Photo by Joe Flood.

Photo by Joe Flood.

New year, same old Courtland Milloy.

Well, not quite. It seems our favorite bicycle terrorist-hating Post columnist has lightened up a bit on the District’s cyclists. He’s matured from suggesting it might be worth the $500 fine for motorists to hit cyclists to now suggesting that they need their own “separate network of biking roads, not bike lanes.”

Oh, and where will these biking roads go, you ask?

“Give them trails through wooded areas, away from cars and trucks,” Milloy writes. And then what? “Once they enter high-traffic areas in the city, it’s off the bicycle and onto alternative transportation. Like two feet.” Like OK, Courtland.

Milloy’s column comes in response to two tragic accidents involving cyclists in the region. On December 27, a cyclist in Baltimore was struck and killed by a Maryland Episcopal bishop driving a car, which led a memorial ride on January 1 that brought out hundreds of cyclists. And two days after the ride, a cyclist was struck in Harford County, left suffering from life-threatening injuries.

Milloy then rattles off a bunch of scare stats to justify his reasoning that the city should build cyclists their own roads:

According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, bicycle fatalities increased from 682 in 2011 to 726 in 2012. Injuries from collisions with cars increased from 48,000 to 49,000. There were no reports of motorists being killed by a cyclists. Passenger vehicle deaths actually declined during the same period.

In the Washington area, seven bicyclists were killed in collisions with cars in 2013, compared with three in 2012, according to the Washington region’s Transportation Planning Board. There were 902 injuries in 2012, compared with 783 the previous year.

It may not look so bad to some, but the problem is likely to get worse. Area jurisdictions are hurrying plans to funnel thousands of bicyclists into unsafe streets. The District has the audacity to fast-track plans for 200 miles of on-street bicycle facilities by 2040.

His interpretation of all those statistics is that the “already outdated 20th-century bike lane system should be finished by the dawn of the 22nd century.” So basically, we should just abandoned all the biking policies and infrastructure in place because it’ll be outdated in two centuries. Cool.

But what about “protected bike lanes,” you ask? You know, those blocked off portions of the road designated only for cyclists, with bumpers and guards so cars can’t drive into them? Milloy spoke to the Washington Area Bicycling Association head Shane Farthing, who explained how “protected bike lanes” are ideal and beneficial to District cyclists, but of course, it wasn’t enough for Milloy, who kind of skirted the benefits of “protected bike lanes” to talk about kids biking in the city:

There are children on bicycles with training wheels trying to keep up adults as they bicycle through downtown. It’s one thing to put yourself at risk, but endangering your child is another matter. I cringe at the sight of infants riding on seats strapped to handle bars, and cyclists towing toddlers in those two-wheel “baby buggies” that are barely taller than the bumper of a car.

Naturally, Milloy’s column didn’t sit too well with a lot of the city’s biking community:

Anyway, happy 2015 to you, Courtland.

Filed Under: bike dc, courtland milloy, myopic little twits,