Hey, are you one of the many Seattle residents who continually flap your jaws about how you totally need to start riding your bike to work? Well, now’s your chance to make good on your eco-friendly false promises plans! The Phinney Neighborhood Association is hosting a special class today at 6:30 p.m. called Intro to Bike Commuting (prerequisites: Pedaling 101, and So You Want To Move To Seattle Without a Job But With at Least Five Roommates).
You don’t even need to show up with a bike—just know how to ride one! Topics will include how to equip your bike and how to avoid cars and death during your daily commute. You will need $30 but the sweet rewards of toned calf muscles and that hard-earned cyclist smugness will surely be worth it. (Phinney Neighborhood Association, 6532 Phinney Ave N, 6:30 — 8pm, $30 for PNA members, $35 general public. Call PNA to register: 206-783-2244.)
Release the Kraken.
War on Cars? I’ll remember that the next time The Stranger start citing new reasons against the deep bore tunnel and re-built viaduct options.
30$ to get a training lessons is ok, but for some reason a 30$ bike tab fee provokes alot of hostility from cyclists.
Oh and remember kids, using your bike on the street is NOT a right, but a privlege.
@2, you know what you little prick..I wouldn’t have a problem paying a fee annually for my bike. (It does use public roads etc. and I understand that everyone should help pay for public services accordingly and cyclists use the roads) But it sure as hell needs to be less than what a motorized vehicle should pay.
And yeah, I do bike (or run) to work most days in the spring, summer and fall ( 6 miles each way). (I’m not just someone posting from a position of ignorance as others do) So take your broad ignorant generalizataion and shove it up your ass sideways and without lube.
Have a nice day!
Do they teach these kids how to run lights and slow down traffic?
Ah a new unpaid intern…
I would like to welcome you with a big fuck you. Fuck you, Megan, fuck you.
Is there a class on dropping your kids off at school/daycare and still making it in to your job by 9AM on a bike?
@3
Nobody says it has to be exactly like cars. My idea is to charge 50$ but have it expire after 5 years. You place it on the back of your helmet and basically can use any street legal bike, as opposed to buying one for every bike you own. This would enforce the mandatory helmet laws that motorcycles adhear to and make cyclists safer as many dont wear helmets. Have all the money be used just to provide additional bike boxes, bike lanes, etc, etc. Wont cover all the costs, but will definately offset it. Cyclists will also benifit from all those red light cameras that drivers seem to hate and would force those who run them, to break at intersections.
Again, using your bike on the same streets cars use, is NOT a right. No more a right than it is for actual drivers who insist their taxes pay for the roads and they should have the right to use them, theyre clearly wrong.
I am a lifelong pedestrial, I have never owned a car.
Have a nice day being angry and pent up.
#2/#3: Just a reminder that local roads and infrastructure is mostly paid by property tax, not car tabs or gas tax. Bicyclists and non-car users subsidize car users, not the other way around.
Not to mention the vast majority of city-owned land is dedicated to subsidizing car use.
I’d be happy with a $30 bike tab fee. But we should be fair and add a $1000 yearly car tab fee too, and reallocate property taxes to education and human services.
@2 the annual fee for a bike to represent wear, tear, and maintenance on roadways would work out to about $0.00008 per bicycle.
And cost 20 cents just to collect.
Oh my god fuck off so much and leave Seattle now, please. Go back to fucking idaho, or frisco, or wherever the fuck you came from and take your wierd ass ideas of what seattle ‘should’ be with you.
Finally, a leftist call-to-arms that is honest about being (1) opposed to what nearly every mainstream member of society wants, (2) unrealistic, and (3) all about smug self-satisfaction. Keep it up, unpaid intern!
This class should be free. Or all-you-can-drink.
@2 Actually according to the courts riding a bicycle and walking are rights, not privileges. Operating a motor vehicle is a privilege, not a right. You do not need a license or pay a fee to walk whether it is on the sidewalk or in the road.
Dear unpaid intern, as a cyclist, driver and pedestrian. This isn’t a war on cars as much as a hopeful progress towards more bike use. Please stop making it something that needs to be fought tooth and nail with a divisive battle to the death…. you aren’t helping.
@9
As someone who doesnt own a car, sure, 1,000$ car tab, doesnt affect me in any way. Similar how to raising the car tab for EVs and Hybrids to 100$ doesnt affect me and thats being jacked up to offset lower gas tax revenues stemed from cars that use less or none at all. As you know the state gas tax pays for many interstate roads, some of which have bike lanes (I-90 as an example). The more you push for bikes to share the road, the more you cant escape the fact that fee’s will be to be applied to them to help pay for it.
Again, using your bike on a street is NOT a right, but a privilege.
Unpaid Intern Megan: I second Andy @15. You aren’t helping. You are in fact hurting. As a member of an information distribution organization, please step up a couple of levels of responsibility and take care in what you write. Divisiveness is not beneficial to anyone in this situation.
@16 see @14.
I think all human-powered locomotion should be free. Motor-powered locomotion should be taxed.
Thus kayaks, canoes, stilts, walking, bicycles, skateboards and rollerskates = free.
Cars, trucks, buses, motorboats, airplanes = taxed.
My person jury is out on sailboats. But if they have a motor, then taxed.
To another point, bicycle vs. car antagonism is hardly unique to Seattle. To wit, England.
@1-17: Stop feeding the troll.
Jesus, you guys, where’s your sense of irony? I think Megan has shown us that she’s capable of, you know, not being literal from time to time. Do you need fucking emoticons, or something?
I’ll be waiting for the dour remark that I’m not using the word “irony” correctly.
#!6: The $ goes before the number, not after it.
Kinison your spelling and grammar are horrific
The problem with irony is that it rusts.
@20,
But you are.
@22
Work refuses to let me install a spell check or a browser that has it built in. Grammar is about on par with Stranger editors.
Geez, someone woke up on the snarky and bitter side of the bed today. Even if you are anti-bike, which I’m guessing you are, FOX-newsy style sarcasm doesn’t add to the conversation; it only devalues the conversation.
@16
Well, this must be one of those privileges that hasn’t a single civil or criminal code dictating the circumstances for its removal – quite unlike the driving privilege, which has many, many codes governing its bestowal and revocation. (I always assumed those are what people are referring to when they trot out that “privilege” aphorism about driving.)
Or, wait – maybe you are talking about some kind of right other than the legal variety?
@17: in most jurisdictions, sailboats have to have motors (sometimes by law, sometimes by marina regulations). They use them to get in and out of tightly-packed marinas safely. Ridiculous to treat them as motorized vehicles for being forced to use motors for 3-5 minutes per trip.