A column by Jason Gay yesterday in the Wall Street Journal takes a look back at New York’s bickering over the city’s supposed “war on cars.” Now that the weather has improved and more people are riding around town, all that rhetoric seems to have died out now that it is “eclipsed by reality.”

From the WSJ:

The revival of urban cycling in this country follows a fairly predictable pattern: nervousness and ridicule, followed by the realization that the truth never matches the fear-mongering. The supposed choice between bikes and everyone else is a bogus choice. More bikes in a city doesn’t merely benefit riders; it reduces congestion, saves money, improves quality of life, elevates the experience. No one returns from a city and says, “Oh, it was great—except for all the biking.”

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The biggest mischaracterization about the infamous New York Cycling War is that there’s a war at all.

Any of this sound familiar?

Ben Schiendelman wrote a post for Slog in May that, aside from pointing out the absurdity of the Greenlake Community Council’s Michael Cornell leading a mayoral recall effort, also posted some interesting poll numbers to demonstrate the city’s support for such projects:

A recent poll of Seattle voters found that—when asked if they support spending more transportation funds on investments in transit, bicycling, and walking—57 percent said yes, only 28 percent said no and the rest weren’t sure. When asked if, given limited funds in the city’s current transportation budget, they would support greater investment in transit, bicycling, and walking if it meant fewer dollars were available for auto-oriented projects, 49 percent said yes, 34 percent said no, and 16 percent weren’t sure. And, when asked if they supported changes in the configuration of Seattle’s streets that make mass transit, walking and bicycling safer and easier (think Stone Way, Elliott Way, Nickerson St, and Fauntleroy Way), 62 percent said yes, 25 percent said no, and 13 percent weren’t sure.

That’s not a war on cars—that’s simply a city that supports all of the basic modes of transportation that we use to get around.

A post by Zach Shaner at Seattle Transit Blog also addressed the nonexistent war in May, pointing out the way we talk about transportation helps to lead to this extrapolation:

A simple truth:  cycling is not an inherently political act.  When a person is on a bicycle, they are just cycling, a verb whose adverbial embellishments (recklessly, quickly, safely, cautiously, etc…) have a short shelf life and extend only to observed behavior.  When people insist on twisting you into a noun – a Cyclist, a Motorist – you become not a person doing something, but rather a category expressing some fundamental defining value.   By definition, categories are constraining, and they make it easier to load transportation choices unnecessary moral weight.  As transit advocates we also do this to “Drivers” – and it’s just as unfair to “them” as to “us”.

He also suggests that anger about any amount of money spent on safe bicycle infrastucture is a matter of our “cultural expectation for complete car dominance.”

Our current investments in bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure are modest, they are appropriate for bicycling’s mode share, and they can only be seen as radical in the context of a cultural expectation for complete car dominance.  When you build your city for its largest scale mode, smaller scale modes are precluded and society actively engineers your mode choice upward toward cars. In a depressing segment Monday on KOMO Newsline AM, John Carlson affirmed as much when he suggested that bicycles be banned from any road with a speed limit higher than 20 mph.  When you build for cars, they become the only permissible game in town.   When you build for choice, all modes are enabled and respected (including cars!).