(Photo: NYC DOT)
Welcome to the last week of the year, which is always one of my favorites as a reporter.
Unless we see a lot of breaking news, expect posting to be a bit slower than usual this week, and more focused on the big picture: where Portland biking has come in 2015 and where it’s headed next.
But as always, we’ll start with the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Best street transformations: Streetsblog’s annual online contest includes inspiring work from Chicago, Columbus, Los Angeles, New York City, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
Smarter enforcement: If you want to change driving behavior, don’t throw the book at a few offenders — instead aim for punishments that are “swift, certain, and fair.”
Construction walkways: Seattle’s new law forbidding building projects from making people walk in the street has taken effect. Bike lane rules are coming next.
Smartphone mount: Here’s an $18 accessory to put it on your handlebars.
Surreal transportation: The “cult classic” comic strop The Bus (1979-1985) is worth a few brain cells.
Carrots vs. sticks: Why haven’t U.S. biking capitals like Portland and Boulder seen larger shifts to biking despite decades of investment? “The crucial component that’s missing is that we’re not implementing any policies that disincentivize driving,” one scholar calculates.
Sticks vs. carrots: Stockholm already charges people for driving into the city center; now it’s considering paying people to bike as a “reverse congestion charge.”
Stick/carrot math: If you simply calculate present and future costs the way Copenhagen does, it turns out that bike trips are far more valuable to society.
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ID requirement: An Australian state will quadruple no-helmet penalties and require adults to carry photo identification whenever they’re on a bike.
Pulling over: Sonoma County, Calif., just reclassified bikes as “slow moving vehicles” like tractors, requiring riders to pull over if five cars line up behind them.
Transportation rights: Overinvestment in freeways compared to urban transportation is a civil rights violation, the NAACP’s legal arm argues in a Maryland lawsuit.
Weaponized tokenism: “I used to be a bike advocate,” writes Dana DeMaster of Saint Paul. But then she realized that “The vision was decided and my role was to give my womanness, my ‘non-threatening otherness,’ stamp of approval.”
Migration destinations: In a healthier economy, Americans would generally be moving to more economically productive cities. Instead, they’re moving to less productive ones, seemingly because real estate in the most prosperous cities has grown so expensive.
Vegas killing: A woman living in a Portland-registered car in Las Vegas deliberately steered it twice into crowds of more than 100 people on a sidewalk in the Strip, killing one woman and wounding 35.
Car-wash ban: A Minneapolis suburb declared an “emergency moratorium” on new auto-related businesses in an effort to boost walkability.
Infrastructure highlights: CityLab looks at the country’s projects to watch in 2016.
Stratified transportation: Let’s stop fretting about Google buses and Ubers creating a “two-tier” transportation system. We’ve already had one of those for 100 years.
2015 in review: At NRDC Switchboard, Deron Lovaas assesses the year in transportation policy.
Free ridership: Public transit use in Houston is up 11 percent after a cost-neutral network redesign led by Portland firm Jarrett Walker and Associates.
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
Carrots vs. sticks by Emily Badger. What a brilliant piece. I can’t wait for our friend from Beaverton to object…
The best stick I can imagine is doing actual traffic law enforcement. If motorists were required to either follow the law or face the consequences (lost time in court and at the roadside, money loss, eventual license loss and social standing loss), that would be a huge disincentive to drive. It would simultaneously incentivise cycling by making the roadways less a wild west experience.
I think that would just be a huge disincentive to drive illegally.
have you tried obeying all the laws while you drive? it’s incredibly hard to do, and nearly impossible at rush hour… people would quickly give up and use another method…
If everyone else was driving legally too, it wouldn’t be as hard as it is now (and I don’t know that it’s THAT hard now). .
Interestingly enough I have been trying this lately in the foul weather of December. By giving proper spacing in front of me between home by Washington Square and NW Portland (Pearl) an average of 25 cars/SUV’s crowd in in front of me. I quickly note what vehicles are within 4 or 5 vehicles in front when I leave home. By the time I exit the foothill freeway, I am back within 1 or 2 cars distance of the ones that were in front of me when I left home. No speed limits broken, no excessive lane changes, and no lights run.
Many of the routes I take are the ones I take on the bike. Very few of the other drivers actually give the required 30 inch clearance for cyclists. I do!
I do. People lose their minds. It’s fun to watch. Drive slower than the limit and they downright explode.
I flat out do not care about all laws. As far as I am concerned drivers can california stop all they want as long as they stop speeding (this means driving below the speed limit much of the time), assiduously respect the traffic heirarchy (they are at the bottom), and stop buzzing/close-passing (threatening) vulnerable traffic.
Vision zero also does not give a @#$% about all the laws. Vision zero focuses on aggressive enforcement of laws that reduce injury and save lives (e.g. not Ladd’s addition stop sign enforcement).
“…Vision zero also does not give a @#$% about all the laws. …” soren
Yours is an interesting interpretation of Vision Zero’s regard for “…all the laws…”, not that your interpretation has a shred of validity.
Laws are part of the means by which people hope to use objectives outlined by the Vision Zero program, to reduce the incidence of fatalities resulting from collisions, and generally have roads and streets become safer travel by people whether they’re walking, biking, or traveling by motor vehicle.
Stop sign enforcement details in neighborhood settings such as Ladd’s Edition in SE Portland, while likely not the type of traffic situation Vision Zero would need to address, are nonetheless important as a reminder to road users that management of their use of the streets in people’s neighborhoods, is very import towards helping to maintain safety, as well as livability of neighborhoods.
I actually think it’s a lot easier to follow all the laws during high traffic hours. You can’t speed, which is the main culprit of car lawbreaking. What other laws were you thinking of?
davemess is a stickler for *all* the traffic laws. For example, I always see him signalling continuously for at least 100 feet for all his stops and turns. (814.440)
I feel like some are forgetting about this provision in the law you cited.
“A person is not in violation of the offense under this section if the person is operating a bicycle and does not give the appropriate signal continuously for a stop or turn because circumstances require that both hands be used to safely control or operate the bicycle.”
SW Canyon Road (TV Highway) needs an “emergency moratorium” on new auto-related businesses.
Sigh There has been no real change in the law in Calif re bicycles being considered to be slow moving vehicles. Under CVC 21202 part 3 bicycles have always been subject to the slow moving vehicle law CVC 21656. The only change is a state Rep needed to do something to prove to his voters that he was working hard on their behalf, thus helping him get reelected so now bicycles are specifically mentioned in CVC 21656 where they haven’t been mentioned in the past. Since bicycles have been subject to CVC 21656 for many years now there is no change in how the law is applied to bicycles.
same with hands-free cell-phone laws… it was already illegal to drive distracted, but people needed something with high visibility on the books… so they created a specific law that basically states that all amputees are horrible drivers…
Unnecessary use of resources and unnecessary fuel added to the Cars vs Bikes war.
In Oregon, a single-file biker is never required to pull over, and should even be educated/encouraged to ride in the center of the lane when it is unsafe for a car to pass while sharing the same lane.
A thousand times YES on making the probability of being fined for scofflaw driving closer to certainty. I’m ambivalent about raising the fines from nearly-free to noticeable, but it has been clear for decades that it’s not so much the extent of the punishment as the certainty of being punished that improves behavior.
I’ll add that when Davis had (unmeasured, but estimated) bike modal shares well over 50%, it also had zero-tolerance, extensive traffic law enforcement. This traffic law enforcement was so complete that there were regular news stories of burglars driving in from out of town and being caught by virtue of a traffic stop before the burglary had been reported.
They need to be tied to income.
Your early free is draconian if you’re making 15k per year. Not nearly as big a fine if you’re making 45 or 75k. Its a huge folly to try and punish people financially without any regard to how much they’re actually making (or have in a bank account).
The probability of being caught is something none of the western states do too well. Outside of a few cities and suburbs, you can spend days without seeing any police. In NYC or Chicago you’ll see a dozen police in the time it takes to see one or two in Portland. I’ve gone more than a week in Eastern Oregon without seeing any.
*nearly free.
“Let’s stop fretting about Google buses and Ubers creating a “two-tier” transportation system. We’ve already had one of those for 100 years.”
Isn’t that exactly why we should be fretting about it? Letting large private companies dictate our transportation system didn’t work out very well in the last century, so shouldn’t we be trying to get ahead of it in this one?
Realizing I probably should have said a bit more about why I find this article problematic. It’s true that there’s a lot of fear-mongering and backlash around ride sharing companies (though much of it is probably due to Uber’s incredibly poor public relations policies). It’s also true that ride sharing could be a key ingredient in reshaping our streets for the better.
What seems totally insane to me is just trusting that Uber (of all companies!) and others will make things better. Why would you assume that? It’s not like they share the same goals (does Uber make any money when someone bikes, walks or takes the bus?). A good outcome is only likely through close oversight and regulation, and we’re a long way from that. Uber is going to spend billions of dollars writing the rules around ride sharing and autonomous vehicles. Meanwhile, we don’t even have basic language in our 20 year comprehensive plan. We’re on the cusp of a transportation revolution, and we are totally unprepared for it.
So, while the fear-mongering and backlash isn’t particularly helpful, I don’t think we should be trying to squelch it. We should harness it. Help it blossom in to an informed and reasoned conversation. That might be the best shot we have at getting our governments to take the challenge seriously and get it right this time.
Great points – and to be clear, I personally think we should definitely be fretting about outcomes but not about the notion that what’s happening now is *creating* some sort of categorically new problem.
I understand your concern about “private companies” and their profit motivations but, keep in mind, the government sets policy, the government designed the roads, the government makes the rules and the people in government also have profit motivations.
I’m far more comfortable with Uber and other private firms because they can be punished for bad behavior. The same can rarely be said of government.
Huh. It sounded to me like you were talking about private companies and government as if they were two separate things.
Haha. Good one.
Smarter Enforcement:
“swift, certain and fair” enforcement also suspiciously sounds like consistent and repetitive enforcement.
This means lots and lots and lots of traffic tickets.
This means either more police OR automated traffic ticketing systems.
We will never increase police funding except for fabricated imaginary fears so that leaves automation.
Obviously it is much more difficult for a computer system to be biased and further more difficult for it to pull someone from their vehicle and shoot them based on the primitive biases of a human officer.
BUT… the #1 metric in traffic safety enforcement is that we keep human police officers employed so this can not be allowed to happen.
FYI, in Australia they are states, not provinces. Either way, the most anti-cycling transport minister in a long time has continued to make another part of Australia the least cycle-friendly Govt administration in the world.
“An Australian province”
Australia has states.
Thanks, folks – my error. Fixed.
Reading the story, the Australian province referred to appears to be New South Wales. Excerpt from the story featuring comments from a biking group in the province:
“…Bicycle NSW chief executive Ray Rice said he was pleased with the package of changes, particularly the introduction of the minimum passing distance.
The increased fines and requirement for identification, Mr Rice said, would not have a huge affect on cyclists as 90 per cent already carried identification and 70 per cent already wore helmets.
“We don’t think it’s necessary and therefore why legislate for something that people are already doing … most riders obey the law already,” Mr Rice said.” sydney morning herald
The specified minimum passing distances of one meter for under 60kph, or 1.5 meters for over 60 aren’t huge, but better than having none at all. Rule applies also, to people biking, that pass people on foot.
Australia has been the country, I believe, that’s had one of the longest standing, if not the longest, all ages mandatory helmet law. Critics of helmet use laws have liked citing Australia’s law as being seriously detrimental to increased use of biking for practical travel, even though they have no really reliable way of knowing one way or another various surveys and studies of debatable reliability notwithstanding.
What effect in reducing biking, the country’s helmet law may have had, is something it seems is very hard to determine. Would the country’s rate of, let’s say, adult biking, increase, doubly, triply, or quadruple, if there were no mandatory bike helmet use law? To possibly find out, I suppose the province could consider a short term…say three to six months…suspension of its bike helmet use law. If the result was a big increase in the number of people biking…with no accompanying increase in head injury…that would worth considering towards possibly revising or ending the mandatory bike helmet use law.
If a New Seasons is one kind of commercial indicator species, then Midas is another. I just hope that Columbia Heights is treating its cluster of body/brake/muffler/oil change shops as a symptom of their decline, not the cause.
5 years ago there were two auto parts shops in Woodstock. Now there are none. (but there is a New Seasons)
you can’t really blame Mike’s for moving after the building burned down… I miss Mike’s…
The elephant in the room for disincentivizing auto use is the fact that we’ve allowed our metro area to sprawl much like any other. Comparisons to European models fail because they are far more compact places. We might be able to make it far more difficult for automobiles to reach the near-in and downtown core, but everything else is a huge lift. Portland is far ahead of many US cities with attention to more compact design, but a brief ride or drive out SE 82nd or into the west suburbs is a reminder that our efforts have come up short.
I just bought the universal phone mount thanks to this story. My phone addiction is the Note 4 and it’s pretty big. The only downside is that the product doesn’t ship prime so…it could be here this week, next week or next month. If it does work, that will be nice. Tired of carrying my phone in my pocket.
Dicincentivize driving and pay people to ride bikes; this sounds like a good way to get bike mode share up – I’m all for it.
I usually find myself very happy after reading anything by Dana DeMaster, but after reading her article in Grease, Rag Ride & Wrench, I’m a little saddened.
She articulates her being marginalized by factors beyond her control (sex/gender in this case) so well and so heart-breakingly. Then she proceeds to muddle those coherent thoughts by marginalizing others by factors beyond their control (sex/gender, perceived “race” and historical identity).
It was the irrefutable argument. You either agree with her that the actions/words/funny looks of any person who shares any trait with you, particularly skin tone and genitalia, represent you and are a problem you created and are responsible for, or you are unable to comprehend the problem by virtue of your “privilege”.
Bonus points to her for never standing up and pointing out illegal actions like the public groping and gender discrimination in the work place. Had she done so, perhaps the fact that almost all of those privileged white males would have lined up to help beat back the bad actions of the derriere chapeaux would have ruined her blame story.
I’ve had quite enough of these diatribes from quitters. I don’t blame people for giving up on advocacy. It’s hard work and rarely successful. However, there’s no need to blame the people who are still fighting the good fight for your loss of fortitude. These bombs dropped on former allies are part of what makes successes few and far between.
I think you’re looking at this the wrong way, if you view DeMaster’s article and similar articles as one of the reasons advocacy is not more successful. The whole point of this type of article is to point out how bike advocates are reducing their own chances of success by alienating women and minorities. The bike advocacy community, as well as the bike community as a whole, is disproportionately made up of white men, and if you really care about the success of bike advocacy, it is important to question why this is. Then you need to actually listen.
Of course, that you belittle DeMaster for not standing up to groping and sexual discrimination really makes your lack of awareness of the realities women face in male dominate arenas very clear. Yes, maybe she would have found support for her accusations, but more likely she wouldn’t have. Claims of sexual harassment and discrimination are much more likely to be dismissed, excused, laughed at, or ignored than are to be taken seriously. It seems unlikely that you have ever had to face a situation where you were routine sexual harassed, and you don’t seem interested in what women have to say about the matter.
I generally only randomly lurk on places like Bike Portland because I know what to expect. Despite the fact that I ride my bike most places and have never owned a car, my issues and concerns do not align that much with the general views expressed on this site or most of the bike advocacy sites. Women are out there biking, and there are more women out there who are interested. Yet everywhere women look there are subtle and not so subtle signs that they’re not really welcome.
Hi Ellie,
I’m glad you commented. I would love to hear more about your concerns and issues. Yes, Michael and I are both men and we are both white but we are very good listeners and we actively try and present lots of different views and perspectives on this site. Our goal is to make this site welcoming to everyone. If you have more you’d like to share, please do. You can comment here or contact me privately via our contact page (it goes to directly to me). Thanks for reading.
@ellie – I want to follow up a bit, since my original disappointment with Ms. DeMaster got turned into something I didn’t intend it to be.
Ms. DeMaster reguarly writes for streets.mn and has articulated some amazing thoughts with much depth. If you enjoyed her writing above, you should go to streets.mn and read more of her writing.
Ms. DeMaster writes so beautifully about the marginalization and bigotry (which is what sexism really is and the fact we don’t call it that is bigoted in itself) she experienced. You can’t help but feel for her. But her solution to that marginalization and bigotry is to marginalize the group (“white” men) she feels is the embodiment of all she hates. When we start putting people in boxes, we start organizing those boxes and giving more importance to one box or another, after all, it’s human nature to organize. When a person uses phrases like, “bunch of white, cis-gendered males” it’s nothing but unpacking a box and filling it with people in the hope the reader’s prejudices make assumptions about the people in that box. And that is just as wrong as calling Ms. DeMaster a “chick”. Saying a group of people have certain characteristics because of factors beyond their control (gender, “race”, heritage) is the first step to classifying some of those groups as untermensch, as my people say, literally “lower men”.
It’s true, in the past and still today, we have to live with the consequences of generations that did put groups in boxes and assign a relative worth based on which box they were in. But the way to fix that isn’t to reorder the boxes or create new boxes and move them to the top of hierarchy, it’s to get rid of the boxes all together.
Ms. DeMaster’s voice is powerful and we should all listen to it. Your voice is powerful also. All our voices (even me, a “white” male) are powerful. Instead of turning our voices against one another, lets come together to show the world that strength, beauty and power come from a chorus of humans.
p.s. I hope you take Mr. Maus up on his offer, your comment was interesting and think all of us look forward to hearing more.
“When a person uses phrases like, “bunch of white, cis-gendered males” it’s nothing but unpacking a box and filling it with people in the hope the reader’s prejudices make assumptions about the people in that box.”
As a white, cis-gendered male I think white, cis-gendered males ought to be put in the box often so we collectively better understand how ubiquitous this phenomena is for minorities and out groups.
Also this cartoon seems apropos:
http://chainsawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/20141204-patreon.png
As a white man, I have personally seen women marginalized in the workplace and others. In the advocacy world, I can also see where the few women there are feel intimidated. Heck, when I walk into a room of women, I feel intimidated.
The root of our problem is that we see the caring for children as “women’s work” by and large. Is that sexist? No. It’s just how we are and why women are largely absent from the advocacy world. Because of their absence, many states are passing laws discriminating against women.
I agree with the writer…when men get together in groups and feel they are immune, they act like jerks. Glad someone finally called it out.
By the way, I think the term is “microagressions”.
“The bike advocacy community, as well as the bike community as a whole, is disproportionately made up of white men…”
Maybe that’s true in Portland, but not everywhere. At the national level, LAB not only employs a significant number of women, but makes it a goal to work on both racial and gender equity in bicycling. Seven of ten Silicon Valley Bike Coalition staffers are women (including the current and former EDs), with a large majority of female staffers on SFBC as well (with as many Hispanic and Asian males as Caucasians). Santa Clara’s BPAC is now mostly female (chaired by a female city councilor who bikes), and at the county level our transit agency GM is a minority female who happens to bike*, and she has many female staffers dedicated to bike/ped planning. Further, several of the females I work with in local bike advocacy have advanced degrees in urban and transportation planning, whereas the guys are mainly engineers who ride bikes and happen to want to help make a difference, like myself. (In silicon valley many people happen to be engineers, not surprisingly, and the majority population is Asian, not Caucasian, and yes, mostly male).
Maybe the boards are made up of mostly white men? To be fair, given that people who currently ride bikes are still mostly white men, is that surprising?
“Yet everywhere women look there are subtle and not so subtle signs that they’re not really welcome.”
Please, I would like to seriously explore what ‘signs’ you are referring to, so that I can learn. In my experience of getting female friends into biking, fear was always the biggest factor for them to overcome. (In getting male friends into biking, it was primarily just getting them off their asses). One day when catching up to my friend Rachel while riding in The Dalles, I witnessed her being cat-called and harassed by some guys in a pickup, and it was something I’d never considered with her riding alone – although I had been harassed by guys in pickups riding near The Dalles before, just not sexually – and I’d argue she’d have likely been harassed just walking down the street by those particular guys. Other than sexual harassment, which I’d argue is not prevalent or endemic or at least generally accepted in modern society (versus not too many years ago), what else about bicycling excludes women?
* http://www.vta.org/News-and-Media/Connect-with-VTA/General-Manager-being-Celebrated-as-a-Woman-of-Influence
Sexual harassment IS prevalent, endemic, and even accepted in our culture, everywhere. I see it all the time. Were I cis female I’d see it even more. Just ask any woman, she’ll tell you. Nothing has changed in the past few years.
In the bicycle world women are subtly or overtly excluded on every level, from advocacy, as described above, to bike mechanic circles, where they’re told they can’t work on bikes, have tools pulled out of their hands or emotionally strong armed into letting some guy diagnose and repair problems with their bikes, the same in bike shops, even to casual conversations about bikes or bike infrastructure or anything therein related, where they’re interrupted ignored and subtly or overtly negated. Tons of exclusion.
It’s all over the place, to be aware of it you really have to make an effort to stop what you’re doing and listen to women when they explain what their experience is. And try to notice it and prevent or pre empt it when it happens.
I am as guilty as any other cis man of being exclusive, no better than any other guy out there, but I do make an effort to read articles like DeMaster’s and do my best to analyze my own behavior so I’m less of a douche. And hence less exclusive.
So your reply to me asking her to elaborate on her experiences so that I can learn is to say that I need to start listening in order to notice?
“I see it all the time.”
Two of the three people I actually trust enough to touch my bikes are female, and the Portland shop that builds my wheels is owned by a female. We can go toe-to-toe with anecdotes until the cows come home. So you’ve seen sexual harassment in action so you believe it’s still as endemic and accepted is it was in my father’s generation. I hear you but we’ll have to agree to disagree. Is the problem eradicated? No, and I didn’t (and won’t) say that.
“Just ask any woman, she’ll tell you.”
I thought that’s what I was doing…
Sexual harassment and a gender-based exclusion from bicycling and bike advocacy are not what I hear my wife or female cycling and advocacy friends complaining about – not by a long shot. Oddly enough, their complaints align with the rest of ours, centered primarily around the enforcement, education, and infrastructure to enable cycling. The equity issues that we do see in my community are based on language, because unlike Portland, English is not necessarily the primary language where I live.
This is why I asked the question and why I challenged the OP on the number of women involved in cycling advocacy. (I can only assume that the OP is actively involved in advocacy herself, presumably in the Portland area).
That was an interesting piece.
I found this quote to be pretty accurate (and pertinent to discussions on this site):
“I’ve seen a worrying tendency among bike advocates to dismiss those who disagree with them as NIMBYs, flattening opposition regardless of whether it comes from community members who lived through the ravages of urban renewal or privileged homeowners concerned about an influx of colored bodies into their suburban sanctum.”
Hopefully the beginning of the end of ~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_running
Beat me to it. I was gonna say to raise your hand if you were actually surprised by Portland’s omission from this list.
Looks like Multnomah Cuunty Library doesn’t have a copy of the first edition of “The Bus” in its catalog. Time to suggest a purchase of this and the new one. Thanks for the heads up!
The conversion of the intersection on First Hill up north is lovely! Public vehicle-free space becomes more and more critical as commercial districts like Division, Williams/Vancouver are built out. Developers on Mississippi did a good job in opening up their commercial projects to offer some space, but that is the exception. A huge opportunity was missed in Hollywood when the apartment development next to the theatre on Sandy put their plaza to the west of the new building instead of between it and the theatre. Sadly public space and amenities are still viewed by many as “homeless magnets.” Private wealth and public poverty is still the rule.