Reviewing the Associated Press’s list of the top ten news stories, I was struck by how many had a linkage, in direct or indirect ways, to bicycling.
Hurricane Katrina (#1) saw an inability of the car infrastructure to handle an evacuation, and how bikes might have worked better, something our own Jessica Roberts wrote about.
Of course, soaring oil prices (#5) led to record bicycle sales. London bombings (#6) also led to a spike in bicycle usage, by those who wanted to avoid transit. More controversially, the Iraq war (#3) is something many believe is connected to the U.S.’s reliance on oil, driven in large part by car dependences. And finally, what the AP calls “Bush’s struggles” (#10) probably doesn’t include the bicycle crash the President was involved in, but brought it to mind. If only the Pope rode a bike…
While admittedly, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail… I still believe that biking isn’t just a issue for some of us. Bicycling has the potential to be dramatically intwined with — and a solution to — central struggles of our time.
