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Influence Pedal-ing

I’m not sure if the Times was trying to start its own Daily Telegraph style expenses-gate tempest with this filament thin story in today’s paper about DOT commish Sadik-Khan’s trips to transportation conferences, paid for by such nefarious interests as “walk and bike promotion.” Tammany Jane!

This sort of thing goes on all the time, of course, with not much comment — and usually, it’s the “road gang” paying the much, much bigger bills and haunting the halls of power — note this story, for example, from Georgia, about a construction contractor who essentially got their commish fired.

I’m sure we could drum up many other examples; but when the pedestrian-cyclist complex begins flexing its substantial muscles, sending public servants to foreign shores to soak up dangerous ideas and influences of the non-motorized variety, fire up the outrage!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 10:01 am and is filed under Etc., Traffic Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Influence Pedal-ing”

  1. spiderleggreen Says:
    July 13th, 2009 at 9:44 am

    Paper thin is right. Nothing about wild trips to Vegas. She must be getting something done, for the NYT to put this shot across her bow. Perhaps protecting those much maligned and under represented autophiles. It’s really just the entrenched interests that need the protecting. I hope she redoubles her efforts to make NY into a 21st Century city.

    Too bad there wasn’t a comments section on that article. I would have loved to respond.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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