I’ve noticed a trend lately when it comes to transportation issues: conservative Republicans are doing everything they can to argue against a complete, multi-modal approach to dealing with transportation issues. It’s happening at the national level, where Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (a former Republican Congressman, it should be noted) announced a more bike-friendly transportation policy, prompting one Republican Congressman to wonder if LaHood was on drugs. It’s happening at the state level too, where today some Republicans argued against a bill that would encourage, not require, local units of government to take into consideration all road users (drivers, bikers, pedestrians, bus users, and anybody else) when designing roads.
I can understand arguments about diluting scarce transportation resources when it comes to our roads. Understand, though not really agree with. I can also understand, from an intellectual point of view, arguments about increasing local mandates, although those who make this argument do it against bills that do not mandate anything. What I can’t understand, though, is how some people argue against this by essentially mocking anybody who does not drive. Not only is it, frankly, intellectually immature, it just doesn’t make sense from a conservative point of view.
I bus to work just about every day, and I bike home when I am able. To me, biking is one of the most conservative modes of transportation out there: it’s cheap, it’s energy efficient, it has next to no impact on the environment, it’s a time saver (I don’t need to spend an hour at the gym if I just spent an hour biking home), it is healthy, it creates little to no traffic disruptions, it doesn’t damage our roads, and I don’t have to give money to unstable Mideast countries to fuel it. When I take the bus, I’m also using a pretty efficient mode of transportation. Given some conservative opinions of biking an busing, though, it’s as if they would prefer that I drive in a single-occupancy car, clogging up the freeway with everybody else. Is that what conservatives want? Thousands of people who currently bike or bus to join them on the freeways, making rush hour worse? That’s hardly conservative.
The only reason I can see for this kind of thinking is that biking and busing is seen as somehow “socially liberal”, done by tree-hugging hippies. Thus, from a political point of view, conservatives have to oppose it, lest they acknowledge the legitimacy of parts of a so-called “liberal” lifestyle. This opposition is misdirected in a couple of ways. First, it’s quite a generalization to assume that all bikers or mass transit users are in the same boat: I just don’t want to waste my time sitting in a car by myself in rush hour traffic, so I’d much rather bus and do something productive like read, or bike and enjoy the fresh air and exercise simultaneously. These are quite common reasons for not wanting to drive. Second, given changes in demographics and energy, we’re heading towards a future where there will probably be more biking, walking, and busing as people become older and less likely to drive, and as oil gets more expensive.
Bikers aren’t just a bunch of moonbats wearing “funny hats and Lycra pants”. From a classically conservative point of view, bikers are making very sane transportation choices. Designing our transportation system to simply take their needs and the needs of all other road users into account is just common sense.