The American Automobile Association may have stepped in it when they picked a fight with every bicyclist in America. We’re scratching out heads over this one.

While we’re all for a good transportation showdown, we just think AAA has got things backwards when its president wrote that federal money for highways should be the sacred province of cars and no other use is acceptable. Instead of discouraging federal money for bikes, AAA should be asking for Congress to pile it on. That is, if they were smart.

The Showdown

In the September/October issue of AAA World Magazine president Don Gagnon wrote that Federal Highway Trust Fund Money should be devoted to highways exclusively, its original intention, according to the Rails to Trails Conservancy, which took up the mantle for all cyclists. More on this in a minute.

Taken from the RTC website:

*The HTF was created to fund the interstate highway system. We should follow its original intent.
*Extraneous spending must be eliminated from the HTF to ensure safe roadways for our users.
*We are not anti-bike
*We will not call on Congress to de-fund trail, walking and bicycling programs. We are simply calling for a change of accounting, not actually the elimination of any programs.

At the same time, however, AAA members in Oregon and Idaho can now receive roadside assistance on their bikes similar to that of cars. The website for the AAA of Oregon and Idaho says:

Bicycle transportation service is provided for the rider whose bicycle is disabled.
Service will be provided to any point of safety within a 25-mile radius of the bicycle breakdown.
Service applies to all bicycles and tandems, including rental bicycles.

Sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it?

Joanna McKone of TheCityFix says of the hullabaloo:

A year ago, when AAA rolled out the program, it marked a crucial step in public awareness of the importance of biking. Despite this program, AAA is still known for supporting anti-bike and anti-transit policy, like increased highway funding, lower gasoline taxes, and reduced vehicle regulations. The organization recently defended itself, arguing that federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) money should be exclusively for highway funding and not include trails for walking, hiking and biking. AAA later split hairs on this issue, arguing that they were adv0cating only for this specific pot of money to go to Highways:

Technically each AAA chapter is independent, though guided by a national strategy, so they’re free to sooth with the right hand and slap with the left.

[For company that offers roadside assistance, AAA has one of the least helpful websites I've ever encountered.
While searching for Gagnon's exact quote in AAA World Magazine, I was constantly asked for my zip code, and when I input it, they just tried to get me to book my next vacation. *Any suggestions? I'm thinking somewhere warm and quiet]

Transportationism

Jonathan Maus, editor of BikePortland.org called this type of fight “transportationism,” when we spoke in May. Transportationism is an us-versus-them competition for scarce road space and scarce dollars. Everyone thinks their side is right, and the others shouldn’t exist.

Bicycles, cars and pedestrians can all coexist. They just don’t do it on their own.

For reasons that should be obvious to anyone with a cursory grasp of physics, cars and other double-axle vehicles are at the top of the heap. They’re heavy, cars are fast, and can kill.

BIcycles and walkers have to fend for themselves, with cyclists literally stuck in the middle both literally and figuratively. Riding on sidewalks makes the way dangerous for walkers, children and the elderly, while clueless/distracted/aggressive/sleepy drivers, poor roads and a lack of cycling amenities conspire to daily make cycling trips a potentially lethal cocktail.

Bicyclist are bound by the same laws as drivers when they use the road, and they should follow all of them (yes, all of them), but drivers don’t face the same hazards.

Many serious bikers own at least one car, and often more. The taxes that biker’s pay to register their cars as well as gasoline taxes should rightly benefit multiple uses. That the argument is framed as one of bikes cyclists versus cars is doubly a disgrace due to how often driver and bikers are the same individual using different modes of transportation at different times.

In Portland, for example, where a whopping 6 percent of commutes are by bicycle (not much compared to Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but massive compared to .5 percent across the U.S.), cyclists are still car owners by and large. People who own really nice bikes are quite often the same people who own really nice cars and pay high excise taxes on the value of their vehicles.

For the record

No one is trying to take the road away from cars! Even in New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched a crusade to rid certain pedestrian-heavy parts of the city of vehicular traffic, the streets belong to cars on the whole. By itself, Manhattan has 538 linear miles of roads, according to The Fund For the City of New York. Between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Janette Sadhik-Khan a few miles–at best–have been closed to cars, while hundreds of miles of bike lanes have been painted to the detriment of no one.

While striping bike lanes, creating pedestrian plazas and closing roads to cars may be restoring a bit of humanity to the urban jungle, it is a far cry from the all out assault on drivers that some claim. Few cities in the U.S. are as congested as New York, yet the changes seem to be working to improve the quality of life for everyone.

Automobiles and the automobile industry don’t need another lobbying arm. As much as we decry cars and the damage they have done to our environment, we need them. While I don’t own a car, a part of me wishes I had one–or at least a ride in one–last night when I schlepped two bags of groceries and a 10-pound sack of potatoes up a hill in San Francisco last night.

If I fell off my bike, I wouldn’t want to go to the hospital on a bike. I would want to go in a car or an ambulance. To leave the city for a camping trip, I don’t want to ride a bike 300 miles to the Redwoods National Forest. I want to pack a tent, cookstove and a cold six pack in the back of a car.

I understand the need for cars, as do most cyclists. I’d just prefer not to be killed by one just because it’s not the way I prefer to travel on a daily basis.

So here’s a thought for AAA and for diehard gearheads, if you really love your car, and simply can’t live without it, the best thing you can do is advocate for anything that gets more people on bikes. Fewer cars in your lane means less time at red lights, less traffic and more wide open asphalt.