interstate bicycle pathways

In the middle of the last century, American President Dwight D. Eisenhower envisioned a highway system ambitious in both scope and design. It pioneered new techniques (the clover-leaf interchange), spawned new ways of living (the suburb), and provided wanderlustig individuals with a relatively cheap method of traveling for both business and pleasure. But every silver lining has its cloud, and, today, Americans' dependence on petrol-carbohydrates is destroying the environment and helping to fund terrorism around the world. If we expect to keep breathing air and fitting into our jeans, we need to utilize a time-tested and reliable device largely ignored since the beginning of the automobile age: the bicycle.

Imagine ribbons of road stretching from Boston to Miami and from New York to Los Angeles, roads designed and built exclusively for bicycles. Imagine being able to bicycle to work each day without having to worry about getting sucked into the wake of a passing semi-truck. Imagine saving money and losing weight while pedaling a bicycle instead of spending money and getting fat while sitting in a car. The automobile isn't called the slave's chariot for nothing – it demands of its user ever and ever greater sacrifices without doing much to improve his financial or physical health or that of the environment. This author has been bicycling instead of driving for the past ten months in a town built around the car, and even though he contends daily with individuals who will pass him in the breakdown lane so that they can be the first in line at the next red light, he still feels sympathy for the poor fools who willingly trap themselves in mobile prisons of glass and steel.

Prosperity through sacrifice! Safety through knowledge! Happiness through exertion! These are the slogans that will drum up support for America's interstate bicycle pathways (IBP). Not only will the IBP create new manufacturing and service jobs in communities around the country (think of all those bikes breaking down and getting flat tires), it will cut this country's reliance on dirty, sadness-inducing oil and gas products. Furthermore, new developments in battery technology as well as cheaper and more efficient solar panels have prompted bike makers to equip velocipedes with electric motors for help on hills and super-efficient coasting. The author is not calling for the construction of an entirely new web of roads spanning from coast to coast, merely that the bike trails that already exist be linked to one another with dedicated, bicycle-only riding paths. In the Netherlands, roughly 27% of all trips are done on bicycle, whereas in the United States of America, less than 5% are. Difficulties of comparison aside, bicycling is a viable form of transportation even in places where the winters are harsh and the North Sea winds are strong. For the past year, the author has dreamed about being able to bicycle into Philadelphia from his house nearly a hundred miles away, but the most direct route – 30, the Lincoln Highway – is a traffic-choked road that was not designed to handle both driver and velocipedist. Adding insult to injury, the nearest commercial bus station lies more than twenty miles from his front door, and the most efficient method for reaching it is on a road even narrower and less bicycle-friendly than Route 30. Some day, fellow pedal-mashers, we will convince the slave's charioteers of the error of their ways, and get everyone back on the saddle. Until then, however, keep your clothes tight, your eyes and ears open, and your head on a swivel. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥