(Photo: Billie Ward)
This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by North St. Bags, who invites you to shop their Portland-made selection of bags and accessories at their holiday pop-up shop at 11 NW 5th.
Here are the bike links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Getaway bike: A New Yorker shot a bullet into both of an acquaintance’s legs last week, ran two blocks to a Citi Bike dock, checked out a bike and fled.
Smoking gun: When Blackberry service went down for three days last month, traffic collisions dropped 40 percent. (The smartphone pioneer has 44 percent of the market there.)
Postcard advocacy: Minneapolis biking advocates just hand-delivered 3,400 postcards to their city hall in support of the mayor’s plan to spend $790,000 next year on protected bike lanes. Many were gathered at protected bike lane demos set up during the city’s six open-streets events.
Cops on bikes: An L.A. Times writer suggests that every police officer be required to spend at least six months on a bike, since they spend so much time seeing the world through windshields. (They add that driver’s ed might include some of this, too.)
Driving’s bike heritage: “I just started peeling back all the individuals who automobile historians treat as their founding fathers,” transportation historian Carlton Reid tells Sarah Goodyear. “And they all had bicycling backgrounds.” Reid goes on to reveal why so many of them concealed their past.
Bike-union busting: Washington’s Capital Bikeshare, an Alta affiliate, has used a dubious excuse to fire one of its employees who was successfully organizing workers for unionization.
Slower cars: Slowing traffic can actually increase road capacity, because people can drive closer together.
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Real-estate impact: Biking is making it nicer to live far from transit stops in “isolated” Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Camas shop: A federal small business loan was key to this Camas bike shop buying a building for itself.
Industrial commuting: The Port of Vancouver is building a multi-use trail to serve bike commuting to its industrial sites.
Rails to trails: One of the never-used tax incentives that Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber is recommending allowing to die is one for using railroad land for “alternative transportation.”
Perfect crimes: New York’s policy not to prosecute reckless drivers unless they’re caught committing at least two violations at once leads to some shockingly awful drivers going free, reports former New York Times editor Jill Abramson.
Magazine folds: Seven-year-old bike lifestyle mag Urban Velo has had “a good run,” its editor writes in its 45th and final issue.
Speed dispute: The man who killed a woman in a collision while he biked through Central Park claims he was going 8 or 9 mph.
Gipper’s favorite tax: U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Portland) and his Republican colleague Tom Petri of Wisconsin are pointing out that St. Ronald himself was one of the guys behind the 1982 gas tax hike.
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.