We have heard that they hurt everything from businesses to butterflies, but Streetfilms finds even more weird excuses.
Whenever and wherever bike lanes are proposed, drivers complain that it will slow them down. Store owners complain it will kill business (it doesn’t). Whoopi Goldberg recently claimed that people will die because ambulances can’t get through traffic. The craziest complaint about bike lanes that I ever heard comes from Los Angeles, where drivers were trying to get a road diet removed. They got really creative with their suggestion that slower traffic caused pollution and traffic diversions, according to the LA Times:
In its appeal, the Westside group said the road diet had caused an increase in traffic by reducing the number of lanes by 33% and argued that the project may have harmed monarch butterflies and migratory birds from the nearby Ballona Wetlands.
Clarence Eckerson Jr is at the National Bike Summit and the people there have heard it all, even endangered species. Some of it is quite funny, most of it is just silly. Five minutes of fun:
BIKELASH 2019: What's the most ridiculous comment you've heard in opposition to a bike lane? from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.