The Cascade Bicycle Club in Seattle is encouraging everyone to get involved in the annual “Jurassic Petroleum Drive to Work Day” on Wednesday.
That's right, it's time for bicycle commuters, bus passengers, pedestrians and even car-poolers to jump into their individual cars and experience the love of crawling along to work on a congested four-lane superhighway, spewing carbon emissions as they go.
If you look at the calendar, you'll realize that Wednesday is April Fool's Day, so I doubt if the announcement at the Great City blog or Cascade's Twitter is being made in all seriousness. But there is a serious point to be made.
Imagine the congestion on our roads if everyone refused to take alternative forms of transportation one day. The regular motoring public would notice a huge spike in traffic and perhaps realize the value of bicycle commuters and pedestrians.
Great City points out that while nearly two-thirds of Americans drive, 37 percent find alternate means of getting to work. Just visualize a one-day 37 percent in increase in traffic — gridlock.
While a small portion of that percentage might be bicyclists, maybe newspaper columnists wouldn't be so dogmatic about bicyclists paying extra for their “fair share” of the road if all those cyclists drove one day. It would help illustrate that many of those commuting bicyclists do own cars, but by not using them they are helping to reduce congestion.
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