Hit and run on a bike; bike laws (pro- and anti-); how to save the bus system; high speed rail; seat belts on the motorcoach; Rosa Parks revisited; the art of bike safety
Here’s the news that caught our eye this week:
– Prominent medical journal The Lancet has published a study that includes a strong recommendation of funding biking and walking infrastructure over roads.
– In the past 25 years, the amount of highway funding that comes from sources not related to highway use has doubled.
– NPR has done a series of stories on the topic of “How Safe are Our Roads?”
– The Mercury reports on how Seattle has managed to avoid the transit service cuts that are plaguing Portland, among many other US cities.
– A Seattle TV station reports on a hit-and-run incident involving someone on a bike who fled after a collision with a young boy.
– Hungarian traffic laws have been changed with the aim of improving bicycling safety. Amendments include allowing people on bicycles to ride either way down one-way streets, treat red lights with discretion, and take the lane.
– In Philadelphia, bicycle messengers are protesting proposed new laws that would require bike registration and raise the cost of traffic fines for bikes.
– US transpo sec’y Ray LaHood has proposed that all buses be equipped with passenger seatbelts and that bus operators be banned from cell phone use while driving. LaHood is also looking at ways to reduce transit crashes.
– An in-depth look at the emergence of bicycle infrastructure and culture in Dallas, Texas.
– Residents of Minneapolis have apparently been slow to take to the city’s new cycle track.
– A high speed rail line linking London and Madrid is slated to open in 2012.
– Media speculation about the mysterious circumstances of the Tiger Woods car crash is rampant today. Fans also wonder if he will be a no-show for the upcoming golf tournament that’s title sponsored by a major gas company.
– Who makes up the real “transportation majority?” It might not be people who drive, contends one blogger.
– In that same vein, we don’t normally include decade-old articles in the news roundup, but this disheartening story about the failures of Montgomery, Alabama’s transit system since it played a defining role in the civil rights movement recently came across our desk and is as good a summing up as we’ve ever seen of the failure of auto-centric transportation to serve the majority of the population.
– Finally, a sobering piece of art titled “Share the Road”