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Regional emphasis on road sharing raises need for licensing and regulation of bicycles and riders
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Chances are quite good that you share your morning and afternoon drives with a growing subset of the Greenest Generation – bicycle commuters. An increasing number of cyclists are zipping along the three or four-foot wide strip at the right edge of many King County roads; a stream of two-wheeled travelers taking advantage of a widening network of shoulder strips and bike lanes.
The ever tenser scrum of Chevy Suburbans and Schwinns that coalesces daily on a field of cement and asphalt has matured beyond an experiment that many local residents saw it as when the trend kicked off years ago. The commitment by local and state governments to create shared roadways – streets that are designed to carry cars, trucks, buses and bicycles simultaneously - has created the need for a regime of common sense bicycle licensing laws. They are needed in the interests of public safety, maintaining revenue for road projects and to preserving some semblance of equity in how the government does business with all users of public roadways.
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when bicycles were used almost exclusively on off-street trails and sidewalks and therefore did not intermingle with motorized traffic. Licensing bicycles and riders in that bygone era would have made as much sense as licensing pedestrians, and any future licensing laws should obviously create ironclad exclusions for the government to begin taxing toddlers on tricycles or recreational cyclists who stick to the off-street venues. But, with more forced integration of our roads barreling down the pike, now is the optimal time for the legislature and local officials to wrap their collective heads around reconciling a maze of statutes concerning the new animal that is the shared roadway, as well as begin to conceive and implement a system of licensing cyclists and their bicycles.
Seattle is only one-sixth of the way through its $240 million plan to add almost 300 miles of on-road bicycle facilities by 2016, and Bellevue has yet to begin implementation of its “Walk and Roll” plan that will create more than 140 miles of similar space on existing city streets. If Bellevue meets its objectives, non-motorized trips will increase at least ten percent over the next decade, projections that do not even keep pace with anticipated population growth.
The number of bicycles on streets and highways is almost certainly to increase at a rate faster than a mere ten percent, and growth of that kind will also inflate the cheerless statistics of accidents involving cyclists. In 2007 there were 763 accidents involving cyclists in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties combined, according to figures compiled by the Washington State Department of Transportation. Five of those accidents involved fatalities. As on-road bicycling increases, the mission of transportation agencies, lawmakers and law enforcement will have to be finding ways to keep the accident and fatality rate from keeping pace.
The challenge of creating a safe public environment is always the paramount task of government and in this case is a particularly daunting one because the space being made for bicycles is most often carved from the edges of motorways that already underserve the driving population. Roads more crowded with motorists, sprinkled with comparatively fragile motorists, are a hazardous transportation setting. Nevertheless, the coexistence of bicycles and motor vehicles on our roads is no longer an experiment. The phenomenon that has existed in a protective bubble, mostly free from enforcement of existing city and state laws, and certainly free from sharing the direct monetary burden connected to the transportation budget, must now be recognized as a reality in the only way state governments know how to recognize a thing. Tax it, license it and regulate its users.
In a convoluted way, cyclists have yet to be accepted by motorists because they have been handed their pavement on a silver platter on top of having developed a public image of being arrogant and careless. Anecdotes about the cavalier manner in which some bicyclists treat the road - as if it were just another trail and without regard for the safety of themselves or the drivers around them - could fill volumes, but the truth about most riders is exactly the opposite of what those examples would presume to say. Still, in order to be taken seriously, to be treated as equals on the road, bicyclists’ street cred will be earned by strapping on the same yoke their fellow commuters don to enjoy the privilege of traveling on public roads.
#1 – Bicyclists and motorists should operate on shared roads with rules of the road that are equal but for common sense exceptions.
On the road, confusion begets chaos and chaos begets injury. The state has allowed towns and cities to develop their own sets of laws for bicycles, but if regional planners expect to promote the idea of bicycle commuting between Bellevue and Seattle, it seems rational to develop a universal set of rules that everyone can depend on. Permitting diversity in this area is at best a recipe for confusion or at worst, loss of life.
#2 – All on-road bicycles should be required to maintain a valid vehicle license and pay annual tab fees.
Building and maintaining an adequate system of roads (or even an inadequate one, in the case of the Seattle/Bellevue corridor) costs a great deal of money. As users of the system, on-road cyclists should bear some share of the cost. Certainly not a fee equal to a car or motorcycle, but some representative share to help pay for the cost of the road network seems reasonable. Cycling groups like the Cascade Bicycle Club could enhance their own revenue by selling specialty license plates.
Even for the utopian vision espoused by radical cycling groups like Critical Mass, bicycle licensing is likely a part of their utopian future vision. Some source of funding for roads must exist even if - in a cyclist’s fantasy – roads someday will only be built to accommodate two-wheeled pedal-powered traffic.
#3 – On-road riders should be required to obtain and hold a valid operator’s license.
We rely on the government to require motorists to obtain a license, mostly because it guarantees that a minimum standard of driving skill must be demonstrated, and a basic knowledge of the rules of the road have been certified for each licensed driver. Despite broad similarities between the operation of a car and a motorcycle, we require a separate license for motorcyclists. By universalizing and consolidating rules for all road occupants, bicyclists could be issued the same kind of permit to operate their vehicle on the street.
Most importantly, a quick road test would evaluate a rider’s skills specific to on-road cycling. Can the rider maintain straight-line motion for one-quarter mile without breaking the boundaries of a three-foot lane? Can the rider demonstrate an ability to change lanes safely and/or merge with traffic? A standard more objective than the current standard for entering the flow of traffic – possessing a bicycle – should be met before a cyclist hits the street.
#4 – Law enforcement officials adopt a formal initiative to write tickets to cyclists as aggressively as motor vehicles.
Perhaps lax citation by police of infractions committed by cyclists stems from a lack of training, but cyclists may currently get off the hook on the basis that they have nothing on the line. Along with licensing, citations become a valuable feedback mechanism, punishing bad apples who could eventually have their rights to ride the roads revoked.
For Pete’s sake, the revenue stream that could come just by writing tickets to downtown Seattle bike couriers might be enough to pay for a few miles of the proposed Alaskan Way Tunnel.
#5 – And, of course, mandatory liability insurance requirements for bicyclists.
Washington has not enacted laws pre-exculpating bicyclists from fault in traffic incidents or accidents. Not requiring bicycles riders to carry some form of general liability insurance is parallel to implying that cyclists are incapable of causing accidents; a preposterous conclusion. If cyclists are on the road, they can cause accidents and should be required to carry insurance to cover potential liability.
The question begs to be answered of why the state has not previously addressed these obvious issues. The excuse cannot be made that the issue of on-road operation of bicycles is a ‘non-issue’ because of the amount of time and money spent on projects and initiatives toward that very issue. No, it likely has more to do with the cheek-to-jowl relationship between special interests and government agencies, in particular the active involvement of the Cascade Bicycle Club. Despite the social implication of its name, the Cascade Bicycle Club is a vigorous lobbying group for the narrow interests of the cycling community. When transportation planning boards and legislative committees meet, Cascade is there in force, and in some cases it is unclear whether they are influencing policy or whether policymaking has been outsourced to Cascade. (Take, for example, the tidal wave of community feedback to Bellevue’s “Walk and Roll” project and measure the comments of the city’s residents against the current plan for which Cascade lobbied intensely.)
In opposition to inevitable proposals to impose fees and regulations such as these, the bicycle lobby will predictably don the halo of environmentalism and make the argument that the absence of fees justified in consideration of the light impact on the environment. Those groups should be swiftly reminded that they have already been compensated for their purity by not having to pay the inflated state gasoline tax. Incentives for a green Washington have already been established for decades; now it is time to institute equal responsibility and accountability among commuters.
Use of public roads is neither a right nor an entitlement. It is a privilege. In adopting a comprehensive licensing regime and a consolidation of its rules of the road, Washington could blaze the trail for other states by truly integrating our local roadways and not affording any special status to one particular group of users.
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