It’s Easy To Forget About Bikes
Over the past couple of months I’ve taken a liking to bashing the fraud known as BRT - bus rapid transit. This led me to investigate more about the world of motorized transport. Blah.
I was never very far from the bike world, though, because I was riding my bike several days a week, if not every day. For various reasons, that hasn’t been the case over the past few days - my bike has sat idle.
Today it finally hit me - I realized just how easy it probably is for public officials to forget about bikes. And maybe that’s going too far, because to forget about them, they would have to know about them in the first place.
There are plenty of reasons why this is probably the case, and I don’t think I’m prepared to explain what they all are or might be, but I am prepared to suggest that being vocal, as a biker, to your local rep, to the mayor, to the cops, to all your politicians and everyone you can think of is crucial to staying ‘in the mix’. If we want real change, we have to stay in our politicians’ heads. I’m not about to suggest that politicians are generally good or that the corporations that control them are benevolent, but I will tell you from my experience over the past few days - an unintended thought experiment of sorts - that is it easy to forget about bikes, and I suspect it is easy for politicians and others to forget about bikes - that’s my opinion.
To help remedy this situation, I think we need to have all of our local, regional, and national electeds on speed dial. We need to have the customer service lines of all the local transit agencies on speed dial. We need to have the police on speed dial. And we need to call them, write them, pester them, cajole them, inform them, inspire them, deride them - whatever it takes to get them to pay attention and do what is right.
On a semi-related matter, don’t forget about your bike.
[Image: Flickr/otzberg]
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