Bike wars rage in Sydney
COMMENT
Sydney is in the throes of Bike Wars with bitter rhetoric filling the radio waves and news pages.
The latest battle was kicked off by US academic John Pucher who labelled Sydney’s drivers as some of the world’s most hostile towards bike riders.
Reaction from callers and bloggers in the tabloid media confirms Pucher’s opinion, with an outpouring of hatred from drivers incensed because people ride bikes on ‘their’ roads.
Most of their claims have long been exposed as nonsense, but some are so often repeated that they have become articles of faith among revheads.
So here is a rundown on the most common myths.
1. When bike riders pay rego they will have rights to use the roads.
This is a furphy on multiple grounds. First of all, taxpaying cyclists do pay for the roads as 80 percent of them also own cars and pay rego – so while they are riding they are in fact subsidising motorists.
But wait – rego money does not even pay for the roads. Only 30 percent of petrol tax is spent on roads, and 80 percent of rego fees go on third-party insurance costs which are necessary because of the massive carnage vehicles create.
Registration is also a weight tax. Trucks are much heavier than cars and tear up the road more so they pay higher fees. A bike is 100 times lighter than a car so its pro-rata weight tax would be far less than the cost of administering it.
Bicycle NSW estimates that road income vs road expenses creates a $19 billion annual deficit in Australia, that all taxpayers fund.
Consider this: If riders should be registered, why not skateboarders, skaters and indeed pedestrians? The last person killed by a bike in Sydney was ten years ago, and it was the pedestrian’s fault. Yet pedestrians assault or kill people every week. They are far more dangerous than bike riders. Think about it.
In the famous bike-friendly cities of the world where over 30 percent of journeys are on bikes, they don’t pay rego. It’s a stupid idea.
But the real reason revheads want bikes to be registered is because…
2. Bikes are always running red lights (and number plates would enable drivers to dob them in)
While po-faced bike advocates are obliged to condemn this, reality tells another story. Traffic lights are there only to stop tonnes of moving metal killing and maiming others. Riders running the red are putting themselves in danger whereas vehicles doing the same are putting everyone else in danger, a reversal of risk which is always ignored by angry revheads, many of whom run red lights themselves.
Riders can also see cross-traffic far better than a driver. Their point of view is usually way ahead of the driver’s and their vision is not obscured by a metal cage.
Riders running the red in fact usually reduce risk and speed up the traffic flow. This is because riders sitting at the front of a traffic queue are intensely aware that, on the green light, they will hold up the cars behind them, creating impatience and dangerous aggression – especially if going uphill. Bikes accelerate slower than cars who can put the pedal to the metal and burn lots of carbon to get ahead. So riders who safely jump the lights are reducing their own risk while allowing the cars a free run.
But the utter hypocrisy of this whinge lies here: Most times a rider is jumping the lights, five or 20 pedestrians are also defying the Don’t Walk sign and the drivers never get angry at them. And it’s a cinch that all those drivers, when on foot, have themselves illegally crossed the road. So this sanctimonious appeal to strict obedience of the law is a crock.
Many riders find that even a second-rate bike lane removes the problem because they can play leapfrog with the cars without conflict, so waiting for the green becomes far more practical.
3. Bikes hold up traffic
No they don’t. As the bike sticker says, “cars hold up traffic”. To prove this, watch a busy intersection for ten minutes. You will see queues of cars blocked not by bikes but by other cars. On the other hand cars hold up bikes, not only at busy intersections but also in on-road bike lanes which are always blocked by taxis, parking cars and buses. Riders are expected to wait patiently.
In built-up areas, bikes may briefly delay cars when free-running between traffic lights but in most cases the next traffic jam stops the car and the bike catches up, proving that if the car had cruised behind the bike no net time would have been lost and the driver would have simply saved some fuel. This whinge is nearly always down to sheer impatience on the part of revheads who think they are in a race.
A bike takes 11 times LESS space on the road than a car. So, as another bike sticker says, each bike means ‘one less car’. Each bike rider in fact reduces car congestion.
In the rare cases when bikes really do delay cars on the open road, tough.
4. Bikes illegally overtake on the left
No they don’t. It’s perfectly legal, except where a car has indicated and is turning left. But as every rider will tell you, many many cars turn left without indicating.
The imposts of drivers on riders go further if you count the exhaust fumes drivers spew into riders’ faces as they haul their air-conditioned lounge-rooms to work, and the health benefits that cycling brings the nation by not adding to air pollution and its resulting epidemic of respiratory disease. How often have we heard the cost in billions to the nations from obesity-related disease?
But the tabloids ignore all this and incite hatred and violence against bike riders with insults such as “Lycra-clad fanatics”, “carbon-counting crazies” and “road vermin”. The idiot who wrote that also complained because riders “clogged up his café”. Tragic. Sydney, please grow up.
by Michael Gormly
