US DOT deleting bike lane references
npr.org"Since nearly 80% of the population uses cars to get to work and their important medical appointments, we are taking a closer look at federal guidance to ensure American families have the infrastructure they need," the spokesperson said. "This is a common sense approach despite the Left's belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda."
Jumping straight into the middle of the article you might believe you stumbled onto The Onion.
This kind of rhetoric is actually going to get cyclists killed. There are enough drivers on the road already who intentionally try to scare cyclists. This will push some of them over the hill to murder someone with their pickup truck.
Just last week in Texas:
The driver, identified as 31-year-old Charles Medina, then sped past the couple from behind. Rapp’s boyfriend responded to the maneuver by raising his hands and yelling, at which point Medina slammed his brakes, skidded to a stop and accelerated in reverse. Medina ultimately hit Rapp so forcefully that his “rear windshield was shattered completely”. He also allegedly left skidmarks from having “rapidly accelerated backwards” as well as apparently “steering towards something while backing up”. Emergency responders found Rapp unresponsive and lying face down in the roadway. She was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/22/boxer-hannah...
This one 5 years ago - https://www.thedrive.com/news/43060/coal-rolling-teen-that-h...
I couldn't find out if he ever got convicted or sentenced to anything.
But any cyclist, including myself, can tell you that there are people out there with murder in their hearts who want you to die just for the crime of delaying them by a few seconds.
> just for the crime of delaying them by a few seconds
Often it's not an actual delay, but just a perception of a delay as the driver then arrives at the next queue a few seconds later which makes no difference to their total journey time.
This also includes cyclists. (I drive and cycle, and see all the combinations)
The big difference between drivers and cyclists with murder in their hearts is that drivers have the means to do so and often do through negligence or even -as described- with intent.
YEs, absolutely, there is a big difference. My point was rather that both drivers and cyclists can be assholes (with different outcomes)
It’s unfortunately expected behaviour in fundamentalist societies.
Crazy, nothing like spending $ to eliminate something you can just let sit and ignore :)
Well the rate were this world is going with Climate Change, in 50 to 100 years the only method of transportation will be walking. That is after what could be called "the migration wars".
Getting out of fossil fuels should have started 30+ years ago. But people would rather have their children, grandchildren suffer far more then we would have if we took Climate Change seriously.
It's not just a sit and ignore thing, this will hit design guidelines that factor into future project funding.
For example, a few years ago they replaced the bridge over a river just outside of town, adding a bike/pedestrian bridge on the side. This connects a county campground to town without requiring riding on the narrow bridge shoulder. Angry people oppose it because they think it's a waste.
Not just walking
Biking, too!
This logic fails on a couple levels. One, bike lanes are often not wide enough to support another car anyway. Two, Braess's paradox[1] is an effect that's been noticed for as long as we've had cars that adding a lane to a roadway will often show no improvement, and perhaps even add detriment, to a local traffic system.
So I guess it's a common sense solution if you don't understand the first thing about roadway design?
They understand it, they're just in the middle of a culture war.
They don't understand it.
I don't get it. Aren't most bike lanes on the far right?
In some places in Europe they're on the far left. I know Trump has a bit of a grudge against Europe, maybe that's what this is about.
Obviously the far-right hates bike lanes.
I’m getting somewhat sick of Christian Nationalist trolls running the US government.
Nothing can be done about it, so (shrug) praise the Lord and pass the Shell 93 octane, I guess. Can't fight a hundred-million strong cult.
There are many more non-cult people in the US, but they don't vote enough.
As long as the government is captured by Capital, however, it's hard to make the case for them to "vote harder".
No idea what you guys are talking about. The Christian faction of the right has waned significantly since the Bush presidency.
In the “I don’t see how this connects with the teachings of Jesus” sense I agree.
In the self labeling as “Christian”, sense not so much.
The current administration is not remotely shy about proclaiming its interest in a Christian theocracy.
Given the level of involvement the Heritage Foundation has in the current administration, I think you're absolutely wrong.
Well you absolutely can but the next opportunity isn’t until 2028.
> next opportunity isn’t until 2028
There's an election every year (including special and midterms). The fight is annual and it's completely unfair to believe it's a quadrennial event and lead others to believe the same. Participate in your local elections. It's where all of this starts. The national is mostly noise that bubbles up and out.
"This is a common sense approach despite the Left's belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda."
The government we deserve.
Nobody bother thinking coherent thoughts, insults and spurious non sequiturs are policy now.
That's one of the many problems I have with the current regime: they can't say anything without framing it as an opposition to some exaggerated bogeyman. I get it, politics is about messaging. But can't these fools, for once, rise above it and just do something without taking a jab?
The worrying thing is that many supporters, and, I’ve come to believe more and more, many of the leaders and upper echelons of organizations on the right actually believe the exaggerated rhetoric is the truth.
No, they are forever captured in that narrative now, they can't jump out, that would kill their carreer.
These fools were elected because they refuse to "rise above it."
How do children get around? They bicycle. For a party claiming to be pro-life, pro-family, pro-child, they don’t act like it.
Nah, pro-family means pro nuclear family mom staying at home waiting for dad in his car.
It's pretty clear that from the other side of the border that the man in charge is literally acting like an 80 year old 4chan b troll.
He's just trying to get under everyone's skin and it's working.
Look at those crowds of bikers... ICE protesters... no king protesters...
He's a showman and he loves it.
Stop giving him airtime.
So what if federal funding doesn't recognize bike lanes or whatever this is about?
Vote in competent city Councillors that will get bike lanes prioritized in your city if that's what you care about.
A big part of the issue is that federal funding drives probably the majority of significant projects at all levels. We have a completely broken system where every project is a targeted towards winning a grant as much as if not more than the actual local need.
Milwaukee WI has had several (awarded!) street reconstruction grants killed by this admin because they included bike lanes. They weren't bike lane _projects_, they are to primarily to rebuild crumbling unsafe streets, but they included bike lanes so the Fed's rescinded the grants and now most of the projects are dead. There's no local money to do it without the grants.
The real fix for this is to fix the stupid system we have, but for now it's what we're stuck with and this has a real impact you can't overcome locally.
> The real fix for this is to fix the stupid system we have, but for now it's what we're stuck with and this has a real impact you can't overcome locally.
And to elaborate on the stupidity, blue states send more taxes to the federal government, which then doles them back out to subsidize the low cost of living in red states.
So you end up with people in dense urban areas sending tax dollars to Washington, then begging to get the taxes their own citizens paid back, in support of building the infrastructure projects they want locally.
What a mess. Condolences, and good luck down there.
“DEI bike lanes” heh, despite cycling being over represented by middle aged white guys.
imo cyclists are different than commuter bikers and the former have a seeming tendency to prefer routes with no bike lane
People who dislike this situation need to stop taking the Trump administration's (and allies') statements at face value, like David Harkey does in the article, and stop calling them crazy. Either way, they are playing you and distracting you, and you are inadvertently acting as their messengers.
Using the universal analytical tool cui bono (more powerful than an LLM) and their own explicit words, there's a consistent, non-crazy strategy: Support the fossil fuel industry in every way possible (which appeals to some people; I'm not writing a critique; you should understand this.):
* Destroy or acquire national competitors: Venezuala, Iran,
even Nigeria
* Buy off domestic competitors: using tax dollars to bribe
renewable energy developments to stop
* A million other policy and political actions, major and
and minor; even opposing bike lanes.
(If you doubt it, see if my hypothesis predicts future events.)
Great, more ammunition for bad faith arguments from all sides.
Unfortunately there's a healthy subset of the Democratic party which is also against road infrastructure improvements like bike lanes and traffic calming. Car brain is an affliction which does not discriminate.
What does it add to both-sides this issue? It's not even addressing the post, it's just redirecting some of the blame to a group who have nothing to do with what the article addresses.
The point is it is very much a “both sides” issue and some of the talking points across the aisle are pretty similar. That the administration is saying it only lends naysayers more authority, even if it’s not a moral or logical one.
The point is the current (Republican) DOT is actively fighting against existing bike lanes.
yes, and it is also true that many Democrats on local city councils and in mayoral roles are doing the same.
There is a difference in being against bike lanes and calling them DEI.
Only one of them is totally nuts
To be fair, bike lanes and cycling are inclusive and a surprisingly effective way to empower underclasses. When the safety bicycle was invented, it greatly empowered women who previously were more or less house-bound to be able to travel distances. This has been seen across several different cultures where the introduction of cycles leads to the empowerment of women.
Here's a good quote from Susan B Anthony (famous Suffragette):
"Let me tell you what I think of the bicycle. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. It makes her feel as if she were independent. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."
I mean, the positive effects of road diets and bike lanes generally are pretty well settled, as the US DOT website used to claim.
Have you read some of the DSA’s policies?
Which ones are you referring to?
I have friends who despise cyclists but oppose bike lanes. Bike lanes would take cyclists out of your lane and into their own lane. Plus if more people start cycling because there's infrastructure, that's less car traffic in the way of your truck! It just seems like a win-win for everybody. I've given up hope on transportation in the USA. It certainly won't be fixed within my lifetime.
Yep, I'm perfectly content to use the full lane if there's not another option. And that doesn't mean squeezing into the shoulder. No, that means riding left of center to prevent assholes from passing unsafely on my left.
The funniest thing is that tactical use of bike lanes, neighborhood greenways, etc, actually serves to funnel cyclists into specific protected routes such that the majority of other roads have fewer cyclists utilizing them. From my home in Seattle, I can ride several miles to work on roads that were already low traffic volume, but which are faster because cyclists get priority, and cars get diverted away. Before this existed, I just used the main roads that cars did, because it was faster.
Like, if you hate bicycles, you should love bicycle infrastructure. It's better for everyone.
You are assuming that with or without bike infrastructure, there is a fixed number of cyclists.
Many drivers either believe there are no cyclists; or that the number of cyclists should be reduced to zero, and they should drive instead, like normal people.
Also, everything is zero-sum, so any money spent on bike infrastructure is less money spent to widen the freeways or subsidize parking.
I think disliking cyclists is the core position for these people. They don’t want cyclists in the road and they don’t want to pay for infrastructure for cyclists, like bike lanes.
Some people despise drug users on their streets but oppose safe injection (a.k.a. overdose prevention) sites, which would move the drug users indoors.
It's often an act of power, like a mob. It's the corruption of power made viceral.
> I've given up hope on transportation in the USA. It certainly won't be fixed within my lifetime.
Exactly the response your enemies planned. Act aggressive enough and the other side will give in. You're their best friend when you do it and every time you post it.
But as much as those people despise cyclists, bike lanes continue to proliferate in urban areas.
Just because there is not unanimous support for good policies, doesn’t mean they can’t be implemented.
Also a big win for local policy making, which used to be a preference of the right.
I don't know if you noticed that, but when they make bike lanes they don't cut them off the sidewalk, they cut them into the car lanes, either taking a lane out or making the existing lane very narrow. Unlike a cyclist, which you see once in a blue moon, the reduced lanes are there forever, you drive through them all the time. Does this explain the paradox to you?
I, for one, cycle and still oppose bike lanes - they don't make cycling much safer (a car can easily jump a curb and most of these don't even have a curb, just some paint and plastic bollards in the best case) but impede traffic for everyone. If you want to increase cycling adoption you will piss off much fewer people and be 1000% more efficient by reigning in bike theft instead of building these lanes.
Absolutely. In my part of Miami proper, what's left for the SUVs after the bike lane was cut in, is not enough for them to pass me. When I am on that same street in a car instead of the bike, it's very unnerving to be that close to a cyclist. I mean, technically, it's enough, but it's scary for the driver. Many streets are painted with solid double no-pass markings.
When I cycle, I take the full lane even if there is a "bike lane". If I am holding up traffic, I'll slow down and retire to the bike lane until that wave of car passes, no need to agitate anyone.
This has been a solved problem in Europe, but in the states, cars got wider, but the streets didn't.
I do dislike Tour de France militant wanna be tribes, they act really obnoxious in traffic in my part of the world. When it's a single rider, mostly all is cool, but when there is a pack of a dozen or more, they transform into something else.
You don't see cyclists because they don't have to wait in traffic as much, and because there's essentially no safe road for them to travel on. Bike theft is not why people don't cycle, from my experience, it's because they're right next to cars going 35+ miles per hour that would maim them if they got hit, even plastic bollards are enough to get drivers to stop riding so close to the bike lane, which makes cyclists feel safer.
> You don't see cyclists ....
Glad we agree on this, the reasons you imagined could be true or false, the main point is that drivers are going to be affected by the bike lanes significantly more than by cyclists.
> Bike theft is not why people don't cycle
It is in my experience. E.g. I don't bike to work because the office building requires bikes to be stored in the shared storage room and I don't want it to be stolen. There is a bike trail between my home and office so no 35 mph cars you are so afraid of.
Could you please read my message in good faith and not intentionally quote me out of context, then ignore everything I had to say? It's rather impolite, and if you did that to someone in person, they'd probably be rather upset with you.
I think drivers are catered to in almost every single scenario in the United States to the point that giving cyclists any space, any infrastructure, or anything that is not also usable by cars is almost unthinkable. With that in mind, yes, drivers will be inconvenienced. Oh well. They're convenienced at almost every turn in almost every decision about transportation, let's give bikes a chance too.
You have a bike trail? Lucky! I live in central NJ, while bike trails do exist in the western part of the state, where people live here, they basically don't exist and you have to just ride in the street. Almost no offices even have a storage room, so you'd be chaining your bike to a sign, most likely, or storing it behind the building somewhere. You have it better than we do here...clearly, there's a lot more work to be done.
I am sorry, what you wrote looked like you agree that there are few cyclists and you just added your idea why is it so. Did you actually want to say that there are many cyclists on the streets but they are, apparently, invisible? Well, you are entitled to believe this, I took the most charitable interpretation of what you said because attributing the belief in masses of invisible cyclists to someone would paint them completely nuts in my view.
>I think drivers are catered to in almost every single scenario in the United States to the point that giving cyclists any space, any infrastructure, or anything that is not also usable by cars is almost unthinkable.
Yet it's reality in many cities in the US - tons of bike lanes, unusable by cars. You can bring up bike lanes on google maps, show me a city without those.
>Almost no offices even have a storage room, so you'd be chaining your bike to a sign, most likely, or storing it behind the building somewhere.
And yet, the bikes don't get stolen? Not even parts like wheels, saddles, lights etc? Lucky!
You don't see the cyclists because they pass right by - they're only in a particular bike lane that you happen to be next to for a very short time, they don't usually need to stop, and yes, obviously there are fewer cyclists than drivers because cycling in the US is unsafe.
People don't bike here because they can't. I don't live in a city, I live in one of the many dense suburbs (which are denser than many cities in the US) of NJ, where there's lots of roads, and almost no bike lanes. Where biking does happen, they bike in the street, with no shoulder, and hope not to get hit by cars.
The bikes aren't stolen because there are no bikes, because you'd have to have a deathwish to try biking in the road with cars in the same lane as them.
It's the densest state in the union, and the only places you can bike are Newark, Hudson County, New Brunswick, Trenton, Atlantic City, Camden, the barrier islands, and the boardwalks. The other 99% of the state, you're putting your life on the line.
It's about safety. Would you feel safe biking in those lanes? Would you feel more or less safe biking where there are none?
Your ignorance of the road rules might be the reason you can't bike in the streets. Bikes, even in NJ, have to stop at the "STOP" signs and red lights, just like cars - if you don't then you are indeed in danger of collision with cars. You should seek the "driver's handbook" for your state and study it (you can download it or even get a free hard copy at the local DMV), follow the rules of the road described there and you won't be putting your life on the line.
PS. Your response got killed for some reason (very bizarre in an old thread and so quickly) but to answer your question - it depends on the road. There are roads I don't feel safe driving (I live in Austin, where the city decided that the traffic enforcement is racist or something so there is none, as the result there is mayhem on the roads) but I do bike on some streets with 35 mph and no bike lanes without feeling I put my life on the line.
From what I've seen and heard, the propaganda is blaming pedestrians for being "distracted". I've heard ads on the radio telling kids to look up when walking and not walk distracted (because automobiles are dangerous). This is absurd and I'll spell it out: larger cars designed to generate more revenue and distracted drivers are problems, not people walking around with their heads down. Nearly everything is backward and designed to make money or blame poor people who don't know any better.
Kids have repeatedly been warned to pay attention when walking near roads for as long I can remember which is over 60 years.
Even getting hit by a subcompact car can kill someone if they just step out in front of it not giving it enough time to stop.
What's a "DEI bike lane"? Like woke, DEI has lost all meaning at the political level of discourse. It's just whatever the current regime dislikes.
In a nearby suburban town, the GOP Chair forced a referendum on a road project.
New York has a complete streets program where bike lanes and pedestrian friendly crossings are included in most projects. Iirc 4-5 people have died crossing this road.
The call to action was that “those people” would use the bike lanes to leave the city, connect to the Democrat bike trail and rape, murder and rob the townsfolk.
Old fearful white people are terrified of this stuff.
Yep. Beverly Hills and Bel Air used the same argument to rally against new subway development near UCLA.
I think there's a good faith possibility here that the taxpayers just don't see themselves biking to "the hood" rather than some sinister plan against black people. I mean I wouldn't vote for a bike route to the white trash trailer park, not because I hate them but because there is no reason for me to bike there whereas I might bike to a nice gentrified district for some drinks.
I would reframe most things more in terms of "what will I gain" to see how voters to vote, and new opportunities or bridges to bike to the hood gains them basically nothing.
Do you think there is any way to convince you to value a broader community of people?
It’s actually a super popular bike route as it’s a 20 minute path to the central business district downtown. And again, 4-5 people have lost their lives in as many years.
In this case most of the hubbub was really about a pedestrian island that would block left turns to a business the guy was friends with. The woke people were out to get them for some reason, etc.
The racist dog whistle was very deliberate and targeted at Nextdoor. The messaging in more mainstream outlets was about lane width reductions causing a traffic nightmare. It was almost taken from Blazing Saddles.
Maybe the "the hood" and "trailer park" people would alo like to be able to bike to other places in town, because they live there too?
So much racism.
It's just a way to keep the culture war hot. They need people on Reddit mad, the media questioning what a DEI Bike Lane is and ridiculing, etc. The actual policy they've implemented, excluding the border, has so far been an abject disaster and even their own base is unhappy. "DEI Bike Lanes" is a way to throw their voters some red meat while stirring the pot.
Making things better is Progressive, and Progressive is woke, and woke is DEI. So to fight back against DEI find the things that make peoples’ lives better (like bike lanes) and destroy them. Just tear them up, and you’ve won the culture war and saved America.
This is the official GOP policy, the best of what the GOP has to offer. Fight friends, betray allies, threaten your neighbors, drop bombs, smash bike lanes.
Not that there's any credence to the idea, but many residents of low-income neighborhoods in urban areas see bike lanes as a dinner bell for gentrification. Never mind that a ton of bicycle commuters in urban areas are from low-income neighborhoods themselves...
I will never understand the fight against “gentrification”. You want property values in your neighborhood to go DOWN?
Property values going up is only appealing if you own property.
For renters, it means they're going to try to increase rents.
For everyone, it presents a pressure on favourite local businesses-- higher costs, and an influx of well-bankrolled outside competitors.
Value of an illiquid asset doesn't help renters who don't own that asset or residents who aren't in a position to liquidate.
Furthermore, the absolute last thing most of these communities need is an influx of people who have fewer big problems in their jurisdiction because those people always go right to work turning the screws of government on the poors and existing residents.
I'm not saying vote against change at every turn, but given the choice between heavy industry and rich people I'm taking the heavy industry every damn time.
So White Flight was a good thing?
>So White Flight was a good thing?
I'll take your flagrant strawman. You're telling me that black communities weren't doing probably the best they've ever done during that exact same period?
A conspiracy theorist would say the white man invented welfare to keep them down. I would say they weren't thinking that far ahead. I mean hell, wealthy (enough, and mostly white but that's beside the point) folk had their own communities to run and what did they do? They cooked up zoning and look how that turned out. And then they kicked all the heavy industry out of the country because I guess we're supposed to all get rich off financial products and real estate speculation. You can hair split and lay these problems at the feet of various groups. Liberal white women, hippies, moralizing christian types, money grubbing businessmen and investors, people with little hats and big noses, etc, etc. Perhaps some of the assessments of blame are mostly true. But they, and other aspects of naive pattern machining (insert 13/50 joke here) wholly miss the the broader trend. And t
The political whims and their nearly universal ignorance of 2nd and beyond order consequences that arise out of the "comfortable middle class and above" have been a disaster for western society.
Idle hands are the devils workshop and oh boy has he been productive over the past couple generations.
Wanna discuss unions next? I have a spicy take on those too.
This is an incoherent mess of labels and epithets. I can’t detect any real argument.
>I can’t detect any real argument
I'd say that's a you problem but it's actually an "everyone who has to share society with you" problem.
There are a myriad of sources available to help you understand.
How to Kill a City is a good one.
GOP/MAGA/"Conservative" ideas are basically Regressive.
Don't forget the children, more milk and less vaccines.
raw milk, unpasteurized, right?
Real Republicans do not bicycle. Plain and simple.
The world desperately needs less "Murica". It needs the U.S. to be weaker, poorer, less powerful and less influential.
And both Trump and Xi-Jiping are delivering just that, thanks God.
The model seems to be Russia, which does not bode well for anyone.
In what way is Russia doing better than China?
Whenever I see Russias ratty old aircraft carrier I kind of feel bad for them.
They’re not, but a certain faction of the US right is taking them as a model nonetheless — I’m assuming they covet the sort of power the oligarchs there enjoy.
Good grief, this website is utter garbage. Keeps popping up the Support Us popup and crashed the iOS web view.
But one thing that’s interesting with the administration’s approach to so many things is the removal of tools to get information. In the article (which works in brave which suppresses the pop up) they talk about this tool to collect information on how a crash occurred. I get wanting to change priorities. As a bicyclist I can understand if road space is optimized for other uses due to the predominant form of use.
But I think one of the reasons the US is so prosperous is that we have here a reliable and high-quality data collection machine. The less you know about yourselves the worse you can achieve your objectives.
Massive tragedy that data collection fell to ideology. Though the ideology is very funny. It sounds like an angry redditor!
“This is a common sense approach despite the Left's belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda”