Re: “End the free ride for cyclists,” July 24, The Leader.

I agree that cyclists should be held accountable for safe, responsible use of shared roadways. However, I find Paula Carlson’s column about the economics around transportation ignorant, inflammatory and greatly detrimental to unity and solutions we need as a civilization to address our destructive impact on the environment and each other.

Cycling on a regular basis has been proven to reduce the instance and the impact of almost all major chronic diseases (heart disease, hypertension, cancer, type II diabetes). The more people who cycle, the more we save on health care costs for preventable disease.

Secondly, do you know how dangerous cars are? Are you aware of the cost of driving in terms of lives lost every year because of these extremely powerful, often poorly operated machines? It’s around 3,000 people per year in Canada. And nearly 15 per cent of those people were either pedestrians or cyclists not even driving the vehicles.

Further, 90 per cent of cycling fatalities are due to collisions with drivers (contributing factors lie pretty evenly with both motorists and cyclists, but the fact remains that if cars were not on the road everyone would be enormously safer).

Finally, you conveniently failed to mention the very inconvenient truth of the environmental cost of driving. Thirty per cent of B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions come from fossil fuel-based transportation.

At this point in time, the government should be paying people to ride bicycles, and doing everything in its power to make cycling safe, attractive and accessible for everyone who wants to try.

Jodi Peters

Driving should be expensive

In a city with pollution, traffic and public transit issues, the last thing we need to do is discourage people from choosing alternate modes of transportation – particularly those that are emission free.

If drivers, with their incessant rage and frustration with cyclists want cyclists out of their way (as they so often say), then cyclist / pedestrian roads, lanes and routes are the best way to go.

Driving is a privilege, not a right, and should be expensive. It is costly to the taxpayer and to the environment.

S. Morgan

Cyclists already pay

Most cyclists have driver’s licences, many own cars, and many own homes (which means they pay taxes which help fund things like TransLink).

Furthermore, environmental damage saved by cyclists is worth far more than any silly bike tax you might propose. Many traffic rules are in place to protect people from the danger of thousand-pound flying hunks of metal... with the exception of small pedestrians and dogs, the only people at danger of an errant cycle is the cyclist himself.

Robin Ryan

No reason to penalize cyclists

Your column appears to pander to the inaccurate assumptions that cyclists pay nothing for what they get, create a huge burden on taxpayers, and get away with lawless behaviour.

The us-versus-them rhetoric employed in your column is neither accurate nor productive. You misleadingly pit “cyclists” against “drivers, businesses and homeowners.” Do cyclists not also drive cars, operate businesses, own homes and pay taxes for all three?

Conspicuously absent from your article is a sense of proportionality regarding cyclist-incurred costs to taxpayers. You cited the Port Mann bridge as an example, but what small part of the cost of the 10-lane structure was consumed by bike lanes? How expensive is the region’s network of bike paths, as it is largely fitted into existing streets?

More unanswered questions: Is there no benefit to investment in bike infrastructure? How much does the growing number of cyclists alleviate the pressure on our roads and buses? In a future of carbon capping and trading, what is the value of emissions currently saved by cycling rather than driving? How many health care dollars are saved due to increased physical fitness as a by-product of cycling? What is the value of the increased quality of life in a transit system where one can drive, bus, walk or bike safely as one wishes?

A system of taxation is also a structure of incentives and disincentives, so what is the benefit of the disincentive you propose?

Ask any Vancouver cyclist and I’m sure that either they or someone they know has been ticketed for not wearing a helmet or some other violation, however small. I have certainly witnessed illegal and unsafe cycling (and driving), but your notion that it exists does not justify a police crackdown.

Without accurate data on the real costs and benefits of cycling, rates of traffic violations, not to mention incalculable factors such as quality of life benefits, there is no basis for your proposal to tax and penalize cyclists.

Jeffrey A. LeMay