When a community takes their share of the gas tax, and the vehicle registration tax, and the general highway fund, its with the implied/legally stated purpose of road use for cars and trucks. People pay this tax as a tradeoff of having nice roads for their cars and trucks. When the City of Ames converts roads to bike paths, they are stealing the tax dollars paid for the use of motorized vehicles. They said they were going to use the money for roads, not bike paths. They are taking 50% (4 lanes down to two) of the tax money and then using it for bike lanes on the roads. The bicycle users didn’t pay for those roads. They are being gifted these lanes by the automobile drivers. The City of Ames took their share of road use tax intended for cars, and broke the agreement and used it for bikes.

This idiocy for the most part goes on in college towns. The governing bodies of those towns are wired into what was “Agenda 21”, and is now Agenda 2030. Towns just down the road like Boone, aren’t so stupid, they’re not a college town. These town councils like Ames feel they have The Vision of the Anointed. Its “the green agenda”. “Alternative forms of transportation”. Its to “mitigate climate change”. They actually believe this crap. They took this money under the pretense of taxing the drivers of cars and trucks to build roads for their use. Hence, the “road use tax”. Instead they are converting lanes of travel meant for cars and trucks, for the exclusive use of bikes. They are stealing that money.

If they want to make bike paths out of the roads, well, there’s no legal way to do that.

All this idiocy is driven by the “green agenda”. Take roundabouts. I haven’t read it, but I know its about keeping cars moving so they don’t idle at stop signs. Having cops not patrol is about saving gas. They totally ignore the reasons cops patrolled in the first place, making a visible presence and knowing who’s who in a neighborhood. One of the funniest “energy savers” in Ames is the Cadillac bus system we have here. While it is heavily used in and around the university during the school year, the rest of the town has these very fuel efficient “green diesel” behemoths driving around empty.

Town councils like Ames have forgotten what their mission is, its not to save the world from climate change, its to provide a clean, safe town that people want to live in for the taxpayers. Its not a toy where they get to exercise all their fantasies for creating a liberal utopia. Their nonsense wastes money and causes headaches for the people. What’s horribly ironic about it is their stupidity actually wastes more energy. At the busy intersection (30th/Duff and Grand) where they took 4 lanes down to 2, there was a traffic tie up yesterday (and that was on a sparse Saturday, imagine what its going to like at rush hour on a weekday?). The left turners were blocking the people who would have normally just went straight in the right lane! But because there is only 1 lane, they missed the light and had to idle through another cycle!

It all reminds me of probably the biggest municipal boondoggle of all time: B.A.R.T. This was the Bay Area Rapid Transit. Looking it up, I see that greenies had envisioned it in 1946! Construction actually began in the 60s. My sister had visited it in the 70s and thought it was the coolest thing ever invented. I suppose considering the money and energy spent making it, it was. They said at one time it would have to run until something like the year 2340, to have saved the amount of energy they spent making it! Like all liberal utopias, San Francisco is now an unlivable hellhole where the homeless shit on the sidewalk and litter the park with heroin needles. But they do have a very fancy green train system.

Their nonsense doesn’t make sense in another way to. At this particular intersection where they snarled traffic to put in bike lanes, the Duff side is gotten there byway of a hill. As a biker I can tell you bikers avoid hills! We wouldn’t come that way anyway! And as stated earlier, it doesn’t make sense that bikers moving at 9 mph would want to ride inches from 3,000 pound vehicles moving at 25/35/45 mph. And the other thing whether its Ames or Des Moines, why do city leaders always choose the working class and poorer neighborhoods for their nonsense? Why never the rich areas like Jordan Creek? If this bullshit is such a great idea, why don’t you take EP True Parkway down to 2 lanes? Because its stupid and rich people hire lawyers.

Why don’t you take the Interstate down to 1 lane and put in a bike lane?