I have been riding bicycles for 76 of my 85 years. During those years, I’ve ridden hundreds of miles of city streets, county roads and bike trails — including two of the best in Colorado, Glenwood Canyon and Vail Pass. And all that time I’ve been a “freeloader,” since I’ve never contributed one thin dime toward the cost of those biking facilities. I’ve been freeloading like all other bicyclists, depending mostly on highway-user taxes to pay the way.

Now the Colorado Transportation Commission has announced a new policy “to provide transportation infrastructure that accommodates bicycle … The needs of bicyclists and pedestrians shall be included in the planning, design and operation of transportation facilities, as a matter of routine.” Freeloaders rejoice! This is in the midst of perhaps the most-dire time in highway funding history.

This new policy resembles the hated “unfunded federal mandate” (added expense to a program, without the addition of more income). What I expect to see are separated bike paths along every rural highway improvement project, when all that is needed is a fairly wide shoulder along which bikers could ride. The shoulder would also benefit the highway user who is footing the bill.

How about if us “freeloaders” supported a 10 percent tax on all new bike sales to pay for the cost of the new “policy” on highway projects?

DICK PROSENCE
Meeker

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 10:36 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.