This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by the Safe Zone Helmet Mirror ~ Scan for hazards of all types with the Safe Zone Helmet Mirror, made by Portland’s Efficient Velo Tools.
Welcome to April.
Here are the best stories we came across last week…
Too bright: If drivers are being blinded by the super-bright headlights in some new cars, imagine what they do to bicycle riders.
It’s the parking, stupid: Writing for The Market Urbanism Report, Portland’s very own Tony Jordan gives a clear explanation on how our city’s auto parking policies have impacted the creation of new affordable housing.
Future of parking garages: Since private cars in cities are destined for the rubbish heap, we’d be smart to come up with better ways of using all those garages.
Timing is everything: A study from Penn State found that a major reason people don’t bike is because they incorrectly estimate how long it will take to reach their destination.
Scooter regulations: With dockless e-scooters fast approaching, the City of San Francisco says they’ll introduce new regulations to keep them in check.
Tolls 101: Consider this feature article in Governing to be your weekly homework on why congestion pricing is so hot right now as a policy tool.
A lack of will: Hate to say we told you so… But new research shows the biggest barrier to changing the road safety status quo is lack of political courage. How do we change that? Create public urgency through activism that focuses on how unsafe roads are a public health hazard and an economic liability.
Now he sees the light: The governor of Arizona embraced unproven AV technology at first. Now that someone died because it backfired (like many smart people said it would), he suddenly gets tough and rescinds Uber’s right to test in his state. Gee what courage.
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An IKEA with no parking? Are you mad?! A new IKEA in Vienna is like a dream: Not only will it eschew auto parking (!!), it will carry only products that are easily portable by foot or cargo bike. Have a feeling this will become a destination for urbanists and planners worldwide once it’s built.
Bikes go first in NYC: Bike riders in the Big Apple will be able to legally go ahead with the green “walk” signal (aka leading pedestrian interval or LPIs) at 50 intersections as part of a pilot to improve safety and bike traffic flow.
Best Twitter bot ever: A new Twitter-based tool called @HowsMyDrivingNY lets people in New York query the license plate of drivers to view their citation history. Can someone start @HowsMyDrivingOr please?
Open-air chop shops: A new law proposed in Toronto aims to deter people who live on the street from “chopping” stolen bikes in public — a problem that plagues Portland as well.
Transportation matters: The next time you see/hear a politician who conveniently ignores the transportation sector in their lofty speeches about climate change — please show them this chart (wherein we learn GHG emissions from transportation have outpaced energy-based emissions for two years running).
DAPL bike tour: Martin Eberlen biked the 1,100 miles of the Dakota Access Pipeline and was able to meet many interesting people along the way.
Vehicle parking shock-and-awe: With all the hue and cry about the “shocking” piles of discarded bike share bikes in China, we couldn’t help but notice that VW is storing 300,000 diesel-engine cars at 37 lots across the country.
Thanks, Trump!: A rollback of EPA rules means that automakers are likely to produce even more toxic, less efficient cars. Which company will step up and adhere to the existing rules? Or better yet, follow even more stringent ones? (**crickets**)
“The community” vs “the cyclists”: Props to Doug at Brooklyn Spoke for writing out this phenomenon we’ve noted in many past project debates here in Portland: The biased perception that “residents” and “those cyclists” are different groups of people.
Video of the Week: Streetfilms looks at how the city of Hoboken improved visibility of intersections by removing parking (this is something Portland activists are pushing for too):
Hoboken Prioritizes Intersection Visibility over Car Parking from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Tony Jordan for PBOT director!
A very nice article, Tony, and also a great show on KBOO recently.
Is there supposed to be a link to the VW diesel lots topic?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-storage/vw-storing-around-300000-diesels-at-37-facilities-around-u-s-idUSKBN1H50GQ
Regarding headlamp brightness “blinding” motorists: Perhaps the issue has more to do with an aging population of motorists, whose eyes don’t recover as quickly from brief exposure to lights and also don’t see as well in the dark in general, than with the brightness of the headlamps. Our lack of driver education may be in play here as well with motorists generally driving too fast for their sight lines and not knowing how to mitigate the impact of bright lights (look slightly away and close one eye).
Its now a chronic and multifaceted problem…the colour temperature of the bulbs (white >4500k vs warm <3000k), age, streamlined car fronts thus complex optics, taller vehicles, multiple trim options per model that affect headlight equipment (and beam dynamics), lack of state inspection and enforcement…on and on and on…
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/most-small-suv-headlights-rate-poor-in-iihs-evaluations
…the only thing worse in cities are the high wattage bicycle headlights without per beam cut-off (often developed for off-road use) vs. German approved on road optics…
Also, Oregon has no requirement for mechanical inspection of vehicles. Some people are totally unaware that their headlights are aimed above the horizon. Bike lights, same thing.
Honest question: The light on my bike only works well when it is pointed straight ahead. If I point it down, it makes a bright spot on the pavement a few feet in front of me, which is not at all useful and just blinds me to other stuff. If I point it straight ahead, it illuminates the road nice and evenly out to 20-30 feet, which is great. But I am mindful of the problems of blinding other people. The question is, what can/should I do to improve this situation. Note that the light is a permanent part of my bike, so I’m not sure if replacing it is practical.
Try putting tape over the upper part of the light.
You can’t point it between those two spots?
I can, which gives me a result between the two. Moderate, not great, ability to see stuff. And I suspect it still get’s in people’s eyes quite a bit.
I don’t claim to be an expert, but I’m pretty happy with my setup. I use a Lezyne Macro Drive 800XL on the front bar, usually set at 400 or 250 lumens (or lower if I’m on a bike path) and aimed at the ground about 20 yards in front of me, coupled with a helmet-mounted Light & Motion Vis 360, which I turn off when on a bike path. The helmet-mounted light is great for aiming around corners, or pointing at drivers who have failed to notice me.
The problem is that headlights are much brighter than they used to be: federal standards dictate the wattage consumed by headlight bulbs (55W/65W for low/high beams if I remember right), not their brightness. With HID and LED technology able to put out several times the output per watt consumed as the halogen bulbs these regulations were designed around, that’s insane.
And although maybe an aging population is “part of the problem”, it is typically several decades from when a person’s night vision starts to deteriorate and they may be more affected by glare (at which point they should driver slower, but should also not have to be blinded by excessively bright headlights), but before they need to hang up their car keys.
The headlight thing is serious — this is *much* worse for people on bikes/trikes low to the ground where your eyeballs are at headlight level.
Having said that, I haven’t experienced much trouble with this in densely populated areas where drivers typically don’t run brights and the high amount of ambient lighting requires much less adjustment of the eyes. In fact, I find bicycles running daytime strobes or who simply have poorly aimed super bright lights are a bigger nuisance. Though once you get into areas where motorists use their brights, this is a common occurrence.
What I personally find effective when being blinded by motorists is to blip them once, and then one more time a couple seconds later with my helmet light if they don’t lower their levels. If that doesn’t work, I figure they can’t find the light switch in the darkness so I direct I reaim all my lighting into their cockpit to assist. With my old 1600 lumen setup, the drivers were able to successfully find and activate their light controls properly 100% of the time 🙂
I find even non-high-beam car headlights to be much, much too bright. I doubt I’d need half as powerful of a front headlight at night if car lights weren’t constantly ruining my night vision.
Like with reflectors and ugly high-viz clothing and accessories, it seems that everyone else has to suffer because drivers and their cars are so dangerous.
Why is a hi-viz top and reflective bits on accessory clothing and bike ugly? I’m not into fashion so I’m biased in that way, but seems simple to me that safety trumps vanity. (I’ve ridden in Euro cities w/properly designed streets where hi-viz is much less/not important, but I don’t think that’s the reality we live in today or the next twenty+ years)
Amen–I consider earth-toned clog hint and polite lighting a luxury to be indulged in if we ever live in an ideal future where drivers can be considered to be human beings instead of a hostile, subhuman predatory species.
The Feds approved these brighter lights, it seems, because they have such a sharp “cut-off”, so they’re never in your eyes. On a flat, straight road that is. However, if there’s a dip and rise as a car goes through an intersection (and there almost always is, for drainage), then the car will aim upward, and the new,, brighter lights are now in your eyes. Combine that with a reduction in the output of street lights in the late 70s (to save energy, you know), which since then have all been at the equivalent lower lumens, you have headlights coming at you that are much brighter than the illuminated roadway, rendering it difficult to see pedestrians or cyclists.
Me too. In my car, my eyes are at a much lower height than when I’m on my bike (my car is low). When driving I have to keep my eyes on the road hundreds of feet ahead, while when I’m riding I can briefly look down at the road just 30 or 50 feet ahead. Also the car is subject to glare on the windshield. I think that is why, for me, oncoming headlight dazzle is more of a problem when driving than when riding.
That twitter bot story has loads of propaganda at the bottom from our favorite driver troll, James C Walker from the National Motorists Association.
I love the article about converting parking in to living space in Urban areas. Once we really internalize the statement, ” private cars in cities are destined for the rubbish heap” it makes our path forward clear.
Yeah, except that’s not how things are going to go down with AVs. Although AV technology will reduce the cost of carsharing dramatically, there will still be lots of people who will want private cars and all that goes with them. If anything, the auto industry will simply up its marketing game. People LOVE throwing money away on cars: witness that the median transaction price for a new car has surpassed $35,000, even though you can get a perfectly nice, comfortable and (by historical standards) fast car for half that.
I think AVs will so dramatically shift the paradigm that it could well upend current thinking about ownership. Or not; it’s really too early for any of us to do anything but speculate.
It might be nice to have access to a variety of different vehicle types, depending on what you want to haul, or what you’re doing.
I’m guessing people will still want access to private vehicles for the times when they want to do something really different, like hardcore off-roading, or driving 100mph all the way to San Francisco. Or if the cost of ownership ends up being less than AV taxi service.
In oregon, it is illegal for MV drivers to flash brights at other drivers when they leave their brights shining in your eyes. This law was in place before MV lights became so bright that they need small dedicated fans blowing on each one from behind, as with my coworker’s truck. So the state felt excess brightness was an issue long ago. I agree. The last time I flicked my brights to get somebody blinding me with their super-brights, it turned out to be a cop in an SUV with “Police Special” headlights super bright white halogen beams. Didn’t get a ticket that time and I’ve come to recognize that vehicle (same work commute route down dark SE Powell in the middle of the night every night.) I don’t feel good about averting my eyes from the travel lane for one second to avoid the light. That’s how fast a kid on foot, a bicyle rider, or a drunk could get in my lane. So there is a problem.
Holy crap, they have headlights with active cooling? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard since they started using rubber timing belts on interference engines…
And yet millions of car engines have been built that way, and only occasionally do the belts snap cause bent valves.
There might be a rarely enforced law against it, but outlawing a quick flash of the lights for communication is a clear violation of the OR Constitution’s free speech clause. Remember, not too many years ago the law against honking your horn for communication was thrown out, on the same grounds. Seems any lawyer who got a 2.0 GPA in law school should be able to get such a ticket thrown out.
Reasonable restrictions on free speech (and other rights) are regularly upheld where there’s a good reason for the restriction. There’s no safety reason to ban honking; there’s a safety reason to ban flashing high-beams. Your analogy doesn’t hold up.
The danger you pose by flashing your high beams is far smaller than the danger of not doing so.
No, there actually isn’t. A quick flash of the beams is no danger to anyone. The state of my analogy is strong.
I’d love to get rid of the chop shops here in Portland. But I’m very concerned that police aren’t able to (or don’t care to) discriminate between a chop shop and a person fixing a flat or performing routine maintenance in public.
We have every reason to worry that what looks like fixing a flat when a white person is doing it will look like a chop shop when a person of color is doing it.
I’m very curious to see Toronto’s legal definition of an illegal chop shop.
I am not sure what is driving your concern. Is there more than one bike present or a pile of parts when someone is fixing a flat?
Very sound point about equity here. If we can’t have traffic law enforcement because of equity concerns, is there any reason to think things will go better with a chop shop law? It’s another redundant law that will be selectively enforced against people that “we” don’t like. It’s already illegal to take parts off a stolen bike and sell them. Do we need to make it illegal to work on a bike in public?
Fixing flats usually involves taking a wheel off. And it’s pretty common to steal a bike minus a wheel, or just a wheel, and put those things together.
The difference between a person doing some maintenance on a bike they legitimately own and a person assembling stolen parts into bikes for sale is a bit of a “know it when I see it” thing… and it’s very difficult to enforce laws like that fairly. Someone living in an apartment without a parking lot near a park might have a good reason to work on their bike in a park. So might a homeless person! Homeless people do have possessions and few places to keep and maintain them but public places!
Toronto then proposes second-time offenders be banned from entering parks! What a punishment! Of course, almost anyone that could possibly chop bikes in a covered place with locking doors would surely prefer to do so there, just as almost anyone that could possibly afford a home with a roof and doors would prefer that over sleeping under a bridge. So they go after the lowest-rung and most members of the stolen-bike market, and hold over their heads banishment from the public realm? There are lots of good measures to be taken against bike theft, but this smells a lot like bans on working on street-parked cars: it’s about making the city look better, not making it better.
3+ bike frames on the side of the road would be a good starting point. I can’t imagine a normal scenario where someone would be “fixing” 3 different bikes in public at the same time that’s not illegal.
Maybe put the Portland police through a brief UBI course? Seriously–if a police officer isn’t a cyclist, let’s teach them the difference between Joe/Jane Bikie changing a flat and Mickey Methlab stripping down the bike they just stole.
Dave,
Thanks to the (small but mighty!) Portland Police Bureau Bike Theft Task Force, there are 2-3 officers on the bike patrol unit that are doing internal trainings for other officers. They are teaching them how to spot stolen bikes, the differences between a crap bike and a sweet bike, and so on.
That’s truly good news, thanks for mentioning it!
This is one of the reasons I oppose all laws.
The emissions charts show we are clearly driving ourselves to “Heck” in the proverbial automobile “hand basket”.
So are disused dock-less bike share bikes all stored off street in private facilities in maintained condition? Or contrary, is VW abandoning cars to rust away on streets, sidewalks, in canals and lakes and generally in the public right of way? No? Neither is true? Then that roundup item is false equivalency and really not up to the usual BP excellence. There is plenty of factual, logical problems to report on with our addiction to car culture rather than invent weird ones just because not everything is perfect with bike shares.
Hmm. I think there may be a misunderstanding.
I think the comparison is being made between these (visually stunning) photos of Chinese bike share bikes laying in decommissioned heaps: https://www.wired.com/story/photo-of-the-week-a-dizzying-view-of-a-bicycle-graveyard-in-china/
And the (also visually stunning) photos of the decommissioned Volkswagen diesels:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-storage/vw-storing-around-300000-diesels-at-37-facilities-around-u-s-idUSKBN1H50GQ
No misunderstanding. Without a link to a photo like that we are left to assume the comparison is to the streets, sidewalks, parks etc. littered with discarded bike share bikes in cities that have them. Cars, whether stored and maintained like the VWs or junkyards gross as they are do not intrude into the public space. I still think it’s a weak comparison. But I did see now the galleries like on The Atlantic of massive piles of discarded bikes in lots, but they were still collected off the streets. It’s not like all those cars were towed to those lots.
How about this kind of thing? http://pix11.com/2017/09/27/queens-street-littered-with-abandoned-cars/
When I was growing up, we had three rusted out junkers in our front yard – as you can imagine, our neighbors loved it. Ton per ton, there are a lot more abandoned cars intruding on public space and blighting public-facing private space than abandoned bikes. We’re just so used to seeing them they aren’t an outrage anymore, though they’re a much bigger hazard than abandoned bikes.
Many of the people in that news clip you linked to seemed outraged.
Not enough to say that private cars have failed as a transportation mode. 🙂
I took a train north from Seattle earlier this week–I saw several stripped bike share bikes in what could probably be called a homeless camp.
Thanks for posting the Governing article on congestion pricing. I’m conflicted on the issue. Drivers should pay more. But giving public land and infrastructure to a private company to provide for-profit, high-speed Lexus Lanes isn’t in the public interest. Better to raise money through progressive taxation for public transit for all.
As a Mercedes driver, I have to agree. Keep those Lexuses out of the lane I’m paying good money for. Those people can take the bus.
I live at a crash prone intersection on SE Ankeny. It’s extremely difficult to see cars coming trying to cross. If you’re in a regular car (not suv) you basically have to pull half way into the road to see around the cars that are often parked all the way up to the corner. Those Hoboken intersections would be a major improvement.
All we would have to do is get PBOT to follow the existing Oregon law.
Maybe I misinterpret ORS 811.550(17), but that means vehicles need to be at least 20 feet from the crosswalk of any intersection, marked or unmarked. That means most vehicles parked too close to the curb (which block sightlines) are in violation. In my experience, this law is seldom if ever enforced, and so it encourages operators to park their cars consistently illegaly.
I also live at the corner of a dangerous intersection for the same reason you cited – the sightlines are awful. I’ve witnessed two crashes here in the last year and many, many close calls. I get on the horn with parking enforcement almost daily to call in the most egregious – people blocking crosswalks – and still the problem continues to happen right in front of my house.
I’m not really sure there is enough parking enforcement to keep up with it all anyway, and I imagine a lot of people just ignore these tickets since they have no real teeth. Is there any regulation which says all tickets must be paid before a vehicle’s registration can be renewed? Seems like a no-brainer, but what do I know..
If curbs were bumped out at intersections, that would allow greenery and bioswales, bike racks, shorter pedestrian crossing distances, a narrower road that tends to slow drivers down, and require cars to make sharper and hence slower turns rather than cutting the corner. As well as improving intersection visibility.
I’d love to make an OR version of the violation twitter bot- unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it’s not possible right now.
A quick search of https://data.oregon.gov/ shows no data available for violations, citations, traffic or convictions. If someone finds it, tell me, and I will build it.
Penn State Study: “Actual travel times were calculated using Google maps”… sooo you really just compared a human estimate to a computer estimate.
I know for me that google maps vastly overestimates my cycling time… although may be more accurate for folks in street clothes navigating a university campus.
Seriously, the Google Maps estimate is never even close for me. I just looked at a typical 6 mile one-way trip to a friend’s house that I know from actually timing myself many times takes me 15-20 minutes. Google’s estimate is 36 minutes, so my actual times would have been in the error of estimation category in that garbage study.
Too much desk work, not enough field work in that thing. Data validation is kind of necessary if one wants to draw meaningful conclusions other than, “There’s a disconnect between Googlemaps’ estimates and real people’s estimates of how long walking and cycling trips take.”
Google’s estimate works out to a 10mph average including traffic controls and turns. 18 minutes works out to 20mph which is a decent pace on an unimpeded road for a recreational road rider, and 15min is a strong rider on an aero setup on clear straight road.
For most riders — “average” people on heavy upright bikes and not applying much effort –Google estimates should be about right. Fit people who push themselves on fast bikes will be much quicker, but such people wouldn’t expect a generic estimate for a rider doing a relaxed pace on a hybrid relevant.
If there’s a disconnect, it’s how far people here think the population at large will pedal — which I find strange as I am under the distinct impression that there are relatively few people even here that do much distance on a daily basis.
That is indeed a strange impression to have… otherwise I agree and google estimates are likely accurate for someone that’s going to just jump on their bike without much change in routine, gear, etc…
Riding from 11th & Morrison to the turn onto Terwilliger is 2.75 miles of city riding. Getting it done in 15min elapsed time/12 min rolling time takes effort – the effort of staying on the green lights up Jefferson and up Broadway (on my commuter with marathon tires, bags, lights and my gear from work).
My entire ride home (14miles) can vary by +/-10 minutes depending how my legs feel and how the lights work. Rolling averages of 14-15.5mph, elapsed averages as low as 13. Heck, last night I rolled up Lombard, just missed the light at Beav-Hillsdale, was just about to get the signal when WES went through- resetting the cycle I think I sat there for 5minutes 🙁
On my weekend “fast” trike I can average 18+mph going out to Banks and back (48miles).
So, yeah, 10mph for most people allowing for lights and what have you seems pretty reasonable.
Agree, I kept waiting for the “So now they actually did walk or ride and were blown away by reality!”
Google Maps seems to be about 10 MPH, which is pretty good for me… I’ll be up around 12 MPH at the end of summer…
This is off-topic – but does anyone know how many minutes you are allotted for the public testimony at the Off-road Cycling plan tomorrow? Usually it’s 2 or 3?
Hi Kate,
From the Parks website:
“Individual Comments on Other Aspects of the ORCMP (excluding Forest Park and Riverview) 6 slots for testimony, each speaker limited to 2 minutes. Individuals wishing to speak will be asked to submit a Speaker Request Form. If there are more interested speakers than slots, there will be a drawing to determine the 6 individuals who will speak.”
That article about misestimating walking/biking travel times is so on point. It’s amazing how often I’ve decided to walk somewhere that seems very far and can’t believe how quickly I arrive. Or when you realize it would take 17 minutes to drive somewhere or 26 minutes to bike there and then not have to worry about parking. Makes me think of that UoP student quoted recently who spent 30 minutes looking for parking, only to drive home and walk the 4(!!!!) blocks back to campus.
The last few weeks I’ve been doing less biking and more travel on foot (walking and/or running). Although slower than biking, I’m regularly amazed how much less slow it is to get somewhere on foot than I would have expected not that long ago.
I used to think of a mile or so as far as I’d be willing to travel on foot before wishing I had a bike, or a bus, or a car to shrink the distance. That has now increased to several miles. As long as I have a little (and, really, not that much) extra time to spare, I no longer think of covering 2-4 miles on foot as a big deal.
I’m the exact opposite – because taking a low trike into parking lots doesn’t appeal, I walk to the store (1/2 mile away for Freddies/Trader Joe’s, 3/4 or so away for New Seasons) and walk to the MAX on days I don’t ride to work (1/2 mile from home, 1 mile from work) – and I’ve been considering getting an inexpensive upright for those trips.
At 51 and with my bad knees (I switched from running/walking 40+ miles a week to cycling because of them) I get kind of achy on the weekends from getting all my shopping done for the week.
I live in North Tabor. A few weeks ago, on a very pleasant day, I decided to walk to the Hollywood Library to return a book, a distance of about 1.6 miles. Once I got there, the day being so nice, I decided to just keep walking. Almost before I knew it I was crossing the Broadway bridge into Downtown. My fitness app tells me I walked about 9 miles (I did cheat and took the MAX back home). If someone had suggested I walk all the way downtown from my house I would have thought they were insane…now it doesn’t seem that crazy really.
Dream Ikea?
The inventory is nearly all manufactured far away by low-wage labor, shipped to the destination country, trucked to the store and the profits are washed through fake nonprofits based in the Netherlands.
The avoidance of auto parking and carrying only more portable objects isn’t laudable, it’s laughable.
Pathetic.
As is your choice of verbage in your post. You can, and should do better.