Viewpoint: the Road Bike In Tomorrow's World

Viewpoint: The Road Bike In Tomorrow's World

Black Clouds & Silver Linings

DAN HUNT

FEW RIDERS I personally know have not thought at one time or another that it is their God-given right to ride a motorcycle. Perhaps this devout belief arises from the individual nature of motorcycling, and the enthusiasm a rider has for his sport.

The mystique of individualism, which we exhibit in company with a select number of automotive enthusiasts, leads us to a violent, emotional reaction against any legislation affecting the way we may operate our machinery on the street.

The average automobile driver doesn't feel this way. Stick him with shoulder and seat belts, standardize controls, antismog devices, helmets and he'll moan a lot. But he'll pay the tab, because he's got to drive to work, and an airbag isn't going to make his beige four-door any more prosaic than it already is.

THE HISTORICAL PRIVILEGE

Tell Mr. Average that driving, or riding, is only a privi lege and not a right and he'll probably believe you. After all, his DMV reminds him of that fact every time he goes to take a drivers test. If he has taken a driver education course during his high school years, the privilege aspect of driving has been most emphatically stressed.

Historically, too, motorized conveyances were denied the status of a sui generis right, whenever they infringed on the non-motoring public. The most amusing example of this was the law requiring the horseless carriage to be preceded by a man on foot with a warning lamp in certain localities.

The motorcycle and the automobile, since those classic days, have been allowed to run more or less rampant. Highway speed limits and performance have risen to match one another.

But now the first signs of new reins upon individual motorized transportation are upon us. We are running out of space, and we are running out of air. Once again the Government is reminding us that driving or riding is only a privilege, not a right.

Speaking for myself, I get annoyed about such things as standardized shift patterns, but I can't get hot about vehicular rights. If driving were a right—God-given, constitutional, or inalienable—you couldn't yank a license from a drunk, or prevent a crosswalk from being a no-man's land for you and your fellow pedestrians.

The only right you have as a driver/road rider is to seek the best form of transportation that the Government will let you get away with.

KEY TO THE FUTURE

Right or privilege? That is the key question, the key instrument through which the Government will or will not have the franchise to control the hell spawned on us by the motorized age of over-population.

No amount of arm-waving by enthusiasts and motor journalists is going to convince me that the Government won't have their way. Not just about safety and smog accessories, but about the basic design, concept and size of the motorcycle or automobile you own.

One automotive journalist made a rather weak implied defense of unbridled motoring by arguing that while New York's extensive mass rapid transport system was cumbersome, outmoded and financially destitute, the freeways of Los Angeles were functioning remarkably well.

I'll admit that after five years in New York City, the Los Angeles Freeway system can look fairly inviting. I'll also admit that a convenient mass rapid transport system for any American city—one that would be used by a majority of commuters—probably is at least 50 years away. But individual freedom for the sportive motorist? That is out of the question, or will be by the year 2000. Sport on the roads is arguable as a poetic concept, not as a right.

THE ROAD AS SPORT?

Our rights are spelled out in the august papers of this United States. They are liberal, but they don't mention the motorcycle or the car, nor would they have mentioned these vehicles had the United States been born yesterday instead of 1776. We have a right to the pursuit of happiness. That does not mean our favorite machine. A bike, a car, is a luxury, a product of affluence, not a requisite for happiness. You are free to walk, play football, tennis, golf, or ride a bicycle. And they are better for you.

So what will happen in the coming year? Will you own a road bike, a dirt bike, a car, a van? Chances are you will. But it will become progressively more difficult. You will see tougher vehicular legislation. You will see incredible taxation of all individual forms of transportation. You will hate them, and thus some of you will emigrate to Australia, South America, South Africa and Canada, where "there's room to breathe." You will fight these laws and taxes in the courts. And some of you will stay behind to fight for these laws and taxes, hoping to make better what has gotten out of hand.

Before you lynch me, allow me the courtesy of some additional comment, for, while the future looks grim for individual transport, it looks better for the motorcycle than it does for the car.

SPACE AND SMOG

What are the main problems with vehicular transport?

Primarily, they are crowding and air pollution. The level of air pollution may eventually be rolled back by means of technology. But nobody has found a way to fit two Cadillacs into a one-Caddy space.

Until a way is found to curb population growth and the vehicle production that goes with it, the prime legislative targets will be how much space a vehicle consumes and how much deterioration it causes to the environment. The forthcoming safety requirements for cars and motorcycles may appear unbearable, but they are mere legislative backwater compared to what may thunder down the Potomac in the next decade, and decades to follow.

Here are a few hypothetical samples that future legislators, concerned about the state of their country, may propose. As space for vehicular travel is the prime urgency, motorcycles do not necessarily suffer that badly.

A TAX ON SPACE

WHEREAS, we cannot condemn any more land, remove it from the tax rolls, and convert it to use by individual surface vehicles, we would create a progressively increasing annual tax based on the actual amount of space a motor vehicle occupies on the roadway. These taxes would be purposely made exorbitant to discourage the use of large motor vehicles, thereby making the existing reserve of highways and surface streets more useful.

For 1975, the "Vehicle Space Tax" will be graduated as follows:

Motorcycles, EXEMPT, standard registration fees only.

Mini-cars (55 square feet maximum road space), $25 annually, plus standard registration fees. This includes such cars as the > Honda N600, Fiat 600 and 850, Austin Mini (now illegal in the U.S.), etc.

Compact sedans (82.5 square feet), $200 annually, plus registration fees. Includes Vegas, Pintos, Datsuns, Toy otas, etc.

Medium sedans, small station wagons, compact sports vans, (104 square feet), $400 annually plus registration fees.

Large category sedans (over 105 square feet), $2000 annually, plus registration fees. Includes Cadillacs, all limousines, Rolls-Royces, Mercury Montclairs, big Oldsmobiles, Ford Galaxies, Chrysler Imperials, extended length sports vans.

By 1980, the space tax doubles for all categories. By 1990 the space tax again doubles for all categories. Year 2000, law to be reviewed in light of population growth, technology.

AN ENVIRONMENT TAX

WHEREAS, present technology allows only a partial cure of the air pollution from internal combustion engines, and pollution from gasoline refineries is directly related to the amount of fuel produced, we propose an annual ENGINE DISPLACEMENT, MILEAGE AND EMISSION TAX on all automobiles, trucks and motorcycles to run concomitant with the space tax. Displacement & Emission Tax to be determined by an administration research study, making actual amount of gasoline consumed a weighty factor in the overall tax. Production of gasoline itself is a factor in pollution.

Hypothetical tariffs might be: under lOOOcc and no less than 30 mpg, $25 per year; 1001 to 2000cc and/or less than 25 mpg, $50 per year; over 2000cc and/or less than 22 mpg, $200.

THERE ARE MANY VARIABLES

These assume proportional emission factors, and, of course, there are many variables, including engine design (four-stroke, two-stroke, diesel, Wankel, etc.). Until motorcycles have been subjected to emission tests, it would be difficult to guess what tariffs they would have to support. But as many of them deliver in excess of 40 or 50 mpg, the displacement, mileage and emission tax would undoubtedly be favorable to them. But dirt bikes as well as road bikes would be subject to this tax. And two-stroke engines would suffer because of emission greater than that of four-strokes.

As technology advances decade by decade, the above tax could be made progressively stiffer for machines which continue to consume large amounts of fuel. Remember, this tax is a multi-pronged attack on smog emission, wasteful over-production of petroleum-base fuels, and over-production of the metal that goes into making an engine. It works the same way as the Space tax: the smaller the car and engine, the less metal you need to make it.

PERFORMANCE VS. BIRTH CONTROL

For 1990, contingent upon the status of the U.S. population crisis at that date, the Government will establish a new POPULA TION CONTROL LA W affecting prospective or present owners of all private cars a) over 2000cc, b) covering more than 105 square feet of roadway, or c) intended primarily for casual high-performance, luxury use on public roads (this would not rule out cars used strictly for amateur and professional racing, nor would it rule out good handling sports cars, nor would it rule out 750-cc or under high performance motorcycles with moderate fuel consumption and smog emission).

Under this law, a prospective owner of an over-large, luxury high-performance vehicle must submit to voluntary sterilization before he will be allowed to buy one.

Why should you have to make a choice between fertility or a hot car? My reasoning is this. It will be hard, even in the event of a population crisis, to arbitrarily choose who will or will not be submitted to sterilization for the common good.

Luxury items and population are not bad in themselves, but only so when they infringe upon the environment and on the quality of life of a majority of people. So the Sterilization Law gives you a choice: fertility or luxury. Living in a Spartan manner, a people consumes less of the Earth's resources and they may consequently be greater in number. Living luxuriously, a people must settle for being less in number, as they consume resources and environment at a high rate.

STRIKING AT THE HEART

The intent of such a law is obvious, and strikes right at the heart of the crowding and pollution problem—over-population.

If the country's state ever got so drastic as to require serious consideration of this law by the Government, there is no doubt that it would not be unique. At that time, you might possibly have to undergo voluntary sterilization to indulge yourself in many other luxuries.

Among them might be: ownership of residential land bigger than one acre, ownership of a vacation homesite, ownership of a private airplane, ownership of a power boat, indulgence in frequent inter-continental air and boat travel, ownership of an off-road pleasure-oriented motorcycle, etc.

The outlook for motorcycles would be both good and bad under these hypothetical laws. On the one hand, the motorcycle will become the most popular and least expensive form of road transportation. But dirt riding will become expensive—perhaps prohibitively so—as a result of extra taxation on the possible legislative variations which might apply to pleasure-only vehicles.

BIG ROAD BIKE BOOM

Road motorcycling could gain an incredible amount of stature as a result of a wholesale switch from cars to bikes, particularly among performance-oriented automobile drivers. You can see this latter phenomenon happening even today among people in the 20-to-50 age bracket who find a Trident, Sportster, Kawasaki or Suzuki Three, Big Twin, or Honda Four a far better performance value than a $4000 to $10,000 car offering equal acceleration or braking. Only the blindest man in Detroit could swear that Superbikes are not cutting into the profits he gets from Supercar sales.

As a result, you may see Detroit getting into motorcycle production in a big way, as well as mini-cars. Unprecedented demand for new bikes, and sidecar outfits, and unprecedented high prices for them, will pave the way for Detroit. The market will finally be big enough for them to afford the design research, high labor costs and automated mass-production tooling.

Detroit, naturally, will oppose the space and environment taxes, and the sterilization law, to the bitter end—just as they have sandbagged every inch of the way on emission control regulations. Governmental deglamorization of the large automobiles and performance cars will cost Detroit more than the price of retooling. It robs them of an important means to create prestigious brand images which bleed from a performance car to the more mundane models in the same line. And profit is generally bigger when unit cost is higher, less in the high-volume, low-cost compact lines.

WHERE GO THE TAXES?

An obvious question arises. Where goes all the money generated by these exorbitant "pleasure-car" taxes? The sum generated, after all, is on the order of several billion dollars.

Hopefully, the money goes to cure the cause of the tax. It does not go to the building of new roadways, and, in fact, supporting legislation should make it increasingly difficult to build any more major freeways or highways than we already have in our national road system.

Instead, the money goes in part to an active, aggressive population control program. Supporting this should come tax reforms favoring those people who don't have children and requiring sterilization of people who have the greed, idiocy or simple bad taste to have too many children.

A greater portion of the tax money goes to extensive urban redesign. Our forefathers may have been well intentioned in giving us our freedom, but they were bumbling idiots when it came to laying out our country. With the exception of New York City and San Francisco, both of which are aided by geographic layout, none of our cities can even hope to have an efficient, convenient mass rapid transport system. The greenbelt/ density cluster concept and other visionary planning and zoning ideas have come too late to avoid urban sprawl.

URBAN REDEVELOPMENT IS NEEDED

If mass transport is to be convenient, the city itself must be convenient. The Paris subway, for example, is convenient. Like the city, it is laid out in a spiderweb pattern and nowhere is it necessary to walk more than five or six blocks to find a line that transfers to any other point in the city.

The more important point about Paris is that it is layed out in such a fashion that it does not generate vehicular traffic every time a housewife has to buy a head of lettuce. It mixes commercial with residential on practically every block. To shop, you walk to the butcher, baker, vegetable man, drugstore, all within one or two blocks of your flat. Paris is not perfect, for it has its suburbs and the resulting traffic. But it offers a better alternative than the rigid concept of zoning in American urban planning which has vigorously separated industrial, commercial and residential zones in the sprawling suburbs.

Even the more visionary city planners are being voted down by home owner's groups composed of people drilled in the megalomaniac ethic of "havin' mah own piece of land and a big back yard." These people (I admit I am one of them) are hangovers from the Pioneer days, when the primary motivation for the establishment of our country had nothing to do with highflying ideals of Freedom, or Kindness to your Fellow Man, but with land, free land, cheap land, gold, free water, free timber, easy affluence if you get there first.

WE'VE GOT IT ALL!

We have gotten there, all right. Everybody has his barbecue pit, his back yard, his fruit tress, his own two-car garage. And every typical man will have his wife, who in numbers of 80 million or more per day, will fire up the family sedan and drive 5 to 10 miles in quest of a 10-cent head of lettuce, because she has no choice but to drive to a remote commercial area.

Until we can restructure urban America and give her a mass transport system, at least we can put you and your wife on a motorcycle, or in a smaller car. [Ö]