Welcome to the week.
Here are the most noteworthy items we came across in the past seven days…
Bicycle riders are dangerous in Japan: This Japan News article says bicycle riders need more insurance because there are 2,500 collisions between bicycle riders and walkers each year and in 2017 there were 299 bicycle collisions where walkers were killed or severely wounded.
Tandems and true love: Just in time for Valentine’s Day CBS News has a story about a couple that says their happy marriage of 45 years is due in large part to the 197,000 miles they’ve logged on a tandem.
Representation matters: A cycling journalist noticed something rare during a major SRAM product launch: A black woman as the lead image. Turns out SRAM is doing much-needed work to make the cycling industry less white and less male.
Micromobility conference recap: A measured and informed account of what happened at the first-ever micromobility conference where the focus was on the 90 percent of U.S. auto trips that have the potential to be made by much smaller vehicles — a move that could, “reshape American cities around vehicles that are far more suited to them.”
War on cars, sport-radio style: The latest episode of the excellent War on Cars pod imagines what streets activism would sound like on sports talk radio.
Salem’s “third bridge” debate: A big meeting in Salem today will decide the fate of a major bridge project. Officials have spent 10 years and $9 million talking and planning for the project with the debate falling on familiar lines: Supporters say it’s needed for growth and traffic relief while detractors worry about environmental harm and other impacts. The Salem Breakfast on Bikes blog has done amazing reporting on the issue.
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Green New Deal: Oregon’s House Rep. Earl Blumenauer is one of the early and ardent supporters of this high-profile initiative. So far he hasn’t said he’ll use it as a vehicle to push for bicycling infrastructure (perhaps he’s saving that announcement for the National Bike Summit in March?) and overall, transportation planning wonks say it “fails” to address land-use and sprawl (see next item).
Land use is everything: Reuters reports on the vast challenge of reducing tailpipe emissions in California (and Texas) because the impacts of car-centric, sprawling urban design far outweigh current mitigation efforts. They should look to Seattle and Minneapolis for inspiration.
Road diet deniers: A group of L.A.-based road diet haters has launched a national movement dubbed “Keep the U.S. Moving,” a name that’s very close to ODOT’s Keep Oregon Moving (the name for the current transportation funding package). Hmmmm.
Planning for who?: Noted bicycle researcher Anne Lusk makes the case that cities rely too much on feedback from wealthy white people when making decisions about where to put high quality cycling facilities.
Thanks to everyone who shared submissions this week!
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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