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The organizers of Bike to Work Day
today may
think they're doing good, but they haven't thought things
through.
They point out that 61 million Americans -- about half the labor force -- live with five miles of their jobs, but drive to work.
Such commuting accounts for 76.2 billion vehicle-miles each year. At 20 miles per gallon, that's 3.8 billion gallons of gasoline a year; in Colorado alone, commuting by bike would mean the annual loss of $9.6 million in taxes for a highway system which already has problems.
There are bigger complications. Short commutes require about 155 million barrels of oil annually -- the amount the U.S. imported from Kuwait and Iraq in 1988.
Without the need for those imports, we wouldn't have needed Desert Storm; we would have missed that chance to feel good about themselves. President Bush's popularity rating would be 30 percent instead of 70 percent. The chance that a Democrat might gain the presidency and make Supreme Court appointments would menace our precious domestic political stability.
On the mundane level, business attire now consists of three-piece suits for men and power outfits for women. Neither is suitable for cycling, but is the corporate office really ready for skin-tight plastic shorts and mushroom helmets? Besides, if people started dressing for comfort and convenience, rather than to conform, then productivity would increase, and our politicians would have to worry about something besides the Threat of Japan.
Riding a bike produces perspiration. Granted, Americans managed without any sort of deodorants until 50 years ago, but can today's delicate noses, which can't handle tobacco fumes, tolerate the aroma of honest sweat?
Driving a car costs 33 cents per mile. Let's be extravagant and put the bicycle at 5 cents. Cycling to work means $21.3 billion of cars not sold, auto loans not made, insurance not written, lawsuits not filed. We're Americans. We're supposed to support auto dealers, bankers, insurance agents and lawyers. We just went to war to preserve the American way, and bicycling would subvert it from within.
Further, the bicycle has a history of sordid effects. Paved roads led directly to the freeways that replaced neighborhoods with suburbs, and the first real political push for pavement came from the League of American Wheelmen a turn-of-the-century cyclists' lobby. The airplane, the cause of a huge raid on our state treasury, was invented by a pair of bicycle mechanics. Who can say what future evils will result from a resurgence of bicycles?
If you cherish our American way of life -- oil wars, dressing for success, congested freeways, politicians incapable of saying anything intelligent, subsidies to big corporations -- then you must do your patriotic part to preserve it. Drive your car to work today.
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