Any user of Facebook knows that while there is a lot to like about this social media platform, there's also a lot not to like -- such as damn crazy ideas being spread around.
About a week ago I started a petition in support of the Salem Bike Vision proposal to build a network of protected bike lanes in Salem. At the moment it has 190 signatures. Please sign it!
To publicize the petition, I shared a post on three Facebook pages that I administer: Salem Can Do Better, Strange Up Salem, Salem Political Snark.
The 591 reactions to date have been mostly positive: 71% liked or loved the post, while 29% deemed it worthy of a "haha."
Most comments in favor of protected bike lanes were predictably reasonable. Bicyclists don't feel comfortable or safe using the current bike lanes, which often don't exist on busy streets and when they do, almost always consist of painted lines on the side of the street.
Comments opposed to protected bike lanes were hugely more likely to be crazily weird. They came in a bunch of different flavors. Here's some examples of central themes put forward by the "haha" folks. I'm going to rebut the themes with a single sentence, since they make so little sense.
Absurd logic. A flawed premise plus faulty facts equals nonsense.
Anti-green conspiracy theory. A road diet is indeed planned when an unneeded car lane is better put to a bike lane purpose, but whoever "they" is, they're not going to ban all gas/diesel vehicles.
Want school armed security. The school district is funded in a separate fashion from how the City of Salem is funded, so the community improvement bond isn't taking any money away that could have gone to schools.
No one on disconnected bike lanes. Aside from the fact that the commenter can't be watching the bike lane 24/7/365, few people using a protected bike lane that goes for just a few blocks says nothing about how much a citywide network of protected bike lanes would be used.
Misinformed. Bicycles aren't supposed to be ridden on sidewalks in the downtown core, though some cyclists do, because it isn't safe to ride in the street; elsewhere it can be difficult for cyclists to ride on sidewalks, so fixing sidewalks is a poor option compared to building protected bike lanes.
Bicycle riders should be taxed. Actually most people who ride a bicycle also own a car, so they are paying a gas tax which funds both roads/streets and bike lanes.
Hardly anyone rides bikes in Salem. Just plain wrong.
Simply anti-bicycle. Hey, if you hate bicycles, that's your right, but come on -- banning bicycles from roads... are cyclists supposed to levitate above the pavement?
Against Governor Brown. The $300 million bond measure has nothing to do with state government, nor with Kate Brown.
Anti-homeless. OK, let's build the network of protected bike lanes and see if this prediction comes true, which of course it won't.
Bicycles should be licensed and insured. In my opinion this would be a great idea, if we were talking about assault weapons, but if bicycles are made too expensive for regular people to afford, only rich people will have bicycles.
Humor. After all the crazy comments I had to read in order to write this blog post, I really appreciated coming across a bit of humor.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.