Rant about the Road

Something’s wrong with bikes. Something is wrong with the right-wrong continuum, too. The bicycle was invented in mid 1800s both in terminology and technology. The device as we know it is so simple and can be made up of precision pieces or cheap alloys and cheap manufacture. After fixing a few bicycles, over the years, the cost factor has become its own monster - simply, bikes work. What’s wrong with bikes? It may be the people in general.

There is a little stretch of trail in New York City that starts in a little park in the Bronx and brings you up to the Canadian border in various iterations. The path starts as a 6ft wide asphalt track and widens to well over 10ft at the county line 1.5 miles north of its origin. The path is used by everyone and it is sometimes heavily trafficked. Bikers use it - as they always have - and walkers too. But also motorcycles and e-bikes. This pathway exemplifies the wrongness of people that bikes will accounted, soon I think.

There are signs popping up at this Bronx park. Van Cortlandt park is one of the emeralds of NYC’s park system. It’s huge. Draws millions of people each year. Hosts the largest party of cross country runners collegiate and high school on the East Coast. Has exploded in popularity since the pandemic and people re-discovered organic green environment. And now signs literally abound within the park that restrict bicycle riding. On top of that, e-bikes and motorcycles are flourishing on greenways and bike lanes. What’s a biker to do? It looks familiar to me as a mountain biker - the problem with image - the problem of the bike as linkage between biker and biking.

In my imagination bikers are independent and strong. Willing to chance life and limb to get there by fiat and foot. Whereas e-bike users are short cutters, sorry to blunt their egos, using electrification to make the pursuit of speed easier and lowering their human effort. No one walks anywhere, so going door to bus or subway doesn’t earn my esteem much - but kudos to pedestrians all the same, it’s safe, it’s cheap and it’s saving our air. That said, bikes are a true model of efficiency and trump the alternatives mentioned here: faster and almost romantic to those of us who maintain a passion for their bikes. So how do we deal with the loss of roadways, access and effect?

A start is to redeem ourselves in better attitudes - sharing the road, using visibility equipment, using civility around the slower and the electrified among us - bikers are truly courageous and powerful.