BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Ah that bastion of progressive thought the Cato Institute. Still it seems like a good point, education and outreach about the program could probably help change this.

One DC economist makes the point that subsidizing bike transportation for REEWF (rich educated employed white folks) is probably cheaper than subsidizing their gasoline, their parking, and their car infrastructure.

When I look at the backup on DC highways, and I realized that people combine the Metro with Bici and get all around town, it seems likely that the bikes are reducing car traffic, emissions, delays, n'at. "To be sure", as they say, there is room for evaluating where the bike stations are, how more people can use them, how to extend them to more demographics, etc.

Cato and Reason are prone to ascribe anything bike-related to Agenda 21, Communism, and the New World Order.

That should be rephrased as "Reason magazine and the Koch brother's foundation [...]"

It's also a stupid premise. Change the last line to "Why should taxpayers use tax payer subsidized programs?"

Only 1 million was for low-income. 7% make less than 25k. 1/16th is 6.25%.

The cost of one of our f22 raptors is about $150 million and we built 195 of them. The whole program cost 66.7 billion dollars.

So if my math is right, we spent over 4000% more on one jet program than we have on bicycle sharing

But you can't argue with Reason, Pierce. Especially not with all those liberal-biased "maths" or whatever you're trying to do there.

Oh yeah, also did a little five second research into the Kock's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries#Koch_Pipeline_Company_LP

So yeah, imagine that, a think tank founded by guys who own refineries and pipelines complaining about bicycle subsidies

Now how much are we giving in fossil fuel subsidies?

72 billion (over six years)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies

So if the Kocks advocated against subsidies for their own industries, we could have another whole fleet of jets or 7,200 bike share programs for 10 million a piece (The D.C. one cost maybe around 7 million? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Bikeshare#History )

Now I wonder how much freedom (something I'm sure the Koch's support) from fossil fuel based transportation and foreign dependence on oil the country could have with 7,200 bike share programs

^ Ah, yes, subsidies are bad. As long as they aren't for something you like.

If the purpose of this program is allegedly to help the poor, it is clearly not doing so. Attacking the Kochs may make you feel better, but it doesn't change that fact.

Seems to me, such bizarre, blatantly non-sensical reports like this one is just an Extinction Burst on the part of the 50's Suburbia in a Suburban cultural neanderthals who have noticed that money is going into other pockets.

loves my wikipedia: "While extinction, when implemented consistently over time, results in the eventual decrease of the undesired behavior, in the short-term the subject might exhibit what is called an extinction burst. An extinction burst will often occur when the extinction procedure has just begun. This consists of a sudden and temporary increase in the response's frequency, followed by the eventual decline and extinction of the behavior targeted for elimination... Despite the name, however, not every explosive reaction to adverse stimuli subsides to extinction. Indeed a small minority of individuals persist in their reaction indefinitely..."

Last time I rented from Capital Bikeshare, it cost ~$50 for two bikes for half an hour plus a $202 hold on my card. Not surprising that affluent citizens are their primary customer.

jkp - if its original intention was to help the poor ride bicycles, it might actually be able to be fixed to do that. Doubtful, but possible.

If on the other hand, its original intention was to ease traffic congestion and improve air quality for ALL people, especially those living in the super up-scale housing right beside eternal traffic jams and congested highways (because that's where the rich like to live, right IN the smog cloud), then it doesn't matter if poor people ride the bicycles or not, so long as people who would otherwise have driven ride the bikes.

Sometimes, one actually has to look further than in front of one's nose to understand the consequences of a change. The fact that this escapes most people is something that has made Koch et. al. very rich.

I think one of the things the bikeshare has illuminated, and I think I have read that the operators are trying to work around, is that so many things that the "average" American take for granted, a credit card to use the system, a bank account, or even a stable mailing address, are just inaccessible to low income people. Americans are willfully blind to the gaping chasm of inequality and the underclass that is right in front of our noses. Rather than simply being dismissed as a subsidized perk for the affluent, the DC bikeshare could spin off some kind of user account system specifically for low income people where they could start an account, get a card, use the system for transportation, and start to build some kind of continuity. It could even be used as an extremely low-risk way for people to start to develop a credit rating, a kind of transportation credit union.

I hope someone smarter than me is thinking of something like this.

I'm not so sure it was ever intended to help the poor. You need a credit card to rent a bike.

oh, edmonds, you're assuming a good credit rating is something that benefits the user. If that were the case, the best credit ratings would go to the people who have substantial savings and no debt. Sadly, to have the best credit rating, you must have some debt (but you don't need any savings).

I honestly thought it was a traffic reduction measure. But I like the idea of a transportation co-op. And at those prices, they push this supposedly middle-class educated white girl out of the pool of users, too rich for me.

I checked the website and an annual membership is $75, which is less or equal to what most people, no matter what economic situation, spend on TV bills a month. There are satelitte dishes all over the section 8 housing near me so I think people can afford this, but people may need more education regarding this service. However, the bikeshare does not have good rates for a short term use.

My take away from this report is that very educated people use this so biking is the intelligent choice! Often the educated and itelligent are better off financially and people that are better off fincially will dictate social trends in the future. Often people do not aspire to inexpensive things, but what if biking becomes an aspirational choice led by the educated middle class? I think that would be a good thing.

@chemical dave: "Last time I rented from Capital Bikeshare, it cost ~$50 for two bikes for half an hour plus a $202 hold on my card."

That cost sounds high to me. When I was there a few months ago I paid for a day pass (around $7) and then borrowed bikes all day. The first 30 minutes were free, so after riding for a bit or getting to my destination, I would dock the bike then borrow another one. I never kept any bike longer than the first 30 minutes, so I never had to pay the fee for additional time.

Still I'm not arguing that it's for the poor, you do need a cc (and there is a hold). However, I would say that any benefits to air quality will benefit everyone in DC.

@jkp1187

I'm sorry, is pointing out hypocrisy and statistics an attack?

Did you read my post above? According to their own article, only one million was for low-income. 7% of the ridership make less than 25k. I.E. 7% of the ridership is low income. 1 million divided by 16 million total is 6.25% earmarked for budget for low income. So that means there are more low income riders than there was budget allocated for low income riders.

The program overall wasn't designed to "help" the poor, so the fact that it doesn't is no big surprise. My bicycle helmet doesn't protect me from forest fires either, but to make a criticism against Bell because of it seems nonsensical, much like this article.

What would make me feel better is if our population had the analytical ability to read through the lines and see misdirection, logical fallacies, poor synthesis and other bullshit for what it is

Instead, a bunch of complacent people are going to read this article and go "Man, big government wasting money, helping rich white people in the capital. That's Washington for you..."

We have a 3.5 trillion dollar budget. As I said, 15 million is nothing. It's nothing to the Kochs

Don't know Why I said half-hour. It was 2 hours, not 30 minutes.

There is a very nice discussion of this issue at TheWashCycle: http://www.thewashcycle.com/2012/06/why-we-subsidize-bikesharing.html

Washington City Paper also notes that the $1 million grant to Montgomery County targeting low-income users is only scheduled to be spent this summer, so previous/current user demographics would not be affected by it: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2012/06/20/reason-what-are-all-these-rich-white-people-doing-on-bikeshare/

@ ChemicalDave - Do you remember the fee breakdown? They really hit you as your rentals get longer. http://www.capitalbikeshare.com/pricing

@Pierce: I suspect that we have a $3,500,000,000,000 budget in no small part because people like yourself enjoy helping themselves to public funds, and rationalize it to themselves by saying that such a small amount is just a drop in the bucket.

Concerning logical fallacies, I'm kind of inclined to ask you what the price of an F-22 Raptor has to do with subsidies for bicycles. I believe that one's known as the "Chewbacca Defense".

The article & study linked from the OP is full of such fallacies.

This is a dumb place to complain about subsidies for any kind of cycling infrastructure. Please direct your complaints elsewhere.

The way I always understood the purpose of any public money, collected and spent at any level, was simply to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

So I do not see any problem with making do with 194 F-22 planes instead of 195, and using that spare $150M to set up bike shares in a bunch of cities. For the cost of our being 1/195th less safe from the one plane, a whole bunch of people can be taken off the welfare rolls and work at some menial job which might supply that government a trickle of tax revenue instead of drain it. (I'm sure there's a couple of logic flaws in my reasoning here, but I'm more framing an alternative view than designing a watertight plan.)

I'm no Economist, but I'm pretty sure if you take money to develop something that provides a good or service and is intended to provide revenue and a return, that is called an "investment" (i.e., bikeshares).

When you use money to produce something that is consumed in use and produces 0 return on investment, that is just a systemic loss (i.e., guns, bombs, fighter planes).

It's a damn shame we enjoy helping ourselves to public money to build and repair all those bridges and highways with 0 ROI and rationalize it by saying they "help the economy". Pshaw. (For those with broken sarcasm sensors, that was some).

There is a halo effect of any type of spending. For figheter planes you create jobs building it, maintanance crew the pilot, etc. People always forgot you can't outsource defense manufacturing jobs.

Anyway, the bikeshare is stimulating the local economy. Here is a good article.

http://bit.ly/NfYZdg

ok, y'all know I'm the last person to defend the military-industrial complex, but not all infrastructure is investment (Mon expressway anybody?), and not all military spending is systemic loss (there's at least two PhDs related to land-mine recovery/disposal out there that were funded by DOD money, and nuclear carriers propped up as much of SEA as they could after the typhoon with drinking water and power).

I'm not saying infrastructure isn't a fabulous way of spending funds, and I'm not saying military spending is always the best choice. I'm saying we've layered gray upon gray upon gray, and have no more apples and oranges left to compare.

But the comparison is moot. The study is a red herring, here to distract the easily diverted and whip the frenziable into a letter writing and PAC donating tizzy.

We can counter it with our own interweb forum tizzy, or we can counter it with reasoned responses designed for best impact.

Honest question - what's the best way to counter this Cato crap? More nekked bike rides? Letters to the editor? Money to BPGH and the like? They've done studies showing how this money is supposedly hurting society, so where's the studies showing what will help us the most?

Wait a minute, I thought a classic right wing grievance was that the rich paid a ton of taxes and got little benefit from the social programs that the taxes support. Here, it sounds like affluent folks are getting some benefit out of the subsidies, and oddly enough a conservative group has a problem with that.

I think EJ's original post nails it - certain people are just pissed off that subsidies are helping folks who, in some manner, don't live like they do.

what's the best way to counter this Cato crap?

Uh, ignore it?

Seriously, think tanks exist for the sole purpose of doing research (add scare quotes if don't agree with the foundations of the think tank in question) to support what they believe. I suspect that there's a liberal think tank doing the same sort of research to counter Cato's work.

@brianj I suspect that there's a liberal think tank doing the same sort of research to counter Cato's work.

The fact that there are moderately right-wing institutions doing work that is somewhat truth based (that is, "liberal" think tanks) doesn't undo the damage done by extremely well-funded, rabidly right wing places with little regard to truth like Cato. Sorry. It just doesnt' work like that.

That's like saying I drink a fifth on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, but I balance it out by drinking a half-pint on other nights.

I get your point, Mick, but I wonder how much reach Cato really has. I suspect their work only cements what libertarians already believe, rather than convincing some centrist that bike shares are sure signs the socialist apocalypse is coming.

@Brian J.

My guess is that their major function is to provide "facts" for the lobbyists (well-funded, of course) of billionaire right-wingers. These "facts" allow PAC-fund guzzling politicians to rationalize selling out the US people.

Secondary functions include providing fodder for the tea-partying lap dogs of wealthy fascists, and providing the illusion of a "fair and balanced" debate.

"And here, to counter the arguments of those that would disenfranchise non-billionaires, is a talking head who would disempower those whose income is less than 6 digits."

Sorry, I should stay out of this. I get angered by much of what I see and hear. I should be writing to newspapers and elected representatives, not ranting here.

@StuInMcCandless: But why is it the government's job to subsidize acquisition of bicycles in the first place?

I'd rather take the $150 million for the price of an F-22 and use it to build more actual bike infrastructure: trails and maintenance on same. If we're resigned to taxing people who don't share our enthusiasm for biking, at least let's do something (relatively) permanent with the money.

@Pseudacris: I am not complaining at all about infrastructure. That, after all, is one of the reasons we have governments and they will last for a good many years once the initial investment is made. I object to providing subsidies for a temporary service that people ought to pay for themselves, particularly at a time when spending and debt are out of control.

You know what's really dumb? Trying to shut down a debate because you're scared to have your own cherished dogma challenged.

Um I never actually read the book, but I'm not sure thats "How To Win Friends and Influence People."

Perhaps the concept behind bikeshares isn't being fully understood here. Bikeshares are intended to be a permanent and fully integrated part of a transportation system, the same as a road, or a subway, or a bus system. The bikeshares are intended to pick up the "last mile" of a particular trip that other transportation modes can't possibly efficiently cover. In addition, the bikeshare makes it more likely that a person will use another mass transit system rather than a car if they know that a bike will be available to pick up the last portion of their trip. Bikeshares are not there just for people to noodle around town, but if that's how some people want to use it, that's ok too. They're not giving anybody a bike.

Also, in terms of spending and debt, what is out of control is that as a nation we have allowed special interests, corporations, and billionaires, those with theoretically the largest stake in the success of the country, to escape without contributing their share. The wealthy are "burning the furniture" of this country for their own gain, and we are stupid enough to allow it.

I've stayed out of this, but I guess I'll put my $.02 in the mix.

My first thought was that the article was playing the class card but dressing it up as playing the race card because that's more politically correct. And I thought Pierce was onto something by suggesting at least to me that it was nothing more than a piece of propaganda intended to maintain the status quo by getting these uppity folks off their bikes and back into their cars so they would buy more gasoline and make the Koch Brothers and other oil complanies money.

While I still think that's true, I think the answer to to the rhetorical question the article posed at the end is simply this:

To buy the votes of a segment of society with a program they will favor while the cost of it is shifted onto someone else -- they think they get something for nothing. It isn't any different than buying the votes of the underclass by providing them with programs that support them while shifting that cost to someone else, or providing two knee replacements and a hip replacement and all sorts of other medical care way through Medicare or health insurance way in excess of what each individual pays in -- cost shifting again.

And it isn't any different than Congress selling its votes to certain favored special interests who purchase those votes with their campaign contributions so our Congress critters can get themselves re-elected.

If the Cato Institute wants to have an honest, adult conversation about these other things, then fine, they can print this article. But if they don't then it's not anything more than bullshit propaganda and distraction. My guess is they don't, or they wouldn't have been dishonest enough to print it in the first place.

So, @edmonds, I think you are making the point that the bikes themselves are part of the infrastructure?

Apparently, they also stimulate the economy at local bike shops.

@jkp I owe you an apology for my choice of words. I agree that spending and debt are out of control and that more debate is needed.

Where we may disagree is on how to allocate subsidies, or if to allocate them at all.

The study that the Cato institute cites is pretty flawed, but it is important to follow up on the effectiveness of programs that are publicly subsidized.

I'm convinced that bike riding has health and environmental benefits and has a much lighter impact on other subsidized infrastructure (roads, parking) than cars and buses do.

For the cost of a fraction of a mile of urban highway, thousands of people are now on bicycles.

@jpk117 I'd rather take the $150 million for the price of an F-22 and use it to build more actual bike infrastructure: trails and maintenance on same. If we're resigned to taxing people who don't share our enthusiasm for biking, at least let's do something (relatively) permanent with the money.

+1.

Whatever the mode of travel, federal dollars are used to subsidize the cost of construction and operation. Airports, railroads, shipyards, transit (acquisition of buses, typically), road construction -- name it, federal dollars are involved. $150M sounds like a big number, but in the overall scheme of things, that really does do a lot for not much money. And yes, it is infrastructure of a sort. It's rolling stock, just like the purchase of a bus, at a cost of typically a half-million per bus, in lots of 50 to 100, per city, per year. I see no problem with the bike purchase.

@jkp1187

I'm not interested in growing debt either. There's two ways to get out of debt. Spend less, tax more (increase revenues). I'm up for doing both. Let us start at looking at where we're spending the most money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png

23% Medicare & Medicaid

20% Social Security

19% Defense Department

18% Discretionary Funding

13% Other Mandatory

6% Interest

Now I don't know how much of that discretionary funding is being eaten up by the additional funding that gets send to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does however look like the DoD budget went up 90% since 2000.

My personal budget is split into categories too. I take care to scrutinize big purchases, especially if I can't pay for it in cash. So if one category of my budget doubles, rather than scrutinizing how many 15 cent Peanut Chews I'm buying, I'm going to take a look at that other category.

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and DoD funding have all gone up and from all looks of it, will continue to go up. Now what the hell good is it going to do to scrutinize over 18% of the budget when the first 62% of the budget is going to keep growing. It's like putting a band aid over a paper cut when your arm is cut off.

Here's what I'd do: DoD budget, cut back to pre-9/11 percentage of GDP. If the DoD wants more money, let them raise the support for taxes to actually support the damn thing. Before 9/11 we paid more taxes during wartime. Bush didn't and our deficit showed up at the same time. Big surprise.

Social security: Raise the age of SS to like 75 or something. Sorry old people, you need to work to sustain yourself anyways. SS isn't going to support you. Stop taking money out of SS coffers to fund other crap so the interest can build up assets again.

Medicare and medicaid: Single-payer health care. Every other industrialized nation has this. Stop the GOP idiocy and stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

Promote a healthy society. Things like bike share programs get people to exercise. I think obesity and heart disease related stuff account for the largest increases in health care costs. Start serving real food in school cafeterias.

Maybe switch out buses for bicycles? My bus stop in high school was maybe like two or three miles away from school. How many kids drove the same distance or took the bus? 99% of them

Increase revenues: Roll back the tax rates (increase) on the wealthy; heck, maybe even a flat tax, it would be more fair than what we have now.

Increase the minimum wage to previous levels. If we give the poorest people more money, they spend it on things. Maybe they'll even save some and get ahead a little. Maybe down the line they'll have more resources, which means less social security we give them when the get older. That means less strain on that big part of the budget.

Oh yeah, stop incarcerating people for stupid crap like selling drugs. Way more people die from drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes and coincidentally those same companies are the ones who fund anti-drug campaigns. Legalize and tax it. Let people smoke marijuana instead of buying prescription pain-meds. It saves us money from that medicare and medicaid budget. Taxing it increases revenue

All those things individually would do waaaay, waay, waaay more good than worrying about a stupid 15 million dollar bike share program.

Do you know why they call them "entitlements"? Because people are entitled to them after paying a lifetime of taxes labeled "Medicare" or "Social Security". Entitlement taxes are adjustable, so there's no need to cut benefits (by raising SS retirement age to 75) if you believe doing so would be injurious to those most vulnerable (the sick and the elderly). You can raise taxes specifically for those entitlements.

And the idea that "old people can work to sustain themselves" - what about farmers, or construction workers, or have skills that degrade with age, as most of us do? Would you hire them?

Well, I don't think those people paid enough. The baby boomers needed to pay more into social security. There's not enough young people to pay into their benefits now. If my understanding of SSi is right, you can actually pay more into it and get more back when you're older.

As for people with degrading skills, I would have them work in the service industry. With a raised minimum wage, they could easily earn more than their monthly SS check would provide.

the other half of the advantage of bike share programs getting people out of cars and on bicycles is it exposes more people to the experience of actually cycling in a place to get around. Thus a broader swath of the population starts to understand how nice it is when bike lanes and trails are available, maybe some of them vote and might start asking for more permanent infrastructure and more complete streets.

I think that's what some of the anti's are unhappy about, the subsidy is subsidizing infrastructure, improved air quality, but also growth of a demographic of cyclists.

Also the government subsidizes corn, which results in unhealthy HFCS-laden diets, which raises the cost of medicaid. Lose-lose. Also in addition to all the other transportation infrastructure that the government subsidizes, they now indirectly subsidize the cost of privately owned automobiles. All of these things are huge mistakes.

And combining some points of pierce and ejwme -- getting people of the cars and getting them on bikes -> more exercise -> healthier -> less medicate and medicare spending

@Pierce: What basis do you have for your assertion that those currently age 50-65 didn't "pay enough"? I think the main reason people are railing against entitlement spending is that the federal government raided the social security fund and replaced it with IOUs in the 1990s and 2000s and now they're finding it difficult to repay all those IOUs, not to mention the fact that IOUs don't tend to gain interest like cash does.

Remember Al Gore and the "lockbox"? Well maybe all this noise about how we can't afford entitlements is a red herring to distract us from the fact that we would've been fine had the tax revenue been kept safe. Similar to the situation of public pension funds going broke because their AAA investments tanked because of mortgage-backed securities scandals that so far haven't resulted in punitive measures against the perpetrator banks.

I mean, I'm willing to believe you if you've looked into the actuarial tables and the financial statements of the SSA, but something tells me that's not where your assertion is coming from.

My doc says there's paptern in the balance of strength in my leg muscles, very common, due to "sitting too much."

I guessing that getting a car would NOT make the problem disappear.

@asobi For years one major party has labeled teh other major party "Tax and spend"

The second party has utterly FAILED at making clear to the public that the anit-tax people are more serious aboput spending, but they are the borrow and spend" party.

I';m guessing the folks that make loans are also pretty good at spending PAC money. Just a guess.