LETTER TO THE EDITOR

• Protected Bike Lanes
• As long as I’ve lived in Ann Arbor, I’ve found most in-town bicyclists to be self-centered, stupid and dangerous. Most of the “facts” in your article are cherry-picked and irrelevant to local conditions. The only thing worse than many bike riders are the arrogant promoters of “bike lanes” who enable them.
• They proceed apace with delusional plans, justified by unproven, politically correct assumptions that ignore common sense, the city’s physical capabilities, drivers, visitors, pedestrians, and the actual experience of the public. Only a single fact mentioned in your recent May 14 article (“Protected Bike Lanes Drive Economic Activity….”) is true: that Ann Arbor ranks 187 out of the 277 “largest” US cities in bike lane mileage. Would it were lower. These are the reasons it is so low and should remain so:
• The streets of Ann Arbor  were never built to accommodate bicycles. Almost all streets within a mile radius of campus never can be reconfigured.
• There are, and likely never will be, protected bike lanes built. Too much  money, brainpower, cooperation needed.
• There is an unbridgeable disconnect between U-M and town street, building and business planners. There is no true polity in this town, never was in our lifetime and never will be.
• Town officials are committed to building hi-rises, parking structures, restaurants, useless pocket parks, adding meters, and attracting frivolous and redundant business. For all the gonzo condo building springing up there, there is no affordable food shopping available in downtown (Kerrytown excepted).
• There is no serious bus or rail commuter service to or from Ann Arbor  to ease traffic.
• Not a single statistic in the article about how bikers attract money to “small” businesses pertains to Ann Arbor .

Ann Arbor’s roads are among the worst in the state—for bikers, drivers, pedestrians, children, and animals. Terrified and lost out-of-town divers are a constant menace.

Endless construction dominates life here, and is planned with no concern for town residents, drivers or visitors.

Bike riders in downtown Ann Arbor  are often self-righteous, arrogant, mindless, distracted, and dangerous.

Nothing prevents or protects from or punishes bike riders on sidewalks—many of  them crowded. This should be universally forbidden, and is in many places. But then, where are there ever visible police?

Has anyone ever heard of a bike rider being ticketed or his vehicle impounded for causing an accident, a disruption, a danger, a violation, or anything but a serious injury?

“Adult” bike riders often tow young children behind then, even in awful, congested, confused downtown traffic, even on  sidewalks. And they encourage their kids to ride on sidewalks. Sidewalk bikers never have the right of way, nor should they.

Bike riders pay nothing—no tax, license, toll—for the privilege of abusing streets designed purely to facilitate motorized transportation, or for using protected bike lanes.

Monstrous, bullying “eco-friendly” buses—much too big for our streets—often terrorize drivers of all kinds and create hazardous lanes, overlap lanes, turns and obscure peripheral vision. And more are coming.

Many “sharrows” that exist are merely nominal, almost invisible, and are sometimes horribly, dangerously placed (one on Catherine Street near Main splits the center of a two-car lane near what normally is always a tricky, crowded intersection.

Many insanely placed, always-confusing, unnecessary crosswalks add to hazardous driving, biking and walking. They have already proven their danger and superfluity, and caused deaths and injuries.

Many out-of-town visitors to Ann Arbor  never learn the streets, the parking options (often meters are arbitrarily blocked), or can, or will (the disastrous exit from town after the Winter Classic proved this forever).

Bike riders and lanes can and will do nothing to facilitate food shopping, mall shopping, sporting events, Art Fair visiting, or campus events.

There are no street-based companies (that I’m aware of), such as exist in many cities large and small, that make bike rentals easily available, affordable, parkable, or practicable. Even the new economical car share companies like CarShare are being harassed by officials trying to protect overpriced taxi licensees.

Many walkways – in parks, on campus, on streets, even on woodland walks – are routinely abused and colonized by bike riders (the serious accidents in Gallup Park are only the most obvious proof).

“The facts are clear,” you state. “Bike commuting is good for you…” This is pure opinion, cherry-picked journalism. The “facts” about biking in Ann Arbor do not support your editorializing. In answer to your question “What are We Waiting For?” We are waiting for all the above-mentioned factors—I’ll take half—to be addressed. Ann Arbor, unlike New York, Boulder, Montreal, San Francisco, Denver, Davis, Portland, etc.  is a timid, old-fashioned town mired in state and local politics, with a permanent split personality, and an entrenched legacy of perhaps the worst traffic management between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Our “leaders” are profit- and greed-driven, in and out of the university. The needs, experience and preferences of drivers, pedestrians and long-term residents matter not a whit to them. No politician who supports adding bike lanes will ever get my vote.

Paul Wiener

Ann Arbor, MI