A group of outsiders pressured the town council of a small town in Massachusetts into passing a law giving bikes the same rights as cars on the towns roads. They passed through the town while riding to work in Boston. They had already extorted similar changes out of other towns on their commute route and wanted this town to toe the line.
2 weeks after the measure was passed the lawyer for the group ran a red light on his bike in front of a police officer. According to the new statute the police pulled over the guy and gave him a verbal warning. They guy laughed it off and proceeded to run the next red light he came to, right in front of the same police officer.
After the cop gave him a $100 fine, as set by the new law for not obeying traffic laws as a car would, the same lawyer who led the group pressuring for the law sued the town.
Thankfully the judge laughed him out of court after ordering him to pay the fine.
The lesson here is to be careful of what you ask for. You may get it.
Cities all over the U.S. are investing more in bicycle infrastructure and it’s paying off. This new video from Streetfilms looks at what cities are doing to improve bicycling infrastructure, and why they are successful at getting their biking community to flourish.
Portland Mayor Sam Adams says his city didn’t just become the “bicycling capitol of America” overnight.
For the equivalent cost of a single mile of freeway, we now have a bike infrastructure. … Today our daily bike count is about 17,000. From 2,500 to 17,000. And for every mile of improvement we make on the bikeways, we are always surprised at how exponential growth is in terms of bike riderships.
New York City is another city where cycling has been a major focus. Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the city’s department of transportation says that they’ve see an 66 percent increase in cycling over the last two years, and in the last four years they added 250 miles of bike lanes. But she says New York City is not alone when it comes to cities making an effort to accommodate for bikes. “This is a national movement. This has become a fundamental mainstream form of transportation,” she said.
If we’re going to continue to grow and thrive, and accommodate the million more people that we’re going to have living in New York City by 2030, we can’t accommodate those people with cars, we need to accommodate those people through more sustainable forms of transportation.
Watch the video below:
Photo: Chapendra/Flickr
