(Image: CDOT)
This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by Holly Go Bikely, handcrafted, bike-inspired jewelry made right here in Portland.
Here are the bike-related links that caught our eyes this week:
Chicago buses: The city’s new downtown bus-only lanes, which include some protected bike lanes too, are opening this week.
Car seats: They aren’t tested at more than 35 miles per hour, but medical workers never insist that you to avoid freeway driving with your infant.
Auto-dependent age: Fatal collisions are deeply concentrated among Americans over age 85, but American seniors who don’t drive face social isolation, shorter lives and worse health.
Freeway park: Seattle is looking seriously at a downtown park that would cap Interstate 5.
Retractable bollards: These peekaboo posts are a common Dutch tool that hasn’t really been adopted much in the United States.
Emissions-free compost: An Austin company will haul away your organic trash by bike for $4 a week.
Traffic deaths: Their continuing drop means that Americans are now just as likely to die by firearm.
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Collision causes: Very few major injuries of people on bikes result from dark clothing, missing lights or traffic signal violations, according to a UK study. It’s almost always about street movement — and among adult bikers, it’s almost always the fault of someone driving.
Induced congestion: A $2.8 billion widening of Houston’s now-23-lane Katy Freeway into the world’s largest highway hasn’t stopped travel times from soaring, three years after opening, to longer than they were before construction.
Catastrophic bikeways: A former British treasury chancellor in the House of Lords says bike lanes have been “doing more damage to London than almost anything since the Blitz.”
Seattle waterfront: The whole idea of Seattle’s new freeway tunnel was to eliminate a barrier to the waterfront, but the city is now planning to replace its viaduct with an eight-lane surface highway that might not even include transit lanes.
Danish parking: Even Copenhagen, where only 10 percent of households drive daily, has three parking spaces per motor vehicle.
Blocked housing: The more people want to live in a neighborhood, the likelier it is to get rezoned for less density, especially in overwhelmingly white areas — even in Bloomberg’s New York City.
Subsidized housing: The mortgage interest deduction has no effect on homeownership, goes mostly toward paying rich people to own bigger homes and dwarfs federal housing subsidies for poor people.
Living close: Facebook is offering $10,000 bonuses to employees who buy or rent homes within 10 miles of its headquarters.
Autonomous cars: California’s first set of rules will still require a licensed driver behind every wheel.
Commute alerts: A London company is working on an app that would wake you up early if traffic is bad.
Road rage: A London man claims that a bus driver accelerated toward him and crushed his bike after he leaped clear after he “stopped directly in front of the rail replacement bus as it came to a halt in traffic in order to get the driver’s attention following an earlier near miss.”
Health grant: Fourth Plain Boulevard in central Vancouver will get $250,000 from Kaiser Permanente to improve biking and walking.
Illegal proposal: A man who stopped freeway traffic to ask his girlfriend to marry him has received a criminal charge for what might be the least violent crime in history.
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.
— Michael Andersen, (503) 333-7824 – michael@bikeportland.org