transcribed in full:
The Bicycle -- It's Like Giving Up Smoking
(Federal communications Commissioner Nicholas Johnson wrote this piece for the
New York Times, Aug. 2, 1973)
I ride a bicycle. Not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to
bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal
sacrifice.
I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that
company's responsibility for most of the air pollution tonnage in the United
States.
It's like finally giving up cigarettes. You just wake up one morning and
realize you don't want to start the day with another automobile.
Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same say, you
finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They
need you to drive their cars for them. You are for Detroit and paying them to
do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all.
NO HARD FEELINGS. You've just moved on to something else. From now on, you just
use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your convenience. You
don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure and care
for.
You ride a bicycle because it feels good. The air feels good on your body; even
the rain feels good. The blood starts moving around your body, and pretty soon
it gets to your head, and, glory be, your head feels good.
You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and
smell smells you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little
original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of
poetry in your mind.
And there's a nice feeling, too, in knowing you're doing a fundamental life
thing for yourself: transportation. You got a little bit of your life back! And
the thing you use is simple, functional, and relatively cheap.
You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few
parts, it should last almost forever.
Your satisfaction comes from within you, and from the envy or jealousy of
others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours,
knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)
ON THOSE OCCASIONS when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the
canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting
snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people folks waiting
for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrol," men
unloading trucks.
Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of
such momentary and chance encounters but by the time I get to the office I do
somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the
city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government
limousine.
Although I am willing to brave the traffic and exhaust, I am aware it is
dangerous. I think bicycles ought to be accorded a preferred position in the
city's transportation system. At the very least, they deserve an even break.
NOTICE THAT BICYCLE riding also has some significant social advantages over the
automobile. Cars unnecessarily kill sixty thousand people every year,
permanently maim another one hundred and seventh thousand, and injure three and
a half million more.
The automobile accounts for at least 66 percent of the total air pollution in
the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas --
and 91 percent of all-carbon monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred
pounds of pollution for every person every year.
One million acres of land are paved each years, there is now a mile of road for
each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System
would build six sidewalks to the moon.
Even so, everyone is familiar with the clogged streets and parking problems --
not to mention the unconscionable rates charged by the parking garages.
Automobile transportation is the largest single consumer of the resources used
in our nation's total annual output of energy. It is an economic drain on
consumers -- in no way aided by auto companies that deliberately build bumpers
weaker than they were fifty years ago in order to contribute to an unnecessary
bumper repair bill in excess of one billion dollars annually.
The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.
________________________________
From: drakes tds.net <[email protected]>
To: Bikies <[email protected]>
Sent: Tue, December 22, 2009 9:03:51 AM
Subject: [Bikies] The Bicycle- It's Like Giving Up Smoking --- 1973 Editorial
attached is a nice piece that is as true today as it was 36- years ago, which
was written by then FCC Commissioner Nicolas Johnson. Please excuse the poor
scan quality.
"You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and
smell things you never knew were there. You start whistling original tunes to
suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind."
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