My hypothesis is people are easily frightened idiots. They don’t like change of any sort. It frightens them and then they can’t reason about if the change is good or bad long term.
If a place had bike lanes for years the same people who bike-lash would probably oppose removing them.
Like how they opposed getting rid of all of the street cars, light and heavy rail, etc. in the US in favor of cars and highways and gigantic parking lots? Or, how they opposed moving from living close together in the cities and inner ring suburbs to suburbs and exurbs because a family darker than them moved in to their neighborhood in the 50s and 60s?
Racism and classism. For example, many of my fellow Americans unfortunately think only poor and black people ride bikes. So, they would rather there be no bike lanes on the off chance that such a person might ride through their community.
MARTA - Atlanta’s transit system, created in the 1960s. It was originally supposed to go to the 5 innermost counties of metro Atlanta (Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton), but the 1965 ‘authorization to participate in the system’ referendum failed in Cobb. Long story short, MARTA ended up only in Fulton and Dekalb until 2014, when Clayton joined. It’s still not in Cobb or Gwinnett.
Cobb County - a county in the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta, known for being relatively white, wealthy, and racist (especially on its northeastern side).
In the decades since MARTA was founded, there have been repeated attempts to get Cobb to join, but it always fails and one of the biggest arguments the opposition uses is that it would bring “crime” (which around here, is well-understood to be a dog-whistle for “black people” in that context).
My hypothesis is people are easily frightened idiots. They don’t like change of any sort. It frightens them and then they can’t reason about if the change is good or bad long term.
If a place had bike lanes for years the same people who bike-lash would probably oppose removing them.
Like how they opposed getting rid of all of the street cars, light and heavy rail, etc. in the US in favor of cars and highways and gigantic parking lots? Or, how they opposed moving from living close together in the cities and inner ring suburbs to suburbs and exurbs because a family darker than them moved in to their neighborhood in the 50s and 60s?
Well, when you put it like that then my hypothesis doesn’t sound very plausible. But maybe racism just Trump’s everything else.
Racism and classism. For example, many of my fellow Americans unfortunately think only poor and black people ride bikes. So, they would rather there be no bike lanes on the off chance that such a person might ride through their community.
Reminds me of one of my favorite videos.
background
MARTA - Atlanta’s transit system, created in the 1960s. It was originally supposed to go to the 5 innermost counties of metro Atlanta (Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton), but the 1965 ‘authorization to participate in the system’ referendum failed in Cobb. Long story short, MARTA ended up only in Fulton and Dekalb until 2014, when Clayton joined. It’s still not in Cobb or Gwinnett.
Cobb County - a county in the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta, known for being relatively white, wealthy, and racist (especially on its northeastern side).
In the decades since MARTA was founded, there have been repeated attempts to get Cobb to join, but it always fails and one of the biggest arguments the opposition uses is that it would bring “crime” (which around here, is well-understood to be a dog-whistle for “black people” in that context).
lol i love it, thanks!