The New Terrorist Threat: Bike Lanes

Jess Zimmerman, writing for Grist, takes a look at the absurdly overheated rhetoric coming out of New York concerning that city's new bikelanes.

1 minute read

March 24, 2011, 1:00 PM PDT

By Michael Dudley

Zimmerman notes that, despite the measurably positive impacts of NY's bikelanes, opponents still see "sharing the road" as a loss of freedom. She writes,

"'Share the Road' has one potential fatal flaw: It involves sharing, which a lot of purported adults haven't really mastered. Matthew Shaer's exhaustive history of the NYC bike lane struggle, in this week's New York magazine, shows just how much people have to mature before a community -- even Brooklyn -- can become truly bike-friendly. Step one: Stop calling bike lanes 'homegrown terrorism.'"

Zimmerman quotes a bike lane opponent who says,

"'The anarchy that has been allowed to prevail is astonishing. According to butterfly theory, according to chaos theory, I am sure that the level of emotional and psychological damage wrought by the bicycle far exceeds the damage done by cars...It is homegrown terrorism. The cumulative effect is equivalent to what happened on 9/11.'"

FULL STORY: New York’s bike lanes are 'homegrown terrorism,' say red-faced opponents

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 in Grist

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