Vision Zero is wearing out its welcome

No one wants to see an unnecessary death — not a pedestrian, not a bicyclist, not a motorist.

The question is, how far are we willing to go to prevent all traffic deaths, and severe injuries,, which is the beautiful, unattainable goal of Vision Zero.

Why unattainable? Because people are stupid and evil. Not all, but enough.

People speed, drive recklessly, run red lights, drive drunk. Nothing will end that.

Not satisfied with the unattainable, VZ throws in some social justice crumbs for good measure: Increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility. Equitable mobility?

Vision Zero, like biking itself, has been on the upswing for a couple of decades despite bicycle lanes being hardly used by the public, which overwhelmingly depends on mass transit, and automobiles, each of which is, yes, a polluter.

While that is changing, wild antipathy to cars is growing. Auto hate is a thing among self-righteous, entitled bikeheads.

The Net is filled with confessions — nay, bragging — about car hatred, such as this one from a Brit, writing in the Independent,  proving the pedalphilia cult is an international trend, as was Covid-19.

Author Rachael Revesz beats us to the punch by calling herself an “angry Karen,” but she doesn’t get off the hook that easily.

She is also an ill-informed, illogical shnook.

Mostly it was the noise from cars that impinged on her mental health, although I think there were other factors at work. She rails against cars as noisy and polluting.

Does she own one? Cars have never been quieter nor more reliable, and less polluting, individually.

Her problem is not cars. What Karen Rachael really hates is the internal combustion engine. That is what pollutes.

And is already on its way out.

Ever hear of EV, Rachael? That stands for Electric Vehicle, which is both the wave of the future, and the now.

Yes, most people don’t want them yet because they are too expensive and too inconvenient to charge. Changes are coming, but not fast enough.

President Joe Biden got over his skis in setting a too-soon turnaround from gas to electric.

We are not going to remake society, Rachael, because you woke up one morning panicked about the environment, which is being ruined more by China than anything else — 14 million tons of CO2 released annually, more than double the U.S., in second place with 6 million tons. And by no means is it all autos.

Transportation — including air and rail — produces 28% of U.S. greenhouse gas, followed closely by electricity, at 25%. Yes — safe, clean electricity.

Before leaving the pollution argument, Rachael likes cycling to the store to buy her food. So pastoral. Just like the 19th Century. Does she understand the food was delivered to the store by a gas-guzzling truck?

Another Greta Thunberg wannabe ranted about her hate for automobiles on a digital media publication, which included the fact that auto crashes are a leading cause of death for people 5-24. Karisa Langlo, another social justice warrior,  and bicyclist, did not provide numbers.

I will.

For 2023, the last year reported, there were 41,000 auto deaths in the U.S. 

In 2023, the U.S. sustained 74,702 fentanyl deaths, almost twice as many.

Apples and oranges, you say?

Which is more deadly? More easily preventable?

You won’t get a fair answer from Langlo, who writes, “a portrait emerges of the car not [as] an achievement of human ingenuity, but a pretty good scapegoat for… just about everything.”

A self-described “smug cycling evangelist,” she sees the world through her prism of two wheels good, four wheels bad.

She thinks her numbers are growing, and they are, as schoolchildren are being propagandized against cars.

That’s one reason the desire of teens to hit that magic birthday when they can get their drivers license has taken a hit.

Obtaining the license was like a Christian bar mitzvah — a rite of passage marking you as an adult. Unlike riding a bike.

There are other reasons, including cost, but also soccer parents who drive kids everywhere, and car share services such as Uber and Lyft.

Why learn to drive when you can get someone else to drive you?

So they’re taught to hate cars as monsters, rather than as a form of freedom.

As Langlo quotes her 3-year-old son, “We don’t like cars, right, Mama?”

No question about where he picked that up, right?

“In a span of only a few weeks, I went from proverbial Prius Lover to Car Destroyer on the pro/anti-car political compass I found on the Fuck Cars feed,” she writes.

Well, enough from the mentally ill.

Let’s get local, and the Inquirer’s large coverage of the Ride of Silence that commemorates the Philadelphia bicycle riders who were killed in traffic. I noticed several peculiar things about the story.

The first thing I noticed was the map that accompanies the story showed where 24 cyclists were killed since 2020.

Why 2020? The Ride of Silence is annual. Why not list the deaths in 2023?

There were 10, but 24 sounds scarier.

I think back to 2017, when 24-year-old Emily Fredericks was killed at the corner of 11th and Spruce when she got herself trapped by a truck making a legal right turn from Spruce to 11th. I am not blaming the victim, but she clearly had no idea about the truck’s turning radius and a driver’s blind spot. (The D.A. wanted to charge the driver, but he was held faultless.)

The story reported 935 traffic deaths — not just bicycles — since 2016, according to the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

Why do the stats come from a partisan organization rather than from, say, the City of Philadelphia, or the Philadelphia Police Department? Why does the city lean on an advocate for impartial stats? When the original traffic survey was done on the need for bike lanes, the work was not done by the Streets Department, but by the Bike Coalition, and it was (much) later learned counts were not made at the intersections of Pine and Spruce and Broad — the two most trafficked intersections. 

I am not making this up. I reported on it. 

The current Inquirer story specifically says the ride is to honor the memory of Philadelphia cyclists, but the first mourner interviewed was there in memory of a woman killed in Cherry Hill. Minor point, maybe, but still a point.

The story then segued into a discussion of Vision Zero, the budget of which was recently cut by Mayor Cherelle Parker.

There were quotes complaining about that.

What was missing, typical of Inquirer coverage of cycling, was the voice of anyone in opposition to Vision Zero and the Bicycle Coalition. Two sides to every story? Not in the Inquirer, which is likewise one-sided in its (illegal) immigration coverage. I say (illegal) because the Inquirer does not recognize any immigrant as illegal. Political orientation trumps even-handed reporting.

Vision Zero’s goal — reducing injuries and death — is noble. It can be achieved in ways other than cutting speed limits, which is Vision Zero’s job one. 

If you cut the speed limit to zero, you would achieve VZ’s goal, but at an impossible price. 

Accident reduction can be achieved by more vigorous law enforcement, but that seems to rub some people — speeders and reckless drivers —  the wrong way, so VZ tries to redesign streets and add other methods of what it calls “traffic calming.” 

Those are not necessarily the best solutions, argues Reason magazine.

It points out that VZ has had mixed results in other cities — poor in Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles, good in San Francisco.

In Washington, the do-gooders find that speed restrictions aren’t enough, what we need are fewer cars.

Improved mass transit is one way to ease people out of their cars. I grew up in New York City in an era where most people did not have, nor did want, an automobile. The best subway and bus system made it fast and cheap to get anywhere.

The buses and trains are now neither efficient nor cheap.

That’s where our efforts should go, rather than to bike lanes that slow traffic and in Philly are used by only 2.1% of commuters, according to the Bike Coalition.

When the city started bike lanes in 2010, its goal was 6% by 2020. 

I predicted it would never happen, and it hasn’t ever come close even as the city added bike lanes and those unsightly white pipes everywhere. And to be counted as a “bike commuter,” you only have to use it three times a week.

It is a transparent farce, a joke that most reporters don’t even question.

It is an idea that has failed, and I think Mayor Parker’s cold-shouldering of the allied Vision Zero thinking is proof that she knows it, too.