For Bike Commute Challenge month, Portland bikeway builders KPFF are sponsoring our regular roundup of the bike news that caught our eyes this week:
Urban color revolt: A 64-year-old Istanbul man painted a public staircase in rainbow colors. Local officials repainted them gray. Now guerrilla artists are painting public walkways all over the country in solidarity.
Seattle speed cameras: Oregon’s legislature decided not to boost anti-speeding cameras this year. Seattle has taken the opposite tack and now has $14.8 million from school-zone speeders to spend on traffic improvements near schools.
“The Armstrong Lie”: A documentary captured racer Lance Armstrong behind the scenes as his doping scandal erupted. It’s at the Toronto Film Festival this week.
Evolution of the bicycle: Neat new poster lays out an illustrated bicycle family tree.
Overbuilt roads: The newspaper Crain’s Cleveland Business blasts “people who argue in the name of private property rights that they should be able to build their homes, office buildings, shopping centers, warehouses or factories wherever they want,” saying this policy is driving the city toward financial ruin.
Can biketecture be just? PSU scholar Jamaal Green gets a shoutout in an L.A. Review of Books essay about two books that consider what bike-centric cities might look like in the USA.
Bailey moving up? State Rep. Jules Bailey (D-SE Portland), who surprised many by backing the Columbia River Crossing this spring, is considering a run for Multnomah County Chair or Metro President.
Mayor helps out: It’s not exactly running into a burning building, but Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel personally rushed to help a woman hit by a truck while riding in one of his new protected bike lanes. No one required hospitalization, fortunately.
Stanford mode shift: Stanford University has doubled bike use and cut drive-alone rates from 72 to 42 percent since 2002. A new slideshow shows how.
Police fabrication: An Australian involved in a bike-car crash that broke his femur was told by police that he didn’t have to make a statement; he eventually found that they’d fabricated one for him to fit the driver’s account. (Warning: somewhat graphic video.)
Bike lanes speed cabs: GPS data from New York City show yellow cab speeds have risen 7 percent since 2008 … to 9.3 mph.
StreetsPAC endorses: The NYC counterparts of our local Bike Walk Vote have endorsed Bill de Blasio for mayor.
An Ohio man used a slickly produced YouTube video to confess that two months earlier he’d hit and killed a man with his car while drunk. He begs people not to drink and drive. It’s your video of the week.
This month’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by KPFF, the engineers and surveyors behind many Portland metro area bikeways, including the Eastbank Esplanade, the Vancouver Land Bridge, the Springwater Spur Trail, the South Waterfront and Fanno Creek Greenways and Graham Oaks Nature Park. You can follow them on Facebook here.
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.