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Late Late Show host James Corden went off on residents in a sleepy San Diego suburb who are outraged about bike lanes.
Some residents of Coronado are fighting the perplexing fight against bike lanes in Coronado City Hall, vehemently opposing a new proposal that would add more.
Clips from a local news broadcast reveal speakers at townhall meetings like Gerry Lounsbury who says, "You are covering Coronado with paint stripe pollution," and Aileen Oya who laments that, "The graffiti on the streets does not help our property values." (The property values thing is probably the opposite.) One verbose bike lane opponent called them "visual cacophony" that can induce vertigo if you look too long, while another compared them to taking their three daughters and having them tattooed from head-to-toe.
"If we have to ride from L.A. to Coronado to paint the bike lanes ourselves, we will do it. And we're not painting them with tasteful whites and yellows," Corden said on the show, before launching into an impassioned speech celebrating bike lanes.
Coronado voted to postpone implementation of multiple bike lanes that had previously been approved due to the residents' complaints. Residents also convinced the City Council to scrap a plan to add a protected path for cyclists along Ocean Boulevard.
City Councilman Bill Sandke said part of the pushback is coming from residents who are upset that Coronado is seeing a surge in tourism.
"On social media you are seeing messages like 'take back our town,' 'bring back the bridge toll,' and 'wouldn't it be nice if we were still a quaint little town,'" Sandke said.
Bike lanes have been proven to make the streets safer, according to Dan Orr, chairman of the City's bicycle advisory committee, and Orr also noted that this is important because 70 percent of children in Coronado are using bikes to get to school.
He also nodded to the fact that most of the complaints are coming from people who are a bit older. Corden, however, called them, "The same people who always have a problem: rich, old white ladies."
The San Diego Bicycle Coalition wrote a letter expressing their disappointment to the scrapping of the previously approved lanes to Coronado Mayor Casey Tanaka and the City Council:
So why stop now based on the concerns of a few who seemed to be more concerned with the visual look of bike lanes rather than the actual safety that they provide? It's unimaginable to think that the city would take steps to decrease the safety of its citizens based on this recent action largely due to the comments that were presented related to the aesthetics of the safety markings.
[h/t Streetsblog]
