Moncton — After just a few short weeks, the City of Moncton announced that they will be eliminating the newly created bike lanes on Mountain Road and returning it to its original four-lane configuration. Somewhat surprisingly, the city has since stated that hosting the lanes for this short duration had been their plan all along.
Mayor Dawn Arnold sat down with reporters Thursday afternoon to explain how the lanes were conceived as part of a five-week plan to gather all of the bikers in the area and ship them off somewhere more amenable to their needs.
“Me, I’ve always hated driving behind the fuckers,” said Arnold. “I mean, you’re late for work, you’re in a hurry, and here’s some goddamn granola-cruncher swerving around the road in front of you at 15 kilometres an hour. It’s not right.”
Nevertheless, she asserted that it was not done strictly for personal reasons, but that it just made “good sense.”
“The simple truth is that Moncton isn’t a ‘biking’ sort of city — it’s a car city! You can’t get anywhere here without one. These bikers were just deluding themselves.”
Arnold explained that she had first dreamed up the idea with her team in late 2017. Although she couldn’t remember who had initially pitched the concept of creating designated bike lanes, she told The Manatee that it was her idea that all the lanes would lead to an internment camp on the outskirts of the city.
“It’s quite ingenious, really,” she said, complimenting her own cleverness. “These guys have been clamouring for their own lanes for years now, so we knew that they’d all use them. What better way to ensure we’d get them all in one fell swoop?
“Right now we’re keeping them in holding facility over in Riverview,” she said, waving a dismissive hand in the general direction of the township.
The admission has drawn some inevitable comparisons the recent actions taken in the U.S. on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that lead to the forced separation of immigrant families earlier this year.
“No, this is nothing like that,” she said. “This was all done real humane-like. Every family gets their own shipping container and are provided with a few nuts and a leaf of spinach at least three times a day. That’s all they seem to want to eat, anyway.”
Arnold added that the bikers are not expected to be held captive for much longer.
“Remember, too, that this is only a temporary arrangement,” she said. “Come September, they’ll be let loose in the wild of Fredericton, where we’re certain they’ll be more comfortable.”