BIKE BUSINESSES are one of the few healthy vertebrae in the rotting backbone of Portland’s economy.
For too long, those no-good “donkey party” louts in charge of our capital have turned a blind eye to the state’s most important small businesses: bikes, which create jobs while cutting health care costs.
It’s a proven fact, as reported on Republican Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s internet web blog, bike projects create roughly double the amount of jobs per $1 million spent than typical road projects. And yet namby-pambies in lefty-controlled Salem shit their knickers in 2009 at the thought of increasing spending on bike projects from a measly one percent of the state transportation budget to 1.5 percent. Horrors! Job creation! In Oregon! Heaven forbid!
Could someone from the Killing Growing Business (KGB) party explain to me why 155 businesses that create over $90 million annually for Portland, and employs over 1,150 people isn’t worth even 1.5 percent of our state transportation dollars?
What are they spending that money on? Freeway interchanges. Ceaseless union-backed road paving. Fattening Columbia River Crossing planners’ pockets to the tune of $117 million. Pork, my friends. Oink. Oink.
You know what I fear the answer is? The liberals have realized that investing in bikes will decrease health care costs. Biking is a silver bullet for killing the cost of Obamacare.
Swiss epidemiologist Thomas Gotschi performed a first-of-its-kind cost benefit analysis of Portland bike investment from this year. His findings? If Portland puts $138 million into bikes, encouraging all those unhealthy plebeians to buck up and pedal, it will result in a health care cost savings of $388 million.
Spending real money on bikes would, ultimately, move toward making socialist health care programs obsolete. As it is, health care costs for small businesses are rising, squeezing out the biking mom and pop. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you—a genuine KGB conspiracy.
“Could someone from the Killing Growing Business (KGB) party explain to me why 155 businesses that create over $90 million annually for Portland, and employs over 1,150 people isn’t worth even 1.5 percent of our state transportation dollars?”
Outside the realm of facetious rhetoric, I feel close scrutiny could reveal .5% of transportation money more worthwhile on non-bike expenses considering practically every business (even biking oriented ones) rely on roads. This is especially true when the federal gov’t is probably going to crap out on overdue infrastructure repairs in the near future.
Still, bike on!
(Oh, and if Marissa is really a grandmother and looks like that, please sign me up for a trike.)
@Tits Mcgee, I think it would be easy to justify spending well more than 1.5% of the budget on bike infrastructure, even on the mobility grounds that you bring up. Why should semis and delivery trucks be stuck in traffic jams caused by people driving their kids half a mile to school? Or driving alone to work? Basically, we are making completely inefficient use of our public right-of-ways because so many trips are being made in a 2-ton, 6′ X 12′ vehicle. And as we know, at least 40% of passenger trips are under 2 miles. Upgrade the bike infrastructure and you can start to switch those trips over to bicycle, and voila, you have faster trips for those in which driving is really justified, and all the reduced externalities as well. A bike lane is estimated to have 5 times more capacity than a motor vehicle lane.