Not surprisingly when I look at that, I look at it as a bicyclist and I look at it as a motorist. As a bicyclist I do NOT like riding on roads like those depicted. I am fortunate. I have a choice. I work in downtown NOLA and I can afford to own a motor vehicle and pay $200/month for parking and $200/month for insurance and $200/month for gas, and $450/month car note.
If you have a job in downtown NOLA, you have a few choices for how you can get to work. Let's take a young person who just graduated college, doesn't want to live in Mom's basement. Being a hard core conservative, this person has too much pride to leech off Mom. They are going to work as an accountant for Shell Oil in the Central Business District. Their salary is $45,000 per year. Of that, after taxes, 401K contributions, health insurance etc they are going to have about $2500/month left over.
Their greatest expense is going to be housing. They will be able to find NOTHING within walking distance in their budget. There are some pretty crappy places to live within bicycle commuting distance. Bust transportation doesn't serve that area well though. The walks to the bus stop are long and go through bad neighborhoods, the pick-up and drop offs are infrequent, and because the employee is the new person, they will be keeping irregular hours. Bus transportation is off the table. Now the two choices are a bicycle or a car.
In this case the person found a dive for 1000 per month. That leaves them with 1500.
Their student loan pay back is 300 per month. 1200 residual.
Our subject is frugal and has the most basic phone plan. They still have to pay an electric bill. Let's low ball those two at 100/month. They now have 1100.
Our subject has to eat. You'd be pretty hard pressed to eat for $10/day. That leaves our subject with $800/month.
Our subject needs incidentals like toiletries, clothing etc. $50 per month. Residual $750.
Our subject isn't going to live in complete austerity. They are going to have some entertainment expenses for dates and such. $50/month Residual $700.
Our subject wants to save some money too. They are going to save $250/month to build up a rainy day fund and to start saving for the future. Residual $450. Well, we already established that the overall cost of owning a car eclipses that, so it's a bicycle for our responsible young person.
That person cannot get to work in NOLA without occasionally ending up on streets like those depicted in the video.
When I encounter bicyclists riding on streets like this, correctly or incorrectly, I operate under the assumption that they aren't too different from the responsible young conservative I used as an example. I treat them respectfully. I treat them like they have a legal right to be there. I treat them like they are my family member that just took a new job at Shell.
I have no problem with any of that. The problem I have is with this t w a t riding down the center lane and refusing to move over to let the traffic go by because “he’s entitled to”. . .
