Welcome to the first day of August and the start of another wonderful week here on BikePortland. We have lots of fun stuff to share, so let’s kick things off with a roundup of the most notable items our writers and readers came across in the past seven days…
Bikesketball: NBA star and cultural icon LeBron James has put his money where his passion is with a $30 million investment in Canyon Bicycles.
Zach is back: Zach Katz, the former Portlander behind Healthier Hawthorne, is back in the news for launching a viral Twitter account (@betterstreetsai) where he posts jaw-dropping street transformations created with an AI tool.
DOTs gonna’ DOT: Activists in Texas are raising the red flag on their DOTs freeway expansion projects, which are somehow almost always found to have “no significant impact” on the surrounding community and can therefore skirt thorough environmental analysis.
E-bikes left out: The “Inflation Reduction Act” that stormed through Capitol Hill last week includes massive subsidies for e-cars but nothing for e-bikes.
Why the above is bad: In an opinion piece for the CBC, author Paris Marx lays out the case about why too much focus on e-cars is a bad policy choice that won’t solve the problems many governments want us to believe it will.
Car as weapon: A Mississippi man shared a video to social media that showed him intentionally driving his car into a group of teenagers and saying vile things like earning points for hitting them and calling them a racial slur.
Great news: Politico details why gas prices are likely to remain high in the future as society transitions away from internal combustion engines, oil companies struggle to meet demand, the vehicle fleet transitions to e-cars, and investors bet to renewables.
The hill they’ve climbed: NY Times has an excellent piece on the history behind the Tour de France Femmes, the women who laid the groundwork for the recent event, and the ongoing push for equality in women’s professional bike racing.
Follow the money: Joe Cortright’s latest in City Observatory points out the doublespeak from Oregon Department of Transportation when they frame a dire need for money for maintenance and operations, yet continue to spend that money on new roads and freeways.
Better bike routing: Google Maps has announced an update to their biking directions which includes details about what type of road conditions to expect, whether or not you’ll encounter steep hills, and so on.
Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week!
