I’m going to plunge back into this argument with both feet – on the pedals. A recent article by Tom Babin in the Los Angeles Times suggests that laws requiring bicyclists to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, as cars do, should be amended. I agree.

We all do it anyway. I like to say to that I’m a conscientious bicyclist. I wear visible clothing. I use lights at night and hand signals to indicate upcoming turns. I ride as close to the side of the road as I safely can. But I’ve rolled through a thousand stop signs, and I’ll likely roll through a thousand more.

It’s legal to do this in Idaho. The “Idaho stop” law, adopted in 1982 and in force ever since without incident, allows bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs. But most jurisdictions are still hung up on the idea that bicyclists and cars should be treated identically under the law.

This means that bicyclists should come to a complete stop at all stop signs and red lights, as drivers of motor vehicles are required to do. It sounds fair, but in reality, the idea flies in the face of physics and common sense. Boise personal injury lawyer and bicycle activist Kurt Holzer recently wrote on his blog (as quoted in the Times story) that he has “never seen a car versus bike collision or a bike versus pedestrian collision that was attributable to road users following the stop-as-yield statute.”

As one commentator on a Facebook site devoted to cycling issues put it: “Adhering to the Idaho stop is how any rational person rides a bike.”

Should bicyclists be expected to ride in a way that promotes safety on the road for everyone? Obviously. It’s in our own self-interest to be courteous to our fellow users of the road. Most drivers of motor vehicles respect this.

But a bicycle is not a car. Coming to a complete stop means loss of momentum, and without an engine, all the energy on a bike comes from the human being riding it. On a bicycle, I am traveling slowly enough to gauge any danger at an intersection in plenty of time to react. The primary purpose of stop signs in most neighborhoods is to reduce the overall speed of traffic by not allowing cars to accelerate to dangerous speeds between them. Since bicycles travel much more slowly than cars, bicyclists rightly treat a stop sign as a warning rather than a requirement.

Operators of buses and trucks, an order of magnitude more massive than cars, are required to obey different regulations. Why should bicycles – an order of magnitude less massive, and therefore less dangerous – be different?

But there are motorists who want bicyclists off the road entirely. One of their repeated refrains is that bicyclists should get licenses and register their “vehicles” and pay excise taxes. I would have hated this as a kid. And it’s ridiculous, anyway. Like the calls to ticket bicyclists who roll through stop signs, this is a transparent attempt to reduce the number of bicyclists, in the mistaken belief that roads should be for the exclusive use of motorized vehicles.

Apart from the medical help from your doctor, you can also prepare any herbal combination of brew as per the guidance of your doctor. buy cialis levitra While it involves traffic violations, particularly 1st time violators, the Texas traffic courts are pretty sympathetic and can, looking get cialis on the precise circumstances, provide you with specific guidance based on the facts and circumstances of your case. Erectile dysfunction causes, when a man gets sexually click here to find out more cialis cipla stimulated, signals are sent to spinal cord and go to arms, legs, chest and abdomen. order cheap viagra It not only gives the mouthwatering effect but also the desire of having sexual intimation on the very thought of consuming it. Bicycles do no damage to the roads, which cyclists are already paying for through property and sales taxes. Only half the costs of roads are covered by fees and taxes directly levied on drivers. Bicyclists are already paying more than their fair share.

Besides, as I’ve pointed out before, the increased presence of bicyclists makes the roads safer for everyone. More bicycles make safer roads. Study after study bears this out. The most important effect of increased bicycle traffic is that it mitigates the behavior of drivers. When drivers get used to the idea that they will encounter bicyclists frequently, they slow down and drive with more awareness. How can that possibly be a bad thing?

But bicycle registration should be discouraged for another important reason: the idea tacitly discourages using a bicycle instead of a car. In this age of oil spills and fracking and human-induced climate change, we should all be looking for ways to live more lightly on the planet. One way is to reduce car ownership and car use.

A law requiring the registration and taxation of bikes is counter-productive. As Gordon Black, director of the Bicycle Coalition of Washington, told a Seattle news site: “We want as many drivers as possible to give up using their cars.”

Traffic laws should nudge – not shove, but nudge – responsible citizens in that direction.

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As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.

No, this isn’t a piece about politics. It’s about bicycles, inspired by a recent conversation with an old friend who now lives near Burlington.

Maine and Vermont have much in common. They’re both rural states with long winters and long roads. You need a car to get around, unless you’re in Portland (population 66,000), or Burlington (42,000). Vermont has a few more hills, but Maine has more lakes, coves, and bays. Travel in either state seldom follows a straight line.

Nonetheless, both states are beginning to embrace the car-free movement, and bicycling in particular.

But this is more than a local phenomenon. All over the country, in communities large and small, bicyclists are changing the way we think about transportation.

Last week I wrote that Bangor (population 32,000) is becoming a friendlier place to do business by bicycle, thanks to the efforts of several citizen organizations. But after talking with my Vermont friend, I realized that Bangor has some catching up to do.

When I stopped owning cars, one of the first adjustments I made was in my pattern of grocery shopping. Americans are accustomed to loading up on groceries once a week or so, and throwing everything into a car. Now, shopping by bus and bicycle, I bought fewer items at a time. This necessitated more frequent trips to the store, but it also resulted in less wasted food, because fewer items tended to get lost in the back of the refrigerator.

As I’ve noted before, most grocery stores (and malls, and other retail businesses) have parking lots. And free parking isn’t really free. The cost of constructing and maintaining a parking lot is folded into the cost of goods at the store. But bicyclists don’t use parking spaces. In effect, they are subsidizing the cost of parking for drivers.

To level the playing field, people who shop by bicycle (and by bus or on foot) should be able to pay less for their groceries. In Burlington, this sensible idea has become on-the-ground reality.
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Local Motion is a non-profit organization promoting walking and biking in greater Burlington and throughout the state. Like many good ideas whose time has come, Local Motion started small, focused on tangible, achievable goals. “Community leaders founded the organization in 1999 to develop the Winooski River Bike Ferry and the 10-mile historic Cycle the City tour,” according to their website. In 2015, the group merged with the Vermont Bike and Pedestrian Coalition, and today has 1,200 member households, 250 volunteers, an office on the Burlington waterfront, and thriving partnerships with like-minded public and business entities.

One of those entities is the nationwide Bicycle Benefits program. For five dollars (free with your Local Motion membership), you get a sticker to put on your bicycle helmet, which entitles you to discounts at participating businesses.

According to Adam Maxwell, Community Engagement Manager for Local Motion, more than 50 businesses in the greater Burlington area have joined the program. “They include everything from grocery stores to bookstores, restaurants and bakeries, and of course bike shops,” he said in a recent telephone interview. The program not only reduces car traffic by incentivizing bicycle use, it acknowledges the savings to businesses that have to provide less infrastructure for cars.

“We make that argument fairly frequently,” Maxwell said.

A spokesperson for the Bicycle Coalition of Maine said that some businesses in and around Portland have joined Bicycle Benefits, but to her knowledge, the program has not yet reached Bangor.

This would seem to be a worthy next step for Bangor’s burgeoning bicycle community. I’d like to see the large grocery stores like Shaw’s and Hannaford get on board. It seems like a win-win for everyone. Every time I ride my bike to the store, I’m saving a parking space for someone who truly needs it: a family with small children, a shopper with mobility problems, a car commuter stopping in for a few groceries on the way home from work.

The beauty of the program is that, like the bottle bill and the proposed five-cent deposit on plastic bags, it’s based on reward rather than punishment. Habitual drivers might balk at paying directly for parking, but who could begrudge cyclists the small savings to the economy and the environment they earn every day?

Bicycle Benefits is in dozens of communities across the United States. Bangor should be one of them.

[Historical note: The phrase “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont” references the 1936 election, when they were the only two states not carried by Franklin D. Roosevelt.]

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