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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Chesapeake's $16 million Bike Path

The Chesapeake City Council voted to build a TWO MILE bike path at a cost of $8 million per mile with grades so steep that the average biker will probably walk his bike up the hill and ride his brakes going down – if he bothers to get on the path at all. The area designated for the path typically sees 5 cyclists per day.

It's a bike path, [Chesapeake mayor] Edge says, for "hard-core" cyclists.

Not to be too harsh on the Council, but this is what happens when you put a pile of other people’s money in front of elected officials when all the vital needs of the community have been met. The cities have been awash in revenue ever since inflation hit the housing market and the real estate tax payments flooded into city coffers.

This little escapade reminds me when I was a little boy reading a comic book about Scrooge McDuck whose vault could hold no more money. He then went on a buying spree only to find out everything he bought was made by a company he owned, re-filling his vault. Unfortunately for the taxpayers of Chesapeake, the only ones whose coffers will be filling are the building contractors building this “Bike Path to Nowhere.”

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