(Photo: City of Evanston)
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Low-car suburb: Evanston, Illinois, slashed its parking requirements, joined Chicago’s bike share system and has seen building near rail stations boom. Eighty percent of the university town’s households within half a mile of its rail stops own either one or zero cars.
Fatality coverage: London’s media went from covering 6 percent of local bike fatalities in 1992-1994 to 75 percent of them in 2010-2012. Scientists wonder if this may have distorted public perception of biking’s danger.
Spare wheels: Jan Heine has some tips for carrying them on your bike to a race.
Safety vs. racism: When the police chief of Fayetteville, N.C., told his officers to prioritize enforcement of life-threatening violations like speeding over minor equipment issues, the racial enforcement gap plummeted.
Car-free downtowns: Oslo isn’t alone. Madrid, Chengdu and Hamburg are all pursuing similar plans.
Fake safety cams: Los Angeles activists have been installing them, complete with warning sign.
Bike light sting: Oxford police handed out $75 tickets to 167 people biking without adequate lights. People who demonstrate to police that they’ve bought lights within a week will get the charge waived.
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Flexible fenders: A one-size-fits-all fender for “foldable, mountain, unisex or fixie bikes” is currently Kickstarting for $39 per set.
Peer to peer bikesharing: Danish startup AirDonkey, which is planning a system somewhat similar to the one Spinlister is working on for Portland, is also on Kickstarter.
Seattle levy: A single Seattle landowner has spent $325,000 in an attempt to defeat its transportation levy. That’s 96 percent of the “no” campaign’s fundraising.
Detroit biking: When you build 170 miles of bike lanes where once there were none, biking has a way of quintupling.
Victim remembered: Allison Hope Liao, whose 2013 death at age 3 catalyzed New York City’s citywide 25 mph speed limit, has been memorialized with an honorary street sign on the corner where she died.
Bike-lane defiance: Chicago’s Dearborn Street protected bike lane, named the best in the nation when it opened in 2013, was built over the state DOT’s objections.
#CrashNotAccident: A letter to a newspaper in the Mariana Islands offers a concise explanation of the difference between the two words.
Driving subsidies: The business models for Uber and Lyft depend on our willingness to keep building more traffic lanes than gas taxes can pay for, notes the Atlantic.
If you come across a noteworthy story, send it in via email, Tweet @bikeportland, or whatever else and we’ll consider adding it to next Monday’s roundup.
— Michael Andersen, (503) 333-7824 – michael@bikeportland.org