The Monday Roundup: Reclaiming street play, bad parking shaming and more

A Northeast Portland neighborhood greenway.
(Photo: M.Andersen)

Here are the bike links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:

Reclaiming street play: After part of Edinburgh set a 20 mph speed limit on residential and major shopping streets, the percentage of kids allowed to play on the sidewalk or street jumped from 31 percent to 66 percent (PDF).

Bad parking shaming: Some Toronto residents have been keeping rolls of stickers in their pockets that say “I parked in a bike lane.”

Hit-run workaround: NYC’s city council voted unanimously to levy city fines of up to $10,000 on drivers who hit and run. The civil penalties will have lower standards of evidence than criminal process, which typically fails to muster enough evidence to convict suspects.

4G bike sharing: An internal Intel news site has a detailed, readable report on the company’s experimental dockless, text-activated corporate bike sharing system.

Walking on air: Pop star Katy Perry biked to work in Silicon Valley last Tuesday. In other news, Jonathan is now weighing more use of emoji in his tweets:

Bikelash errors: “In its worst manifestation, bikelash descends into glib homicidal musings,” writes Jon Terbush for The Week. “But even the more tame outrage is still misguided — and misinformed.”

Outrage of the week: California’s new three-foot passing law “doesn’t add up” because people in cars aren’t capable of passing bikes safely, writes the Orange County Register (the previous paper of Oregonian publisher N. Christian Anderson III) in an editorial. Also: every new bike-related law “must confront the bad behavior of cyclists.”

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NYC soul-searching: After the second fatality in two months caused by a bike that hit a person on foot, New York City’s biking advocates are looking inward.

Portland development: When it comes to infill, Portland ain’t seen nothing yet, says local writer Carl Alviani in a look at buildings about to rise in inner Northeast Portland.

National bike network: Bike Route 10 in northern Washington state is the first in the Northwest and California to be designated as part of the U.S. Bicycle Route System.

Biking and privilege: Sorry bros, but driving is just not enough like being white for it to work as a metaphor for privilege, says Brentin Mock.

Speed control: Oregon State Rep. Jeff Reardon is taking up the cause of unmanned speed cameras on high-crash corridors.

Transportation genius: New MacArthur grantee and historian Pamela Long, 71, has been car-free in DC for 10 years thanks to transit, Capital Bikeshare and her feet.

Autonomous truck: Mercedes has a working prototype of a self-driving semi truck and says it could be on the road in 10 years.

Wasted space: An Oakland-based web database is now tracking the Bay Area’s thousands of empty private car parking spaces.

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.