documentary about cargo bikes.
Welcome to Monday. Here are the stories that caught my eye this past week…
— Big news in Richmond Virginia. That city has been selected to host the 2015 UCI World Championships Road Race. That’s a very big deal. Organizers estimate the event will generate about $135 million for the state.
— In Japan, a man is walking the streets is ringing a bike bell to see how people react. “The results are near Pavlovian, because as soon as the people hear the bell, they instinctively move out of the way.” There’s even a video.
— In other Japan news, according to the Cycle Wellington blogger, children are required to wear a helmet while walking to school.
— Several people (including my mom!) have emailed me about Revolights, which appear to be the hot thing on Kickstarter right now.
— In other exciting Kickstarter news, two very cool bike projects were funded late last week: the ‘Conscious Commuter’ folding e-bike and the Ginger Ninjas cargo bike music tour.
— I love this “Bike Tech at School” program in Santa Cruz, California. It’s like auto shop, but with bikes and it’s run through the Regional Occupation Program.
— Interesting advocacy note from Marin County, California. That area’s influential bicycle advocacy group, the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, has decided to embrace the off-road trail access issue and hire a full time off-road advocacy director.
— The Atlantic’s new “Cities” publication took up the “Bike lane backlash” in North Portland.
— And the Williams Ave project was also mentioned in a New York Times Business section article about Portland’s bike-oriented development.
— In case you missed it, the Lovely Bicycle blog had a dreamy roundup of the most elegant transportation bikes that were shown at the big Interbike trade show this year.
— Here’s one to add to your debate file when someone mentions how much exhaust you breathe while bicycling. A study finds that “Car fumes ‘raise heart attack risk for six-hour window’“.
— There was much ado about Ford’s new e-bike concept.
— A strange juxtaposition of competitive cycling and cycle chic as the Road World Championships were held in the Copenhagen.
— Also from Copenhagen, and in honor of the return of rainy skies in Portland, have you seen Mikael Colville-Andersen’s photoset of people bicycling with umbrellas?
— From Washington D.C., comes yet another ancillary benefit of bike share systems: They offer researchers an excellent pool of easily trackable subjects. A new, year-long study will look at how regular use of Capital Bikeshare impacts mental health patients.
— Speaking of Capital Bikeshare, it’s going so well that there are plans afoot to expand it considerably next year.
— Have you read noted Portland architecture blogger Brian Libby’s recent piece on the Columbia River Crossing project? Here’s a snip:
“this Mt. Everest of political and transportational folly is about to coagulate into an unfortunate future. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster (actually, Dr. Gregoire-Kitzhaber’s) is being lifted out of the castle and up to the roof, preparing for the lightning shock that will lurch it into a living breathing terror of concrete and wasted greenbacks.”
— Our friend Clarence Eckerson (of Streetfilms fame) passed along this YouTube clip from the opening scenes of a 1978 movie called Americathon. Watch it and you’ll understand why.
— A woman was struck and killed while bicycling in Cottage Grove, Oregon when she attempted to cross a rural road while on a rail-trail.
— If you haven’t seen the October issue of Bicycling Magazine yet, here’s the big article on cargo bikes (featuring lots of Portlanders) that I wrote about last week.
— Speaking of Portland’s cargo bike scene, filmmaker Liz Canning is working on a documentary about cargo bikes and she just released the trailer. The film features many Portlanders and some of the footage is being shot by local videographer Dan Kaufman.