Many years ago, someone spent huge amounts of money building HOV lanes all over the state, and then spent even more getting patrol cars and aircraft to enforce it. Meanwhile, the tax laws were set up to encourage big corporations to locate giant campus-type headquarters out in the middle of nowhere. People were commuting in from a huge radius (including Pennsylvania and New York). In order for these HOV lanes to work, there would have had to be a co-ordinated effort to get employees who worked the same hours in the same company (or companies whose campuses were geographically close) and lived in the same towns to form carpools. In my office of several thousand, three of us lived within a 10-mile radius of each other, and though we tried to do this, mandatory overtime, trips to customer locations, and various “emergencies” made it impossible - since we all worked different jobs and had these schedule changes at different times. It was a matter of months before the lanes were opened up to all commuters, and our legislators (who, I would assume, never looked up and observed the traffic during their chauffeur-driven commutes) were at a complete loss to explain the failure.

The town I moved from had neighborhood elementary schools, and when the weather was nice, we would often walk to pick up our kids and walk them home. Afterwards, though, all the students attended a single middle school and a single high school, and they started having to take buses. The superintendent, pushing the idea of health and fitness, and saving some money for the town, tried to expand the distance needed for students to qualify for the bus, saying they should bike if it was too far to walk. The uproar among parents was tremendous, seeing that only a couple of years earlier, the same superintendent had removed all the bike racks because bicycle theft was rampant and too expensive to prevent.

Just recently, the speed limit was reduced by 10 mph on a 20-mile section of the Garden State Parkway. Our Governor has assured us that it is for safety, and it will be changed back after the road is widened (at some unnamed point in the future.) While he has proposed a tremendously slashed budget (which includes, ironically, disbanding the Agriculture Department - in “The Garden State”), somehow the money was found to put up signs announcing the new speed limit, replacing all the old speed limit signs with new ones, and placing additional patrol cars to monitor the speed limit. This is bad enough, but get this - there are also signs announcing the distance until the “speed enforcement zone” - 1 mile, 3/4 mile, and 1/2 mile, as well as signs that say “end speed enforcement zone.” So in case you don’t like to drive slower, you know in advance where the police are. It gets better, though. The money has also been found to get a helicopter to monitor for speeders, on a three-mile section of the road. There are signs to tell you where the helicopter is, too. A huge sum has been spent on passing a law that people don’t want, and making it easier to not follow it, so it won’t even pay for itself with violation fines. But we’ve been told that it’s a really, really, really good idea because it will make the road safer.

So if Mr. Blumenauer has actually studied the ways to encourage cycling, has worked out some plans to implement it practically, can respond thoughtfully to questions about the pros and cons and the bottom-line economic and environmental impacts, then bravo for him. If, however, it turns out to be just an opportunity for some favorable press coverage, then he should be called out on it. Having lived in NJ for so long, I’m skeptical - it would be nice to be wrong.