Criminal Cyclists of Vancouver

For years I was told that I was paying high cost on motor vehicle licenses and gas for the up keep of the roads.  I don't even know if cyclists here are required to pay for bicycle licenses but they certainly do little but serve themselves these days in a city beleagured with eco entitlement.  Overnight cyclists, representing political 'green society' have taken up the torch the communist gangs in Russia gave up.  Today the motor vehicle owner is the 'bourgeosie' and the cyclist is the "proletariat". We barely survived as a society  the social communism of Canadian feminism with all men being bad and all women being good.  So it's a bit tedious remembering history and seeing the new arrogance of the 'eco terrorists' jack booting all over the rest of us who just happened to drive cars, or ride buses, or  take planes,  trains.  Cyclists ironically consider themselves even superior to walkers and are a scourge on the elderly especially with their disrespect for boundaries.
The Mayor's attempt to 'contain' this scourge in bike lanes is a dismal failure.  Cages are probably the next answer for these new 'wild animals'.  
Downtown Vancouver is now a nightmare with half the roads given over to bike lanes, all the parking lanes gone, no one going downtown to shop as the city becomes a green ghetto. What the Vancouver Canuck Riots couldn't achieve to keep citizens out of the city the bike lanes are doing in spades.   Ironically  3 Vets and Mountain Coop the famous outdoor stores, have large parking lots, and are located well off the bike lanes. Even more ironically the shoe stores are suffering from the bike lanes because no body can drive downtown to buy their shoes anymore.
Meanwhile cyclists using cell phones, (drivers can't), showing no consideration of traffic, seeming oblivious of 'rules of the road' and not many willing to have a street side breathalizer test or urine drug screen, cause all manner of road rage and traffic havoc.  Apparently the Mayor likes to bicycle.  He can afford to.  His bike like mine probabably costs in the range of thousand or more.  The cyclists aren't poor but just a new 'elite' in Vancouver top heavy with priviledge.
I bicycled across Europe in the 70's.  In the 80's I  bicycled to college  when bikes as commuter transport were a rare oddity in Canada.  I loved bicycling on Vancouver's seawall until a few years back, cycling, I hurt my knee.  I used to mountain bike too and mountain biking around Vancouver is magnificent.  Great trails.  It's just that overnight we have all this 'attitutde' and 'lawlessness' among the cyclists.
I just walked the seawall with my dog. Along with Stanley Park our seawall is one of the truly great assets of the city.  Unfortunately hooligan cyclists have destroyed it's wonder. There are two paths, one for walkers, and one for cyclists and roller bladers.  Every 10th cyclists or roller blader was barrelling full speed along the pedestrian lane causing me to literally jump out of the way repeatedly.  I feared for the life of my dog and had no peace along the whole of English Bay. It thinned out a bit on the Coal Harbour side but even there the cyclists didn't feel obligated to obey the simple laws of lanes.  They were lawless and uncivilized bullies. I don't know how many were on drugs. Drugs is the principal past time of Vancouver so it was even more disconcerting to have someone bombing along high speed, talking on a cell phone or chatting to their buddies, only to swerve onto the bike lane at the last moment.
What happened to the cyclists who were once 'my people'.  I've always loved the nude cyclists of Vancouver with their great hilarity, the triatholon folk like my friend who pushes himself to the limit of endurance, or the people with kids who just like to ride as families.  This new breed of entitled cyclist, the fans of the Mayor, who finds every method to fine anyone who drives a car, puts  cyclists above the law. They're this Mayor's new Green Brown Shirt battalion. Even now that my knee is healed I think twice about taking my bicycle out on the Vancouver streets where these 'new cyclists' consider themselves superior to cars and oddly foot traffic.  I shared bike lanes across Europe with motorcycles and scooters but loved that I could walk safely on foot paths there.
If there were traffic police in Stanley Park yesterday giving out fines for 'dangerous driving', "driving well intoxicated', 'driving on the wrong side of the road', 'driving in the walking lane', a million dollars of city revenue could have been made in the couple of hours I tried to survive a walk along the seawall.   Maybe if the Mayor and Luddite courts didn't celebrate lawlessness, criminality and uncivilized behaviour  we'd not have such banality, a city with the potential of being one of the greatest in the world.  It certainly is beautiful if you don't find yourself in the cross hairs of the entitled and those who clearly don't 'fear the law'