Happy Monday everyone. Jonathan has been away from Portland attending to a family medical emergency since Wednesday, so things might look a bit different around here until he gets back.
Don’t dis cotton: A breezy piece about the pleasure of wearing cotton when riding. (Outside)
E-bike infrastructure: Manhattan is poised to convert an iconic newsstand into an e-bike charging station, but first it has to jump through a few hoops (like the Landmark Preservation Commission). (Gothamist)
VanMoof is back!: Under new ownership, the company is relaunching with a new line of e-bikes. They recognize that they have a big job getting “angry customers back on track” who were left in the lurch after bankruptcy with no place to go for service or upgrades. The new owners, LaVoie, have revamped the company’s business model and seek to offer “better customer experience, after-sales servicing, and reliability.” (The Next Web)
Cotton mouth: Republican Senator of Arkansas Tom Cotton escalated the tension over pro-Palestinian demonstrators who block traffic by calling for inconvenienced drivers to “take matters into their own hands.” (NBC News)
Too much pavement: Turns out that San Diego shares one of Portland’s problems, a backlog of needed street repair, and no funds to pay for it. A group of advocates, led by the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, is asking whether the city just has too much pavement. Discussion of San Diego’s first-of-its-kind Pavement Management Plan. (KPBS)
Jamaican racing: Better known for success in Track and Field, Jamaica hopes to develop cycling as a sport too. Nice discussion of the differences between the two sports, and the different pathways to success. (Cycling News)
Expired tags: This article reveals the breadth of the Fake Tags crisis which has exploded in U.S. cities since the pandemic. Portland gets mentioned because “even motorists with legitimate plates have become routinely late in registering their cars.” (NY Times)
Bad drivers and death: A must-read analysis of road fatalities reveals that the reason the U.S. is an outlier is not just because of our affinity for obscenely large trucks and SUVs; but also because maybe our drivers are just more inconsiderate and recklessly distracted. (Financial Times)
Biking through grief: A moving and insightful piece about how a jerry-rigged e-bike helped the author grieve the death of a newborn daughter, and how biking has moved in and out of her life. (NY Times)
Vision Zero at City Hall: Taylor Griggs writes about how susceptible Portland’s houseless population is to traffic violence, and how some city officials seem to be shifting the conversation away from traffic safety, infrastructure and design and instead toward the fentanyl crisis. (Portland Mercury)
Cars are the problem: A thorough opinion piece about the problems of car-dependence from the editors of this popular science magazine. Leads with the Dutch Stop de Kindermoord, talks about the epidemic of U.S. traffic fatalities, street redesign, density. A good introduction for the person in your life who is new to transportation issues. (Scientific American)
Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week. The Monday Roundup is a community effort, so please feel free to send us any great stories you come across.