Bikes get slighted in compromise climate deal – washingtonpost.com

Dino Grandoni
Wind turbines. Solar panels. Electric cars, nuclear reactors, geothermal energy.
The $369 billion climate package unveiled by Democrats last week is chock-full of subsidies for technologies meant to rein in planet-warming pollution. But there’s one popular, emissions-free machine conspicuously absent from what could be the nation’s most significant piece of climate legislation yet: the bicycle.
Provisions designed to supercharge the sale and use of traditional bikes and the battery-powered variety were dropped from the climate deal reached by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), the Senate’s most conservative Democrat. The absence is grinding the gears of bike manufacturers and cycling enthusiasts who pushed for months to include the pro-bike provisions in Democrats’ climate package.
“We need people not just to shift from gasoline cars to electric cars. We need people to shift from cars, period,” said David Zipper, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government who focuses on urban development. “We can do that. But there’s nothing in this bill that makes that process easier or faster or more likely to happen.”