Sorry I couldn't be there. I have been having a private debate about the merits of expanding CTH M with Jed Sanborn, who believes that all us bicycle activists really want is to get a free ride at the expense of his constituents and crush their freedom of mobility. After I started pouring out the studies that demonstrate that quite the opposite is true, he stopped responding to my e-mail.
As much as I appreciate the environmental arguments associated with promoting bicycling, I am pretty sure most of the council will not be persuaded to change their votes by them - as my exchange with Alder Sanborn demonstrates. This is an election year for the council and they are going to pander to the common denominator voters out there. And while those common denominator voters may want something done about global warming, they are unwilling to accept any solution that would require them to put in any personal effort, or give up what they understand to be their standard of living (no matter how much better off many of them really would be by bicycling more). Here is just one example of the degree of the problem: I, and many other bicycle activists, attended a rotary club meeting early this year. The focus of the discussion was on the recently adopted Platinum Committee Report. During the Q/A session, one skeptical Rotarian asked Arthur Ross about the practicality of bicycling in winter. Arthur gave an answer that I suspect most of us would agree with: "there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad equipment". The room erupted in laughter, and not the good kind - they were laughing at Arthur. At my table several people suggested that Arthur was spouting nonsense. So you see the crux of the problem here. If people believe that you cannot bicycle in winter, then they believe they need those wider roads, they can't ditch their cars, etc, etc. So it follows that if a council member suggests a shift in emphasis away from road expansion before an election you can expect those voters to choose another candidate that conforms to their model of reality when they go to the polls. Coming into the spring election season, I would suggest we put some counter-weight into the political equation. Thuy Pham-Remelle won by only 19 votes last time and she is on record on youtube demonstrating a level of ignorance that is an ideal motivator for anybody that regularly pedals a bicycle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-k7fAHiZy8 Assuming we can find somebody more reasonable, it should be easy to make an example of her in the next election. -----Original Message----- There were all of three people who testified against Mayor David J. Cieslewicz's sprawl budget tonight. We did the best we could, but folks, there were *three* of us. Three. Nothing is going to change if even the people on this list can't turn out to defend the air, the water, the land, the economy and the social well being of this community. Pretty pitiful showing, I'd say. Anyway, thanks Mike for your great testimony. -Mike _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
