This week’s news roundup is sponsored by the Barlow Road Ride, the scenic 100-mile tour along the Oregon Trail Aug. 23-24.
Here are the great bike links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Cleveland bikeways: Cleveland has some beautiful plans for its former on-street streetcar routes.
Left Bank renaissance: One year after Paris closed an expressway along the Seine to cars, it’s a space for soccer lessons, backgammon games and an impromptu Michael Jackson dance party.
Against e-bikes: “It chagrins me, that’s all, when novel technologies that are hardly amazing cause everyone to forget elegant ways of being in the world. … We did it to cycling when we found cars, and we’re about to do it to cycling again with these stupido e-bike contraptions.”
Family housing: With more children living in cities, the Sightline Institute looks for ways to create more more family-sized urban housing. One key idea: enlarge the middle tier of housing by allowing more duplexes, courtyards and cottages in single-family neighborhoods.
Belayed order: After Toronto’s city council voted unanimously to install a downtown protected bike lane, the transportation department built a buffered lane instead.
Attempted education: The Washington Post columnist who called people who bike on sidewalks “terrorists” took local biker Veronica Davis up on a challenge to “bike a mile in her path”. Looks as if few eyes were opened.
Gresham bike police: For the first summer in six years, Gresham again has a regular bicycle police patrol, part of an effort to evict people camping along the Springwater Trail.
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Traffic deaths: In Clark County this year, people have been dying on streets at the fastest rate in at least 10 years.
Transpo funding poll: Only six in 10 Americans believe “the cost of good highways, railroads and airports is justified by their benefits.” Other findings are less surprising.
Right-turn ban: In an echo of Broadway/Wheeler here in Portland, Seattle has banned right turns at a busy intersection to prevent right hooks.
Contest winner: Seattle’s entry in the Oregon Manifest bike design competition, with handlebars that are also a built-in lock, took home the prize and will enter production.
Jailed for speeding: A car journalist who spent three days in Virginia jail for driving 93 mph in a 55 zone writes about what it feels like when a state criminalizes excessive speeding.
High-beam punishment: If you use inappropriate high-beams at night in China, one possible punishment is being forced to stare into bright lights.
Diversifying agency: Equitable-biking expert Adonia Lugo observes that “a lot of activism is still about white men fighting each other for dominance.” But she refuses to be “sand to fling in the eyes of your white rival on the playground.”
Curing traffic with traffic: In Dallas as elsewhere, you can use a federal “sustainability” grant to widen a road.
Texting cop: In Los Angeles, a sheriff’s deputy was texting immediately before fatally striking a man on a bicycle with his car.
Outsider’s eyes: A Los Angeles Times travel reporter offers an adorably wide-eyed look at Portland bike culture. “Workplaces feature ‘bike rooms’ where commuters can stash their rides during the day.”
Finally, your video of the week is simple but useful: it’s a carefully detailed and zoomable year-by-year map of Portland’s expanding bike network from 1975 on.
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.