Here’s the news that caught our eye this week:
– Warren Buffett has made his largest investment ever: $34 billion to purchase the BNSF rail company. He eloquently praises the promise of rail freight transportation, calls the move “a bet on the country.”
– An interesting article about how politically progressive inner cities are primarily white (which explicitly ties in bicycling with this dynamic) has drawn smart critics who look at the statistics and anecdotal evidence to show that bicycling is not a racially one-sided passion.
– In the US, streets are apparently safer in cities built before 1950; grids support human life better than cul-de-sacs.
– And some stories from around the country of how sidewalks (or lack of them) affect the mobility of people who use wheelchairs.
– Traffic fatalities by population in all the countries of the world are charted on this revealing map.
– A part-time European muses on the costs, economic and otherwise, of the US’s concrete culture. “We Americans are all infrastructure — and no people.”
– A student group at a California high school are aiming for a series of carfree days at their school.
– Slate provides a new vocabulary for one long-running debate about bike infrastructure: “facilitators” and “vehicularists.”
– A look at the colorful history of media and public discourse about bicycling, including such gems as the bicycle brake controversy of 1896.
– If you’ve been following the coverage of Paris’s Velib’ vandalism, here’s one of many counter-stories suggesting that it’s not such a major problem as the ad giant that administers the program might have you believe.
– In bicycle industry news, SRAM and Shimano both reported reduced sales last quarter.
– Boise is taking a serious look at streetcars; other cities are also queuing up for a revival.
– Is jaywalking a real public safety hazard, or a red herring?
– Latest anti-livability myth: Dogs are worse for the planet than SUVs. Sightline debunks.
– If you’re in the mood for a heated and smart discussion about the possibility of carfree cities, here it is. (Via Carfree USA)
– A fancy ski resort in the Alps will go completely carfree in 2010.
– Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, made the news when he rescued a woman who was being harassed by teenagers as he was cycling home one night.
– A bicycle wedding party brings cheer to the car-centric streets of Sao Paolo, Brazil.
– A New Yorker (along with his dog) walks a marathon of 75 laps around the city block where he lives and finds a fascinating landscape.
– Not exactly news, but I recently rediscovered this history of Portland’s bicycle movement, from the 1970s through Critical Mass in the 1990s. Good stuff! Enjoy it.
Thanks for reading.
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The story about the heroics of London’s mayor Boris Johnson was a hoot! Great picture of him on a bike…and there he is…with a bloody cellphone stuck to his ear! Safe riding there, man! Whole thing sounds a little like a publicity stunt…oh well.
Didn’t Portland’s own Commissioner Randy Leonard do something like this some months ago? Couldn’t find the story, but I think he also collared some thug while riding home on his bike.
“And some stories from around the country of how sidewalks (or lack of them) affect the mobility of people who use wheelchairs.”
Hey Elly! Did you have a link for these stories?
Thanks!
Daniel
Hey Daniel, thanks for pointing that out — seems like every week there’s a link I skip. It’s in the story now — and also here:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/11/03/demanding-safe-passage-for-americans-with-disabilities/
Great Monday Roundup this week!
Now I’m curious to hear Howard Kunstler’s (http://kunstlercast.com/shows/) take on the Warren Buffet investment. Kunstler is a rail fan, but also an iconoclast, and is clear-eyed bordering on cynical. I wonder if this move fits in with his vision for the revitalization of rail in America.
The Slate article, besides adding “facilitators” and “vehicularists” to the vocabulary (and unfortunate title notwithstanding), also has one of the best-written mainstream overviews of bike legal issues I’ve seen in a while. (And I’m not just saying that because he linked to my animation. 🙂
The Times’ account of cycling in the 1890s gives a sense of how cycling’s current popularity is more of a resurgence, a continuation of a really good idea that just happened to get delayed for a hundred years or so.
And I love this, from the same article:
It remains with us today :). Reminds me of Jeff Mapes’ story about how he’d be happily riding along, and then realize passing drivers were looking at him with pity; maybe it was “bicycle face” at work? Maybe we can promote biking by looking happier? (Be “smilators” instead of “grimacists”?)
The jaywalking article reaffirms my preference for crossing mid-block, away from crosswalks, especially on Hawthorne and in the Pearl. There’s just too much obliviousness on the part of drivers when it comes to even marked crosswalks. On Hawthorne, it always seems like, for every two or three lanes that stop when you’re in a crosswalk, there’s one that just refuses to even slow down. Every crossing in those crosswalks feels like playing chicken, so I prefer to just cross whenever and wherever there’s a break in traffic. In the Pearl the crosswalks at intersections always feel hazardous to me, what with drivers practicing the right-turn-while-looking-left-with-cell-phone-plastered-to-ear technique. Crossing mid-block I can at least see them coming.
seems no matter where I go I am still white, though maybe not as white as the guy who trades in his “clunker” F150 for a newer F150 with slightly better gas mileage and a tax rebate and then tries to run me off the road.
but it also seems to me that if you build an infrastructure that requires people to use private automobiles to get around, this will eventually place people with less means at a disadvantage, while if you build an infrastructure that allows people to get around on foot or by bike, or by light rail, etc. then you have something even poor people can use.
maybe.
I like the term “vehicular jihadist”, myself.
“Didn’t Portland’s own Commissioner Randy Leonard do something like this some months ago? Couldn’t find the story, but I think he also collared some thug while riding home on his bike.”
wsbob-
The incident I was involved in was much less dramatic and I certainly would not characterize the perpetrators as thugs.
In walking up SE Hawthorne one night last spring, I did nab a young man spray painting graffiti on surfaces.
You might have heard I am particularly adverse to that particular form of vandalism.
The Mayor of London, however, is my newest hero on a very short list.