Peter Morsch: What Are You Talking About?!

To the Editor:

In response to your editorial about downtown semi-vitalization, and the sad, sad situation for poor, poor motorists who--oh, sad thought--may not have room to park their SUVs:

Bikes do belong on the road. They are vehicles--the most efficient mode of transportation ever invented, in fact--and they should have every right to occupy the billion dollar road surfaces that their tax-paying owners have paid dearly for over the years.

We deserve those streets, and we deserve the respect of the lumbering, dinosaur-class of vehicles that the majority of the public wastes their money on.

While we’re talking budgets, how much do you think it costs, upfront and in yearly maintenance, to plug in more car-parking downtown? Compare that figure to the cost of more bike parking (which could be a tree), or a stripe down the shoulder of a city street that says “Bike Lane”? Peanuts, man.

You want a sustainable future? Start asking for it. Start living it. I see you riding bike round town, Strand, and you seem to enjoy yourself. I know thousands of people like you that get a real, functional kick out of it, too. As the economy tanks and the tankers dry up, we’re going to see a lot more of my kinda people pedaling around town, too.

We, your cycling neighbors, just need to get along with (and transform) outdated visions of transportation (i.e., destructive, disgusting, and resource-guzzling automobiles rule, and everyone else sucks their smog from the hind teat).

So, let’s propose a truce, shall we? I, cyclist, will do my dangdest to respect traffic laws, signals, and signage; I’ll do my best to flow responsibly down any city street I so choose, of course selecting the most efficient and enjoyable routes possible; I’ll signal you, drivers, when I want to change lanes or turn.

I’ll even resist the urge to smash off your sideviews when you cut me off or hurl insults at me (which is really more funny than insulting, but I do really enjoy it when you rev your sputtering engine at me at a stoplight. That I get a real kick out of. Keep doing that. That’s fun).

You, motorist, for your part should do your best, likewise, to obey traffic laws, to respect your fellow commuters and neighbors, and to resist the urge to eat your sandwich while double-thumb texting and smoking a cigarette simultaneously. We would appreciate that.

And, while we’re making a truce, would you also take time to think about this goofy little question: is $3.50 gas (paid out to a giant, tax-evading and/or ridiculously subsidized corporation who’s raking in record profits while tearing up the oceans and the wildernesses of our fragile planet) really worth it?

I’d tell you what conclusion to come to, but you’re smart people.

Sound like a deal? I thought so. See you on the streets.

The attached picture was taken in a small, decently-impoverished mountain town in Ecuador a few weeks back.
Cyclists are provided with road signs, and bumpered bike lanes. This is a town of perhaps 12,000 souls, in a developing nation that has tons of petro reserves, and a great relationship with Venezuela (where gas costs less than breathing).
If they can get it right, why can’t Fargo, N.D., U.S.A.?

-Pete Morsch
Moorhead