Welcome to the Monday Roundup, where we’ve gathered (with help from readers) the most interesting stories and links from the past week…
Nabbing unsafe passers: Police in Birmingham (UK) are riding bikes undercover-style to catch people who pass them too closely.
Chicago #1 Bike City: Bicycling Magazine’s new rankings are out and Chicago has earned the top spot. The magazine’s editors felt it was Chicago’s turn at the top in large part because of their progress on physically protected bike lanes. San Francisco is ranked second and Portland came in third.
Speaking of protected bike lanes: The NYC Dept. of Transportation has been under fire from advocates for not doing enough to make streets safe for bike riders, so they’re doing a media push to tout their record-setting pace of building 18-miles of protected bike lanes this year.
They got the wrong guy: A man who was biking in Brooklyn says he was assaulted physically and verbally (with a racial slur) by two people inside a car — but somehow he’s the one who spent the night in jail.
Carbon tax goes mainstream: The time to start taxing people for how much carbon their vehicles emit has come, says the Washington Post Editorial Board.
Better blocks everywhere: Portland isn’t the only city where tactical urbanism — when citizens create temporary road re-designs — is taking off. NPR profiles the national trend with an eye on Burlington, Vermont.
No auto parking, no problem: Another local trend that’s happening nationwide is developers who opt out of including auto parking in housing projects.
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Trebon retires: Professional racer and Portland resident Ryan Trebon has decided to retire from cyclocross and he gave an exit interview to VeloNews.
Backstreets and bike lanes are not a solution: We are in a post-bike-lane-only era — at least we should be. Curbed has a strong call for continuous protected bikeways on major streets as the solution to get more people riding more safely.
Unified strategy for a happy city: Copenhagen is once again showing the rest of the world how it’s done. This article in the Guardian details how officials break down government silos to create a comprehensive plan for citywide public health and happiness. If Portland attempted this, the public process would likely last for decades.
Good news in northeast: A 34-unit development on NE Killingsworth and 17th has been opened with help from a transit-oriented development grant from Metro.
Perspective is everything: Brooklyn Spoke expertly breaks down a weak answer from New York City’s mayor about people who park in bike lanes.
Fast e-bikes and the future: Yes, e-bikes can help people make the switch from driving to bike on long commutes; but at some point they are more akin to mopeds than bicycles and cities are starting to regulate them as such.
Our tweet of the week comes from author and Vision Zero expert Neil Arason:
If the car were invented today, given what we now know, it would be unconscionable and unethical to approve it as a consumer product
— Neil Arason (he/him) (@neilarason) September 17, 2016
— Jonathan Maus, (503) 706-8804 – jonathan@bikeportland.org
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