Bike riding, like so many other things in the Bay Area, has become a political battlefield. The latest salvo, as Phred Dvorak reports today in the WSJ, is the charge that making San Francisco more bike-friendly will lead to more pollution. That’s the battle cry of longtime local gadfly Rob Anderson, whose legal challenges have so far paralyzed the city’s plan to add dedicated bike lanes. His argument:

Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It’s an “attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy,” he wrote in his blog this month.

Read more about critical mass and its detractors here.