Comment 33173

By BayAreaBiker (anonymous) | Posted September 02, 2009 at 09:22:18

I myself have been biking for over twenty years and considerable distances, 70 km to San Francisco 22 times, about the same distance to Oakland once, 100 km to Hollister, also to Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, Sausalito, and Sunol. My favorite biking route, which I used to get to San Francisco and to San Jose, has very heavy car traffic (El Camino Real). Hwy 9, which I used to get to Santa Cruz, has some scary areas, narrow and winding, also some fairly steep grades. I think the reason bikers are poorly accommodated is because the oil industry is very powerful. Los Angeles had a bike highway in 1910, but the railroad, oil, and automotive industries wanted it torn down, and succeeded in doing so. It is now the 110 Freeway. Around 1920, bikes were reduced to toys in status because cars became affordable and reliable, and easy to use. It took the Oil Crisis of the early 1970's to get some people on bikes, and the fitness movement of the late 1970's to get more people on bikes. Once the fuel crisis ended, people who were biking got back into their cars. @Capitalist: Under normal (not rush hour) conditions, a car is indeed faster than a bike. When the road has more cars than it was designed to handle, bikes get the speed advantage, yet we still choose the car.

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