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The Monday Roundup: Major Taylor recognized, cycling’s bro culture, campus car culture, and more


Here are the most noteworthy items we came across in the past seven days…

Remembered: Cycling legend and pioneer Major Taylor finally got some of the respect he deserves from America’s newspaper of record as he was featured in their special “Overlooked” series of obituaries.

Cycling bros strike again: Discrimination against women is rife in the Outdoor industry and the bike industry is the worst, with 55% of women surveyed saying they’ve been victims of bias. A group led by people of color has been pushing for diversity in the industry long before this recent survey received attention.

As we were saying: A pro racer is in hot water after he made a lewd gesture toward a woman in an informal photograph.

Women breaking rules: A program to get women on bikes in a city in Pakistan is inspiring and liberating women while causing a stir among men who think they shouldn’t even leave the house.

Off-road riding benefits: A program in Scotland uses urban mountain biking as a way to improve peoples’ mental health. Add this to the myriad reasons Portland needs to expand local singletrack options!

Scooter CEO gets it: “The deeper I get into transportation, the more I realize we don’t need autonomous vehicles, we don’t need tunnels, all we need are more bike lanes,” said Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden at a recent conference.

Riding in cold: You heard about the crazy polar vortex weather that hit the midwest; but did you stop to think what it would be like to ride a bike through it?

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Stars upon e-bikes: Electric bikes are a big hit with many Hollywood A-listers. Now, if we could only get writers and directors to display them in a respectful, accurate way in their productions!

DeFazio interview: Oregon’s very own U.S. House Rep. Peter DeFazio, new chair of the powerful House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, didn’t break much new ground in an interview with Streetsblog.

Interval to freedom: Spend some time with this amazing but true story about Tom Justice, a once serious racer who used his bike as a getaway vehicle for dozens of bank robberies.

Car culture on campus: UCLA officials found that students take about 11,000 Uber/Lyft rides each week for short trips that never leave campus. Sigh.

Oregon failing on emissions: City Observatory once again lays out the truth about Oregon when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions: Largely due to our state DOT being a de facto driving advocacy group we are failing to meet our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

Less biking in SF: The SF Examiner reports that on U.S. Census figures that show a decrease of 20,000 bike trips in 2017 compared to 2016.

Ciclovia his Ethiopian capitol: Addis Ababa went carfree for a day and the results were absolutely beautiful (and totally predictable).

— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org

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