Here’s the news that caught our eyes this past week…
– Riding a bicycle in Los Angeles is a little bit safer now that the city has installed a bright green bike lane in downtown, a treatment made popular here in Portland. And just like Portland, L.A. is having to contend with wet weather. Moist conditions have caused the green paint in their new bike lane to dissolve in many areas.
– If you have doubts about how fun it is to ride in L.A., you should talk to Russ and Laura from The Path Less Pedaled. They took a car-free weekend vacation in Los Angeles and ended up having a great time.
– Tragically, despite how fun it is to ride in L.A., the State of California saw fatalities and injuries from motor vehicle crashes jump over the Thanksgiving weekend.
– In an effort to reduce injuries and fatalities in their city, New York has installed signs at dangerous crosswalks with haikus reminding people on bikes and on foot that it’s a bad idea to leap into traffic.
– This won’t be a surprise if you ride your bike on a busy road, but the UK’s Department of Transportation released a new report that concludes the most effective way to keep people on bikes safe is to slow down motor vehicles, especially at intersections.
– For anyone who wants the ultimate DIY experience, a bike shop in Brooklyn has started offering customers a chance to help build their newly purchased bicycles.
– As you’re assembling your new bicycle, you might find a “Made in Taiwan” sticker. Companies like Giant and Merida have shifted their focus on production in the country from quantity bicycles to quality of components.
– Good news for anyone who rides on rural roads: the Federal Highway Administration has adopted better bicycle-friendly guidelines on installing rumble strips on highways.
– A small town in Arkansas is going on a road diet in an attempt to spur business development, and many stores are already seeing an increase in foot traffic.
– In an effort to curb noise pollution, the city of Hamburg, Germany is building a park to cover a section of the autobahn.
– We may not need to worry about noise from the autobahn if current trends continue; more and more young people are choosing to drive less or not at all. StreetsBlog has a rundown of the tactics car companies are using to influence children, some as young as preschoolers, into wanting to own a car.
– Young folks (and everyone else) on bicycles have the privilege of bypassing traffic jams in an editorial cartoon from The Onion.
– In Toronto, one man used pieces of trash to build a temporary bike lane, as an experiment, near the location of a recent fatal collision. The results: there’s more than enough room in the intersection for people driving trucks to share the road with people on bicycles.
– Portland is home to many creative street markings, but a sharrow-tree could be a festive addition.
– Steve Vance at GridChicago debunks common (but unfounded) concerns about using bicycles and public transit, recently stirred up by a lecturer at a local university in response to the Kinzie Street protected bike lane and other projects in the city.
– To see the new bike lane in Chicago yourself, check out this video from StreetFilms featuring the protected bike lane on Kinzie Street. (As you watch it, imagine how nice it would be to ride on a similar lane on SW Broadway in Portland!)
Kinzie Street: Chicago’s First Protected Bike lane from Streetfilms on Vimeo.
Did you find something interesting that should be in next week’s Monday Roundup? Drop us a line.
I love the video! Let’s get a buffered bike lane from Hollywood to PSU!
Are urban cyclists just elite snobs?
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/04/are_urban_bicyclists_just_elite_snobs/singleton/
(like all article titles ending with question marks, the answer is no).
I agree. So tired of those kind of articles… reminds me of “Should cyclists pay a road tax?”
There’s a word for that: Linkbait.
I want to see protected bike lanes on every busy road in Portland just about. Powell, Foster(actually there should be space for cycle tracks there)… make the once least bike friendly areas the MOST, and connect with calmer greenways, bike lanes, etc. This is the way to really increase mode share to mass appeal.
What about left turns? Especially mid-block lefts?
(Sarcasm)
We’ll just have to build bicycle turn overpasses everywhere bikes need to turn.
It’s safer that way.
Do it for the children.
(/Sarcasm)
“editorial cartoon from The Onion.”
Before anyone gets spun up about this remember that this is on the Onion.
That and the others on their site seem to be a collection of troll comics.
`sides, segregated bike lanes exist only because auto drivers insisted on the privilege of driving unimpeded by cyclists.
Auto drivers dug their graves and buried themselves. I have no sympathy that they choke on the dust of congestion they so dearly love.
Way to spoil the fun a bit there; was looking forward to a Literally Unbelievable moment!
I knew the acid rain problem was bad in LA, but zoinks!
I like the bollards on Chicago’s cycletrack. Curious how they encourage pedestrians to cross the track at the crosswalks instead of just diving across, though.
Not trying to start a helmet debate, trust me! I was just kind of surprised that the helmet use was rather low in the video.
Hooray for Chicago! If anything, I think these folks took the cycle track idea in front of PSU a step further with the flexible posts. What a great idea!
My favorite point was hearing that there was more bicycle traffic than car traffic during rush hour on some bridges. I call that a resounding success.
Every morning I see bus 68 cross the parking lane and cycle track on SW Broadway to pick up riders at the curb. How the heck are the Chicago buses going to do that, now?
(Yes, that was sarcasm!)
That Salon article Champs mentioned led me to a good one about freeway removal:
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/are_freeways_doomed
Exactly. A big part of the problem with plugging interstate highway infrastructure into a city is that lack of flexibility in response to all the curveballs a city can throw at transportation infrastructure.
Thanks for posting about improvements to biking in LA. I did a good deal of biking in LA in the 90s, back when the subway didn’t exist. I recall that, when the LA subway opened, you originally couldn’t take your bike on during rush hour, eliminating the possibility of multi-modal commuting. Lacking subway access, my daily trip from North Hollywood over the hill to the city (similar trip to the recreational riders in the video) involved a lot of sidewalk riding plus a 300 ft stretch of walking in a gutter literally 2 feet away from 40 MPH traffic on the Cahuenga Pass. It was bad. I did it anyway because I was young and contrary, but looking back I remember many close calls and oh-$#^t moments. I’m glad conditions are somewhat improved.
I’m often struck by how quickly city biking went from being marginalized and, in some cases, criminalized (like skateboarding) to an indicator of urban snobbery. The Salon link from Champs’ comment above does a good job of explaining this shift.