Welcome to the week.
Here are the most noteworthy items we came across in the past seven days…
“June the Broom” is watching: Concerned bike lane users in D.C. have resorted to sticking brooms in flex posts to make them more visible.
New cargo bike era: NYC has gone big with a pilot program that will allow operators of 100 electric freight delivery trikes to park in loading zones citywide.
Scooter polluter: The fact that climate change group Extinction Rebellion has begun sabotaging e-scooters due to their environmental footprint gives me second thoughts about how much I should get behind them.
Car culture run amok: CNN Travel’s hagiographic story about dudes who sped illegally across country “Cannonball Run” style is everything that’s wrong with American transportation culture.
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“Trans women are women”: Outspoken transgender athlete, target of Donald Trump ire, and track World Champion Rachel McKinnon published an opinion in the NY Times saying that “We are not taking over” and that being able to compete is a human right.
Smaller streets FTW: Yelp-influenced science finds that Manhattan’s smaller, intimate “streets” have better food that gets higher reviews than larger “avenues”.
More reason to ride Williams Ave: One of the busiest sections of N Williams Avenue (in terms of cycling traffic) will soon be home to a food cart pod.
Coach Balto doing work: Portlander Sam Balto, who we featured a few months ago for his Red Cup Project work, was featured by KATU TV for his work in making streets around Cesar Chavez school safer.
The naughty list: Portland made a list of cities who have “climate mayors” who support freeway widening.
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KC’s free transit miracle: “If we want to prioritize public transportation, [the funding] is something that we can find,” said a Kansas City city council member who voted to completely subsidize public transit and make it free for all users.
Climate politics: New Pew polling shows that even among registered Republicans there is growing public support for taking strong actions against climate change. (Link shared by former Portland Mayor (and climate change expert) Sam Adams.)
Screw your free parking: City of Denver staff are the heroes of the week for standing up and telling people that a safer bike lane is more important than 91 on-street parking spaces.
Tweet of the Week: We often hear that “The vast majority of people drive, so we should cater to them.” This chart shared by our friend Richard Masoner shows why it’s important to consider not what people do in a broken system; but what they’d prefer to do in a functioning one:
https://twitter.com/cyclelicious/status/1202701134088945666
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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That’s going to get awkward when Extension Rebellion discovers what bicycles are made of.
Not to mention Schwalbe tires made with natural rubber from tropical developing countries and Shimano parts from Malaysia, Vietnam, and China.
I love my Schwalbe Mararthon Supremes.
Any information on other brands? A quick search turned up something about Continental tires made of dandelion rubber but there’s no reason to think all of their tires are made with that.
That was an experiment that produced a minuscule number of tires. Continental bike tires are still largely made out of petrochemical rubber petroleum-derived carbon black.
One can make the argument given the poor energy ratio in modern agribusiness produced food and the greater thermodynamic efficiency of traveling by human powered bike vs foot travel riding a bike is better for the climate than walking. Even if we include the 4 or 5 lbs of steel needed ( can get from recycled sources like old cars) and other things. Especially when we include the energy footprint (mostly plastic ) of modern athletic shoes and their low mileage lifespan compared to the 25 year life of good steel bike.
Why “25-year life” for a steel bike? My commuter is 20 this year and I don’t see any indication that I’m only going to get five more years out of it. Should I be worried about a catastrophic frame failure five years from now?
You are right, if properly taken care of a good bike can last much longer than that, I was using a conservative estimate to make my case. I in fact, still have the Mizutani 10-speed I got new in 1974 and ride it occasionally.
When talking about a “standard bike”, the vast majority of units sold are Next, Magna, and other equally disreputable brands sold at Walmart & Target. They may not ride very nice, they have short life-spans, and are very unpleasant to repair and maintain, but they are far more common than and more widely available than bike shop brands like Trek, Specialized, and the like. In most poorer areas of most US cities, reputable bike shops no longer exist, and the only bikes available to poorer consumers are those at the big box retailers. Sad but true.
Thanks, that’s what I figured. I do wonder sometimes if I should worry about rust inside the frame, but I’ve never really done anything about it.
I usually fully disassemble my frame every couple of years, and clean out any rust that has accrued on the inside of my tubes. I’ve found that slitting them lengthwise lets me unroll them and really attack the problem.
LOL!
Why worry? For just a few bucks, either DIY (https://youtu.be/1Eve6e8epKQ) or have a shop apply frame wax. Look for J.P. Wiegel Frame Saver, LPS 3, CRC SP-400, or similar.
I usually apply that while I have everything unrolled.
You sound like a workaholic, HK! 🙂 I just spritz a little in the chainstay holes, every year or so. The big tubes only get treated when the bottom bracket needs service.
Why don’t we focus on numbers instead of reaching and demagoguery?
The referenced article says: “It claimed that using the scooter still involved the emission of some 25 percent of greenhouses cases that would be emitted if the journey was made by car, and 40 times that of a journey by public transport.”
I’m pretty sure this is from a recent widely circulated study that also relied on the dreadful survey of e-scooter usage in Portland. I will go dig up that report. In the meantime how about speaking to those numbers, and if you disagree show your work.
Article about the recent e-scooter study from NC State University: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/2/20751610/scooters-electric-dockless-carbon-emissions-study-life-cycle-analysis and the study itself: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8
Good article and study. For those comparing Raleigh to Portland, Raleigh has about 450,000 people and Wake County just over 1 million people, part of the 2 million person Research Triangle region of NC which also includes Durham (275,000), Chapel Hill, and several other sprawling suburbs. Raleigh is both the state capital and second largest city and metro area of NC, after Charlotte (city pop 900,000) – a bit smaller than Portland, but not by a lot. It’s popular locally for high-tech computing, education, government and medical industries, with a thriving downtown and excellent bike paths, but no so good on bike lanes, and like most NC cities, it is heavily segregated by income and race. The 3 largest universities in the state, UNC (Chapel Hill), NC State, and Duke are all in the region. And the sprawl there is terrible, as it is in the rest of NC.
We should not beat up on e-scooters too much. If the battle against transortation caused climate change was Star Wars then the auto industrial complex and motorists would be the empire and cyclists would be the Jedi Knights. E-scooter users are certainly part of the rebel alliance but they are more like Jar Jar Binks.
I heard they kick you out of the club if they find out you have children.
Given Extinction Rebellion’s own statement that scooters are only x% less damaging than driving, I think they are aware that the situation is not binary. Presumably they are also intelligent enough to recognize that while bicycles’ environmental impact is not zero, it is substantially less than that of e-scooters.
I suspect part of their claim is due to the fact that the scooters appear to have a very short expected lifespan. If they could be expected to actually stay in service for a few years and provide thousands of miles of use, they would (like e-bikes) have to be vastly lower-impact than cars, and not just incrementally lower.
“I suspect part of their claim is due to the fact that the scooters appear to have a very short expected lifespan. If they could be expected to actually stay in service for a few years and provide thousands of miles of use, they would (like e-bikes) have to be vastly lower-impact than cars, and not just incrementally lower.”
Yes, part of the problem (and it is worth emphasizing that thus is not research done by Extinction Rebellion, some peevish grudge against e-scooters they invented, but the results of a study out of North Carolina State University linked above. Another part of the problem is that the idea that they self-evidently substitute for car trips just isn’t the whole story (Portland’s hapless survey designed to show this notwithstanding).
Jonathan, is ‘them’ Extinction Rebellion or e-scooters? I am pro any group that is anti-e-scooters. On this specific issue, the environment has no bearing on my sentiment.
I recently developed a chronic disease that makes it difficult to bike for transportation. The Ninebot Max scooter that I recently purchased has become invaluable for getting around without relying on an automobile.
It’s disheartening that so many people hate scooter users to the point that they would sabotage my scooter.
This particular ‘sabotage’ wouldn’t affect your scooter unless you access it through a QR code, in France.
Considering that I was responding to a bike portland commentatory who was celebrating sabotage, your assurance falls flat. After 40+ years of cycling for transportation being on the other side of the divide has been eye opening.
Stickers, they put stickers on the scooters. If I were on a jury and somebody tried to sell this as sabotage, I’m a no vote. Of course they would never put me on that jury so it’s moot.
Once again, my comment was not directed at the actions of XR in France but was a response to the commentator who wrote: ” I am pro any group that is anti-e-scooters.”
It’s been my experience that many who bike have an intense dislike of e-assist vulnerable mobility. This can be seen in repeated rants and mansplaining on bike portland that targets e-bikes and e-scooters. I’ve also experienced this kind of “hate” in real life. For example, people who bike have posted rants on my social media feeds and last month I was verbally accosted for locking my scooter to a bike rack.
As someone who have biked ~140,000 miles (almost exclusively for transportation), my experience as someone who can no longer bike has been eye opening. I’ve always believed that “bike culture” in Portland has a problem with exclusivity but this has now become a visceral feeling for me now. To be blunt, I feel that I would be judged for riding a scooter if I attended any kind of bike-focused activity.
How do you make it through each day with the crushing weight of your victimhood?
If the pattern holds, expect a soy allergy to followed closely by sunlight intolerance.
—
Christ, he says he doesn’t like scooters and you’re off on sabatoge, sexism and “vulnerable mobility”…
(NOTE FROM MODERATOR: JeffS, this is close to needing deletion and/or editing and further moderation. Please be careful of how you treat others and make sure your comments are respectful. Thanks. – Jonathan.)
“To be blunt, I feel that I would be judged for riding a scooter if I attended any kind of bike-focused activity.”
Would you attend a bike focused activity if you don’t ride?
Or by “bike focused” do you really mean anti-car?
XR FB posts that announce these actions shows them cutting controller cables which permanently disables the scooters.
https://www.facebook.com/xrfrance/posts/2350370991904564
If someone were to cut cables on my scooter I could crash. If this is what XR stands for then I want nothing to do with them.
The car emissions from charging and re-balancing E-Scooters make up a large amount of the emissions. If you’re using a personal scooter and charging at your destinations then the environmental impact will be significantly less than a shared E-Scooter.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8
So does their obscenely short product life, and the Herculean and toxic efforts required to mine lithium. Of course these Life Cycle Assessments don’t look at toxicity just focus on carbon emissions for comparative purposes.
Hi 9watts, The e-scooter I bought has an overbuilt alloy frame that was expressly designed to be serviceable. I plan on keeping it for decades, just like my bikes.
? Nobody hates you.
Some loosely affiliated people in France are putting stickers on rental scooters.
Above my post: ” I am pro any group that is anti-e-scooters.”
I’ve never used an e scooter and the way the rental scooters are strewn around the city frankly pisses me off. However, I’m able to make a distinction between a private person’s scooter locked at a rack, which is fine, and some start-up that will probably never turn an operating profit cluttering the right-of-way.
When I see an actual person going somewhere on a scooter that makes me smile. I definitely endorse that choice over a single person riding in a vehicle that weighs over 100 times as much, has a power-to-weight ratio that is just obscenely dangerous, and shuts the occupant off from their environment to such a degree that they are a danger to others. See, I kind of hate cars, but even so I can’t hate car _users_ because some of them are my friends.
It’s a stretch to say that people hate you. That’s an oversimplification of what’s going on here. One commenter on BP maybe, maybe, hates you? That’s sort of like a person going down the street saying “fuck” a bunch of times gave me a dirty look. Life goes on.
I’m so sorry to hear that you are having health issues that preclude riding. Is there hope of a return to the saddle?
My spouse couldn’t walk more than across the street for three years. This year she finally found someone who understood her problem and it is now 90% resolved (days with 15 miles of walking have been happening, much to our delight). She actually put a lot more energy into her search for help when her problems started interfering with cycling, which is mildly amusing since cycling isn’t considered a major life function but walking is. To each their own, I guess.
I definitely hope I regain some function.
Not a single sentence in that article leads me to infer that ER is targeting people that use scooters in the context you described.
For the third time, my post was a reaction to a comment here (see above).
The Naughty List: fyi, the $2.2 billion project in Raleigh NC is likely to be substantially delayed for two main reasons – the Republican-controlled state legislature and the Democratic governor still haven’t passed a state budget, and the DOT suddenly went from a $2.3 Billion surplus to a $1 Billion and rising deficit overnight when the state supreme court ruled that the right-of-way the DOT was holding for future highway projects was in fact a “takings” that the landowners must now be compensated for. Naturally, the owners are suing the state into the stone age. So it goes.
How is it that cargo bikes were ever prohibited from loading zones? Sounds like a technicality that should be fixed with little fanfare.
Agreed, that should just be a small administrative change citywide with no fanfare. Dedicated little loading zones for e-bikes seem like a more reasonable pilot, to see how to get them respected, and how much they’re used.
A curious bit of slippage there. How did we get from cargo bikes to e-bikes?
Ha, whoops. Meant cargo bikes. I suppose it happened because I had an image of an e-cargo-bike in my mind.
Are there such rules? I’ve never heard of them but haven’t researched. More to the point for me is the very real possibly that somebody will back a truck over the bike. Smallest truck vs. any cargo bike: that’s not good.
The “Cannonball Run” article is infuriating. I ran across another article on the “achievement” in Road & Track {https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a30085091/these-guys-just-drove-an-e63-amg-across-america-in-a-record-27-hours-25-minutes/}, which at least mentions the safety risk involved, while still painting the drivers as heroes. It also details the lengths they went to to evade police detection, while still averaging 103mph on the 2,825 mile journey.
Speaking of this event and the way it’s presented in the media as a reflection American car culture, this quote from one of the previous record holders stood out:
“In America, we have allowed ourselves to believe that we cannot be good drivers. But in Germany, people hit speeds faster than Arne’s average Cannonball speed just driving home from work on the Autobahn.” – Alex Roy
Yes, our problem with traffic safety in America is that people just don’t have enough faith in their own driving ability. Sigh.
Dangerous, and wasteful: https://www.mpgforspeed.com/. Of course, the entire trip was for show, but encouraging people to drive faster is not only more dangerous but will also have a significant energy and ecological impact.
Did they publish their route? Seems to me, given the claim of an average of 103 mph, nearly every single state they passed through should be able to bring Reckless Driving charges against them.
If they can afford an AMG Mercedes they can assuredly come up with the money for the fines. Were they fined it would probably only boost their status in certain circles.
It’s not about fines. Reckless Driving is not a mere moving violation. In every state where I’ve lived it is a criminal offense, potentially resulting in jail time.
I am impressed that Kansas City is taking such bold moves by making their transit system free. I love how there’s a dig at Portland’s increase in fare enforcement at the bottom of the linked article.
The bloom is off the rose.
If you want an alternate to the view that mass transit should be free, look at this Jalolnik article. It does not think that free is better in all cases. They reference a study that says, “What we heard is that most low-income bus riders rate lowering fares as less important than improving the quality of the service. This suggests that if a transit agency had to choose between devoting funds to reducing fares or to maintaining or improving service, most riders would prefer the latter. The idea of making transit “free” turns out to be less appealing to the public than making improvements to transit.”
https://jalopnik.com/kansas-city-almost-has-free-public-transit-but-should-1840267151
I’m not one prone to conspiracy theories, but Extinction Rebellion’s “missteps” sure do make me think that they’re a right wing movement aiming at tarnishing left wing environmental groups. Their targeting of London’s tube, which is a SOLUTION to climate change, is all the proof I need that they’re either idiots or worse. https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/10/17/extinction-rebellion-london-tube-video-lon-orig-mg.cnn
Based on their public statements, Extinction Rebellion is not against mass transit. (I am not affiliated with them or talking with them). There’s internal debate about their tactics, as reported in a Guardian article.
Their point seems to be that business as usual is a mistake since we know that our activities are changing the planet in radical ways. We’re sawing away at the branch we’re sitting on. In this situation it’s good to look at some criteria other than ‘trains on time’ or quarterly profits.
At this point I don’t have any evidence that ER is a very well-coordinated group at the higher levels, at least no reason to believe so far that they are a right-wing effort to discredit climate activists. The ER people I’ve met here in Minneapolis certainly seem both very earnest and pretty clear-headed about their cause.
If anything, the London Tube protest may be evidence that they are not well-coordinated. Probably just a few people in the local ER group taking their eyes off the real target. I suspect that may be true in Paris too … but it’s possible that copycat sabotages may happen in other cities, so I think Soren’s concern is well founded.
With regards to Rachel McKinnon competing in women’s races I would really to to hear the opinions of elite category cisgender women that are in the same races/level as Rachel instead of the opinions of a bunch of cisgender males that will never compete against Rachel. As a cisgender man I’m never going to be at any genetic disadvantage so my opinions don’t really matter.
The grassroots organization Save Women’s Sports was very much started by women.
As a woman who has raced at an elite level, and has raced against trans women, I am fully in support of including trans women in women’s cycling categories. They do not have some advantage over other women by nature of having been born men, any more than someone younger, with a higher VO2 max, or more natural ability has an advantage. More to the point, there is NO FLOOD OF TRANS WOMEN threatening women’s sports and especially not bike racing. I wish we had a flood of women joining bike racing, instead of leaving the sport entirely.
If there is no physiological difference, then please point to any female to mMale trans athletes competing against other males who are winning. Seems that this isc nly happening when males are transitioned to female.
I hope that posting Dr. McKinnon’s op-ed will nudge a few minds further along in their journey away from transphobia. The last time transgender athletes were discussed here showed just how much distance there is to cover.
Up in your neck of the woods, you may be interested in reading in what Meghan Murphy, editor of the website called Feminist Current, had to endure when she spoke out against allowing men into previously women-only spaces.
“Speaking out against allowing men into previously women-only spaces”
Besides denying them dignity by calling them “men,” this is clinical definition of transphobia: “phobia” being *irrational* fear. Trans people’s fears, on the other hand… perhaps more well founded. I remember my middle school gym class.
While I certainly don’t always agree with everything that Meghan Murphy says, I think she has made a good case that the fear is far from irrational. The Economist has also argued that men should not be allowed to declare themselves to be women without rigorous outside overseeing of the transitioning process.
So there’d be a checklist for when a trans-woman is actually determined to be a woman, rather than their declaration of it?
Yes, if a man wishes to gain official documents that certify that he is now a woman, he would have to go through a state-sanctioned process and meet all of the criteria in the checklist. Self-identification is open to abuse.
I don’t think there are many Heather Swansons out there (see South Park’s “Board Girls” episode for the reference) really living as men but competing as women. I suspect that requiring competitors to publicly declare themselves as women – possibly requiring a minimum time to have elapsed since they did so (I.e., more than 3 days as in Heather’s case) should solve what is a very, very tiny problem. Creating a state process to track and rate trans people’s compliance seems fraught and ultimately unnecessary.
“The fact that climate change group Extinction Rebellion has begun sabotaging e-scooters due to their environmental footprint gives me second thoughts about how much I should get behind them.”
It’s your funeral. But your approach hasn’t exactly saved the world either. Regardless, don’t fret: It will all be under water in 50-100 years anyway no matter who you “get behind.”
The Dude,
Not sure I understand your comment. I’m merely saying that I will take pause to consider my own feelings and decisions around e-scooters because a group like ER thinks they are bad. Regardless of ER and what they do/why they do it, I am constantly questioning my stance on stuff based on what I read. It’s just a normal part of how I operate.
I wish the PBOT quotes about the bike path plans for the 60th and Glisan area were like the City of Denver position that safety trumps parking. Kudos Denver. Anyone on your staff looking to move out to the Northwest? We could really use some help with corner sight lines too.
Have you requested parking removal at specific locations?
Is there a form for that or would an email to the bureau work?
I like the fun brooms in DC. I wonder if one can remove them from their post in order to sweep up glass and debris in the bike lane.
That Sword cuts two ways. The reality is Denver will do great things, they they will do half measures and say it’s a great thing.