Here’s the news that caught our eye this week:
– The EPA has ruled that “greenhouse gases threaten the health and welfare of the American people.” Electricity generation and vehicle emissions are listed as the two leading causes.
– Cities for Cycling, an initiative that will change the way road design regulations work, celebrated its official launch in Washington, DC last week.
– After a bike lane was removed by the city from a Brooklyn neighborhood after residents made a stink, unknown parties went in at night and repainted the lane. A protest ride along the corridor last weekend was attended by 15 “mourners” on bikes and a huge line of police vehicles.
– NYC’s new bike access law went into effect last Friday; now any building with a freight elevator must allow employees to use it to bring their bikes up to their offices.
– New England states have formed a coalition to pull together the logistics and funding for creating a high speed rail corridor in the Northeast US, earning praise from DC.
– In Philadelphia, two experimental bike corridors have been deemed successful and may become permanent.
– In Seattle, traffic infractions that end up killing someone on a bike or on foot rarely result in more than a fine. Elsewhere in the state of Washington, though, a man was sentenced to a year in prison for ramming someone’s car in a road rage incident.
– As London faces fines for not meeting its air pollution reduction goals, the mayor is considering making some high-pollution streets temporarily car-free.
– Are bicycle highways coming to the US? And even if they’re a possibility, should they be a priority?
– On an LA blog, a heated discussion of whether or not race has anything to do with bicycling.
– The folks behind WalkScore are hoping to use their clout and software skills to encourage public transit ridership through aiding the spread of open data and the development of apps.
– How many people bicycling, for how long, does it take to power a five minute shower? You may be surprised. Meanwhile, at the Copenhagen climate conference, a Christmas tree is decked out with pedal-powered lights.
– Are Portlanders the “biggest wimps ever?” Bike Pittsburgh read our cold weather coverage, and wants to know.
– Two videos of the week jumped out at us — one in which a bike mechanic in Kenya demonstrates his set of handmade tools, and another interview with people on the street in Amsterdam about why they love (or hate) cargo bikes.
– We don’t really think of ourselves as “outdoor media” here at BikePortland, but this conversation is interesting to anyone closely following the downward spiral of Big Publishing and the rise of smaller, niche media.