By Lou Murray
Bike lanes aren’t really about bicycles. Bike lanes are a tool for social change. To the average person what that really means is that the pointed headed intellectuals don’t like you and the way you live. You breeding-oriented people with your families, youth hockey players, your regional and local Catholic schools are taxing the environment with your cars.
The bright bulbs at Boston City Hall and their university think tank allies also claim that more bike lanes will change the sedentary culture. Translation: You are too fat. They want to make it so difficult to drive and park your car you will be forced to walk or bike to grab a sandwich or a slice of pizza on Centre Street. They snicker at their Orwellian double entendre of a “road diet”.
The last benefit the pointy headed people are so excited to tell you about is gentrification. What does gentrification really mean in a middle class/working class neighborhood like West Roxbury? First the streets become clogged with protected bike lanes and then it becomes a challenge to park outside of Holy Name Church or Saint Teresa on a Sunday.
Little joyful errands will become a painful reminder of the Wu administration, while Mayor Wu has moved on from the steppingstone of Boston City Hall to lecture and hector the nation from Senator Warren’s desk in the United States Senate. Dropping your child at the school you fought so hard to get into will take twice the time. Think it through, you’ll need to budget 60-90 minutes instead of 30 minutes for the quick Saturday morning run to the local hardware store, bank, cleaners, and donut shop because there are 50% less parking spaces. Gentrification in a middle-class town means
changing the voters who live here. You say you won’t, but you will. You’ll tire of the nonsense and traffic on your side streets, and sell out like the people of Charlestown, Southie, and Brighton. Our vibrant businesses, youth sport leagues, parishes, and schools will suffer the same fate as other neighborhoods in other cities who have surrender to this delusional thinking of bike lanes.
Lastly, an element of bike lanes that City Councilor Kendra Lara won’t tell you about is the fundamental legal change that social planners have waiting for you it is called “default liability”. It is now the law in Europe where this bike lane craze emanates from. In Denmark and Holland, the bicyclists pull their bikes right in front of cars. Part of the reason these bikers are so bold is that in those countries and much of Europe is that the automobile driver is automatically at fault in
a collision with a bicycle. Imagine getting a 7-year surcharge on your auto insurance because some nitwit on two wheels from Jamaica Plain slid on the ice into the side of your car in February.
“What can we do?” I was asked this question by a teary-eyed small business owner. If you really believe in your businesses and your community, I recommend electing anyone to the city council not allied with Mayor Wu or the Democratic establishment. Several years ago, Mayor Walsh completely backed off bike lanes in West Roxbury. His old ties to the city and common sense won out over the urban technocrats. Mayor Wu never even had the decency to
campaign for bike lanes in her mayoral election, and the press never bothered to ask. Mayor Wu is from Chicago, she was a political legacy admission to Harvard Law School. Like her mentor Professor Elizabeth Warren, she was grafted onto and into the Boston Democratic establishment by Barrack Obama after the death of Ted Kennedy.
Her youthful memories are tied to a tony suburban Illinois high school and Chicago. It seems to this observer that based on last night’s special city council election in District 8 that the machine politics of Boston have been completely harnessed by a Leftist City Hall, as another Progressive Wu backer was overwhelmingly elected. This result does not portend glad tidings for West Roxbury, business owners, or city people who are fans of a well-run Boston in the fall elections. I hope
my crystal ball is all wrong but get used to the idea of bike lanes. Welcome to Chicago.
Louis L. Murray is a resident of West Roxbury. He occasionally rides a bike, and occasionally writes for the Boston Herald.
