I rode my bike to River Forest today to work, which wasn't too bad. You can side streets pretty well through WS, LG, LGP and Crookfield, but then you feel a little lost. The worst stretch is down Harlem through Berwyn - too busy and you have to use the shitty sidewalk. Guess where they put the streetlamps? The middle of the sidewalk. Luckily no one ever walks anywhere ever so you don't run into much traffic. Just a few poor souls at the Pace bus stops from time to time.
All of that biking got me thinking - why isn't there a bike highway? There is a dedicated highway system throughout the country for autos, why not for bikes? It would take far less maintenence because it would not have to be as big as a polluter highway, and light bicycles wouldn't shred the road like the petroleum monsters. Ok, let's start small - why not dedicate Chicago to having it's own bicycle highway system? Dedicate at least as many miles to a bike highway as we have in the real Chicago Highways (Kennedy, Ike, Dan Ryan, Edens Express etc.). We could make a couple hundred miles of dedicated road only for biking that would tour around the city - imagine how fast you could get around? We'd be an example to the world, and a mecca for bikers all over.
Let's start small - HOW ABOUT SOME FUCKING BIKE LANES IN THE SUBURBS?
It is what it is
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
A Bike Highway
Spewed out by Will at 19:06
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14 comments:
Okay, but only if they're made out of Rearden Metal!
Will, I think I remember seeing that as part of that criminal highway bill the federales just passed, Chicago got $30 million for a complex bike lane system. Check it out.
What, and minimize the noble concept of urban sprawl and the popularization of driving a Hummer in the city?
Blasphemy, broseph.
-pip
p.s. - I'm actually with you 100%
this comes from "ennui to go: the art of boredom" compiled and edited Jon Winokur:
"The French 'ennui', which entered the English language in the late 17th century derives from an Old French word for annoyance, and before that from 'odium', Latin for hatred or dislike.
...in other words, if an Englishman was bored it was because of circumstances, but if a Frenchman had ennui, it was his own fault.
Other distinctions have been suggested: Ennui is a disease, boredom is a symtom...Or if boredom is passive, ennui active. It has even been suggested that "the poor get bored but the rich have ennui."]
...so you're not a hobo afterall...
just found this one while I was glancing through the book:
"slums may be breeding-grounds of crime but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium."
--cyril connolly
now that you're actually a rich whitey, you should buy this book
Is there anyway to get this ingenious idea off and running? Seriously, how do we start, can we just start building? It may catch on once people start asking us what we're doing.
Bikers are the minority in all metropolitan areas...but why don't they get their own space? I mean, we give gay people their own bars, don't we?
Ok ok, I just made that reference because I totally just watched an old episode of Ellen on the oxygen network where Ellen was talking about what the world would be like if straight people were the minority. Then it went into this whole dream sequence of "Gay world" and it was actually pretty funny. Am I really this big of a loser? Next I'm going to be watching "Oprah after the show" in which you can all give me a few choice slaps to the face.
P.S. I read this article yesterday about some school in England that is enforcing a new policy that students can "fuck" and its derivatives up to 5 times each class. They keep a tally on the board. And if they go over their allotted 5 times, they get "spoken to." Jolly old England! Cheerio old chap!
whoa...sorry...the students can USE the word fuck or its derivatives...no sex allowed during school still. As far as I know, anyway.
haha, students can "fuck" 5 times a day.
uhh... bikes rule!
Willson,
I think Madison is the model you want. When I lived there they had bike highways from everywhere to everywhere and people actually biked places. Something like 150 miles of bikepaths in the city. Now that doesn't forgive those cheeseheads naivete.
Other news, there was an article in the student newspaper here how the police here now give fines for marijuana possesion, no court dates or community service. They made a big deal how it was still harsh even though it cost students less, courts less, cops less. Ahh Carbondale, what an ideal.
Kit - did you hear about that student journalist at SIU that made up an entire story about a soldier in Iraq and his daughter? I guess it was a long standing story that people were really getting into...an epic of some sort. The Trib went down to investigate it and do a story on it because the soldier died and everyone wanted to adopt the little girl...and it was all a lie! Totally like Shattered Glass (the movie). They had pictures and everything and it turns out that these people are actors! So now the journalist says they fooled him and they're saying that he paid them to act in his story. Scandalous. Ahhhhh, good ole Carbondale.
Hey I practically live on Harlem... prolly not close to where you were biking though. I love my bike and completely agree about the highway thing! There could be "air & oil stations" too. Har har.
Glad you like your new job. Working the front desk seems like it could have plenty of mischievous possibilities.
School sucks balls.
S.
"shattered glass" was an amaaaazing movie, and I wish I was Maggie Gyllenhaal so that Peter Saarsgard was my boyfriend.
And if I felt like being Angelina Jolie about life, I would occasionally make out with my brother Jake. And maybe his gf, Kirsten Dunst. But pretty much just Jake.
And Peter Saargsgard is my all-the-time boyfriend.
I've turned into Tom Cruise again, horribly bored and crazy and posting on everyone's blog.
get ready everyone, this will be a Tuesday to remember!
p.s. not really, I just am bored.
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