Welcome to Monday.
This is our last full week before the news cycle slows way down. So let’s get to it, shall we? Here are the best stories we came across last week…
Death by headphones?: A coroner in Yorkshire had no evidence a woman was listening to music prior to being run over by a truck crashing her bike near a truck — but he put the blame squarely on her anyways. And The Telegraph piled-on with a biased and irresponsible article.
Design saving commutes: The bad news is people’s work commutes are getting longer (see next item). The good news is, according to The Economist, the free market and urban designers are stepping in to make them more enjoyable.
Going further: More lower-income Portlanders are moving further away from their jobs and other important destinations in order to afford a place to live.
Anti-bike NYC police strike again: It seems like the biggest barrier to transportation reform in New York City is the police. After they spread anti-bike lane propaganda through a tabloid, our friends at Streetsblog did a proper smackdown.
Who’s losing the ‘War on cars’?: Short and to-the-point blog post from Dan Savage shares important truths about the so-called ‘War on Cars’.
How the Dutch do it: As we debate how to tame big streets here in Portland, here’s how it’s done in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
Cycling’s status symbols: The idea that luxury bike brands like Pinarello and Rapha are equal parts fashion statement and functional gear has been cemented now that the former just sold a majority stake to Louis Vuitton and the latter is rumored to be doing the same.
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All ‘vision’, no action: It took Portland 18 months just to pass a plan for Vision Zero, in New York City their mayor said their effort “is just getting started” three years after committing to it, and now from D.C. comes a report that one year into Vision Zero there has been no decline in deaths.
A cautionary tale: One of the greatest cities in the world waited too long to regulate auto use and now smog is at a crisis level. In response, Paris plans to seriously curtail auto use and ban it altogether in some parts of the city.
No more private cars: Portland wants to eliminate traffic deaths in next nine years. In Helsinki they’re focused on the root of the problem and want to eliminate all private cars in about the same amount of time.
Carfree Broadway in NYC: NY Times editorial nails it: “Perhaps it’s time to embrace a more radical solution — to think bigger, not smaller… why not close off Broadway to traffic for a far longer stretch — perhaps even from one end to the other — creating an unfettered corridor for bicycles and pedestrians that would slice across much of Manhattan?”
School trip analysis: The first comprehensive survey of its kind in San Francisco showed that 56 percent of the city’s more than 45,000 students are driven to school and just 3 percent arrive by bike. The report (PDF) is full of interesting data — including the fact that 40 percent of those who drove who said they’d love to explore an alternative.
Unprotected bike lanes: TransAlt in New York City is demanding more investment in protected bike lanes after a Citi Bike user was hit in a section of street left “unprotected.”
Win for bikenomics: President Obama signed a new bill into law that takes into account the outdoor industry — which includes cycling — when calculating the country’s gross domestic product.
One tough bike race: Any time the New York Times gives feature story treatment to a bike race, it’s worth taking a look.
Santa cycling: The Santa Rampage Ride in Milwaukee, Wisconsin looks fantastic. I’m surprised we don’t do this in Portland.
Tweet of the Week: If you don’t think America’s car abuse problem has reached epidemic levels, please watch this:
https://twitter.com/yann_rouen/status/807781862022246401
— Jonathan Maus, (503) 706-8804 – jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Actually it seems from the Telegraph (not Guardian??) article that the cyclist was not “run over” by the truck as you describe. It sounds like she was distracted, skidded out trying to avoid the truck at the last second, and hit hear head on the ground. There was no contact between her and the truck. It also sounds, sadly, like the helmet she wasn’t wearing that day could possibly have saved her life (I know that will be an unpopular opinion here).
Hi Pat. Thanks! My mistake. I edited that item. Fact remains that the article was awfully paternalistic and the coroner’s statements were clearly biased against the woman’s actions in a way that I found completely baseless, unfair, and in very poor taste.
I do agree that the editorializing about headphones was bizarre and completely inappropriate on the coroner’s part. I hope that’s not normal business practices over there.
I see plenty of motorists wearing headphones/earbuds all the time…or blasting their stereos so loud you can hear it outside their vehicle.
It’s a sign of progress that out of place editorializing about reporting on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is news — particularly since the tragedy appears to have been caused by cyclist error.
Even during its heyday, the Telegraph was well-suited only for wrapping fish or lining bird cages. It has gone downhill since then.
The coroner’s statement used the subjunctive. “. . .could have. . .”
“paternalistic” seems kind of strong from what I read. The coroner, the truck driver, everybody seems pretty distressed that a person in the prime of their life is gone. Nobody knows if wearing headphones caused this and nobody said it did, actually.
A person who was an experienced cyclist atypically went out without their helmet (roadies tend to wear helmets) and, on their home ground, rode into a roundabout without observing that a really big truck was already in it? It strikes me that something is missing from this story. It’s a tragedy for sure. But this doesn’t seem like the story that makes a strong point about official victim blaming. It’s not a hard point to make but there must be better examples.
(I went out without my helmet today. I feel free to do that although it made me strangely uneasy once or twice. This is not a wear-helmet screed. I mention the missing helmet only as an indicator as something unusual was going on.)
If this story was in a Certain Local Paper it would actual seem kind of fair and almost caring.
passive victim blaming…
there were no facts to support any reason that she fell and died, yet they’re trying to make up reasons out of nothing…
click-bait…
disclaimer at the bottom states the story previously said the coroner DID blame the headphone before the story was edited… how many people read the corrected version? even the link itself still bears the blame… “cycling headphones kills mother coroner says caused death”
I think a little background might be helpful for those unfamiliar with Coroners’ Courts and the inquests they conduct. In the UK, Australia, New Zealand and other places with similar jurisprudence (but not the USA), the Coroner is a magistrate (lowest level of judge) who conducts legal inquiries (inquests) into deaths, fires and some other events. Medical evidence may be provided by a forensic pathologists (like a coroner here) and the Coroner will hear evidence from the police and other witnesses as well. The Coroner’s role is to determine the legal cause of death and whether any criminal charges should be leveled. Unlike criminal courts where the judge plays a less active role, the Coroner is actively conducting the investigation and may be assisted by Counsel engaged by parties with an interest in the death/fire such as the police, crown prosecutor or the deceased’s family. Sometimes Coroner’s are also assisted by juries, but these are not like the juries in other courts – more like grand juries. Coronial findings are often wide ranging and can provide recommendations for actions. To those unfamiliar with the Coronial Inquest system, these recommendations can seem paternalistic/patronizing, but they are sometimes intended to prompt the government to take some action. In this case, I think the Coroner is hoping to highlight the importance of situational awareness by cyclists using the roads. We are all aware of the dangers of distracted driving, well distracted cycling is dangerous as well. We also know that a good helmet can prevent many head injuries.
A Coroner’s Court is more like a European style inquisition court, than the typical English style adversarial court. Coroner’s can find that there is sufficient evidence to send an individual to trial for an offense related to the matter under inquiry, in which case a trial may be held in another court with the more traditional Judge, Prosecutor and Defendant set up.
Personally, I have never ridden my bicycle while using headphones. I have occasionally forgotten to put my helmet on before leaving the house, but usually turn around when I remember. I am still recovering from a bicycle crash which resulted in a broken shoulder, but because I was wearing a good helmet, I avoided head injuries.
Unless there was some kind of missed evidence (or a big cover-up or whatever), it sure sounds like the rider was out for a workout, made an initial mistake of not being attentive to traffic in a roundabout, then was startled, then fell and died. This is tragic. As advocates we’re right to advocate for transportation cycling conditions where simple mistakes aren’t deadly, and practices and culture around this, too (all those slow, upright bikes… routes where it’s comfortable to ride slow… a city where that’s useful day-to-day, not constraining…). As advocates we’re right to say that public officials and the media often push way too much responsibility for safety on people trying to do what should be an extremely simple act: making basic trips in town under their own power.
When I’m out for a workout I’m ignoring a lot of that intentionally, and therefore taking on more responsibility for my own safety. I want to ride fast, so I’ll take roads that support fast movement. That’s way more polite and safer for myself and others than riding fast on roads designed for slow movement! The roads designed for slow movement should be there for local access, and if I have to go down one I’ll ride slowly, but that’s not where I’m going to spend most of my ride! I’ll ride in a forward, not upright position, where a fall is more likely to put me on my head, and faster, where I’m less likely to be able to simply brake to avoid a fall, or get my feet down. Maybe my clipless pedals will also get in the way of putting a foot down, too, and my saddle will be adjusted for pedaling efficiency, again not for getting a foot to the ground. That’s not how I ride to work, that’s how I ride to get a workout. The more of those things I do, the more I have to take responsibility for my own safety. I’m going to come across some intersections designed to move traffic (I probably chose them so I wouldn’t have to stop!), and even if I’m absorbed in my workout I’d better snap back to reality and pay attention to traffic. Maybe music doesn’t distract me from doing that, maybe it does. If I say it doesn’t I’d better be sure, because it might be a pedestrian or an animal that surprises me and not a big truck — it might not just be my own skin in the game.
As far as I’m concerned (as someone that works out on public roads and in public parks all the time, sometimes cycling and more often running) wearing headphones while using the public realm for a workout is dumb as hell. Maybe if you’re really committed to being alert and aware you can do it, but that’s mostly not what I see — I see a lot of people that get too self-absorbed to observe the rules by which they’re supposed to share the space with others. Before someone jumps in with some nonsense like, “What about deaf people?”, deaf people develop a lot of experience maintaining situational awareness without hearing. I see a lot of “headphone zombies” that aren’t aware of anything.
Most people aren’t half as good as they think they are at dealing with distractions. You don’t have a right to listen to music on a bike just because a car has a stereo any more than a driver has a right to take a phone call just because he could do it on the bus (or even because truckers have CBs). A bike offers limited traction, stability, and protection in a fall, and many bike routes (whether they should or not) require more careful attention and judgment from riders than the average car route. And this is all extra true when exercising: less traction and stability, less protection in a fall, more difficult routes.
in my opinion, your comment is worse than walking up to a woman who has been catcalled and telling her to stop wearing a short skirt.
A skirt was not designed to prevent rape. A helmet was specifically designed to mitigate head injuries if the wearer falls from their bike, which appears to have been the case here.
I will agree that a helmet is not designed to say, protect the wearer from being struck from behind by a drunk driver, nor does it prevent the rider from making a mistake while distracted, but I continue to believe that it would have lessened the injuries suffered during her crash.
from the article:
are helmets designed to prevent fractured spinal cords? your omission of this suggest bias to me.
afaict, there is no evidence that a helmet would have made a difference in this case. moreover, there is very little evidence that helmets reduce health or mortality risk in the context of transportation cycling.
Yours is a very extreme position. Helmets are not exactly hijabs.
@Pat, your mistake was implying the cyclist had any responsibility in the tragedy that unfolded or that people should take a modest safety precaution that has been widely accepted for decades.
Here we take it as given that cyclists and peds can’t make mistakes or bad decisions — only motorists can.
A cycling or pedestrian mistake in and of itself so very rarely results in death I would be surprised if the risk was significant in a statistical sense. Much more likely a correlation… the presence of vehicles (contact made or not). If my presence on the road riding a bike indirectly caused cars to make mistakes that led to death or injury… I’d probably try and blame their radio or lack of anti lock brakes also.
Crashes rarely have a singular cause. There may be a primary cause, triggering cause, and other factors that work together. However, except for the purpose of determining responsibility, it’s not particularly useful to focus on fault or on any particular cause.
What’s much more interesting is what we can do moving forward to prevent other accidents (a more encompassing term than crashes). Some things are under your control and some things are not. In your example where you do something that contributes to a crash, hopefully you’d be more mindful in future of your movements since you’re now aware people are inadequately equipped and hopefully others are more mindful of their driving practices/equipment and make appropriate adjustments so they’re ready for similar situations.
In this forum, attention focuses like a laser on what everyone else needs to do to make things better and what’s wrong with the infrastructure. These factors are both real and important, but being safe requires people to be ready for whatever they actually encounter.
Our ability to influence drivers and the environment is minor, but our ability to prepare for and respond to these things is huge.
Safety cannot depend on waiting for an entire population of drivers to change their behavior or for an infrastructure that barely exists to be built.
To place too much emphasis on these things makes cyclists less safe, discourages new cyclists from a mode of transport they perceive to be too dangerous, and contributes to the marginalization of cyclists.
Except when people here don’t, which is often.
has a “mistake” by a pedestrian or cyclist ever killed someone?
i support strict liability for drivers because they are source of all the risk on our roads.
Bike-ped deaths are rare, but yes. They do happen.
>i support strict liability for drivers because they are source of all the risk on our roads.
A large share of risk. But it’s absurd to take your absolutist position that they are the source of all risk.
I wouldn’t say ‘all’.
But considering that drivers are the source of the vast majority of risk, it’s even more absurd to talk about equal enforcement or penalties for cyclists or pedestrians.
The article said a skull fracture contributed to her death. Skull fractures are exactly what helmets are designed to prevent. Would it have saved her life, we don’t know from the information given, but it is not reasonably disputable that it would have improved her chances. If she had died of a broken neck, a helmet would have been irrelevant.
Did we just call the NY Post a tabloid? Well done!
“Oregonian Comes Out As Tabloid”
The Santa Rampage is one of Milwaukee’s great bike events (The Riverwest 24 is amazing too)… It’s really it’s own holiday.. Santas all over town.
Concerning the school in the Tweet of the Week: Just look at the feeder road! It’s narrow and has no sidewalks or bike lanes. I’d certainly think twice (or more) about using active transportation to get there. Sad, too, because the countryside looks very nice.
At least the traffic is pretty much at a stand-still at the start and end of the school day.
Here’s a lovely rendering of BSD’s ‘New High School’:
and here’s the location in reality:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4266104,-122.8535599,3a,75y,175.51h,70.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMOIZPjSh-657N0NlyseTSw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
they need to stop putting schools so far away from kids…
Wow, complete with butterflies…Delightful.
Picture of parking lot vs picture of main intersection on other side of school… seems fair.
Maybe you’d prefer this delightful fantasy of the adjacent road?
Someone is going to get killed in that crosswalk.
Fortunately that crosswalk won’t exist. It’ll be up at the intersection or much more protected and signaled if it does cross scholls ferry into the new housing development.
That is less misleading yes.
Doesn’t quite line up with this:
Looking at that image I don’t see any curb buts in the new sidewalk that match the concept drawings location.
I’m not disagreeing with you in principle (it’s a nightmare of an intersection to put a school at)… just that using these examples seems a little nit picky. Of course conceptual renderings look well… unrealistic. Thankful this rezone puts my son at southridge (well if it’s still the same in 13 years) where the only main road he needs to cross is Brockman. This school will be bounded by 6 lane behemoths and will be the worst school in the district for non-car transporation.
Here’s a rendering for the middle school.
I don’t think I’m being nitpicky at all. What is the school district doing to make the roads near these schools suitable for walking & biking?
The New Middle School on 118th is a much more reasonable area for a school. Yes they don’t seem to be doing anything to the road to make it more bike / walk friendly but that area is already much better than the new high school as it is. Agree that the cyclists in the rendering are very unrealistic.
Sad thing is that 118th is really just a corner cut of Barnes / Cornell. Would be nice to see it dead end into the school from both directions, eliminating it as a thru street and making it car free right in front of the school.
Actually, lookin at the plan they are adding a lane to Stone Mountain Lane right outside the “Plaza” now kids are bounded by 3 lanes on both sides! Nice.
That’s what Washington County calls ‘improving’ a road — adding more lanes. I’m glad they have improved the roads around our elementary school.
Sorry, I mean ‘glad they haven’t‘.
That’s fairly typical for a lot of suburban/rural America. The roads have been there longer than most people alive today and bicycles were not a consideration when they were built. The sparse population probably does not provide enough tax money to build bike infrastructure; but the sparse population is what people who live there prefer.
Tweet Translation from French if anyone’s as uncultured as me “A Primary School in the United States”
On a personal opinion note: That is insane.
The school video was discussed on the shoupistas group, apparently that setup was a trial as they were attempting to prevent the line of cars backing up onto the highway. It didn’t work so they stopped doing it. That school is an elementary school near Charlotte NC.
Wow, yeah that video still shows huge lines down the main road. As an industrial engineer the process frustrates me… haha
Hmm a second look at the school and area seems to show that the only change they made for this test was to route traffic through the parking lot making a bit longer snake. Looks like area has been setup to have drop off traffic perform the main S bend (per 2007 and 2014 street views). You can even see where they gated the old main entrance and added the S bend, parking lot and paved a new long exit road.
To be fair the school draws from a rural area that’s roughly 5 miles by 10 miles in size. No sidewalks anywhere, the nearby high school has as much parking lot as school real estate… although this outward facing circular bus staging concept is an interesting use of space (https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0933833,-80.4913352,193m/data=!3m1!1e3) With so much open rural space how are there not wooded bike paths everywhere?!
“With so much open rural space how are there not wooded bike paths everywhere?!”
It looks like farmland to me. It would probably be too expensive to buy the land to build the paths. A private landowner wouldn’t want a path on land they still own as that opens them up to lawsuits if someone were to get injured on their land.
That makes sense given how orderly and well-behaved drivers were as opposed to what I regularly witness at the schools I ride by. Thanks for the clarification.
Do they not have bus service?
My thought too. Does nobody ride the bus anymore? I asked this here once before and I forget the explanation for all the parental chauffeuring in Portland…
My understanding is that there is not as much money for buses anymore, though that could simply be an effect instead of a cause (bus funding is cut as more children are driven to school). The other explanation is that there is excessive concern about children’s safety when they aren’t under the direct supervision of an adult, prompting parents to prefer wasting their time by driving their kids rather than sending them on the bus.
I think a huge part of it is the time kids spend on buses in rural areas getting to school. When a bus has to take a long route many of the kids have to get out the door 30 minutes or an hour sooner. A big reason I would love to see a shift from Buses to 12 or 15 passenger vans. Better fuel economy and smaller routes / quicker trip times for kids.
But more drivers to pay for… Would there be enough savings on vehicles/maintenance to offset that? Could a district store an adequate number of smaller buses in the same space they store the big ones?
Driver cost would likely be the biggest inhibitor here. Capacity for a standard bus is on average 54 but I am very skeptical of that high of ridership. I think conservatively you could replace each bus with on average three 15 passenger vans (minus two front seats = 39 seat capacity). May not make sense for suburban areas but for rural routes where ridership is lower and travel is longer a van that gets in the 20’s mpg vs a bus that gets 7 means even an increase in ridership requiring 3 vans would be a wash. Maintenance may be higher on 3 vans vs bus but I’d be surprised if by a significant amount. Length of standard bus is 45 ft vs 22 ft of a vans so would need more space to park but vans would allow for tighter lots and reduce the need for giant turning radius.
Would likely only be a good option for rural schools. Good things cost money, whether it’s through a provided bus service, or the opportunity costs associated with parents driving or time spent on long bus routes. Gotta start making the costs of private transport more tangible to parents.
Vans would help a lot too with activity buses. I can remember taking 40 min rides home with only 10 other kids on a full size school bus after sports practices. I lived 15 minutes from school. Smaller vehicles would just offer so much more flexibility.
It seems strange to me that schools need to budget for bus transportation. I’d rather see that come straight from city/county budgets.
Yes, current model continues to support the “rich get richer” aspect of demographics between school districts.
Schools only have to bus children if they live more than 1 mile (elementary school) or 1.5 miles (secondary school). If your route to school is not considered ‘safe’ they will bus children living closer than that, but the district’s definition of ‘safe’ is different than ours. Is there a sidewalk and a signaled intersection? It’s safe! Oh, nevermind that it’s a 5-lane road crossing a highway onramp, there’s a walk light!
Bus service has an entrance on the other side of the school. You can see a few pull through in the video but it does not appear to be busy at all.
City Council will never vote to remove cars from any streets as long as they all live in the car-dependant West Hills. I wonder how our incoming Commissioner Eudaly is planning on getting to work.
Who knows how Eudaly gets to work, I want to know how she sleeps. Closing her bookstore the minute she gets that sweet $108K city salary. Would like to know how she plans to make things more affordable for employees that are no longer working.
So she complied with a law requiring her to not own the bookstore? I don’t know any of the details about her decision, but I can’t see a rational person closing a business when there was a plausible (potentially profitable) way to transfer ownership. So I’m going to take her statement “I realized that it really cannot stand on its own two feet without me” at face value.
So, in Portland, a relatively humble city council person can’t carry on their one-lane bookstore, but in another sphere (licks third rail) it’s another thing entirely
It’s because it was barely profitable. I don’t think anyone would have bought it.
It alway pains me to see elected officials show up to meetings and events in cars. It makes it very clear what their perspective is (windshield). How can someone show up to a ride of silence or a climate change protest in a car and be taken seriously?
It’s entirely possible they have different demands on/during their workday that makes a bicycle unfeasible.
No doubt that is the case some of the time. All of the time for all meetings? No way.
How does Novick get to work? He lives in “The West Hills”, but I believe he’s a bus commuter. Could be wrong though…
I think he said he drives down Barbur with his wife. Funny how most people who live on the I5/Barbur corridor (served by at least 5 car lanes in each direction) feel like their “only” option is to drive a car.
Or, in this case, a carpool.
How the Dutch to it: “In general, there is no parking on main roads in the Netherlands.”
Also loved this part:
“Roads with multiple lanes no longer serve a purpose in a dense city. In the past, they made it possible to overtake slower vehicles, but nowadays all vehicles are capable to reach the blanket speed limit, (50km/h in Dutch cities) which makes that unnecessary.”
Never thought of it that way, later they mention that it is often intersections that dictate capacity, not road space (cc: ODOT, re: St Johns Bridge).
ODOT knows, so to speak. Traffic engineers take great pains to add even more lanes at the intersections whenever possible so that the throughput per signal time is maximized. Of course this just makes the intersection that much more hazardous, but it’s not like they care about that sort of thing.
I see more people using the “protected” bike lanes not knowing what they are. I think if any state government is to implement more of these it might be a good idea to let people know by new reports or something. And in trouble spot have a cop or 2 sit there and watch people use the new bikes lanes as another lane. Example 16th and Marshall (4 way stop).
Santa Cycling: the Dropout Bike Club has Cheer & Socksgiving… but it’s not as big as Milwaukee’s Bike Fed…
https://www.facebook.com/events/976997119073092/
I would love a big Santa ride in Portland! Thanks, Spiffy, for the link to the Cheer and Socksgiving event.
Looking at the Oregonian article on rents and income – I agree folks are “biking” further to reach affordable rents but some of the visual relationships in the data may be too simplistic…
…rents in our downtown have increased [mine increased >50% between 2010 and 2015..but the map shows green – this “drop” in proportion of income allocated to rent is due to folks with higher incomes coming into the area again (it happens in waves every 5 years – rippling up from Portland etc.).
Re: smog-choked Paris
“Cars 20 years and older have already been banned from Paris roads from July 1, 2016 and some 120,000 stickers have been distributed. But participation in the scheme so far has been voluntary and enforcement scarce.”
How Parisian we are in Portland! “…voluntary and enforcement scarce”…Laissez faire, all the way. Yes. We’ve found that works.
Also laughing over this choice in phrasing:
“as clouds of pollution hang over many European cities due to a lack of the winds that normally blow in off the Atlantic Ocean.”
Yes, yes…clouds of pollution mysteriously choke European cities mainly “due to a lack of the winds…” Evil, evil non-winds, making pollution, as if by magic! Think of the innocent humans! Dammit!
p.s…didn’t this same thing happen last year in Paris? Really lazy reporting by Reuters…
(from the article)
“It is only the fourth time in 20 years that Paris has imposed such a ban and the first time it applies for consecutive days.”
Here’s what they didn’t report. Apparently three of those four bans occurred in the past three years. That’s rather significant and, I think, worth reporting. What with climate change and all.
2015
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-france-paris-smog-20150323-story.html
…and 2014
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-france-paris-smog-20150323-story.html
oops–wrong second link. Here’s the right one:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2014/03/car-ban-french-capital
Countries worldwide are finding it increasingly hard to solve even their most basic problems and address their most pressing needs. IQs worldwide have been declining for the last 40-odd years, and, in America, life expectancy, already low, is beginning to fall even further.
Can’t help but feel there’s a natural plan in all this. Is Mother Nature prepping humanity for extinction? Will the Big One eliminate Portland’s never ending housing and congestion problems in a brief five minutes?
Stay tuned.
I’m going to guess that after the Big One, Portland’s housing problems are going to be A LOT bigger.
recent peer-reviewed scientific publications suggest that the consequences of anthropogenic climate change will make the big one look like a 1950s era suburban bridge party. i also find it darkly and painfully comical that the USA is about to adopt policy with the explicit goal of emiting more GHGs.
We’ll see what policies come out of the White House, and what their impact will be, but you’re on target in being deeply apprehensive about the consequences of climate change.
trump’s picks for his administration telegraph truly awful policy when it comes to climate change..
About a dozen years ago there was a hypothesis that climate change, with its resultant rise in sea levels, would cause a rash of big earthquakes. I don’t know what the status of that hypothesis is today, but it sure seems like we have seen a lot more large quakes along the Pacific plate in recent years.
More than the normally high numbers?
Actually, lookin at the plan they are adding a lane to Stone Mountain Lane right outside the “Plaza” now kids are bounded by 3 lanes on both sides! Nice.
Whoops, reply to Dan A regarding middle school.
That elementary school is a missed opportunity for some cops to set up an ambush/sting and probably write a truckload of tickets for cell phone use while driving.