Hey, good to hear ya. I'm from up in Muskegon county myself. I was riding in Muskegon, Grand Haven, Spring Lake, and even to Grand Rapids once. Now I live where it doesn't snow. I see the train tracks that went past the farm I grew up on has been converted to a bike path from Grand Rapids to Muskegon. Wish we had that back then.

Really. They make it sound like we are afraid of getting our tires wet. I rode on a trail through the woods where my feet made trenches as each pedal went around. It was safer than the road at the time. That was on the way home from work at around 10pm.

Besides absolute depth, snowbanks and hidden obstacles/ditches can't be ignored either.

I'm sorry, did I simply say "OMG winter" in my earlier post? I don't think so.

By the way, you never mentioned how many meters of snow you get in your part of Germany. Where I lived it averaged several feet per month. Other places get much more than that. Some get far less snow, but the temperature is many degrees colder.

So, what is the average snowfall where you live? What is the average winter temperature?

You originally wrote:

So you are saying that the opinion that large SUVs shouldn't be allowed in cities is based on the physical characteristics relevant to their size, which is larger than standard passenger cars. These physical characteristics include their width compared to the road/lane, and their turning radius. Your argument apparently is that they cannot maneuver well enough to ensure the safety of other vehicles.

I brought up delivery vehicles, which are as large as or larger than SUVs. I pointed out that they maneuver adequately on city streets. Therefor SUVs should not be a problem, based on their physical characteristics.

Your next sentence shows the heart of your argument:

You simply don't want them there. The physical characteristics you mentioned earlier were just a smoke screen. The rest of that post, excusing "critical" delivery vans while condemning vehicles that are "just taking up a crap load of space" further illuminate your true feelings.

This is no straw man, and you get no debate team points for trying to use that old crutch. This is taking your own words and arguments, and making a reasonable approximation of your thoughts and prejudices based on them.

My only contribution to your reasoning is assuming you have a car that you drive in a SUV-choked city. Why else would it be such a sore point for you? If that isn't the case, you either have no car or don't drive in a city, I will gladly rescind the clause at the end of that sentence. Now it is simply large vehicles you don't like have no place in cities.

Well, I don't drive a car powered by crystal methamphetimine. Gasoline is much cheaper than the ice sold on the street corners.

In a thread proposing putting all trucking companies out of business so that only farmers have the food they need, I think my post fits right in.

Considering the original article is about lack of funds from fuel taxes, spending further trillions on rail over passes doesn't make a lot of sense.

I'm sorry. I thought your argument was about physical characteristics such as turning radius and vehicle width in relation to lane width. That the numbers show large vehicles have no place in cities.

Now it is simply large vehicles you don't like have no place in cities where you are driving your privately owned car.

Again, sorry for the confusion on my part. I assumed you were being logically consistent and reasonable.

Considering I rode a bike to work for years, including in the Michigan winter, I will stand by my statement.

A bicycle is not an acceptable solution for most of the working public. For many reasons, two of which I mentioned.

Are you referring to the final year of Bush's term? When a Democrat controlled Congress insisted we needed to throw a couple trillion dollars to Wall Street, or poor people would starve to death?

How about using the 6 years from the middle of his terms? Then you eliminate the first year that he had less to do with, and the final year for the same reason.

"Citizen" sounds good.

They can convert to using biofuel, and grow their own.

Yeah, because we all want to be stuck in traffic all day because of the all the freight trains going through our cities every half hour.

If delivery vans can make it through city streets, then Hummers should have no problems doing so too.

Well, why shouldn't the government save that group of idiots from their own actions? The government does it for so many other groups already. It seems to be its default action nowadays.