Bicycles cause more pollution than cars

Washington State Rep. Ed Orcutt (R) recently claimed that riding bicycles causes more pollution than driving cars.

According to SeattleBikeBlog.com, Orcutt wrote an email to a voter who disagreed with his support for a new tax on the sales of bicycles.

In his email, Orcutt wrote: “If I am not mistaken, a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.”

Orcutt also claimed that when people drive cars they are helping to pay for the roads, whereas bicyclists “need to start paying for the roads they ride on rather than make motorists pay.”

So there.
It must be true.

Ronald Reagan already proved that trees cause the most pollution.
Reagan was RIGHT (About everything)

bicyclists pay tax on their bikes for the roads? i hope you dont mean thru sales tax

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as does everyone who buys anything. in that case so do skateboarders, skaters, and scooters and moms pushing strollers.. whatthey dont do is pay dedicated taxes as you must when registering a car, getting a car inspected, a motorcycle or buying a gallon of gas which goes directly to the roads.

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not saying they should pay the same, that would be silly, saying they should pay their fair share... reponding to CARLOS who said they do

expecially since Bloomberg is bike crazy, building all these lanes without ryhme or reason...sometimes in the middle of the street!!! it makes me SMH whenever i walk in the city or in brooklyn and the bike lanes are always EMPTY or the one bikes going the wrong way and the car lanes are full.

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Updated On: 3/4/13 at 03:07 PM

^^ thats funny JC! :)

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I ride a bike and I own a car. So I pay just as much as anyone else. AND, on top of that, whenever I'm riding my 50lb bike around, I'm lessening wear to the roads that driving my 5000 lb car would be doing, even though I'm paying my full share.

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One could make the argument that there should be some sort of fee or registration cost to cover whatever minimal costs there may be for bike users. For me, that argument is greatly outweighed by the obvious point others have made that travelling by bike is better than travelling by car, and therefore should be encouraged rather than discouraged. However, when one makes an outrageously stupid comment like the one made regarding pollution, it immediately distracts from any meaningful discourse. Not unlike the ridiculous remarks made last year by various Republicans regarding rape.

And Jordan - I ain't payin' no sidewalk tax. We take our cars, we don't walk anywhere.

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...reponding to CARLOS who said they do...

I didn't "say" anything. I was quoting the linked article.