Thursday, April 15, 2010

LaHood's Pro-Bicycle Policy Is Big News

My bike pal Gordon Ridge sends an intresting item about Ray LaHood, the Republican Secretary of Transportation who drew applause from bicyclists nationwide for his new policy that the government is going to give bicycling – and walking, too – the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and the selection of projects for federal money.

"This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized," LaHood wrote.

But it seems that truckers don't like it, according to a story on The Huffington Post:

The National Association of Manufacturers' blog, Shopfloor.org, called the policy "dumb and irresponsible."

"LaHood's pedal parity is nonsensical for a modern industrial nation," said the blog. "We don't call it sacrilege, but radical is a fair description. It is indeed a sea change in federal transportation policy that could have profound implications for the U.S. economy and the 80 percent of freight that moves by truck."

By the way, a bicyclist was killed in Washington, D.C. by a military truck that was part of the security around a nuclear weapons summit.

And check out this story about a bicyclist in Virginia who was victimized by college kids in a car who thought it would be fun to scare a cyclist on the road.

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