Welcome to the week.
Before we get started let’s say thanks to our sponsor: The Banana Belt Fat Bike Festival. Celebrate the Southern Oregon Coast at this family-friendly event that promises fat bikes, great beaches, and great beer. Get registered at BikeGoldBeach.com.
Here are the most notable stories we came across in the past seven days…
Baltimore’s quick fix: A very hopeful story about a city effectively created protected space for people by using plastic jersey barriers.
Spokane’s cycle track: The City of Spokane, Washington is about to begin building what would be their first major downtown protected bikeway.
Inclusive transit 101: With transit investments coming from TriMet, the State of Oregon, and the City of Portland — now is a great time to better understand how to create systems that aim directly at reversing mobility disparities. Thankfully Transit Center has just released a great set of recommendations and videos.
Thank you for shutting up: The Bike Snob thinks roads are best shared when there’s no verbal interaction between drivers and bicycle riders. Not sure I agree with this 100 percent; but he makes a compelling — and as always, a funny — case.
What a waste: An analysis of parking spaces in many U.S. cities gives hard numbers to the fact that we have way more real estate devoted to car storage than we need.
Secret socialism: Allow economist Joe Cortright to explain the ways in which America has become a socialist country when it comes to one aspect of civic life: auto parking.
One more on parking: Curb space wasted on parked cars is perhaps even more of a shame than surface lots, for all the reasons expounded upon in this Slate article.
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Pro cycling’s gender problem: This excellent roundup of facts about men’s and women’s pro cycling shows a stark contrast between the two when it comes to pay, media, racing opportunities, and more.
Bike parking arms race: Read it and weep: “The Netherlands is experiencing an underground bike-park boom, as cities race each other to build the largest.”
Safer school zones: Forget about low speed limits and/or cameras, a district in Vienna is trying an outright ban on driving as a way to keep kids safe when coming to and from school.
I drive better distracted: OMG this study from King County found that 75 percent of respondents claim they can safely drive and text. Reminds me of what people used to say about driving drunk — before we as a society made that an unacceptable thing to do.
Biking while black: Despite promises that they’d stop the practice, the Chicago Police Department continue to pull over bicycle riders for petty crimes in what is clearly more of an effort to hassle people in underserved communities than to keep them safe.
Bikes rule, cars drool: In a trove of data released for their San Francisco market, Uber says customers seem to favor their e-bikes over their cars — “In other words, Uber is disrupting itself.”
Divided by cars: Richard Florida lays out the ways in which America’s allegiance to cars and driving exacerbates the growing political and economic divisions that are tearing our country apart.
L.A.’s struggle with speeds: This article in the LA Times that explains a dangerous Catch-22 in police enforcement of speeding in Los Angeles makes me really appreciate the work of the City of Portland.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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