If I Owned the Road
Recently I found myself in this situation:
And I wished I could show this dude what would happen if I really did own the road. Things would be very different.
I wouldn’t have to take the lane ever again. People would have their roads back, and they’d be safer because…
Bad behavior wouldn’t be tolerated.
And parking wouldn’t be so free and flowing.
And that’s just the beginning.
No, drivers don’t realize how easy they have it. But, how about we make it a little easier for people?
Oh, I am so linking to this in my blog tomorrow…
As someone who loves riding his bicycle long distance *and* drives a truck for a living, please realize that many of us truckers do NOT want to drive the rig in the city –particularly Northeastern cities. We KNOW we should not be there, ergo we do NOT want to be there. The problem is our dispatchers and our salesfolk who cluelessly overpromise a clueless client, and force us to be there.
It is not by choice that we drive in the city.
For the center of Boston, a strict limit of 24 feet in length for motor-vehicles should be imposed, and more cross-dock warehouses should be built to transfer freight from larger to smaller trucks. Any business that wants or needs a truck longer than 24 feet inside the city center should get a police permit in advance, and have a police escort for the vehicle to & from its pre-arranged rendez-vous.
Please go after the businesses for encouraging heavy truck traffic where it does not belong. We truck-drivers would be grateful.
should have distro centers on the outsides of the city, and bike trailer the goods into town! haha!
Great to hear this perspective.
“Horns would be as loud inside sara as outside”
Classic.
Bikeyface, there is a country where cyclists already have all of the items on your wish-list – and more. Three clues for you: (i) it begins with an “N” in the official version and an “H” in the colloquial one, (ii) much of it lies below sea level and its inhabitants are given to wearing wooden shoes and (iii) you went there on holiday last year: that is, unless you were sitting in Boston and made it all up.
Did you wear your trademark helmet when you cycled in that country? On the evidence of your drawings you didn’t. And did you feel at all uncomfortable or uneasy without it? By the looks of it you didn’t. So might that have had something to do with the fact that just about everywhere you went on your bike in that small country, you were physically segregated from motor traffic by nice solid concrete berms, and therefore the worst that was likely to happen to you was a collision with another cyclist and a few bruises to show for it, not a wheelchair for the rest of your days or an early trip to the cemetery.
How did things end up like that? Because enough people wanted it, and back in the 1970s refused to listen to the traffic planners who, even in that country, were already trying to consign the bicycle to the museum as an everyday means of transport. So keep on grinding away: with time and persistence it can be done. A few weeks of traffic-fume smog such as they’re currently enjoying in London may provoke even the not-very-bright to ask, is it really sensible to go on building city transport around the internal combustion engine?
PS. When’s the book coming out?
love the one about the horn…as loud inside as out…brilliant