(Image: Metrocosm.com)
This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by Walnut, the Portland-based leather goods maker whose new Travel Dice set is perfect for taking along on your next bike tour.
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Death map: A new online map shows 373,377 dots — one for every person who died in a motor vehicle crash in the United States from 2004 to 2013. You can filter for incidents related to alcohol, speeding and distracted driving.
#NoCarForMe: NPR’s hashtag campaign offers an impressive variety of offbeat and/or appealing ways to get around.
Framebuilding boom: London’s biking boom has led to a surge of small manufacturers, too. “The sport of cycling is recovering from decades of decline,” writes Bloomberg.
Fix-it guide: Park Tool has generously illustrated new online guide to maintaining your bike.
Bike mythbusting: No, your city is not too hilly to be bike-friendly. Or too hot. Or too snowy. Or too sprawling. Or too formal. Or too car-centric. Copenhagenize gathers its mythbusting counterexamples into one big post.
Streetcar tracks: The family of a man killed on San Francisco’s Market Street after his bike wheel apparently caught in a streetcar track as he tried to pass a bus are shocked and dubious that a rider as experienced as he could have made that error.
Jaywalking enforcement: Austin police say they’re “reviewing” an incident in which officers are filmed punching a man into submission after he reportedly jaywalked across a street that was closed to traffic. (If this sounds somehow familiar, it should.)
Helmet laws: A new study of Canadian provinces and regions found that helmet mandates have no correlation to bike-related hospitalization rates for brain, head, scalp, skull, face or neck injuries. Bike injury rates varied greatly but were predicted by two variables: being male made you much likelier to be hospitalized, and being in a city with more biking made you much less likely to be hospitalized.
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Fear vs. biking: “The constant and overwhelming media message is simple,” writes Bicycle Retailer in the first of what seems to be a first-rate series about how to sell bikes in a culture of fear. “Every trip by bike is a potential trip to the graveyard.”
Deadliest interstates: Mile for mile, the most dangerous freeway in the country is Atlanta’s I-285 ring road, which saw 29 fatalities in 75 miles in 2013.
Justice podcast: Steph Routh, former director of Oregon Walks, just launched a new podcast about “justice and the built environment.” The first episode, an interview about Portland’s housing crisis, is co-hosted by her fellow bike lovers Alexis Gabriel and Mychal Tetteh.
Seattle levy: Seattle residents bucked conventional wisdom to approve a nine-year transportation property tax that includes funding for a neighborhood greenway network bigger than Portland’s, dedicated bus lanes around town and 50 miles of protected bike lanes.
Urbanist majority? “Maybe the NIMBYs are loud but smaller in number than we thought they were,” one union president who supports the city’s all-urbanist city council tells the Seattle Times.
Transgression photos: A New York bike commuter uses a camera on his front rack to capture hundreds of photos a month of people breaking laws with cars. “It’s not a happy experience,” he reflects.
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