(Image: gianlucagimini.it)
This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by Green Zebra Grocery, celebrating the grand opening of their new store in the Lloyd District (808 NE Multnomah) on April 21st!
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Funny bikes: A designer asked dozens of people to draw bicycles from memory, then created 3-D renderings of the sometimes pretty creative designes they offered.
“Textalyzer”: A New York State bill would let police easily check phone records to see if someone was texting before a crash.
Ikea bike: Look out, world. It’s priced at $797 and arrives in August.
Lycra ban: A New Zealand hotel forbidden guests from wearing kits because they reveal “unsightly bumps and bulges.”
Mandatory exercise: When the autocratic nation of Turkmenistan declares bike to work month, it doesn’t mess around.
Normalized biking: Now that so many squares have started biking, biking is feeling more square, laments Tom Marriage.
Anti-distraction option: Smartphones have an “airplane mode,” so why not a “driving mode”? Former Apple employee William Henderson tells the story of what happened when he suggested one.
Anti-distraction enforcement: Austin police officers have been boarding buses to see if drivers are using cell phones.
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Infrastructure crunch: Though it was “once at the heart of American public policy,” the United States is now making no net investment in infrastructure after you account for depreciation.
Declining fatalities: In Europe, too, they’ve been falling much faster among people driving than among people biking.
Speed kills: A new study found that rising speed limits on various state highways killed 1,900 additional people last year.
Death counts: Vermont is the latest state posting the year’s traffic fatality counts on signs over its highways.
Death exposure: Drunk drivers in Thailand are getting sentenced to work in morgues.
Defining success: The point of L.A.’s big transit plan isn’t to make driving easier, it’s to make driving less necessary.
Housing shortage: Los Angeles and San Francisco are considering amnesty for “bootlegged” apartments that have been operating without permits.
Peterson job: Weeks after being unexpectedly pushed out as Washington’s transportation secretary, Oregonian transportation reformer Lynn Peterson has taken a job as senior transportation policy advisor for Smart Growth America.
SF biking: Its bike counts rose another 8.5 percent in 2015.
Drunk biking: Like drunk driving, it’s dangerous, though mostly just to people who do it. 15 percent of people injured in bike crashes had been drinking.
Fake gear: BikeBiz.com has collected all its coverage of knockoff bikes and accessories.
Against cars: CityLab goes big and broad. “In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane.”
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
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