Welcome to the week. Here are the most notable stories our writers and readers have come across in the past seven days…
This week’s roundup is sponsored by The Vineyard Tour, a full weekend of wonderful people and cycling coming to the beautiful Umpqua Valley on September 3rd.
Welcome to the war on cars: “In the span of only a few weeks, I went from proverbial Prius Lover to Car Destroyer… And I started to wonder… had I been radicalized? (CNET)
Second to soccer: Colombia, already known as a pioneer of the open streets movement, is equally enamored with serious road cycling thanks to a mix of culture and topography. (NY Times)
Transgender policy: The UCI (global sanctioning body of competitive cycling) has announced a new policy that bans transgender women from competing in women’s racing categories. The decision has sparked a mix of praise and outrage. (UCI)
It’s not helping: One women’s racing advocate says the transgender ban from the UCI is useless because there are many more pressing issues faced by women racers. (A Quick Brown Fox)
“Nobody wins”: From a matter of fairness to folks fixing for a fight, there was a wide range of reaction to the UCI’s announcement. (Cycling Weekly)
Not all good news: VanMoof was poised to be the Tesla of e-bikes, but now it looks like this high-end brand is taking steps to the VC-funded trash heap. (TechCrunch)
A fitting moniker: Some officials in Paris have had enough of the absurdly-sized SUVs on their streets and want to cure “auto-besity” by charging fines to their drivers. (Guardian)
Muscle cars are the new cigarettes: Automakers routinely market cars in ways that glorify and normalize reckless, dangerous, and deadly behaviors. Now we have some stats to help make the case for regulation. (IIHS Auto Safety)
Bikes are best: Bicycle riding has roared back stronger than driving in London post-COVID, thanks to infrastructure and… well… just people exercising common sense perhaps? (Forbes)
Thanks to everyone who shared links this week!
Person from Hillsboro killed while bicycling down the Oregon Coast.
:^(
https://yachatsnews.com/hillsboro-bicyclist-killed-in-collision-with-log-truck-near-gleneden-beach/
From that article, “…was riding south on his bike “when for unknown reasons it contacted the side” of an empty log truck driven by…”
Unknown reasons, such as a dangerous pass by the driver? We’ll never know the whole story because the only statement we have is from the driver.
The UCI decision reminds me of this article from years ago:
https://bikeportland.org/2015/12/10/local-transgender-racer-told-she-cant-race-mens-championship-event-170078
Can you imagine having your life plans randomly upset like by seemingly arbitrary decisions like this?
I’ve no doubt that the UCI is making a good faith effort to resolve a controversy that involves the competing interests of two justifiably aggrieved parties. Being inclusive is easy, unless the arena is, by definition, based on exclusion.
But the effect on trans racers has got to be difficult: a back and forth seesaw of varying institutional decisions that can elevate or drop one’s standings in the time it takes to sign a document. Not to mention being a lightning rod for culture warriors and right-wing hate grifters.
Just to start, since it matters to be clear and concise, especially given our current social arena. Transwomen are Women.
The UCI, and subsequent USAC, decision at the very least prevents your example by opening the “mens” series of cats to all gender and sex expressions, social or physiological. What I do not see addressed with this change is how the UCI will address the safety of participating athletes that have been thrust into the open series. Transphobia is very clearly rampant in our society, ignoring this until it becomes an issue during an event is utterly unacceptable.
What is the safety concern the UCI or USAC should be mitigating for, hard to tell what you’re referencing?
If there are transphobes allowed to compete alongside trans athletes, there needs to be a clearly defined baseline plan to keep trans athletes safe, and clearly stated consequences for those that disregard this and directly or indirectly attempt to harm a fellow athlete.
This is not an instance where we “see what happens and then decide” and is part of the responsibility that the UCI/USAC takes on when they dictate who competes where. It is wildly evident that there are many strong feelings regarding this change, not provisioning for the likelihood for those emotions to become physical altercations, direct or indirect, is patently an excersize in negligence of athlete safety.
How do we determine who the transphobes are?
Also, have there been riders (transphobes?) within the ranks that would be racing on the UCI or USAC elite schedule who have said they are going to endanger a new competitor?
I don’t think we or the UCI needs to define transphobia, in order to be proactive with safety regulations and reassurance that those regulations will be enforced. I have not waded into the depths of what has been said outright or inferred by athletes, but these are ultimately distractions from my concern for rider safety. Being proactive with these regulations falls inline with the UCI’s safeguarding standards. Should the regulations exist, it would be good of the UCI to reiterate them, as making this change adds a lot of uncertainty for athletes, as Charley initially pointed out with the see-saw analogy. The UCI Code of Ethics was last revised 5.5.2023, if the UCI feels this meets safety needs for trans athletes they needs to make that clear, if they or the athletes do not, they need to enter into transparent discussions for revision, and get them revised.
It seems like transphobes are just as likely to be in the men’s and women’s divisions, no?
Yes. Cis men are also much more physical with their expressions of aggression than cis women.
How come nobody ever says Transmen are Men?
I certainly do, as transmen are men, but it often doesn’t apply to the “debate” people are insistent on pushing.
It’s almost like they don’t win as much.
I think the main reason is there is a lot less gay panic around Transmen so it seems less necessary to say it out loud even though it is true. Most of this all seems to stem from weirdos who are scared to death that they might accidentally have sex with a transwoman and it will turn them gay.
Is it “gay panic” that makes people uncomfortable with trans women in the women’s restroom?
Maybe not “gay panic”, but it’s certainly a panic. Honestly, which restrooms do you think trans people have been using for the last several decades since hormone therapy became available to the public?
https://theconversation.com/gender-affirming-care-has-a-long-history-in-the-us-and-not-just-for-transgender-people-201752
The anti-trans “bathroom bill” push largely failed, which is why the discourse has now pivoted to trans women athletes. It’s a deliberate wedge issue driven by the Religious Right.
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/identities/22334014/trans-athletes-bills-explained
The article I linked to is just a memorable example of how organizations have shifted trans competitors in and out of categories over time, and the UCI decision reminded me of that article because people are yet again being shifted around.
Contra your comment, there’s nothing about that example that can be “prevent(ed)”, given that it already happened. Furthermore, that the same thing (people being shifted around against their will) is happening again.
Very true, I agree many have been disrupted by this change. The current rule would allow current trans athletes to compete at the level Molly wished to compete, preventing them from working towards that very specific goal and have it disrupted, which I was not clear in stating. And credit to your comment, there is nothing holding them from making a change again to disrupt these athletes more with zero notice, so I was incorrect to suggest that there would be any prevention.
Charley, re-reading my comment, the opening statement may be interpreted as attempting to call you out for not making a statement yourself. I want to be clear I did not write it to do that, it is directed publicly to those that may come read it now or later. I try my best to unabashedly show support where and to whom I am attempting to support, and to make that support clearly stated and in a way that hopefully removes any doubts regarding my stance.
I think the best solution to trans athletes in sports would be to simply stop sorting sports based on gender. If we accept that gender and physical sex characteristics are different and that we get to choose our gender, pronouns etc. then why are we still trying to use it as a rigid athletic category?
My local races we sort by age but I’m sure there are tons of other ways, sort by BMI or some lung measurement or how big your leg muscles are or how tall you are, or your weight etc.
Point is athletic sports is always a balance of the genetic lottery you drew, the work you’ve put in to being fit and the skill for the sport. The genetic lottery is never even or fair but we don’t need to use gender identification as the class system.
Personally I think a better solution would be to wean society off of paid sports entirely. Can you imagine what we might accomplish as a society if so much money, time and energy weren’t sunk into the pit that is organized sporting events? Creating out of thin air groups of people who organize and then reward people to play games has always been a bit ridiculous.
I think most sports aren’t paid, especially women’s sports. I only made enough to have to claim it on my taxes a few years. I doubt I’ll ever make any again but it’s still fun to do. For me it’s a lot more fun and motivating than just working out in a gym or something.
You’re not into sports. That’s fine. I’m quite into sports. Participating in and watching professional sports. Societies have always and will always enjoy sports. The idea of “…weaning society off of paid sports..” is interesting. There are many things I’d like to wean society off of! Great idea, Jakeco969! I’m curious about what you enjoy that I’ll find ridiculous!
Well, I enjoy treating people with respect and doing my best to listen/read their comments and respond to the idea they’re discussing rather than the poster as an individual. I’m guessing that’s one of the things I enjoy that you find ridiculous?
I’m more than happy to discuss the morality and reality of amateur sports versus paid professional sports, I’m just not sure if thats something you’re actually interested in.
I’m interested. I’ve won money and had sponsorships but generally just enough to cover my costs, so I only have direct experience with amateur sports. Maybe my son will have more luck.
It sounds like you think professional sports are immoral, if so why?
And if so then do you feel that way about other forms entertainment, actors, video games, dancers etc. ?
I’ll do my best, lot to unpack here. First off our definitions might be a little off, I regard amateur as being without pay such as pick up games or organized play with maybe tshirts (or something simple/inexpensive) as prizes or for completing the event. So when you say you’ve won money and been sponsored financially (congrats by the way) I think more professional than amateur.
I played sports through college (tennis and fencing) and continued a little bit after, but I simply didn’t have time. So on one side is my potential bias and jealousy for people who do have the time and opportunity to play games as they get older and the other side is this…..
100 Billion spent on sports by Americans in 2017 and I can only assume the numbers have either remained the same or gone up. Thats just a lot of money and time spent on either playing games or watching grown adults play games when that time and money could be spent on other things. Things like helping around the community, victory gardens, volunteering, etc, etc. It just seems like the amount of time spent playing games, producing consumerism equipment, using green spaces for playing fields is an insult to the majority of the world who can’t bear the costs of such an entertainment complex.
Competition is good, it fosters teamwork, lets a person find a place in ones social group, athleticism is important in an ever more sedentary 1st world, but the deification of sports “heros” is a little upsetting. When I was in Iraq the younger soldiers would discuss the sporting events going on back home and discuss how tough and brave the players were. I told them that none of those people had the courage to be where those young people were, nor did they have the courage, ability or apparently desire to go through what they had done to be able to actually be brave and strong.
The wealthy players, and not so wealthy players continue playing games while our world burns and it seems like its a waste of resources to support people playing a game instead of directing those resources to greater aid the rest of humanity.
This was a bit rambling and freethought, but its where I’m at right now.
Why do you hope your son will do better at playing games? Is there life successfully financed to the point where they don’t have to worry about supporting themselves? A lot of people don’t have the luxury of that which I’ve seen first hand and its hard to look past that I’m afraid.
I and I think most, consider professional sports meaning you can do it for a time as a profession, aka make enough to support you without having to do another job. Hence an organization I do sports with might have an amature class where some of the top amatures might still have sponsors – not usually in the sense that their sponsors are paying them but usually more that the are getting free gear etc. from sponsors.
Finding the time is hard, especially with kids but we all need exercise and personally I find it much easier to find motivation with a fun sport. Having your kids do it with you certainly helps.
I’d break it down like this –
People compete in sports because it’s fun. If we can do things we want to do and get paid for doing them it’s a win-win, if we can get paid so much we don’t need a job then we’ve gone pro. Even if it’s not with sports I think most of us hope to have a career or job that is something that we would want to do even if we weren’t paid.
Sports Viewers want entertainment – just like going to see a broadway pay, or a movie etc. depending on the production the top people might be making a lot of money and ticket prices might be high. For them it’s worth it for the entertainment.
Your argument against this seems to boil down to – but we could do X great thing for society with that money. Sure of course we could but if we want to do that we should legislate it, tax on X dollars spent on spots, but if we were going to do that then why target sports? Why not all entertainment? or why not all discretionary spending? Or…. maybe instead of asking middle class people to forgo their entertainment spending we could simply tax the wealthy. I think Elon gained over $100 billion this year.
I guess it feels odd to target the discretionary spending of the middle class when to me it seems like there are better places to find the money – like the ultra wealthy and the defense budget.
As for my son, yes it’s 6 so he doesn’t have to worry about supporting himself. Luxury of being a kid. I hope he’s better than me because he’s starting younger and likes it and being good at it would be nice for him from a confidence perspective, and it would be fun to be able to compete with him. A professional opportunity down the line maybe could be nice as well, and again I certainly hope he can make a career out of doing something he loves – just like an artist would.
Thank you for the well thought out response, discussions like this really help me focus my own thoughts and helps me make them more concrete.
This is partly what I was going for and you helped me solidify my thought process. I do think we can do great things for society with that money and with the time we could save playing/watching sports and instead spend that time on all of society. The old saying “time is money” is a truism. We all have a finite amount of time that exists in a day. Would it be a tragedy to spend less time playing games and more time volunteering to aid the elderly, hospice care, hospitals, orphanages, produce fresh vegetables/flowers and do our best to make the world more tolerable for others? Can we help by less consumerism from those of us in the 1st world? If we want to save the world, which I read a lot about here on this site, can we really do it if we remain focused on games?
Zero argument from me on taxing the crap out of billionaires to include a yearly tax on the value of ones held stock options (for everyone) and reducing the Defense budget. The best way to do that IMO is to close a lot of our overseas bases and stop with the obscene defense welfare platforms such as the F35.
But, its not just the money that I’m concerned about. I am concerned that as the 1st world plays our sports and sinks our discretionary funds into those sports that we are ignoring the rest of the world as well as not preparing ourselves mentally for any Cascadia event, if the Climate alarmists are correct with the coming traumatic climate shift or if the wheels should come off the 1st world gravy train suddenly. Having worked in 3rd and 2nd world countries I’m doubtful if our citizenry are prepared should suddenly join them.
I agree. We should also wean society off music and movies and acting and writing and art.
Can you imagine what we might accomplish if we didn’t sink so much energy and money into those?
Creating out of thin air groups of people who can entertain us and inspire us has always been ridiculous…
Right?!? It’s pretty intriguing once you start thinking about it.
I mean people like Picasso and Warhol and Jack Nicholson and Hemingway and the likes of them are so over rated, whoever needs them is just lame aren’t they?
Art is something I know a bit about. Dwk, I think you might be noticing the financialization of art, the development over the past three decades of art as an object for storing obscene amounts of wealth. Hand in hand with that goes the “blockbuster art show” where tourists force themselves to walk by and photograph pieces they don’t have the attention span to look at. Those shows, and the feet through the door they bring, offer cover for donations of “art” to museums, for tax write-offs…and so it goes.
Salvador Dali so disliked the game he tried to screw it up by signing blank sheets of paper (that’s why there are so many fake Dalis).
Warhol willed his estate to start a very traditional art school in Manhattan, cadavers, cast drawing, grisailles. He valued the art education that he wasn’t able to receive because a more superficial, entertaining art world destroyed it.
How’s that for off-topic?
Sarcasm does not play well here, obviously…
Michael Jordan is every bit the artist as Dali is…
What a dull world Jake wants to live in…
For a world traveler (I enjoyed your posts and observations when you were in Ireland) I’m not sure if you’ve seen much variety of the world or if it’s mainly been other 1st world scenarios. What I want is for modern consumerism to lessen it’s grip on our US society so that so much of the worlds resources that we devour isn’t devoured for our mindless entertainment.
And you’re right, sarcasm doesn’t play well in the written form. I’ve given up trying to guess if a post is sarcastic or not since it’s become not worth the effort.
Oh man I’ve probably double sinned. I made money in sports a few times making me a professional in his eyes… My main career for the last 20 years though has literally been art of the visual creative kind.
It’s true if we all just focused on the necessities instead of art, sports etc. then we would certainly have a smaller per capita footprint, but I think we’d lose something that makes life living personally.
Not at all, many have argued that the financialization of art, literature, music, real estate … is destroying it. Making the world a less vibrant place.
Yes it was much better when artists made no money..
It’s a disgrace that people who have a gift or talent and work their asses off (writing, painting , etc. actually require real effort on top of talent) are actually paid for it.
Who needs that in this world when we can read bikeportland comments….
Do you think Taylor Swift and Beyonce are destroying Music?
Is Steph Curry ruining basketball?
Women get paid real money now to play soccer after they worked at it for years.
Soccer is now ruined in your eyes?
Please elaborate how paying writers, artist and musicians has destroyed the world.
I watched the Tour de France this morning, it was excellent and they make more money than ever, should they do that for free?
If you are interested in the business of art, and you haven’t heard it, I highly recommend this:
https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/the-hidden-side-of-the-art-market/
Thank you, I’ll listen to it. I was an artist, so I’ve been paying attention for several decades.
What’s wrong with using biological sex as the determining factor?
Maybe that biological sex is not binary:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/
That sounds like an argument for the complete elimination of female divisions, then. Attempting to gender/sex people is inherently discriminatory, because someone is going to fall somewhere in between the lines.
Yes, I think they probably should be eliminated. The UCI says they don’t want women in the women’s class if they transitioned after puberty because it can change bone structure etc.
Different people have different bone structures anyway though, maybe just measure people’s bone lengths or something and go off that if you must.
It’s just silly to me, genetics aren’t fair or equal, we see this in all sports already. For example basketball shouldn’t sort on gender it should sort on height that’d probably be more fair.
Do you think a 6’5″ man and 6’5″ woman are equally adept at playing basketball?
Depends a ton on which man and which woman, their ages, etc of course.
I have no skin in the game one way or the other, but here’s an article about that I read recently:
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/why-elite-sports-should-remain-separated-by-sex/671594/
Appreciate the link!
He did a good job explaining how having the genetics to go through puberty as a male boosts running performance by about 10% but he didn’t really seem to address why sorting by sex is important or what it means for those who don’t fall into the two main categories – aka intersex people.
Regarding the “fairness” issue, the NCAA has found a two-to-one disparity in funding for men’s versus women’s sports in US colleges. Where’s the outrage over this?
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1107242271/the-ncaa-says-that-funding-for-women-in-college-sports-is-falling-behind
It’s like I’m reading a replay from you the last time this subject came up. Do you have any new perspectives this time?
You’re free to ignore any commentary you find irrelevant or repetitious. Hope this helps.
The How I Became a Car-Destroyer article particularly resonates with me, although I am more of a Strong Townsman based off the fuckcars chart he posted.
I remember a year ago I was lamenting to a fellow advocate that I was worried I had been radicalized by NJB and Strong Towns. That their arguments sounded good but I was at the end of a day a computer engineer and not an urban planner. I played cities skylines and tried out the strong towns logic and it made the game way too easy. No heavy use of imminent domain or really mid game at all. None of the scaling issues with traffic I usually ran into, causing a long mid game as I tore my growing city apart to put in public transit. Slowing cars down really is effective, as it makes the alternative and more effective transit options such as light rail more competitive. The cims just want to go places as quickly as possible. But a video game is just a video game. What I lacked was a good counter argument that could convince me I was wrong, and it is possible to scale with car dependent development patterns. Unfortunately, I still haven’t heard a good argument against the strong towns logic. Even my suburban local government seems plenty aware of the changes it needs to make to have a future. The only thing holding everything back is a populace who sacrificed so much for their car, they don’t want to give it up.
I do hate the term orange pilled tho.
After that incel black pill garbage, identifying as a some “woke” warrior against the status quo leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’d like to focus less on the self serving identity jumbo and more on the practical real world results.
London ≠ City of London
See the tiny little C in this map of London and Greater London:
Urbanist confirmation bias is the epitome of cringe.
I understand all of those words, but I have no idea what your actual point is.
Less subtext and more text, please?
It’s in response to the article about London, and how all the “bike boom in London” articles use “London” as the headline city while meaning “City of London”. The City of London is the historical core and former Roman city that is now the financial district. Greater London is a separate administrative unit that was roughly (but not entirely) the extent of the London metro area in the 60s.
The issue he is raising is that a huge increase in cycling in the City of London being conflated with Greater London (or just London) is extremely misleading. It’s like saying “The Bay Area now has 40% of trips being taken by bike!” while only measuring ridership in the Financial District.
And for the record, I think we should and could duplicate the City of London’s successes in limiting driving. I was furious at the outcome of POEM which punted on City of London-style congestion pricing in the PDX downtown core (with the overt or tacit approval of urbanist/YIMBY orgs). We will not see any significant shift from driving without policy/law that makes driving less convenient and more expensive. Moreover, the argument that infrastructure drove mode shift in the City of London and not draconian congestion and ultra-low carbon zones is insultingly ridiculous.
I agree, I like the City of London’s strategies, and think congestion pricing and the ultra low carbon zones are great. I would maybe not frame them as “draconian” though – rather a positive and simple way to limit mass destruction from drivers in a dense core area.
In general, I think the “infrastructure vs. congestion pricing” debate is a bit non-sensical though, since London (the City of, and Greater) have invested in both. They are two parts of a multi-faceted strategy (reducing car trips) which Portland seems to think can be solved by just a lackluster grid of greenways
I agree that draconian was poor framing and with your point about their being a false dichotomy.
London ≠ City of London
There are only about 8,000 residents within the one-square-mile City of London but between 8 million and 14 million in the greater metropolitan area depending which definition you use. Statistics based on 8,000 residents are not the same as those for 14 million.
It’s hard to argue for congestion pricing when there’s not much congestion to price (when is the last time you heard a serious complaint about congestion in the downtown core?). If the only answer to convincing people to use other modes of transport is to add artificial constraints to driving, the politics become impossible and we’ve lost the argument.
The answer has to be to make those other forms more attractive, which, I’ll admit, given the inherent deficits of bus travel, has been a challenge.
Artificial constrains to driving implies the existence of a “natural” amount of driving space.
And you do that by “artificially constraining” single occupancy vehicles and giving that space to buses, bikes, pedestrians.
Comment of the week!!!!!!!
The current state of our road and transportation network is the result of proactive decisions made by governments and private actors over the centuries.
That’s not to say that underlying factors (existing geography, law, culture, and economy, etc.) have had no effect. . . but the use of “artificial” should be correct only in a sense that much of the rest of our transportation law and infrastructure is just as artificial.
In a democracy, citizens have the right to make decisions about law and infrastructure. We can choose more or less subsidy for car traffic, etc. The current domination of the private auto is the result of previous decisions which provide practical and political constraints, but not natural or fundamental constraints.
I read the comment I was responding to as suggesting the intent of congestion pricing was not to minimize congestion, but to maximize cost and difficulty of driving. In Portland’s case, there isn’t a lot of congestion these days, so pursuing the idea at this point would be “artificially constraining” driving.
Of course some bus, bike, or pedestrian improvements might take space from autos. I have no problem with that.
While not pre-pandemic levels, it can still take twice as long by car to get around the city during peak times vs non-peak times. This is not a sign of a healthy, functioning transportation system.
And you completely missed my point. While I used space in the public right of way as an example, same can apply to the costs each transportation mode bears. The price to drive is artificially low. Revealing the true cost of driving to drivers is going to be politically unpopular. No one likes to pay for something that was free before.
Believe it or not Watts, nothing exists inside of a vacuum. What if we start charging road users even if there is roadway capacity, or taking away lanes when roads are at capacity? Guess what! There is now funds to spend of driving alternatives, or newfound space to dedicate to other uses. To make other alternatives to driving more attractive often rests upon making driving worse, dare I say to do so artificially. The carrot often comes with a stick.
Everything about our transportation system is artificial. How we choose to allocate resources and charge users is equally artificial. To say that implementing a congestion charge is artificial, well yes of course it is.
Until this becomes politically possible, it is an entirely theoretical question.
Our governor was unwilling to allow a modest tolling program on a very congested freeway take effect, even at the cost of delaying a project one of the agencies she oversees has been pushing hard for.
That should tell you something about what her political calculus is.
“It is an entirely theoretical question…” Unlike the usual online discourse that always leads to a swift and practical response from elected leaders, I’m sure. Do you have a theoretical answer?
Theoretically speaking, if PBOT started closing roads and somehow charging people to drive in a way that was obviously intended purely to punish drivers, I strongly suspect that whoever was in charge at that moment would either lose their job immediately or at the next election depending on who they were.
I mean, what do you want me to say? If you outlawed cars, or closed all the roads, or made driving prohibitive expensive, of course fewer people would drive.
Who is arguing for congestion pricing “purely to punish drivers”?
That was my read of the comment I was originally responding to.
That comment was about “revealing the true cost of driving”, thereby generating “funds to spend [on] driving alternatives, or newfound space to dedicate to other uses” and “mak[ing] other alternatives to driving more attractive”. Interpreting all this as being “obviously intended purely to punish drivers” seems pretty misleading, not to say dishonest.
Making driving less convenient does not equate to punishing the people driving. The intention is to give people a genuine choice by no longer *artificially* propping up personal car use. Most people just want to get where they’re going quickly and conveniently, whether that’s by car, bus, bicycle, or on foot. Not Just Bikes explains in “The Best Country in the World for Drivers” how even those who have to drive benefit from alternatives to driving:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
Its not purely theoretical! Roads have been going on diets all over Portland every year! The multiple bus lane projects, Lombard going down to 1 lane for bike lanes, Foster gets a road diet just to name some from the past year or so.
The political will of getting road users to pay their fair share has been minimal, but Portland has been slowly making progress on the front of limiting road use to cars “artificially” for some time now.
Indeed they have (and an earlier draft of my response acknowledged that). Those projects are not intended to make driving more difficult — loss of street capacity is a side-effect of the positive policy goal of making the roads safer.
I advocated pretty hard to reduce Hawthorne to a single lane between 12th and 20th when they repaved the rest of the street, so obvious these sorts of projects are ok with me.
Remember: I was responding to a comment advocating for instituting a new and intrusive congestion pricing scheme downtown for the purpose of making driving painful, not because there was any real congestion to reduce. Do you see the difference?
And I am saying there is no difference. Making driving more difficult is synonymous with making cities more livable, safer, and accessible in a variety of ways.
The outcome of projects, whether it’s road diet or some kind of pricing scheme, is to achieve car-alternative goals. Making driving worse is just another tool to achieve the outcome of safety, or a quieter downtown, or faster transit times, etc…
Politically, there is a huge difference.
Your rhetoric tells me that you agree that there are no carrots big enough to entice folks onto transit and bikes.
What is politically feasible changes over time. Shifting the “window of discourse” to encompass policies that were previously considered unrealistic or unpopular is a big reason for talking about them at all:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
I’m not sure that posting on BikePortland counts as “moving the Overton Window”.
Yet here we are.
The Monday roundup has a list of links and one of them incorrectly referred to London (perpetuating a common urbanist myth):
I love Paris’ idea to charge parking fees based on vehicle size. Anything we can do to push back against the ever increasing size of automobiles is a win in my book.
It is a really good idea and I’m glad they will do it as it will provide an important test case cities in the US will hopefully piggyback off of. The only part I was puzzled about was this…..
If the point is to single out grossly huge machines that are incongruent with inner city commuting than I would think that whether they are EV or ICE would make no difference. If anything, the EVs that tend to be heavier should be charged even more than an ICE. Its interesting that they would consider family size an exemption from the extra costs as I don’t believe that really comes up in equity discussions on this side of the pond.
Agreed. Carve outs are expensive and absurd.
You might create a carve out for electric vehicles if you were trying to convince people to switch to using them.
Oh I understand the virtue signaling dimensions of that but I don’t think it sensible to use public funds to incentivize switching.
EVs don’t solve anything. They just add new environmental insults to the already long list associated with our transportation system.
In a country where more than half the cars are diesel (used to be 2/3 just a few years ago), getting delivery vans, taxis and cars to switch to EV will be helpful. Particulate levels in Paris are regularly unhealthy. Taxing size vs weight is interesting. When on a bike overall car size is more threatening, and large parked cars spill over into the counterflow bike lanes.
It’s not about virtue signaling; it’s about encouraging people to make decisions that have real and positive environmental impact.
In fact, they do. EVs are a critical tool for reducing our CO2 emissions, a statement I consider so well established at this point that I won’t even bother with a citation.
Just buy the right product and you too can solve climate change.
EVs are necessary but not sufficient. You can snark all you want, but that doesn’t change the underlying fact that it’s not going to work with EVs.
Sure, compared straight across they win on CO2, but while important it is by no means the only metric we might use to weigh the tradeoffs. Rare metals, while present in conventionally powered automobiles, are far less of a factor than with EVs. Cobalt, Lithium, etc. are dreadfully and inextricably coupled to slavery, despoliation of lands and peoples, etc. Oh, and they are running out too.
Oh look, a chart: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/minerals-used-in-electric-cars-compared-to-conventional-cars
Call me when we hit “peak oil”.
Cute. I can never figure out if you don’t understand how limits work or just prefer jeering.
Biophysical limits are real, irrespective of whether I mention them or you prefer to pretend they don’t pertain to us. Oil, cobalt, lithium, fisheries, an atmosphere that is chemically stable enough to correspond to a climate-we-can-live-with, etc. The fact that these discussions keep happening is just one of many indicators that could suggest we are already coming up against limits, exceeding biocapacity, approaching tipping points. Exactly when each of these thresholds is reached is less critical than the fact that exponential growth bequeaths us a trajectory that amounts to a collision course.
And you are on record here yourself conceding that once we cross (some of) those tipping points it will be too late to avert catastrophe.
Limits often reflect our current understanding of a system, and that understanding can change. That’s why, rather than running out as was predicted so many times, we now have more oil than we will ever use.
Neither of us even knows if lithium will be the choice for batteries in 20 years, or if, like lead batteries, recycling will recover most of what we use. I’m not going to debate the limits of lithium, or any other anything else, because neither of us has any idea what they are.
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/04/07/Rising-Chorus-Renewable-Energy-Skeptics/
Agreed if the aim was to have more EVs than ICEs (which I don’t think helps all that much, but many government agencies do) but the stated goals seem to be to decrease the size of vehicles in the urban core
and that
Lighter vehicles can include EVs, but sadly most EV’s are pretty heavy in relation to an ICE.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/business/electric-vehicles-weight/index.html
If you operate a public agency in charge of fixing streets, I dare say having more EVs would produce less local air pollution and subsequent chemical reactions with paving materials, plus less harm to breathing organisms such as voters, than ICEs, though the tire pollution and wear-and-tear would be about the same for both. In France, more of the electricity is nuclear rather than fossil fuels, which presents its own long-term issues of course. From my understanding, the French sincerely believe that nuclear energy is cleaner than other sources, even if no one else believes that.