The Austin Bike Blog picked up on Oak Cliff resident Jason Roberts’ online tiff with City of Dallas Bike Coordinator PM Summer when the words started flying a couple of weeks ago. We reported on the back-and-forth, both on Summer’s Cycle Dallas blog and on Roberts’ Bike Friendly Oak Cliff blog. (Roberts, for those who don’t know him, advocates for many things, among them the restoration of the Texas Theatre, the return of streetcars to Oak Cliff, and his latest, amenities to make our neighborhood more friendly for cyclists. As he explained to me last week, all of these intertwine along a common theme — creating an environment for community living.)

Last week, the Austin Bike Blog stepped out and proclaimed that, as a result of the argument and some of the statements Summer posted on his blog, it would be removing Cycle Dallas from its blog roll.
The Austin Bike Blog also had some harsh things to say about Summer, including that it is "completely unacceptable for a major metropolitan city like Dallas to have a bicycle coordinator who doesn’t want to seriously work to increase cycling as transportation" and that he is "is a social Darwinist of sorts who believes that only the most elite cyclists deserve to even survive on Dallas roads." The blog instead pointed to Bike Friendly Oak Cliff as a good site to visit, describing it as "a group of cycling advocates who are trying to fight this insanity."

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Summer was a bit kinder when bashing the city of Austin’s "silver standard" bike lanes in a recent post, making a case once again as to why he disagrees with bike lanes. Posted prominently on Roberts’ blog is a quote from Summer along these lines: "As long as I’m the bike coordinator for the city, Dallas will never have on-street bike lanes."