(Image: CA Bikes)
Here’s the bike news that caught our eyes this week:
Bike ambulances: In much of Uganda, they’re the most sensible way to get to the hospital.
Tire pressure app: How much should you pump up your tires? I mean, exactly how much? There’s an app.
Speeding brag: If you hit and kill somebody with your car, you should not boast about it on Twitter.
Hit-and-run dog: A “big dog” who allegedly ran in front of a bike in Kentucky remains at large after the hospitalization of two teens.
Bike harvest: Bikes were the perfect tool for a recent Urban Gleaners trip to harvest residential fruit trees for social service agencies and summer schools.
Bikeshare expansion delay: “New York’s Citi Bike is already the biggest bike share program in the country, but it was supposed to be bigger by now.” This story may be especially relevant as people criticize Portland bikeshare’s plans to focus its service downtown, just as every bikeshare system in the country does.
SF to LA in 35 minutes for $20: Electric auto/space travel/digital payment/solar energy entrepreneur Elon Musk has a plan for the future of intercity travel. As long as I can pack my bike for an optional $5 extra, Elon.
Road diet works: An upstate New York town convinced its state department of transportation that more auto lanes was the opposite of what its Main Street needed. NYDOT conceded, and a renaissance has resulted.
Teen driving drop: The AAA is concerned that by learning to drive later in life, more teenagers are missing driving classes. OK, AAA, so you’d support bike education classes instead, right?
“Defensive walking”: Schools should be teaching that, two California senators say.
Teens and bikes: “Taking my daughter cycling may be the best thing I’ve done as a parent.”
Turkmen president backs bikes: Memo to the haters: this is what an actual dictatorial endorsement of biking looks like.
Protected lane rebuttal: Bicycle Quarterly’s Jan Heine continues his nuanced pushback against physically separated bike lanes, saying people should listen to the preferences of longtime bike users, “many” of whom he says prefer to ride in the middle of the road. (He doesn’t offer any numbers to back up this claim, however.)
Categorizing bike crashes: Some academics have designed a new system based on street categories in Denmark.
Traffic and the global poor: “Poor countries account for 50 percent of the world’s road traffic, but 90 percent of the traffic fatalities. Road accidents will soon become the fifth leading cause of death in these countries, leapfrogging past HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other familiar killers.”
Bloomberg’s streets popular: As New York’s mayor prepares to leave office, his citizens are closely split over plenty, but not his active transportation policies: 72 percent like his pedestrian plazas, 64 percent his bike lanes and 73 percent his bikeshare program.
Danish bike rap: Finally, your video of the week, via Copenhagenize, is a Danish rider who can both (a) build a bike camping trailer for his girlfriend and (b) throw down. At the end, he gives it to a homeless person.
If you come across a noteworthy bicycle story, send it in via email, Tweet @bikeportland, or whatever else and we’ll consider adding it to next Monday’s roundup.