Mandatory registration sweeping the nation!

The year 2011 is barely two weeks old, and is already proving to be quite challenging for cyclists and for personal liberties.

1. January 4, 2011: the LA Times runs a story about $400 in fines levied against one teenage boy for operating a bicycle without a license.
2. January 12, 2011: New Jersey Assembleywoman Tucker proposes legislation requiring a $10/year registration for all bicycles and a $100 citation for each offense.
3. January 13, 2011: Tucker back-pedals and withdraws her proposal.
4. January 14, 2011: the New York Post runs a story about a legislator from Queens proposing similar registration laws.

And today, the city attorney of Santa Monica is proposing to the city council an ordinance that will require bicycle registration for all residents of Santa Monica at a cost of $4.00 per bike, and which sets the fine for operating a bicycle without a license at $10.00.

Click through to the summary report and full-text of ordinance.

In response, local (to Santa Monica) inter-blogger and pedal-masher Gary has written a letter raising several logistical concerns about redundancies and enforcement that bureaucrats and politicrats will likely find more ponder-worthy than my ideological "bikes are like libraries" flight of fancy.

Click through to Garyridesbikes

Some of my favorite bike personalities—bloggers, photographers, advocates—are in and around LA, so I'm anxious to see the coverage of the meeting and reactions to the outcome.

And as for things on the home front, I'm a little nervous about the spread of this apparent anti-bike brush fire. I would feel confident that bike-friendly Denver, home of the country's first bike share program, would be immune from the craziness if it weren't for two things.

1. Dan "It's A Plot" Maes is headquartered a stone's throw away in Evergreen and his influence, if felt from New York to LA, is surely felt here in his back yard, and
2. Even Portland, where cyclists hope they go when they die, is suffering from restrictive bicycle legislation! This proposed law would prohibit, with the threat of a $90 fine, children under the age of 6 being carried on bicycles.
   
   
   
   Click through to oregonlive.com story

Basically, I can't take it for granted any longer that this couldn't happen here. I denounce this kind of legislation, and I need to make sure my legislators know this.

Bike registration continued: the real source of the problem

Eric Ulrich, lawmaker from Queens, is "floating the proposal" that all cyclists pay for mandatory bicycle registration.

click through to NYPost.com story

Ulrich is the Republican/New York complement to Cleo Tucker's Democratic/New Jersey anti-bike agenda, proving that Bike Hating is a bi-partisan issue behind which we all can get.

It goes without saying that we are witnessing the beginnings of a movement. A movement no doubt masterminded by the most paranoid, anti-bicycle conspiracy theorist of our time.

Dan Maes. Is Crazy.

Yes, you can almost hear the sound of Dan "Corny" Maes' weird grin all the way up in Evergreen, Colorado. Deep down in the Maes Cave, in the center of a nondescript Evergreen cornfield, Maes is accumulating politicians by the handful and is encouraging them to introduce anti-bike legislation in order to cull the Red Threat.

In the NYPost.com article, both of the city of Denver's stated reasons to register a bike are addressed with varying degrees of bizarritude.

1. The recovery of a stolen bicycle. Ulrich himself couldn't offer us a way that this law could actually benefit actual cyclists. It was left up to a gentleman named One Biker (aka Audio "Engineer Chvad" Bernhard) to find one.

   One biker saw an upside, saying lost or stolen bikes could be identified. "Right now, [recovered] bicycles just get auctioned" by police, said audio engineer Chvad Bernhard, 37.

2. The identification of an injured cyclist. Okay, so in a weird backhanded kind of way, Ulrich conveys concern for cyclists here. His proposal will help identify cyclists, which cannot at present be done because

   many cyclists don't have identification on them if they get into an accident because "they're in Spandex or whatnot."

   It is absolutely, entirely true that all cyclists are at all times either in Spandex or in whatnot. Whatnot, in my case = corduroy slacks and a long sleeved cotton t-shirt. But neither my corduroy slacks nor my long sleeved cotton t-shirt prevent me from carrying identification.

   Furthermore, look at the picture included in the article.

   
   Does it look like this cyclist is prevented by his whatnot from carrying anything whatsoever?

But none of this is even the interesting part.

The interesting part is this. Both Ulrich and Tucker say their legislation was inspired by frightened, elderly constituents.

In New Jersey:

[Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker (D-Essex)] proposed it after several senior citizens in Belleville and Bloomfield called her to complain about kids on bikes. "They had been knocked down, knocked over and they had no way to register a complaint. They couldn’t identify the person," said Tucker.

In New York:

Ulrich says that many of his constituents are seniors and that "people on bicycles scare the hell out of them. Sometimes they can be an intimidating presence on the city streets."

So what we obviously have here is perception problem. The perception that Evil Mastermind Dan Maes wants us all to believe is that old people are being intimidated and tipped over by cyclists.

In reality, the truth is that old people are slow moving and easily startled, and are better off doing laps around the mall.

Frankly, old people scare the hell out of me. Sometimes, when they wander into the middle of city streets, they can be an intimidating presence.

What I'd like to see is a piece of legislation requiring that old people be registered and stickered at the DMV so I have some way of identifying and reporting them when they wander into traffic.

Freedom of Access: Bicycles, libraries, and mandatory registration

On Wednesday, a New Jersey lawmaker named Cleopatra Tucker proposed a law requiring bicycle registration, inciting a peloton of protesters, comprising penny-farthings and twelve year olds, into a frenzy of action.

click through to NJ.com

There are five penny farthings in that picture. Five pennies and five farthings. That's four more than I've ever seen in person, and possibly every such bike in New Jersey.

Cleo Tucker must have been overwhelmed by all the big wheels, because the very next day she was back-pedalin' and retractin'.

click through for NJ.com story

At which point the big wheels and the twelve year olds all turned around and went back home.

Arguments in favor of registration are often of the type, "If you're using the roads you ought to be paying for their upkeep." It's hard to argue against that. Fortunately, one doesn't have to, because nearly all cyclists are already paying city and county taxes.

The city of Denver offers—but does not require—bicycle registration for two cited reasons: to assist the police with-

1. the recovery of a stolen bicycle, and
2. the identification of an injured cyclist.

I have a hard time imaging a successful outcome in either of those scenarios resulting from having registered your bicycle, but click here to do it anyway.

Some places, like Long Beach, actually do enforce bicycle registration. With $400 fines.

click through to LA Times story

Which is utterly ridiculous.

Mandatory registration, especially as proposed by Cleo Tucker and especially as enforced by Long Beach, is in direct opposition to the idea of freedom of access, which is a major pillar of my personal belief system.

Freedom of access empowers any person to grab one (of whatever it is you have been granted access to) and use it it for what-so-ever-the-hell pleases them.

It's the primary function and purpose of public libraries. The material is there, and the user has access to it. It's up to the user to decide what it means to them and how to use it, how to apply it in a way such that they achieve their vision of success.

Bicycles and libraries serve critical functions—far beyond mere entertainment value—for twelve year olds, homeless adults, and everybody in between. People often need access to these resources and these opportunities in order to thrive.

Libraries and bike kitchens caulk the cracks in the sidewalk of society because libraries are bastions of knowledge and bicycles are instruments of mobility and transportation. People crave and are entitled to knowledge and mobility. They are human rights, and as much as abstractions can want something, they want to be free.

Ultimately, bicycle registration will never work because there will always be people salvaging bikes out of dumpsters to ride to work, or the drug store, or the unemployment office, or the day laborers office, or to the library to work on a resume and apply for a job, and that simply has to be allowed to happen freely and unhindered by the threat of a $400 fine.