Below are more fun reads from my week (now ended) of doing the daily news headline roundups from around the Charlotte region for PlanCharlotte.org and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute homepage.
Note, also, that as of today Chesser’s Choices now has Chesser back at the helm, offering intriguing material from around the U.S. and globally.
The “all-powerful” bike lobby”? Politoco.com casts a dubious eye at the comments by Dorothy Rabinowitz, in her now-famous-across-the-Web rant against New York’s fledgling bike share program, that there’s an “all-powerful” bike lobby. There is a bike lobby, the article notes, but it’s anything but all-powerful.
The same must be said of Charlotte. There is a bike lobby, or at least, some people who care a lot about bicycling, and their voices have been heard in the past decade. It’s known as the Charlotte Area Bicycle Alliance. But if you’ve tried to ride your bike through the city you know this group is anything but all-powerful. Yes, there are more bike lanes and routes than previously. But Charlotte is nowhere near the state of, say, the Netherlands. Check out last week’s New York Times article: The Dutch Prize Their Pedal Power, but a Sea of Bikes Swamps Their Capital.