ON YER BIKE

Now, how guilty are you feeling today?  Especially if you drove your car to work. Or you were a passenger in a car. You selfish beast. Didn’t you know that today was Ride-to-Work Day?

The Melboune Age has an accusatory front-page pointer to its story. ‘Ride to work. It’s the day to join in. Will you?’

No I won’t and no I didn’t. And I wonder how many Age editors and reporters and headline writers pedaled to work in the dark. How many journos were dispatched on two wheels to cover stories for today’s edition.

Editorially the paper says ‘this morning Melbourne glimpsed what the future could, AND SHOULD, look like.

It waxes eloquent about Melbourne being the Mecca for sports events and literary and arts festivals and for being ‘a gateway for tourism’. Did anybody tell them that all those tourists will be traveling by plane or bus or car?

And they say we can become one of the great cycling cities of the world by emulating Copenhagen. Do people in Copenhagen pedal daily through or over the European equivalent of the Burnley Tunnel, the Monash, the Tullamarine Freeway or the West Gate bridge? Were Mums meant to get into the spirit and dink their kids to school?

And how big is Copenhagen compared to the sprawl of Melbourne?  This is real Greenie, feel-good, bulldust.

The Age says that not only should you embrace the bicycle revolution but town planners should.  That’s all we need. The last anti-car ideas they floated was to shrink St. Kilda Road one of the main city arteries for cars and trams.  And if you want proof of the anti private transport campaign just look at the mess they have made of Collins street with uber-sized tram stops and other road users treated like pariahs

I remember twenty years ago when they launched the ‘Think Bike’ campaign. I said back then, and my opinion has not changed it should be ‘Think car’. Sure some drivers are selfish but two-wheel travelers are worse.  They treat red lights as if they don’t apply to them. Don’t stay in bike lanes when roads have them. Weave in and out of the traffic. Lean on your car.  Don’t wear safe clothing at night and have insufficient lights.

If anybody, they are guests on the roads. They pay no petrol taxes, no registration fees, undergo no safety checks, no insurance if they bowl over a pedestrian or damage your car.

Think bike? Think car. And stuff Copenhagen.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007