My review of the 2026 New Jersey Bike & Walk Summit

Les Liaisons Dangereuses à la Conférence Vélo or Dangerous Narratives

My review of the 2026 New Jersey Bike & Walk Summit: Les Liaisons Dangereuses à la Conférence Vélo or Dangerous Narratives

I have attended the New Jersey Bicycle and Walk Summit every year for over ten years. This year reminded me of Les Liaisons dangereuses—but instead of drawing-room discourse on bedroom conquests, we had panel discussions, and their weapons were not seduction letters but carefully deployed narratives about “the undocumented” and “traffic violence.”

The Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil understood something the presenters and organizers of this conference also understood: that power is not merely about what you do, but about what you can make others believe you are doing.

The most effective cruelty is the one performed in the language of virtue.

If you have no power, or are perceived as having none, you cease to be a person. You become an object. An object to be mined for data, to be woven into a compelling narrative, to be trotted out on cue so that a well-funded initiative can claim, “This project is for the people.”

The conference panels concerned themselves with arranging the conditions for a grand deceit. First came the discussion of electric bicycles. The opening falsehood arrived dressed as moral clarity, pronounced with priestly gravity, “These rules are horrible, because first off, they hurt the undocumented.”

It is true, of course, that bureaucracy-laden rules disproportionately harm the undocumented, as they harm everyone historically excluded from the corridors of power.

But the argument made was not for the undocumented; it was for laissez-faire economics. It conveniently omitted that these rules exist because PeopleForBikes—a business lobby, not an advocacy group, despite the name—wielded its considerable power to redefine the bicycle to include mopeds. They did this so their business membership could access subsidies and tax breaks. This is a fact. And yet, in that room, we were meant to pretend it hadn’t happened. But I haven’t forgotten. I don’t have a grant to help me forget. I am still here, looking out the window, saying it’s raining.

So, the argument was made: electric bicycles must be unregulated, for the sake of the undocumented.

Then came the final panel of the afternoon, on Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR).

Now, if the undocumented were truly the compass by which this group navigated, one might expect a similar concern here.

One might think the conversation about ALPR—cameras that log the location of every vehicle, a tool for surveillance and, inevitably, for immigration enforcement—would be shaped by the same urgent empathy.

It was not.

The response to concerns about civil liberties was swift and ‘pragmatic:’ “undocumented people get run over, too. So, if we have to trade a little civil rights for a little traffic safety, isn’t it worth it to save lives? Safety first.”

It was a stunning pivot, executed with zero shame. Only an older woman in the audience dared to challenge it.

This is why I will never allow white men to mock “Karen,” because “Karen” is typically the only one in the room who will challenge hegemony.

These were the same people who, two hours earlier, had been practically weeping over the regulatory burden on businesses.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. People want to return their electric bicycles!”--distraught business owner.

Their grief was for the constraints placed on commerce, for the red tape that chokes innovation. But for people, “Well, if you didn’t do anything wrong, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

I was getting that kind of weltanschauung.

For our neighbors, friends, and families, who might those cameras surveil or displace? For this conference's attendees, regulation was not a burden then; it was a necessary weapon.

Then they regurgitated what study after study has shown to be untrue.

“Tech is more neutral than people.”

That’s a lie, and they know it. Anyone with an edu email handle and sat at that conference knows that is a lie. Urban planning is now development’s Victoire, a complicit chambermaid.

Bike advocacy, I hope I’m informing you. I won’t yet judge you.

So let me understand —regulation is bad when it hampers the bourgeoisie and the capitalists’ interests, but good when it regulates regular people.

Maybe you folks need some education on Law and the Political Economy. The libertarian stench that continues to emanate from the bicycle community is getting more putrid by the day.

The only working-class racialized people in the room -not working or with the university- were there to receive awards for their work on “traffic violence.” They were children. Of course, they were children. And I overheard a planner/lawyer murmur with satisfaction, “We need to use children more.” The cynicism was breathtaking. You need to use children because racialized adults who look like me are a little too uncooperative. They ask difficult questions. They see through the performance.

I find it strange that hegemony never suggests using white children to push for bike lanes in upper-middle-class neighborhoods.

But working-class and poor racialized children, deployed in the service of red-light cameras? That is an a(door)able of opportunity.

I want an honest argument. The disingenuousness of the day was aggravating.

Here are some truths:

The greenway is for recreation, not for connecting hyper-segregated communities.

The “four-foot law” was written for roadies cosplaying the Tour de France, not for people trying to get to work by bicycle.

And “traffic violence”? It’s a disgusting co-optiztion of a framing that EVEN in its original iteration as “street violence” was ineffective as it pathologized hyper-segregated neighborhoods harmed by lax gun laws, but now that co-opting is an elite capture communication weapon. The term “traffic violence” is used to redirect health dollars away from grassroots organizations run by racialized people to foundation-funded “traffic safety” groups —whose board members are developers, tech oligarchs, and lawyers.

It is easier to use racialized children as your props and death data for grant proposals. You kill two birds with one stone. I’ll let you marinate on what I mean....

I know some of you are like, “Well, you should?”

I should what, volunteer, I did that.

Donate, I did that too.

So now what is left is me documenting.

Space is a means of production, and it is a mistake to allow hegemony to map the way out of Auto Asphyxiation or define safety.