here in Oregon.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)
Find a place to air out your jacket, Portland — it’s been pretty wet out there. Let’s warm you up with the bike links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Gravel race: 1,400 riders signed up in 15 minutes for a Kansas gravel grinder; the remaining 500 tickets were gone in two hours.
Mandatory flags: A bill in Missouri’s legislature would require anyone riding a bike on lettered country roads to have a 15-foot-high fluorescent flag.
Biking to learn: A group of New Jersey first graders are using desks with pedals because studies say it aids concentration.
Riding high: Marijuana apparently doesn’t impair your biking ability, a study found.
Helmet psychology: People tend to take more risks while wearing them.
Love quest: Indian street artist PK Mahanandia couldn’t afford a plane ticket, so he pedaled from Delhi to Vienna to follow the woman he’d fallen for.
Car bubble: The new-car financing industry has figured out a way to play hot potato with bad car loans, because that sort of thing always ends well.
Bikes and gentrification: Researchers say bike infrastructure is more likely to arrive in neighborhoods where the share of homeowners and college grads is rising, but which causes which?
Barricades arise: “I would like to give Parisians back the space that cars have taken from them,” says Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris.
Demystifying planning: The original Better Block team has scored Knight Foundation funding to spread their concept of on-street demos.
Street library: Los Angeles now has one. On a trike, of course.
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Interested but concerned: For the first time, the famous phrase coined to describe would-be bikers in Portland has been shown to apply nationwide.
Sharp trike: Just look at it.
City lawsuit: A 59-year-old man who apparently flipped his bike on a cable in a Vancouver street is suing the city for failing to mark it.
I-5 Bridge: Public radio’s Marketplace did a five-minute spot summing up the stasis that followed the CRC debacle.
“Pedestrian menace”: The NYC transit workers’ union continues their bizarre campaign against walking.
Bike share analysis: A New York data geek visualized Citi Bike statistics in awe-inspiring detail.
Against Vision Zero: Famous public transit hater Randal O’Toole has discovered the movement. He’s not a fan.
Induced demand: Dutch bike lanes are operating at full capacity, a national report found.
Collision fury: A Brooklyn writer has some intemperate advice on “how to stop hitting me with your car.”
Out of mind: A Portland scholar found that people who never bike are way, way less likely to respect bikes on the road.
Parking causes driving: It’s not the other way around, a new study concludes.
Parking permits: The Sightline Institute looks at Portland’s parking permit proposal and loves it.
Elite demographics: A proposed New York City bill would reveal the number of community board members who own cars.
Bike licensing: Cheyenne, Wyoming, is considering repeal of its unenforced bike licensing law.
— Michael Andersen, (503) 333-7824 – michael@bikeportland.org