Cars are weapons: There’s been another intentional attack using a motor vehicle in a crowded city. It will be interesting to see if governments respond by limiting auto access and/or creating more protected areas for vulnerable users (both of which have been encouraged by transportation reformers for many years).
Bike-share’s latest boom continues: We continue to track the explosive growth in next-gen bike share systems taking over Chinese streets. Check the latest data from private companies operating the largest systems China. One of them is manufacturing 100,000 bikes per day to keep up with demand.
Seattle as a test market: Our neighbors to the north might have missed the first bike share boat, but they’re way ahead of any other U.S. city when it comes to prepping for the influx of the cheap, decentralized systems run by private companies that have taken over China and earned hundreds of millions in startup investment.
Fight them or welcome them?: European and North American cities are faced with this question. Here’s a look at an Irish businessman is betting on dockless bike share; while a planning expert says the new systems have major drawbacks and should not be allowed to “run wild”.
Apple can do better: Turns out their new “Do Not Disturb While Driving” feature is really weak. Apple has a responsibility to be tougher on distracted driving, too bad they don’t step up to the plate.
How Oslo is (slowly but surely) banning cars: The Norwegian city boasted an ambitious carfree city plan two years ago; but business owners balked and now the plans have been tweaked in ways that can provide an important lesson for Portland.
Baltimore’s bikeway saga: People For Bikes shared the twists and turns of a bizarre bikeway fight in Baltimore that resulted in a court-ordered restraining order against removal of a protected bike lane.
L.A.’s new green compromise: After a kerfluffle with the film industry about bright green bike lane paint that clashed with cameras, the City of Los Angeles has agreed to a new color.
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Where the TNCs hit the road: Cars being used by people driving for companies like Uber and Lyft have a profound impact on San Francisco’s traffic: to the tune of 5,700 cars on an average weekday and about 20 percent of daily VMT says a new report.
Fight fallacies: A website dubbed Cycling Fallacies has an impressive list of myths used to argue against cycling and the facts it takes to dispel them.
We’re not so hot: Just for perspective, Portland isn’t even on the list of top 20 bike-friendly cities in the world.
Cars and climate change: It was nice to see this Slate article state, “Want to fight climate change? You have to fight cars,” as a follow-on to our article about hypocrisy from Oregon’s leaders on the topic.
Auto racers like bikes: Turns out cycling is the hottest training method for NASCAR racers.
Questioning our self-driving future: Mother Nature Network asks some good questions about how our “irrational” car-centric culture will react to a future of self-driving cars.
Influential bike leader says goodbye: Tamika Butler, who became one of the most high-profile bike advocacy nonprofit leaders during her tenure, is moving on from her position at the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition.
Learning about — and from — the past: “Bike Boom” author and reporter Carlton Reid has a fantastic series on the forgotten history of bike advocacy in America — including the origin story of Oregon’s “Bike Bill” — in The Guardian.
Bikes, riots, and peacemaking: Portland was at the forefront of using bike-mounted police officers in street protests — now in the Trump era, the tactic is gaining popularity all over the country.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Hopefully PBOT can find a bike lane color that interferes with the filming of Portlandia.
Are they still making that show?
Perhaps they have forgotten Portland…Portlandia will be up in Vancouver (WA) downtown on Tuesday (6Am to 8PM) to film. See the Pedal Palooza event…
The “forgotten” 1970’s bike boom? Oh, for Christ’s sake, now I’m really feeling old!
This generational issue is troubling to me. Our children (and sometimes grand-children) rediscovered bikes in the early years of this century and too many have dismissed all the accumulated knowledge and experience those of us who lived through much better cycling times have.
I weep to see mistakes repeated over and over, especially when they involve thinking we can import European constructs without changing the social infrastructure (traffic law enforcement, river training standards, strict liability, etc).
Same here I was just getting my second wind cycling after I started in 1953 but slowed down in 1962. Back up in 1972 but I stayed with it. Still on the road after training a new generation every few years.
How would a smartphone be able to automatically detect whether its user is driving a vehicle or just a passenger?
I don’t think it can, Mitch. That’s why Apple includes an easy override function.
Ignoring that it’s a terrible idea to cycle while operating a cell phone (even though I see people do this all the time), this idea was never going to go anywhere.
Why run yet another app when all you have to do is just put it in silent or airplane mode when driving?
I’m totally agreed with you there. Passengers with cell phones can be valuable assets to the driver, and it harms no one when passengers use cell phones.
Because most people (myself included) won’t remember to put it in airplane mode everytime they get behind the wheel. And, critically for many, they won’t always remember to take it out of airplane mode when they get out of the car.
What Apple has done here here is to make this the default mode, and you have to override it to use your phone in a car. That’s a big deal. I probably wouldn’t use Do Not Disturb and Night Shift on my phone if I had to turn them on every night and back off every morning. But I’m glad they just come on automatically, and then turn off again automatically.
I see what you’re saying, but I frankly find devices that are always trying to outsmart me annoying. Take motion sensor lights. Sounds like a great idea, but when you enter a room, you have to wait for a couple seconds. Is it in auto mode or is it off? And when you leave, is it in auto mode or continuous on? What used to be super simple — i.e. hit the switch as you walk in and out is more complex and less effective.
I can see that others may feel different. Seems like maybe it’s a fine way to deliver the phones by default. But if the feature can’t be shut off and left off, I have no interest in the phone. And that’s before we get into having the phone waste my battery trying to get a GPS signal to calculate the speed during the more than 99% of the time that I have no use whatsoever for location services.
Kyle, there’s no GPS involved. It uses bluetooth connection to car and/or doppler effect on nearby Wifi networks to determine your speed.
the Apple lock is only effective in SOV. :=()
It cannot. Thus the phone has to allow the user to say “I’m not driving” and use the phone.
It should be possible for the phone to remind the user of the danger of/local laws against distracted driving, and require the user to acknowledge before turning off the feature. That would serve as education and potentially as evidence.
I noticed on the news the Washington State Patrol is electronically monitoring vehicles in their proximity to give them $136 tickets for the first offense.
the “cars and climate change” link actually goes to the bikeportland article, not the Slate one
Article is dumb. Like all the other articles we read or read about here. They sloppily claim that density equals reduced VMT –
“The most effective strategy for reducing VMT in the long-term is to site new housing near transit.”
But this is pure wishful thinking when there is no willingness to face the music that is population growth, economic growth, consumption growth. Density is a ratio; it says nothing whatsoever about the total VMT that might be driven in a given locale, state, or country. Per capita VMT might decrease, but we don’t need to bother pursuing goals that are ratios; we need to focus on, articulate, pursue goals that target total emissions.
Disappointed. Once again.
meant to have written
‘like all other article on density…’
they need to site housing near amenities, not transit… I want to walk to the local store, not take the bus to a centralized store…
what we need is to break the city back into townships by neighborhood and let each one be a fully functional mini city…
Portland has an opportunity to do that, with Lloyd District and Gateway. Living at 80th or 100th would be very convenient if your job is in Gateway. But development continues to be concentrated on the close-in neighborhoods, which both increases congestion and drives up housing prices in those neighborhoods. The city needs to re-focus the PDC on Gateway and surrounding areas.
But how to recreate the city neighborhood of yesteryear, the main street with small independent businesses. We drove them out of business by wanting more things cheaper and voila, the big box comes into existence.
It’s encouraging that the “planning cities around cars has created bad cities” line of thought is breaking into the mainstream, so there will be support for long-term land-use changes like eliminating parking minimums, increased density.
It’s disappointing that Americans (presumably like the author) don’t know how to ride a bike, because most of them can’t see a realistic path from our current suburban sprawl to sustainable levels of energy consumption and density through their parking goggles.
sorry ed. fixed it. Here’s the article.
I love this quote, “We want to redesign Portland to make it a city for people … instead of what it now is: a giant, smelly parking garage for commuters.” Earth to Portland, this was 47 years ago, when are we gonna get started?
Except back then, people whizzed in to town on fast moving freeways and parked their cars in smelly garages downtown, now they sit in their smelly cars in a giant parking lot that used to be a freeway. Way to go auto zombies
To be fair, emission standards are much better today than they were 47 years ago. So today’s cars are far less smelly.
and cars aren’t smelly in the olfactory sense anymore, though we’ve learned about their climate implications, which more than makes up for the improvements so emphasized by Cornucopians.
Curious…but are you implying I am a Cornucopian?
No. In fact your post was hung up in moderation so I only saw it hours after we both posted our comments. When it did appear I was pleased to see our comments so closely mirroring each other given how often we disagree here.
The zombies I encounter everyday are focused on their phones. Be here now and try looking where you are going.
“…Way to go auto zombies” bikeninja
Would you happen to be a ‘bike zombie’ or bike enthusiast that would be happy to transport some of the people you refer to as “auto zombies”, on your bike to wherever they need to go, so they don’t have to drive or otherwise travel in a motor vehicle?
The conventional, motor vehicle travel distance community design the U.S. has flourished on for decades, is a difficult one to depart from. There’s lots more to successfully doing that than banning cars and banning parking for them.
Not to interject (but I will), they could roll, walk or take transit to their destinations. Yes we have designed our spaces for the auto, so we must consciously re-design them for increasing density, depleting resources and the increasing impact we have on our planet.
You mean like prying their car out of their cold, dead hands? Because that’s about the only way a lot of people in our society are going to give them up. It’s rather amazing how some agree that we are in fact making the planet less hospitable for life, but are still waiting around for someone else to do something. Personal responsibility is key here, and while many on this forum have made the decision to “inconvience” themselves by living a reduced-car lifestyle, we have a long way to go in both education and overcoming American entitlement.
Sorry was meant for the level above, clicked the wrong reply button.
“the only way a lot of people in our society are going to give them up.”
A common observation here.
If preferences are the lens through which we look at this situation I would agree with you, but if instead we view it through the lens of constraints, then I think this all looks very different. It is my contention that when the rubber meets the road, sh!t hits the fan, chickens come home to roost, etc., preferences aren’t going to mean a whit because the material and economic conditions that make the kind of reflexive, ubiquitous driving we currently still experience possible will have evaporated.
And the problem with predicting the apocalypse is that we can never quite pin down the date it will happen. It’s not just a question of preferences (but I can see how you would interpret my comment that way), but that auto-centrism is propagated culturally and is about as deeply ingrained as baseball and apple pie. It’s not easy to go against that, to stand personally and say “I will sell one/all of my cars and greatly reduce my driving.” It’s actually something of a radical act, and it takes brave people to do it. Should I be shaming those who know better and do nothing anyway? Well if they’re not listening to their own conscious, then yes.
To the point that an individual makes no difference: this is simply another excuse to stand idly by and pretend “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not my fault.” It’s easier to not care, right? Every gallon of gas you don’t burn is 20 lbs of co2 not put in the atmosphere. Every pound of garbage you recycle instead is a pound not dumped into a toxic landfill. Really, we don’t get to take this world with us when we die, so let’s try to keep it nice while we’re alive and can enjoy it.
“And the problem with predicting the apocalypse is that we can never quite pin down the date it will happen.”
I submit that the date is less important than the direction of change we anticipate.
“It’s not just a question of preferences (but I can see how you would interpret my comment that way), but that auto-centrism is propagated culturally and is about as deeply ingrained as baseball and apple pie. It’s not easy to go against that, to stand personally and say “I will sell one/all of my cars and greatly reduce my driving.” It’s actually something of a radical act, and it takes brave people to do it.”
I’m not going to disagree with any of that.
I look at the same facts and come to the opposite conclusion: personal responsibility doesn’t matter. The impact of one person, positive or negative, is essentially zero.
I think the key is a set of incentives that encourage people, en masse, to act in their personal self interest to do the right thing.
See: Carbon Tax
“personal responsibility doesn’t matter. The impact of one person, positive or negative, is essentially zero.”
But why interpret what resopmok was saying so individualistically, statically. That leaves out the fact that we are social creatures, emulate each others’ behaviors, learn from each other, are constantly changing.
“I think the key is a set of incentives that encourage people, en masse, to act in their personal self interest to do the right thing.”
Exactly. But there’s no omniscient position from which to argue that what you call incentives and how I think of behaviors scaling up as necessarily opposed or mutually exclusive or …. Why couldn’t it be both? A coevolutionary thing?
Relying on selfless action on behalf of individuals will not in itself be effective. But you’re right that it need not be an either-or situation, and probably won’t be.
The most important thing is that the incentives apply to businesses and industry, where the big emissions are occurring.
“The most important thing is that the incentives apply to businesses and industry, where the big emissions are occurring.”
Lots of ways to go about this. Focus on industry is familiar enough, but if we do this any pedagogic value is lost on the public who, after all, are demanding all this stuff, with all the fraught caveats resopmok mentions above.
WE don’t want increasing density.
Bob your are correct that a number of things from the built infrastructure, the real estate industrial complex, and advertising that have created a world where transportation via anything but the automobile is difficult for many people. But in the article I was refering to, this was apparent to many almost 50 years ago. So the “auto zombies” are all those ( most of us) who have made the small incremental decisions over these last 50 years to keep moving down the same path without looking to either side for a better way. Mindlessly marching forward like zombies even though the same tragic outcome was predicted almost 50 years ago. Like zombies, the pull of happy motoring has warped our brains and we march forward looking for our next fix of speed, convenience and cheap parking while the consequences predicted so long ago unfold around us.
“…But in the article I was refering to, this was apparent to many almost 50 years ago. So the “auto zombies” are all those ( most of us) who have made the small incremental decisions over these last 50 years to keep moving down the same path without looking to either side for a better way. …” bikeninja
There have been for a very long time, many people aware that the predominant U.S. city and community design obliterates basic travel functionality of streets and roads used by walking and biking. Making societal course corrections tend to be out of their control:
County or city feels compelled to widen a street or road to try accommodate higher hourly numbers of motor vehicles. A few tenths of a percent of the public shows up at the meetings, or writes their elected officials to register their opposition. That doesn’t represent enough mandate for County and city to feel they have enough support for a change in course direction, so they feel obliged to proceed with the street or road widening.
These people need help coming up with ideas to affect the kinds of changes that will better serve the needs of a wider range of individuals and community than U.S. community and city design existing today is able to offer. It’s not helping to refer to them in terms of a derisive nature.
All of you reading here that frequent the area in Beaverton, bounded by roads Jenkins, 158th, and Baseline, directly next to Nike’s world campus…keep your eyes on the form its development is taking, and the road, street, sidewalk, bike lane and bike path infrastructure that’s being included in the design to accommodate the travel needs of people living there now, and that very soon will be living there.
Take some time, if you’ve got it, to casually study what’s being provided, and think about whether you believe the travel infrastructure part of the design will be sufficient for many people residing there to meet their travel needs to Nike or the big Fred Meyer shopping center nearby, by any other means…than driving.
I hear 158th will have a wider than usual MUP on the east side of that street. Other than this single provision that barely distances walking and biking from motor vehicle traffic, the forces that be have made this relatively small but high density residential area into another land where driving must and will overwhelm and rule over all other modes of travel in the area. There’s the Westside Trail…which could be impressed somewhat into serving dual duty including both its primarily recreational function, and infrastructure for walking to and from the store as well, but being hilly, narrow and rough, it’s not really suited for this function.
This could have been a prime walking and biking area. Looks to me like that’s not going to happen, and as happens so much of the time in areas all around cities and communities, the majority of people will have to make the half mile trip to the store, with their car.
I was just saying last night that it seems vehicular terrorismo is now officially a thing. We started the war on terror over 15 years ago and now it’s worse than ever. Reminds me of the war on drugs. Billions of dollars later and we’ve got more people overdosing than every before and minority communities destroyed and the largest prison population out of nearly every country. When you just try and treat the symptoms, by putting people in jail, dropping bombs, passing gun control or making protected pedestrian walkways you are not actually solving this problem. This world is getting worse all the time with no end in sight (enjoy Arby’s) and that’s not going to change until there’s a paradigm shift and we start addressing the causes of things like terrorism and addiction.
Sorry this was a little rambly. In reference to the first link, I’m trying to say that building protected areas for vulnerable users will not save them from deliberate acts of terror. Terrorists wishing to inflict massive casualties will always be able to find a way to do so. We need to reduce the motivation for terror. In general, I am all for protecting vulnerable road users. We’re much more likely to be killing by a motorist who is distracted or did not look for a cyclist or pedestrian than we are someone who is trying to do us harm.
I was not far from here when this happened:
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Car-slams-into-pedestrians-in-Jerusalem-in-suspected-terror-attack-380834
Palestinian radicals have been using car attacks in the west bank for a while now.
Goodness. I had no idea this had been happening for so long. I guess it goes to show that it takes an attack in Europe (white people) to get the US news to cover it. Sad.
The US news did cover it. But don’t worry, Israel is white enough that you don’t need to change your world view.
The latest was a truck attack in January that killed 4 and wounded 15. I hate to say it, but it’s not necessarily “news” over there. Violence is a way of life in many parts of the world that we’re incredibly fortunate to be sheltered from (for the most part).
True: violence is a way of life in many places over there. So what do we do? We invite them over here to replicate what they had over there – and they’re doing it. Geniuses.
And the war on cancer… Decades in and there’s still no end in sight!
Make love, not rhetorical war!
In fairness, we have taken some territory from cancer in the sense that several tumor types that were once death sentences are now mostly treatable. Unfortunately, our overall record isn’t exactly thrilling, likely owing to our lack of reduction in exposure to CARcinogens, among other failures.
I’d definitely rather have cancer now that 20 years ago. And I’d definitely rather have it in 20 years than now.
(and I say this as a cancer researcher)
Yeah, but the war on education seems to be going OK.
Most effective war we got going, in fact.
Nope. Education is winning big time. Poor education is destroying the nation. And doing a fair job of bankrupting it as well. Hopefully Betsy and Don will fix it. They can’t make it any worse.
Don’t count on it.
Cars as Weapons: another one this morning, terrorist drives van into mosque crowd… http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40323769
Are jetliners weapons also? Anything can be used to kill someone else, that does not mean it was designed as a weapon.
Grumpy white man intentionally plows into a crowd of Muslims.
It’s not just NASCAR drivers that are cycling enthusiasts. If anything, they’re late to the party. Most European F1 and sportscar drivers have ridden for fun and fitness for decades now.
And MotoGP riders- Nicky Hayden died recently due to injuries sustained after he was hit while riding – http://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/motor/kentuckiana-motorsports/2017/05/22/kentucky-kid-nicky-hayden-dies-five-days-after-being-hit-car-italy/336451001/
Jean Girard comes to mind. I bet that Frenchy rode a Look.
> How Oslo is (slowly but surely) banning cars: The Norwegian city boasted an ambitious carfree city plan two years ago; but business owners balked and now the plans have been tweaked in ways that can provide an important lesson for Portland.
Oslo is smart to reduce parking. It’s crazy that cities concerned with climate change go to such lengths to ensure everyone has publicly provided private SOV parking spaces.
Even if Portland did outright ban parking, it could start by using a lot more of it for shared vehicles (Getaround, car2Go, Lyft pick up/drop off etc).
I was in Oslo about six weeks ago. Never seen so many electric cars, and so few cars overall in a good sized city. Tons of walking and bikes, but also lots of people riding skate boards or scooters (the kind where you have one foot on and push with the other), including people in business suits. It is a really livable, walkable, bikable city already (if you can afford it…really, really expensive there). Portland can definitely take some lessons.
Our rents are too damned low?
Cost of living is high in Norway not because of the greed of private developers but because of the way their incomes fund social services.
Also, adding density to a city is expensive.
If you ban cars, then everyone who works in the city will want to live in the city. Rents and home prices will explode because demand will increase.
I’ll bet if Portland banned parking and cars that rents would explode. Everyone who works downtown would want to live close – no more commuting. The “ban the cars” crowd should be careful what they wish for.
“The ‘ban the cars’ crowd”
Who are they? Can you introduce us? I’d like to meet them.
Re Baltimore: Interesting to hear the example of old, narrow streets and the idea that firefighting equipment should be able to fit them. This could describe some of residential inner Southeast and Northwest Portland neighborhoods as well as many other cities with 19th century and older cores–anybody ever walk around the downtown areas of Philly, for example? Sounds like a lame excuse for wanting to remove a bike lane.
Dang! Another terror attack using a motor vehicle; and on the Champs-Elysees in the sophisticated and civilized Paris, France no less! My goodness. Whodathunkit?
And the proposed solution to this problem which is repeating more frequently throughout much of Europe? Banning cars. Well, that ain’t gonna happen, but at least one nation has solved the problem. Imagine that, after all those Pollock jokes, they outsmarted every other nation on the continent; in fact they outsmarted most of the nations on the planet:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/06/poland-no-muslim-immigrants-means-no-terror-attacks/
That’s not going to help us much here in the U.S. where our terrorists are mostly native-born and predominantly Christian.
Tell it to Boston, Orlando, San Bernardino, NYC, Roseburg, Ft. Hood, Garland, Chattanooga, Portland (thwarted), Moore, etc…………..
Yes, let’s not let facts get in the way of our ideologically driven hatred of a certain group of people.
You’re right. We all hate that group of people with the ideology that says they should kill us. What a bunch of bigots we’ve become!
To be fair, it would reduce some.
Dated info, but 29% of terror attacks seem to be from Left Wing Radicals and Communists.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/non-muslims-carried-out-more-than-90-of-all-terrorist-attacks-in-america/5333619
No use to reduce just “some”, right?
The article on policing with bikes is quite interesting.
“The bikes are a form of de-escalation in themselves.”
I thought it ironic that even so the equipment they were wearing in the photos managed to make them look menacing.
“There is certainly a Robocop feel to the outfits Seattle’s bike squad wear”
Well you all wanted density right? And you really believed everyone was just going to abandon their cars and move to Portlandia? Really?
If they drive they will sit in traffic, one way or the other. Poetic justice, or who has the last laugh, or whatever you want. The smug feeling is fleeting.