Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Tuesday that his department would redirect $1.73 billion in Biden-era grants away from establishing “DEI bike lanes” to build roads and bridges instead.

So, what exactly is a “DEI bike lane?”

The Daily Wire pointed to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim that a series of 2021 grants funding bike lanes would serve to “improve infrastructure, strengthen supply chains, make us safer, advance equity, and combat climate change.”

Upon hearing “equity,” President Donald Trump’s goons can’t help but get triggered into attacking any federal spending that won’t benefit them directly. In reality, those Biden-era grants directed funds to build a new transit center in North Carolina, replace bridges in New Mexico, extend streets in New Hampshire, install traffic lights and crosswalks in Missouri, and install bike lanes in Seattle, among other projects. Now the financial status of these projects is unclear.

    • Macchi_the_Slime@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Idk with the way Trump makes deals it’ll probably end up being less than a mile in a no bid contact to the company of some golf buddy from Mar-a-Lago.

  • SuiXi3D@fedia.io
    0·
    3 months ago

    I mean, duh. Inclusion for those that don’t or can’t drive. Diversity for… the same reason. Equity by providing a safe place for those without a car to be able to travel just the same. Turns out bike lanes ARE DEI and that isn’t a bad thing in the slightest.

  • arin@lemmy.worldBannedEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Nothing says diversity equality and inclusion like bikes 🙄. Ands what’s up with that?

  • azimir@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Conservatives hate freedom. In this case they hate the idea that you’d have freedoms to travel without paying for the privilege.

    Want to leave your home? Buy your car from the billionaires. Pay for gas to billionaires. Have your insurance from billionaires. What? You’d like to bike and no pay to a billionaire?!? Can’t have that freedom. Get back to work, serf.

    • galacticbackhoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I think even more so, they think riding a bike somewhere is a “gay soyboy” activity and that people biking are “in their way”. Of course, bike lanes would get bikers out of their way, but they are too stupid to understand anything.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I often think of the movie bugs life where the grasshopper says that the ants outnumber them 6 to 1, and if they ever figure that out, our way of life is over.

      No particular reason, but there are more of us than them, by a lot.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Of course it is. Everything I don’t like is woke.

    To be fair, everything that is good about the United States of America is DEI. There are even expressions of it in the Declaration of Independence.

    Granted, the DoI was written by slaveowners, but Jefferson was borrowing from enlightenment philosophy which really was about everyone having equal rights, equal relationship to law, equal liberties, etc. When Lincoln and the Republican postbellum Congress took power, they understood the enlightenment principles that guided the framers and extended them to all men (but not yet women).

    France did more to balance the playing field with the Napoleonic code, though that was because Napoleon wanted to be emperor and understood the whole social contract thing. France would still have to wait until the 20th century before providing full freedom of religion. And now France is frightened of Islam.

  • Rose@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Reminds me of Conservapedia. They don’t believe in Theory of Relativity. Because Andrew Schlafly thought “relativity” sounds too much like moral relativism, and big Biblical Literalists like him think that is a Satanic ploy.

  • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Meanwhile painting a skinny line on the road and calling it a bike line is so sketchy that not having them at all is safer

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Fuck that.

    I love my bike lane, as a recent e-scooter convert. And you know what sucks? Even my protected bike is not respected.

    Just in a month of being a scooter traveler, I’ve had food trucks park in the bike lane (Ignoring that there’s ample parking space beyond the boundary), homeless people just laying down and sleeping in the bike lane, multiple people not paying attention on their phones just walking into it, people pulling out of a McDonald’s and more interested in their burger or soda than checking if a bike or scooter is coming, etc. etc. etc.

    Bike lanes are great, but if you’re on two wheels, understand that no one is looking out for you and it’s on you to ensure your own safe passage. (Not that it should be, mind you. That’s just how it is.)

    • abigscaryhobo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      We need all terrain bikes and we just run them over anything in the bike lane. Gimme the Hummer of bicycles and let’s make those bike lanes as dangerous as the main road. See how many people hang out in them then