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š A Radical Act
A guest essay by Weslie Lechner
Weslie Lechner
July 12, 2024
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Welcome back.
Undoing decades of car-dependent infrastructure is a big lift, but the more of us that embrace the many benefits of better bike and public transportation infrastructure, the betterā¦for the climate, our lungs, our mental health, and more.
Please enjoy todayās essay and ode to biking by guest writer Weslie Lechner.
Iām Quinn Emmett, and this is science for people who give a shit.
Every week, I help 38,244+ humans understand and unfuck the rapidly changing world around us. It feels great, and weād love for you to join us.
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The Road to Healing Is Paved With Good Bike Infrastructure
 | By Weslie Lechner Weslie Lechner is a freelance writer, storyteller, and cycling enthusiast that enjoys spinning her existential dread into stories about how to take action. |
While I admit that infrastructure is not the sexiest of topics to bring up at a party, I still find myself doing it a lot these days.
One margarita in and you can find me posted up by the pool talking your ear off about how auto lobbyists and policymakers allowed cars to take over our streets to the detriment of the rest of us.
For example, did you know that in the 1970s, the U.S. passed the āGas Guzzler Taxā to penalize carmakers for vehicles that didnāt meet the minimum fuel efficiency standard of 22.5 mpg BUT exempted trucks and SUVs, incentivizing automakers to push the sale of larger vehicles which today make up four out of ever five new cars sold in the U.S.?!
Larger cars led to larger roads and more of them, which led to induced demand, putting even more cars on the roads, so if you think about it, in this āif you give a mouse an SUVā scenario, cycling is kind of a radical act, right?!
If by this point, you havenāt politely excused yourself to swim to the other side of the pool and enjoy your margarita in peace, Iād like to invite you to consider partaking in this radical act of micro-mobility with me.
But first, Iāll tell you why I think itās so important.
You see, I live in Southern California, a place known for its sunshine, palm trees, and long love affair with the car.
This love affair was not something I spent a whole lot of time thinking about until I took up cycling myself. After all, who am I to tell a city what form of transportation to love?
And anyway, Iād grown up in L.A.ās suburbs. Cars as the main form of transportation was the norm. My grandmother used to drive fifteen minutes to our house every morning just to drive my sister and me to school five minutes away.
While Iād love to say the time spent with my grandmother was priceless, these kinds of short car trips have quite a hefty price tag.
In the U.S. alone, car trips under a mile make up around 10 billion driving miles per year, adding up to an estimated 4 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
The walk to school wouldāve taken fifteen minutes.
Still, if you live in the U.S., Iām sure you can understand why cycling-as-transportation wasnāt really on my radar. It wasnāt safe, efficient, or really possible where I lived.
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