Chairman Jeff Mullis asked for a motion, Butch Miller motioned to pass the bill, Democrat Doug Stoner seconded the motion, and it passed by unanimous voice vote.

Now it is heading to the State Senate's Rules Committee.

As written, SB 468 will jeopardize:
  • Group rides
  • BRAG, the Wilson 100 and other organized events
  • Racing team rides and double pace lines
  • Parents riding alongside their children
  • The ABC's BeltLine Bike Tour
  • Tucker, Six Flags, Pizza, Airport rides? Fuggetahboutit!
We have yet to hear from state and local bicycle advocates about their strategy. Presumably, they are mounting a vigorous campaign to defeat SB 468?

As the late author William Gibson once wrote,
The future is already here -- it's just not evenly distributed. 
Here in Georgia, the forces of ignorance, fear and sloth are conspiring to keep Georgia on the tail of that distribution.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Walking the BeltLine in Someone Else's Shoes

Today, on the birthday of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I reflect on his call for us all to stand in the other person's shoes, to see the world in their eyes, to feel their pain.

This reminds me of a nasty screed against the Atlanta BeltLine project (and other transit projects to be funded by the proposed Transportation Investment Act sales tax) predicated on the unsubstantiated grounds that the developers are oppressing black people with it. I recently entered into a short online exchange with a defender of the article but found no desire on his part to enter into a dialog with me,  even to temporarily dispense with the use of emotionally-charged hyperbole such as "Jim Crow" and "white supremacist."

I was to uncritically accept his, and the article's, viewpoint, else we had nothing else useful to say to each other. It frustrates and saddens me, to be unable to bridge our differences on this, a most important development for the City of Atlanta and for the region.

King's advice helps me to understand this. I have no doubts that the BeltLine should be built. Still, I am open to the possibility of inequities in the way that the project expenditures are being distributed, and to seek remedies for those inequities.

Many underprivileged people have depended on MARTA as their sole form of transportation and have a hard time accepting the long-term promises of the BeltLine and the expenditures it now requires.

They have suffered disproportionately from MARTA's recent fare increases and cuts in bus services. It's hard to explain how an expanded transit system serving a broader constituency of patrons benefits everyone, while they are currently struggling to find affordable transportation to their jobs, schools, and so on.

It may not be Jim Crow or the work of white supremacists, but it hurts nonetheless.


- As always, thank you for reading and stay in touch!