No one wants to make Louisville a cycling-only city

A letter writer’s histrionics about cycling from April 5 are understandable if all you want to do is drive. Not everyone does though. No one wants to make Louisville a cycling-only city, anyone who has thought about it knows it isn’t possible anyway.

Louisville has seen 70 years of car-oriented development. I’m a car driver, I drive. I chose though to set my cruise control on roads like Via Appia and South Boulder Road to the speed limit. It’s frightening to see the number and speed of cars that pass me.

The number one cause of pollution on the front range is transportation. Electric cars won’t save us.

The City of Louisville maintains roads as an accounting asset, as do most cities. This is little more than a slight of hand. Over the next two decades, many of Louisville’s roads will soon start to decay beyond pothole repair.

Ever wonder why Arapahoe at 95th is such a mess? Because it’s beyond pothole repair and needs to be re-laid.

Relaying roads can cost up to $1 million per mile. Louisville doesn’t have money to pay for its hundreds of miles of roads to be re-laid. It will leave the repairs until everyone is complaining and then raise the money through bonds paid for by taxes, because everyone wants the roads repaired.

Car ownership is a boat anchor for most people, leasing and buying cars is the second most expensive thing most people do. Why do they do it? Because there is no effective alternative.

It’s time to redress the balance. Lots of people don’t actually need cars all the time, there isn’t another industrialized country that allows 15-year-olds to drive, in America they have little choice. The problems evacuating

Monarch High School during the Marshall Fire were cars, not students and not cyclists.

Adding cycling lanes, encouraging electric bikes, scooters and walking shouldn’t kill anyone but it will unless things change. Perhaps that is why the letter writer doesn’t see many people on Via Appia, they are scared if they are not in cars!

It’s time for a change and that’s good for drivers and taxpayers if roads are a little less busy and wear out a little slower. Embrace the change, slow down and wave to neighbors.

— Mark Cathcart, Louisville