The Monday Roundup

Streetfilms looks to get ’em while they’re
young with Zozo, the livable streets mascot.

Here’s the news that caught our eye this week:

– Some (very) large companies are finding it beneficial to encourage employees to bike to work, and to stay active in general, in part as a way to control rising health care costs.

– After discovering that nearly half of bicycle deaths in London each year involved freight trucks, the city’s mayor has called for a ban on the heavy, high vehicles, saying they are incompatible with city streets.

– A roving urban planning student is looking at bicycling infrastructure in Europe, and finding a lot to love in some countries, room for improvement in others, and a lot to blog about everywhere–here’s his take on Italy’s bike-ability.

– Scotland’s big cycling advocacy organization has launched a major campaign against electric cars, saying they distract money, energy, and political will from biking and walking.

– After finding out that everyone, regardless of modes, misuses NYC’s bike lanes, the Don’t Be A Jerk campaign is being launched to target people who ride bikes.

– On Staten Island, a bike lane has been removed from a major thoroughfare to make way for a bus lane. People on bikes will be rerouted to nearby multi-use paths that close at dusk.

– A traffic engineer comes clean about the dangers and damage of the road building standards he used to unquestioningly enforce in the name of safety.

– An architect did a survey of the various kinds of custom bicycle businesses he found on the streets of China, including bikes for vending food, dispensing water, and dust collection.

– While heavily investing itself into its image as a developing country that leads in sustainable energy, Chinese cities have been trading in their hordes of bicycles for luxury sedans and nightmare traffic jams, points out a horrified reporter.

– Meanwhile, also in China, a wealthy young man drove into two students who were walking in an alley, killing one, and fled, creating huge rumblings of class-based discontent.

– America Walks, the country’s only national pedestrian advocacy organization, is reinventing itself as a coalition and launching two new campaigns that focus on creating safer streets and increasing pedestrian access to jobs.

– There’s a new livable streets advocate on the block–kids are loving the giant, purple Zozo, who only appears in walkable, bikable urban spaces.