Sausalito councillors may limit bike tourism

http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/sausalito-councillors-may-limit-bike-tourism.html

CC BY 1.0 Lloyd Alter, from the Sausalito ferry after bike ride

When I first rented a bike from Blazing Saddles in San Francisco and rode over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, I thought I had died and gone to heaven, it was the most beautiful ride I had done in my life. There was a song in my head that I adapted to “I wanna live in Sausalito.” I continued to tour Mill Valley, then on to Tiburon where I missed the ferry by one minute because I had stopped for ice cream, and then pedaled back to Sausalito and caught the ferry there. I did the trip again with my daughter, although that time we just went to Sausalito, spent a lot of money on lunch and took the ferry back. It is a truly glorious experience that everyone should do. I never even took out my camera until I got on the ferry, hence this bridge shot is my only photo.

http://abc7news.com/video/embed/?pid=554603

Except if Sausalito councilwoman Linda Pfeifer has her way, you won’t be able to what I did. She says that there are too many of us and that the town is being overrun with tourists on bikes. She tells ABC “That’s 1,000 rental bikes a day coming into our small town, and it’s just unsustainable to have those numbers exponentially increase every year.”

Ted is right. There are thousands of tourists of all kinds coming into Sausalito on a nice day, most in big cars and taking up a lot of space in big parking lots that are all over. They spend money and have big trunks on their cars to put stuff, but cyclists spend money too, and have big stomachs to fill after the ride. They pay for their ferry ride home, too.

Councilwoman Pfeifer says cycling is dangerous: “We’re trying to ensure that people, who our our guests, will have good memories, not sad memories of bicycle accidents”. But perhaps there might be fewer accidents if she put a limit on cars, not bikes.

The ride to Sausalito is a truly transcendent experience that everyone should put on that horrible list. Councilwoman Pfeifer should try it and who knows, she might change her mind.