Welcome to the week. I’m still processing the huge political news and feeling a massive weight lifted from my mind now that the Democrats have a new, capable candidate.
Today’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by The eBike Store (809 N Rosa Parks Way). Portland’s original, all-electric bike shop with top brands and great service.
And with that, here are the most notable items we came across in the past seven days…
Cool it: Trees are powerful when it comes to keeping a city cool and Portland is on the leading edge of “shade equity” trend that’s at the intersection of social, economic, transportation, and environmental justice. (Portland Mercury)
Physical feat: Imagine pedaling as hard as you can for 100 miles and averaging 31 mph the entire time. That’s what a rider did to break the 100-mile time trial world record. (Cycling Weekly)
‘Round and ’round: I like traffic circles and roundabouts and wish we had more of them here in Portland, so it was fun to see that my former hometown of Long Beach, California has embraced the facility. (Streetsblog LA)
A highways-are-really-bad primer: Here’s a cheat sheet with five key insights from Megan Kimble’s excellent book, “City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways,” — including the part where she uncovers who the Interstate Highway Program was never meant to fund freeways through cities! (Fast Company)
What leadership looks like: We desperately need our local and regional government to stop throwing billions at freeway expansions and start talking about transportation like the Labour party in the UK. (The Guardian)
Bike trail haters: Someone is so upset that the City of Spokane and a local bike trail group are working together to improve off-road riding that they’ve resorted to vandalism and sabotage that has injured at least one person already. (Spokesman-Review)
Bikes ‘indispensable’ in Paris: No I’m not yet tired of sharing stories about how cycling has become a huge thing in Paris. Or as this global travel publication says, “up there with the baguette, the béret, and the Marinière shirt.” (Conde Nast Traveler)
Olympian effort: Related to the item above, the City of Paris plans a new bike network just to get folks to Olympic venues, and they plan to keep the new bike lanes in place when the sporting games are complete. (Tripzilla)
Portland needs a MAX tunnel: This week’s must-watch video comes from RMTransit, who deftly breaks down why Portland’s light rail system is too slow and why we need a tunnel to fix the problem. (RMTransit on YouTube)
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.
Thanks for reading.
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On the topic of shade, I had the thought of something that there’s obviously nothing we can do about – it would have been cool if we hadn’t aligned street grids with the sun! If the grid was rotated 45 degrees, the trees would actually shade the road most of the time. As it is, Going is an absolute furnace even with trees, except in the places shaded by like 100 year old huge trees they aren’t planting anymore.
Or, maybe they can and are planting trees intended to have branches going over the road. I don’t know. I just remember hearing recently that the new trees they’re planting are intentionally not going to get as big as some of the good shade trees we have.
But for sure, anywhere with lots of trees feels immensely better!
I think “haters” isn’t strong enough of a word. This saboteur put grease on a steep rock feature and threatened to use caltrops. That’s sociopathic and potentially murderous.
100 mile TT record: “…the Scot ended up averaging 337 watts to take the national title and the record…” –while traveling at 31 mph for over 3 hours. Imagine if John Archibald, who weighs about 79 kg, were stoking your tandem. It’s frightening.
For only a 20 kg weight penalty a person can now have a 1000 watt motor on an e-bike. I suspect that we’ve gone pretty far down the wrong path in e-bike development. Especially for a purpose built bike with a mid drive, 350 watts is a lot.
The ever loving market has supplied us with a bunch of stuff that is appalling to many bike riders, not to mention legislators. I don’t think we’re going to be able to put that back in the bottle. Maybe there’s a middle way to encourage effectively powered e-bikes that doesn’t involve passing laws that we know will never be enforced.