Happy Monday, folks.
– First off, some exciting meta-news: our own BikePortland.org has been accepted by Google as a legitimate news source. Now, when you search news.google.com, our stories may come up, depending on your search terms. If you search for “bicycle portland,” a lot of our stories come up. We’ll have a big party to celebrate when I get back to town in a week and a half!
– Snow can’t stop the hardy cyclists of Montreal.
– This Norwegian TV commercial is the first for a group called Miljøagentene (Eco Agents). It features a very young eco-agent fighting the battle against SUVs on a family level.
– In bike economy news, LA bike advocacy group CICLE and the uber bike friendly New Belgium Brewery of Colorado have teamed up to start the new Social Bike Business program in Los Angeles. The business is intended to provide jobs building affordable bikes to sell in the community, and also includes a program to provide assistance to distressed bike shops.
– Tom Vanderbilt, in his blog How We Drive, writes up a research paper discovering that more traffic tickets (even the kind issued primarily to out of town drivers) translate directly to not only more revenue, but fewer crashes.
– The radio in Baltimore has been nonstop on the topic all the bridges into Washington, DC being closed for the inauguration. Intrepid local blogger Washcycle has discovered that they’ll still be open to bicycle and walk across. DC may be largely carfree for the big day. Even so, I’m not sticking around for the circus.
– James L. Jones, retired Marines general and Obama’s appointed National Security Advisor, commutes by bike.
While the snow is not too bad in those pics from MTL, what it’s not telling you is that the temps have been hovering around -20C to -25C (~ -4 to -14F) – then there is the windchill – these past days.
Congratulations! That’s awesome NEWS!
One news item – Senate Bill 22 has passed, and will move to the House. It adds significant wilderness around Mt. Hood and elsewhere around the country. Generally great news, but there are probably many established mountain bike trails that will no longer be open to bikes once the areas become wilderness.
The general ban on bikes in wilderness should be revised – if pack animals are okay, in most cases bikes should also be okay. Cyclists on trails were rare when “motorized” vehicles were first banned from wilderness, and as such bikes are incorrectly classified as motorized vehicles.
Thanks for the note about Montreal and its unique cycling scene. A cycling blog in Montreal (to which I contribute)recently investigated the extent to which bike facilities are maintained in winter:
http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/ontwowheels/archive/2008/12/28/r-233-seau-blanc-lots-of-blanc-less-of-r-233-seau.aspx
At least it’s good practice for the ice races in February. Now if we could convince the city to invest in some more of your bike corrals and green bike boxes, ça sera tres bon!
I nearly forgot to post about this: Daily Kos, the blog I obsessively read for election coverage, had a front page story up about biking last week — a first, I believe. One of their writers believes bike infrastructure should be a major part of our transportation network, and the comments are pretty interesting:
http://bitly.com/kryB
I often view Google News for the latest stories. I long ago customized the page by adding Portland OR as an extra section. I just checked it a few minutes ago, and the top story for Portland was this: http://bikeportland.org/2009/01/12/outgoing-planning-director-says-bikes-should-be-primary-mode-of-transportation/
Way to go bikeportland.org!