Welcome to the week.
We’re excited to announce a new sponsor: Lovejoy’s Tea Room at (NE 33rd and Killingsworth). Owned and operated by a BikePortland reader, you’ll get a 10 percent discount if you arrive by foot, bike or transit!
And with that, here are the most noteworthy things we came across in the past seven days…
Next level indoor riding: A must-read from Bicycling about how Zwift is making indoor cycling not just a training tool but a new discipline altogether.
Clearcutting the Corridor: Sellwood resident Edith Mirante laments the loss of trees near her home adjacent to a newly paved section of the Springwater Corridor path.
Helmet ads in hot water: The German transport ministry is facing harsh criticism for a pro-helmet ad campaign that features scantily-clad models.
Bike taxes lowered: In a bid to reduce congestion and promote cycling, the Belgium parliament voted to drastically reduce taxes on the purchase of new bicycles from 21 to 6 percent.
Street protest collision: A man who drove his truck through a crowd of protestors in October and allegedly hit one person on purpose, had the case against him dismissed when the plaintiff said he wouldn’t testify.
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E-scooter injuries: As the next wave of e-scooter use comes this summer the Centers for Disease Control are taking a closer look at how people were injured while using them. In San Diego, 48 percent of people injured had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit for intoxication and 52 percent tested for an illicit substance.
Get rid of cars in cities: Not only is Portland not on this list of eight cities taking bold action to limit car use in cities, we are actively working to expand car use (thanks PBOT and ODOT!). Sorry.
Hate crime with a car as the weapon: A jury ruled that a man with ties to a white supremacist gang is guilty of a hate crime when he purposely used this Jeep to run down and kill Larnell Bruce in Gresham in 2016.
Role reversal: Ford has a problem with their Explorer SUVS as hundreds of people say fumes inside the cars are making them sick.
“The best offense is none at all”: The Bike Snob says no matter how angry you are, it’s never worth it to confront an auto user.
Longer commutes: New data show higher housing costs in Portland are leading to longer-distance commutes and the bad news is public transit users spend way more time getting to work than drivers do.
Helmet testing: After the big debut of new “WaveCel” helmet tech last week, VeloNews reports that the folks behind MIPS say more standardized testing is needed to make accurate comparisons between safety ratings.
No more cars: A NY Times columnist says private car ownership is on the way out and she’s practicing what she preaches.
Twitter thread of the week:
Cars are the perfect late capitalist consumer product: an expensive, often de facto mandatory, solution to a problem that the product itself has largely caused.
— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw) March 22, 2019
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Hey Jonathan, the link for getting rid of cars in cities is missing. Sounds like a great read!
Fixed. Sorry about that. Here’s the link
Haven’t tried Zwift yet because I use a Galaxy tablet (Rouvy is my go-to), but having a smart trainer indoors has radically improved my fitness options and those of my wife and several friends. I have some Zwifting friends who are virtually unbeatable now (pardon the pun), two friends with bronchitis who prefer indoors air quality (much less the experience I’ve just had of three right hooks in three days of road rides all by Uber drivers), and one friend with a disability who uses a modified Di2 bike on a Kickr after years of hating outdoors riding with STI shifters. For me, the difference is in having a trainer where I can set target power and push my fitness, but I know it’s the social and competitive aspects for most of my friends.
I use Zwift as well, more in the winter months than when it’s warmer. It’s a great tool for getting intervals in without having to worry about conflict with other road/trail/path users, and it’s a quick and easy way to get in a pre-work “ride” when it’s dark, rainy, icy, snowy, etc. I’d add that it’s a particularly nice tool for women and other folks who may be/feel more vulnerable out alone on the road/trail.
I ditched Rouvy a year ago for BigRingVR – maybe Rouvy has improved since then?
I like the training aspects of Zwift but sometimes the “scenery” gets tiring. After doing the Tour of London, I vowed never to visit London.
Will check it out, thx! My wife and I use three profiles (one for tandem on the old fluid trainer) and swap seat/posts on a shared bike. Samsung Galaxy is great because it picks up ANT so I don’t have to screw with BT (hasn’t always been reliable). We have the family plan for a year which lets me spin through many a conference call year-round. Rouvy getting better… slowly.
Cheers, Brendon! I’ll get to Lovejoy’s one of these days.
Knickers?
Thermal, yes.
I agree with Bike Snob about trying to correct drivers who cut you off or otherwise make riding difficult for you. I have found that letting those things go, both as a driver or as a rider, leaves me in a better mood than confronting them. Teaching them the traffic laws is not my job. They will learn eventually, maybe by getting a ticket, maybe by just growing up a little, without, I hope, hurting anyone. I don’t think that getting yelled at encourages them to reflect on their behavior.
For some of us, yelling and lecturing is a form of letting go… 😉
Likewise, I’ve found that apologizing to a cyclist you’ve cut off is unproductive. Neither side wants to hear, they both just want to speak.
Wear a camera. Use a dash cam.
Personally I won’t speak to or listen to anyone inside a motor vehicle while I’m on a bike, either riding or stopped at a light. If you’re in a car you don’t exist to me, don’t give me advice or ask for directions and I won’t regale you with my thoughts and opinions.
Many drivers probably view you the same way.
Refusing to engage / further distract confused motor vehicle operators is different than the sociopathic indifference to life that you seem to support. Good job keeping up your false equivalency marathon however.
My experience in talking to drivers has been different than yours, apparently.
Speaking of sociopathy…
“If you’re in a car you don’t exist to me “
Somebody should speak to AOC and her use of Uber.
As someone who has been a road cyclist for fifty years I have to say that’s not sociopathy–that’s wisdom and someone who has progressed beyond that naive “kumbaya” stage of their cycling life.
Hey look if everybody obeys the law, you barely need to address the thorny question of others’ existence.
Next what?
Having trouble seeing your point. People do break laws. So you would prefer to spend time considering whether people exist then? That was a joke that you missed there buddy, an allusion to the kind of college intro philosophy class where such things are discussed at great and tedious length with no ultimate outcome. Whether pro- or con-other-people’s-existence, it’s best not to clutter one’s saddle-bound thoughts with that kind of thing.
Or maybe you’re saying laws are worthless if there isn’t perfect compliance? Most of the time, people obey them, so I would have to disagree. And doing so prevents problems to a surprising degree. Almost anytime a cyclist dies for example, someone has to break a law first (or else in the act of killing a cyclist someone de facto breaks one) so I’m rather fond of them.
Or maybe just the fact that these are all replies to Troll-Boy up there, has you all turned around.
Everybody here has to be espousing either the same or the polar opposite opinion, isn’t that how it goes in fake insane dumb-ass America now?
Or maybe you’re simply trying to get me to suddenly not like you, which worked. Dismiss ME with a lazy one-liner, I don’t think so. Lighten up, go to college, and don’t alienate your would-be friends. Next.
Regarding tree removal for trail construction, The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a federal law that prohibits “take” of birds. Cutting during nesting season should not be allowed
You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette.
The trees didn’t have to be cut down during nesting season. And is sounds like there were alternatives that could have prevented cutting the trees down.
As Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke gutted the Migratory Birds Act protections, so Portland Parks & Rec. was able to take advantage of currently nonexistent Fed. guidelines and clearcut the Sellwood Gap from SE 9th to 11th, wrong side of tracks, during nesting season for its extra-wide pavement.
Heya,
“No more cars: A NY Times columnist says private car ownership is on the way out and she’s practicing what she preaches.” just links to the Twitter link below it. Thanks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/end-of-cars-uber-lyft.html
Like the idea, but it doesn’t seem realistic outside of large cities.
I don’t think private car ownership is on the way out, even if we eventually get driverless cars. A lot of people will still want to have their own personalized vehicle – cars are clothing to most Americans, have NYT columnists still not gotten this after 100 years? – with their stuff in it, parked in front of their house and ready to drive without waiting for someone to show up.
Sure, driverless cars and the shared model will cut down on ownership quite a bit, especially for more urban residents. Sure, car ownership is ridiculously expensive. But so are Uber and Lyft, if you use them every day. I see the dominance of individually owned cars diminishing somewhat, but not going away.
This, of course, is all assuming we continue down the present path of technological advancement and growth, but without a massive scaling back of how much energy we consume. I know 9watts thinks that is coming, but I also think he underestimates how much longer the frog that is the American public is willing to sit in the boiling water.
” I know 9watts thinks that is coming, but I also think he underestimates how much longer the frog that is the American public is willing to sit in the boiling water.”
I’m with you on our fellow Americans being disinclined to give up their cars, change their preferences. My point here has been that it won’t be up to them, up to us.
News flash: fear, uncertainly, and doubt are stock in trade for the helmet industry.
The MIPS response is telling. They can’t sue WaveCel away like other competitors, so they want the goalposts moved instead. Higher standards are good, but it’s all talk until MIPS puts them forth as a benchmark instead of a black box of superiority.
I try to take the opposite approach to street arguments with motorists and chose to instead give a wave or a verbal thanks to the drivers who ARE behaving in a mutually respectful way, usually in the way they either yield the right of way to me when I have it or by passing courteously slowly and with generous space etc.
I might not be able to change minds of the biggest idiots out there, but I can help to make sure the ones getting along keep doing it. Yes, I know some will say you shouldn’t have to thank people for just doing the legal/right thing, but I don’t see it as an obligation, just something I find a salve to the stress that can overshadow the beautiful activity of riding a bike. I usually feel pretty good afterwards as well.
Jonathan – I would suggest deleting the last sentence in your write up on e-scooters. As the San Diego information has not been published or peer reviewed yet [so far these news articles are just cut and pasting information from 1 interview, as best as I have seen from monitoring this topic].
Until more research is completed – perhaps the only thing one can concretely say [based the international trends]: there are a lot of electronic foot scooters being used in many cities worldwide AND the majority of the reported injuries presenting at ER / A&E rooms are from the scooter operator being involved in a single vehicle crash [vs. being stuck by a car etc.]
I want this.
The update on the Sellwood Gap is that last Wed.-Fri. Portland Parks & Rec. obliterated every tree on the south side of the tracks from the walnut at SE 9th to the doug fir at SE 11th. They needed a logging truck to cart it all away. It was live-tweeted here:
https://twitter.com/EdithMirante/status/1108477261433303040
Then they bulldozed the embankment into a muddy shallow slope scattered with straw. All for 2 more blocks of detour + stop signs with PP&R using bike riders “falling” as their shoddy excuse for 16 ft. wide pavement. 10 ft. wide pavement with 2 ft. of gravel shoulder would have been fine to ride on and saved most of the trees.
Sellwood Gap tree-mageddon could absolutely have been avoided. Should have been.
Another cycle centric business is effectively biting the dust this month. SoupCycle has now stopped its B-Line home delivery service, now selling its product through standard delivery services like Caviar, citing “rising costs”. The writing had been on the wall since the original founder sold out a few years ago. Their kitchen and storefront will remain in The Redd on SE 7th.