Why The Effort to Repeal The Gas Tax Must Die

California Republicans, after years of shrinking numbers, have looked at state demographics and decided to grow their ranks by publicly backing ambitious bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects.

(long silence)

I'm just kidding. They want to repeal the gas tax (you know the one that is paying for repairing streets and bringing train infrastructure into the 21st century, and so on) and they managed to put a measure on the November ballot to do just that. 

For the record: when you ask people to pay taxes, they usually say no.  Samantha Bee put it best on her show when she talked about the wretched financial mess that is Colorado. Here's the clip: 

California has actually been down a Colorado-like road before, and it wasn't until I read up on Proposition 13 - the anti-tax initiative of 1978 - that The Golden State made more sense to me in its own backwards way. 

One of the things Proposition 13 did was make it impossible to raise property taxes very much - again. So forty years after Proposition 13, we have boomers and silents living in houses for decades and paying a pittance in property taxes - and the tax bill goes up when they sell the house (which, around here, appreciates in value). 

I took this photo on a bike waiting to make a left turn. Anyone who looks over a sea of automobiles and thinks they need to make driving cheaper has officially run out of ways to move the world forward.

That is a great deal if you are an older homeowner but it stinks if you're a young one. 

Put another way: in 1978 California homeowners put an infrastructure in place that would give them benefits that would last decades and preserve their world at the expense of others. In 2018 California motorists want to put an infrastructure in place to shield them from road maintenance and preserve their ability to drive cheaply and guilt-free. 

If they're successful like they were in 1978 their jubilation (here I am thinking of the smug face of Howard Jarvis on the cover of Time) will mask a horror that awaits every generation that follows theirs - and given the news of Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring from the Supreme Court those horrors are on a lot of people's minds today. 

If you drive a car and don't ride a bike that's okay. But the lack of bike infrastructure and acceptance affects you too by creating more drivers you have to compete with on the roads. Cyclists give you space. Give them some too.

But we can't change Kennedy's retirement, can't (immediately) undo the travel ban or the decision to bleed unions. What we can do - California cyclists, walkers, transit activists, people who understand the significance of switching from Level of Service to Vehicle Miles Traveled and even self-driving efficionados - is make sure the gas tax repeal and any Republican backing it loses this fall.

That's not as easy a sentance to write as you might think. As you may have guessed with my Cycling with Candidates series, I don't want Democrats or Republicans to carry the cycling issue. I have no interest in it being partisan. I want leaders to argue with one another over what kind of bike/ped infrastructure should be built, argue about ways to pay for it, and debate about how best to create laws and infrastructure that work.

This should already be happening. Conservatives should wake up tomorrow and think: "You know, we have tens of millions of young people out there with a paper-thin loyalty to the Democratic Party and no money or desire to own a car, and few places to live. Let's eliminate the burdensome regulations like parking minimums and live within our means by only building bike and pedestrian infrastructure." 

Deep down, liberal cyclists: you want this too. I know I wish Connecticut Republicans would stand up up and say: "The Merritt Parkway Trail is a stupid idea. It costs too much, won't be plowed, goes nowhere, cuts across too many roads to be of interest to professionals and is too hilly for amateurs and it doesn't go anywhere! Instead we'll make a bike boulevard that runs the lenght of Rt. 1 - it'll be cheaper, better, and will benefit the businesses that are clustered on the coast.*"

Because Connecticut Republicans never say the part in italics - at least not yet - Democrats coalesce around a mishmash of priorities and don't get very far on any of them.

But back to the gas tax: Republicans are playing the 1978 playbook that gave them a generational victory but today I think they have chosen the wrong hill to die on. A lot of Gen Xers and even more Millennials don't like driving and don't want to or can't afford a car. They don't feel as strongly about paying a mere twenty cents a day more to do something they know they shouldn't be doing as angry white homeowners felt about rising property taxes in the 1970s. 

Please, cycling brothers and sisters: prove me right. 

California Republicans need to lose the effort to repeal the gas tax. Actually, they need to lose in the most humiliating and one-sided way imaginable. They have to look like a punchline for the joke they insist on telling even though we're saying "we've heard this one before." The gas tax repeal has has to be knocked out with a closed fist, spin around twice like Biff Tannen, and then slump, unconscious, beside Dr. Emmett Brown's Packard.**

We live with the legacy of Proposition 13 every day in California. NIMBYism, a lack of affordable housiing and, as I mentioned a few months back, a knack for denying a change that is coming. Cyclists: do you want to live in a world where motorists get to keep driving around cost-free and stick you and your unborn 1.5 children with the bill in perpetuity? If your answer is yes don't visit my site again. 

If the answer is no, please join me in voting against anything the GOP ever puts in front of you having to do with reducing, eliminating, scaling back, or dumping the gas tax or bridge tolls. Let's put California Republicans into the grave they are intent on digging - and perhaps someday they will rise and we'll have a bike infrastructure arms race between the left and the right. Meaningful debate, forward-thinking plans. Sounds good to me. Thanks for reading and thanks for VOTING. 

*I'm not sorry to write that, People Friendly Stamford: The Merritt Parkway Trail is a dead horse you've been flogging or  too long. Focus on downtown, let young people lead, and stop carrying water for the trail alliance people. The people I know in Stamford don't want to ride from Maine to Florida. They want to ride from their house to the library.

**Did you understand that reference? No? Then you are who I am talking to! And if you did understand it, I am talking to you too.

Let's All Stop Being Stupid About Scooters (Especially you, San Francisco)

My Spartan Sports FS-101 Electric Scooter (bought Summer 2004)

This is a bike blog but I'm going to deviate from my brand a little bit and talk about scooters. I figure IHOP is changing its name to...IHOB, which can only mean it is branching out from Pancakes to Bed, Bath or Beyond, so I can veer off the cycle path slightly.

Something you may not know about me: I am an urban electric scooter expert. Really. I had an electric scooter and used it frequently in the city of Stamford, Connecticut fourteen years ago.

You heard that right: my expertise in this "new" and "bizarre" form of urban mobility predates Twitter, Tesla, and Bitcoin.

Here's what happened: In June of 2004 I moved from rural New Hampshire to Stamford, Connecticut. It was a big adjustment going from a 800 square foot house 20 miles from the nearest movie theater - and an acre away from the nearest neighbor - to a 400 square foot apartment on the 5th floor of a crowded building on 700 Summer Street.

Part of this adjustment came in the form of me realizing cars were a pain in the butt. In the beginning my job was less than two miles away and the 3,000 pound glass and metal box that had served me so well in New Hampshire felt cumbersome, slow, and unnecessary most of the time.

So in the summer of 2004 I bought an electric scooter: A Spartan Sports FS-101 from Amazon for $199. Two lead acid batteries, small pneumatic tires, and all-steel construction It weighed as much as the Chrysler Building but it folded and was perfect for city life. I'd charge it overnight and scoot to work. Then, as I did most nights back then, I'd scoot to the Metro North station, go to Manhattan, and zip from 42nd' street to my girlfriend's apartment on 32nd between 1st and 2nd. I'd spend the night, then early the next morning I could scoot to Grand Central and, after the 45 minute train trip, could scoot back to my tiny apartment so I could shower and change before returning to work.

The top speed was an advertised 15 miles per hour. Most of the time it felt faster. The range was about ten miles or so - I never really figured it out but discovered one night that running 40 city blocks to get Thai food and bring it back to my girlfriend's apartment killed the battery. 

The scooter beat having to pay cab fare, allowed me to move quickly without dirtying my clothes, and, since it wasn't a bicycle it was permitted on Metro North (which, as you've heard me complain about many times, doesn't allow bikes on trains during peak hours). But when my girlfriend and I finally moved in together in Stamford I didn't need that part of the value-add as much, and about a year later the motor started to fail. Soon it was mothballed and was shoved in my basement for years until I gave it away before driving (with a bike) across the country to California in 2015.

So I am a scooter expert. You'll probably see me one day on CNBC or Bloomberg News talking about something happening in the urban scooter universe and you'll see my name followed by the words "Scooter Expert."

Naturally I was a little amused when, a few months ago in San Jose, electric scooters suddenly began to appear on the sidewalks. I wasn't sure what they were but saw the "$1 to start" signs on them. Then they multiplied. Then they became things that every street has that you almost don't pay attention to like plastic alt weekly newspaper boxes or pay phones that no longer have any phones in them. 

And something happened. People became stupid.  

I am referring to everybody. The scooter users too stupid to not block wheelchair access. The ones too lazy to use the kickstands. The ones who zipped too close to pedestrians for fun. The ones who threw them into San Francisco Bay. 

Lime Bike discarded by some nincompoop in San Francisco

 Not just the customers: the scooter companies who followed the man-this-is-getting-old! Silicon Valley ethos of asking for forgiveness before asking for permission and trading manners for free press. The San Francisco - and other city - government officials who moved quickly to make sure the nightmare of clean, reliable transport would end before anyone had the nerve to question car culture. 

On a dockless Lime scooter in San Francisco. Note the dockless motor vehicles trudging along beside me.

I could hardly log onto Twitter without seeing some stupid person complaining about scooters in some way, shape or form. Yuk-yuk-yuks! of dockless scooters in trees or underwater were frequent. #Scootergate began to trend. What was going on? 

Base of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, May 2018. Note the five empty cars get more safe and secure housing than the guy living in the tent. 

I felt people were losing their minds over the wrong things - as usual (I've talked about the 'disproportionality of fear' all the time). I was finally pushed past my limit last week at the news of a rally in San Francisco where Google's buses were being protested by having several dockless scooters tossed in front of them. 

I understand the anger and helplessness that comes with being displaced (or having to worry about being displaced) but that was just stupid. What exactly did they want the Google workers in San Francisco to do? Have them all buy cars so they'd have to lobby the city to tear entire city blocks down to build the garages they'd inevitably need to store them all?

I tweeted out the picture above trying to lend sense to the madness - which is something one should never try to do on Twitter.

The reply I got was just something else - and it was delivered by a "group" that seems very common in these parts: NIMBY meanness disguised as compassionate social justice.

My reply to their assertion that density "causes harm" and that "scooters kill" was made several days ago and never returned. And the this I am referring to is the it-would-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-true story of a Tesla crashing into a Starbucks on bike to work day. I reasoned that if that driver had a scooter that day - heck, if more drivers had scooters every day - this kind of crash wouldn't happen. 

You know, car crashes - those filler news stories describing the cars, SUVs and such things that kill over 40,000 of us every year? Those crashes that are a lot less interesting to talk about than a boomer who got scared when a scooter zipped close to him or her while enjoying some free parking.

And as you've probably figured out by now, I have the LimeBike app and have used it a few times (mostly trips in San Francisco where I didn't bring my own bicycle and FordGoBike - for which I have a membership - didn't have a convenient station) but I want to tell you about one trip in particular: that girlfriend I had in New York City that I visited on that Spartan Sports FS-101? She's my wife now and that ridiculous, 14 year-old scooter with a hamster lifespan is part of why we've only owned one car between us for the more than 12 years we've been married. 

A couple of weeks ago I needed to meet her in San Francisco, far from the Caltrain Station, after work one evening. It was an actual, grown-up event that had a start time and everything so I needed to figure out a way to get across the city quickly. 

OH NO! It's a dockless scooter on the move! Hide your children! Warn your neighbors!

So I took a FordGoBike to Diridon, took the Caltrain to San Francisco, unlocked a scooter at 4th and King with the app and hummed the final four miles to my destination. I passed every car on the Embarcadero like it was standing still because most of them were. 

When I got to where I wanted to go I found that my $1 start-up fee and $0.15 per minute was well spent - and it was cheaper, faster and better for the environment than a car would have been. I found a place on the sidewalk that wasn't in anyone's way and deployed the kickstand. SEE HOW HARD THAT WAS?

That's the first antidote to scooter stupidity. Behavior of the end user matters - and this is something that'll be a rude awakening as tech moves further into the Internet of Things. Silicon Valley is long used to federal rules that shield them on the Internet when people who are stupid and mean do things like create mysogynistic chat groups, or a racist Twitter account. But with app-based transportation, you're now in a place where the dolt who leaves a Bird scooter blocking a sidewalk is not protected by free speech. 

The second is to realize that car share - which was the only real alternative for me to get to that part of San Francisco by such-and-such a time - is contributing to car blindness. Ride share services like Lyft and Uber make traffic worse and the same can be said about pollution. Self-driving cars have already killed people and aren't solving the street safety or obesity or suburbia problem either. 

The third antidote to scooter stupidity is to start realizing how much valuable space is given to cars - not just in our cities but in our minds. Start erasing the need for owning your own car - and even the need for riding in others - and nothing but good things can happen in cities. Yes, LimeBike, Bird and others followed the same, tired, Always-Be-Obnoxious playbook when launching these things but if they and we stop being stupid maybe cities will let a few inches of storage space here so scooter users don't have to fight pedestrians on the sidewalk (like cyclists do with pedestrians in Tokyo). If these things were set up to take space away from cars to begin with it would be a much more welcome disruption.

Also please consider parking docks - on the street that take space away from cars! - with solar panels and windmills to give the 'gig workforce' angle a rest and to annoy the Prius Worshippers in San Francisco even further. Hey, I predicted Barnes & Noble would regret trying to split Nook from the rest of the company (correctly) and four years ago I said bike share would eventually create incentives to self-balance fleets (correctly) so maybe I'll be ahead of the curve once again. I may be. I'm a scooter expert. 

So everyone, please: stop being stupid about scooters. Blame on the rollout and aftermath is everywhere but that is no reason we shouldn't figure out a way to work this into transportation and take more space away from cars. If you're in San Jose go to the DOT meeting on June 21st and provide input (read: drown out the voices of any 'Footloose' town elders who want to use cities as car storage facilities. 

That's all I've got.  I'm going back to writing about bikes. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding.  

The summary of all of the arguments I've ever hears against electric scooters.

Why San Jose Cyclists Must Vote No on Measure B

Around this time three years ago I moved to California from Connecticut. Every warning I got from friends about how problematic the housing situation was true or was too limiting in its scope in describing the madness. There are too many jobs being created here and too few homes to fit all the workers, so people move two hours away or further or crammed with a ton of roommates.

Oh, sorry: I forgot I'm in Silicon Valley. Instead of "crammed with a ton of roommates" I meant to say "co-living."

Worse than that: the tight demand for apartments is raising rents faster than incomes, so teachers, restaurant workers and even small business owners have to move farther from the homes they grew up in. 

The need for affordable housing is severe but we have to break down the words "affordable" and "housing" to understand what's really going on here. The median sale price for a home in San Jose is around $1 million and the median rent is north of $2,500 a month. If you add a thousand - two thousand or event five thousand units it won't add to the supply enough to bring the rents down. 

So if you add, say, 900 homes, it's not enough to bring the rent or sale prices down. 

So the proposed addition of 900 homes in the Evergreen neighborhood in San Jose - which the Measure B San Jose ballot initiative wants to do - won't bring prices down. In order for housing to be affordable, homes that are for sale or rent have to only be available to those who make below a certain income level. 

These 900 homes will not be - and even if they were it does not speak to a bigger problem.

San Jose had a bunch of annexations in the 1960s that made it not grow up, but out. This city is huge, and with suburban homes everywhere cars were (and still are) the preferred way to get around. Frequently, my wife and I - who have successfully gotten away with owning only one car between us for the nearly thirteen years we've been married - feel environmentally coerced into getting another one. It's the same old story: there aren't enough trains, not enough buses, where-I-need-to-go-isn't-walkable-or-bikeable. Using a car is almost always easier and cheaper even though their wear on the environment is harder and more expensive than most drivers know. 

That brings me to my next beef with Measure B. Look at Evergreen on a map. Then look at downtown San Jose. 

More of the same environmental coercion. 

In other words, building 900 homes far from transit with a garage and a Tesla flanked by a GMC Suburban in every driveway is a bad idea on multiple fronts: as I've said before if you enable cars, you get traffic, you get pollution, you get road deaths, you get local governments going insolvent trying to pay for all the infrastructure. 

So when some rich goofballs want to build a new suburban land mass on the outer edge of a city we have to say no. Not only is none of this "affordable" but we have to get used to the idea of not calling the suburbs housing. Suburbia is something San Jose experimented with and is failing at - just like any other city. 

San Jose's own housing plan isn't perfect as it is (why I'm also recommending Yes on Measure C) but giving a green light to developers to build a replica of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" neighborhood isn't the way out of a housing crisis. Homes that are part of multifamily structures that do not require the need for the occupant to own a car is the only way this city can move forward. 

And it isn't just me who's saying this: The Bay Area Council (I know, I know: I gave them some heat last year for talking about housing and traffic as though they were separate issues) recommends building dense housing near transit. Since we do have to "build our way out of" the housing crisis let's not force tens of thousands of dollars a millennial can't afford anyway into car-related infrastructure they'd rather not use.

The Bay Area Council has also found, again in their survey, that the number of people who want to leave the Bay Area has gone up once again this year. Not only that, but outgoing governor Jerry Brown is starting to put permanent water conservation rules in place - hardly the time to build places that involve the water-suck and time-suck of a lawn.

And the final reason to give Measure B a big thumbs down: as much as the backers yammer on about "senior" housing and "preference for seniors" we have to recognize the long-term dangers of that. Sure, a home out in the suburbs might be nice for someone in his or her sixties, but what happens when they push up against their eighties and can't drive anymore? The organization Strong Towns probably put it best in a piece they wrote last year: car-based living isolates the seniors living in car-based places - and worse than that: the streets themselves become scary, pedestrian and wheelchair-user unfriendly places that can't be navigated easily even if they could. 

So this is what you need to do by or on June 5: Vote no on Measure B - not because it is for billionaires (it is) and not because the backers are cynically using the need for affordable housing in the most irresponsible way imaginable: but because it wants to keep San Jose in a backwards place: with a car wash next to every train station, a boatload of car loan debt on every adult, and a two-hour car commute for everyone who commits the sin of earning less than six figures a year. 

To hell with that and to hell with them. Vote for our future. Vote no on Measure B and Yes on Measure C. 

P.S. - Also vote yes on Regional Measure 3.

Thanks for reading and thanks for riding - especially if you're in San Jose.