In my former life, I was a paid lobbyist for bicycling interests. Once you get into the business of trying to affect policy, legislation, and funding in a political system that is hopelessly two sided, the inevitable question arises: whose side are you on?

I've always felt that bicycling was a nonpartisan issue, and it's both frustrating and humorous that I catch hell from both sides of the aisle on a regular basis. I'm always being accused of being too liberal or not liberal enough.

I'd argue that most issues in life and our country are human issues, not Democratic or Republican issues. We all want financial security, health, protection from attack (whether it be mugging, house fire, or war), nice communities to live in, and the freedom to do whatever it is that we want to do. Of course, it gets complicated quickly, because there is a wide spectrum for how to deal with each of those issues and limited time, labor, and funds. And for some reason, humans often seem to feel that allowing others to do whatever they want to do is somehow a threat to our own ability to do so and/or to our own security. Witness the many holy wars throughout the ages and the bizarre argument that gay marriage somehow threatens traditional marriage.

And so, on the face of it, bicycling is a nonpartisan issue. But like everything else, people seem to find a way to turn it into a partisan issue. For reasons that are beyond my understanding, popular "wisdom" is that bicycling is a liberal issue. And people who are not liberal politically, but who love bicycling, desperately want to change this perception towards bicycling being a conservative issue. I've often heard the argument that, in order to become a "mainstream" issue, bicycling has to be perceived as less liberal and more conservative, never mind that our country seems to be split nearly right down the middle 50/50 Democrat versus Republican. In order to be as mainstream as possible, and thereby gain as many enthusiasts and supporters as possible, don't we REALLY need to assure that bicycling is not perceived as liberal OR conservative?

I don't know how or why bicycling became considered a liberal issue. It is possibly the connection to environmental protection and the fact that many people who are environmental activists support bicycling. A related, but really a separate issue, if you support transportation bicycling, at some level you probably also support compact communities, ala Smart Growth or New Urbanism (note that the links here are important for the purposes of definition. These words have become hot button topics, and often the arguments stem from the fact that people are not defining the terms in the same ways. For instance, Smart Growth is also the Wisconsin Law that requires comprehensive planning. That law alone is often misunderstood by some, especially in the heat of debate.). Why? Because if you are traveling by bicycle you'd like all of your needs to be located within a reasonable bicycling distance and you'd like the streets to be safe and efficient for your travel to and from those locations. Again, to me, environmental protection and compact growth are really HUMAN issues, not partisan issues. I don't know why people insist they are the strict purview of Democrats. Both address health and conservation of limited resources. Both are, in the strictest sense of the word, CONSERVATIVE concepts. Republican property rights activists would probably take issue with this idea, I'm sure.

It is also possible that the kind of people who bicycle and are loud about it also tend to be liberal political activists. I don't know if this is really true universally, but in some limited contexts it is. But I suspect that there are just as many people out there who are politically conservative who are passionate about bicycling.

I think the experience of getting your first bicycle and learning to ride is nearly ubiquitous in this country. We all share that experience, and everything that comes after stems from those moments. And those moments occurred long before we had rammed ourselves firmly into one political box or the other.

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