Hope everyone had a nice weekend. Here are the most notable items we came across in the past seven days…
End of an era: The Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT) in Eugene has closed its doors, but its mission will live on. The building will be taken over by a transportation advocacy organization and be called the Nexus for Eugene Sustainable Transportation (NEST). (BEST Oregon)
Kids on bikes: A brilliant idea from The Netherlands where they’ve built a pump track bike path. Don’t miss the video that shows kids riding in the rain (without helmets!) on opening day. This is the kind of innovation we need in Portland. (GLD)
Climate Kamala: A credible source who’s covered California climate policy and politics for a long time thinks Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris could do good things for transportation reform. (Streetsblog LA)
70s and cycling: A senior living facility in southeast has launched a bike club and several 70-plus residents have taken to the streets on bikes. (The Bee)
E-bikes changing lives: A positive story from San Francisco, where a “quiet movement” of families replacing cars with cargo bikes is showing it has real staying power. (SF Gate)
Wrong direction: Given that Portland’s bike and scooter share systems are growing, yet becoming less financially accessible at the same time, this story about a new report that calls for more public funding of micromobility systems seems very relevant. (Streetsblog USA)
Causing crashes: The rise in shared bikes and scooters has led to a sharp rise in injuries from those modes, according to new research. (Quartz)
Good sign: The number of pedestrians killed in the state of Colorado is down 24% from 2023 and officials say less risky driving behavior coupled with new enforcement and infrastructure initiatives are the reason. (Colorado Sun)
Sisters cycle against the odds: Imagine being threatened in your home town for daring to ride your bike and then having to escape a repressive regime just to get to the Olympic games. That’s what the Hashimi sisters from Afghanistan went through prior to competing. (CBS News)
Freedom and driving fast: Enjoy this deep dive into Germany’s autobahn and you’ll understand why efforts to set speed limits (to save lives and the planet) have come up against very American-like notions of freedom and the all-might automobile industrial complex. (Slate)
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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Pump track link is the same link as CAT. I need to see this pump track, Portland could use a dozen more of them on school grounds and in city parks!
ugh. Sorry. Forgot to double check the links. Fixed the post and here is that story – https://www.gld.nl/nieuws/8174703/dit-nieuwe-fietspad-zit-vol-met-hobbels-leukste-fietspad-van-nederland
Wrong direction: I’ll support publicly funded bikes/scooters to the extent they reduce CO2 emissions (i.e. driving). If they primarily replace walking or taking the bus or riding a personal bike, I’ll pass.
My 2¢: they tend to replace trips of a type that the person would already be taking. So when I’ve used biketown, it’s replaced waiting 30+ minutes for the next bus late at night. For most of my friends in Portland, a scooter trip would replace a cab/Uber/Lyft.
Maybe they replace trips in rough proportion to the existing modal splits present in American society. In that case, it’s almost all going to be from the personal car – however I do think in NYC that citibike has diverted a lot of trips away from the subway in all likelihood.
Maybe they do (but I suspect it’s not that simple; for longer trips, an Uber is going to be (much) cheaper than a scooter, and scootering 8 miles is going to suck, so maybe replacements skew towards short trips, which may look different than overall mode splits).
It’s been long enough that we should have some data.
“An Uber is going to be (much) cheaper than a scooter…” Hence the need for public funding to level the costs. Maybe funded by a wealth tax on venture capitalists and CEOs of companies like Uber?
Yes, we need a constitutionally dubious wealth tax to subsidize scooters. Pass that hot idea onto the Harris campaign, stat.
A nationwide wealth tax is not the only option. States can tax billionaires as well.
I suspect you are right that a scooter-funding wealth tax could be implemented at the state level, and I think it would be great if NY or CA instituted a nice high wealth tax, and we can learn for ourselves why European countries largely abandoned the practice.
Ah yes, as the saying goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, just give up entirely.”
And that’s why they relocate.
Some do. Others not so much.
I suppose I should have been more clear – in the existing modal splits for the particular type of trip being replaced. I think scooters often replace a cab ride home from a bar, and that is a modal split that I think is poorly studied, but most likely leans cab/personal car (yikes)/bus. But maybe the bus rider is more likely to replace their trip since they are the most sensitive to a schedule (and bus schedules do not cater to the later night crowds).
In the case of the most studied modal splits – to and from work – I doubt they have much of a difference in Portland. The transit system serves that trip fairly well (by US standards anyways, and with a ton of qualifications), though perhaps the sort of unicorn “last mile” users exist who take a Bike Town bike from their home a few miles to a MAX or Bus stop rather than walk or get a connection. That’s the sort of trip that gets planners excited about bike sharing, but I’ve not seen or heard of a ton of evidence of that being a successful use case in Portland. I suspect that the transit is too slow in the vast majority of cases.
But in any case, if Portland had a more integrated transportation agency (think Transport for London) this competition wouldn’t really matter. In London, the taxis, bike shares, metro, bus, light rail, tram, some mainline rail (Overground, Elizabeth Line), and ferries all being controlled by one agency means that if there is significant displacement of trips from a tube line to a bike share, it doesn’t really matter much. Of course, in Portland, our bike share is not publicly owned so any displacement onto it from transit is a loss for TriMet. Everyone talks about how important “multimodal planning” is, but no one talks about ensuring all modes are governed under one body that benefits in some way from any one mode increasing. This matters a lot for public transit, where the US funding structures tend to cause death spirals, where decreased ridership leads to decreased service, which further cuts ridership.
It is plausible that they replace a short cab ride or a medium to long walk home from the bar (though whether it is good policy to be increasing the number of intoxicated vehicle users is an interesting question).
But to make good policy, we need good data.
PS You make some interesting points about the benefits of an integrated transportation agency where, essentially, over priced (in my opinion) scooter rentals could subsidize bus service.
My only use case for Biketown has been to ride it to or from the bike shop where I took or picked up my own bike. I would have driven otherwise.
That’s certainly a tiny, tiny use case. And it’s possible I would have taken the bus otherwise, too.
Lowered CO2 emissions are not the only benefit of bikeshare programs. That said, there is evidence that bike-sharing does reduce car trips.
That “evidence” is a passing reference to some other studies which, at a quick glance, at least, did not seem to strongly support the assertion (one was based on a phone survey, not the most reliable of methods).
If there’s a good study out there clearly showing that bike share lowers CO2 emissions (you know, something with a chart or some numbers we could base a rational policy on). If it exists, I’m sure it will surface sooner or later. It’s not crazy to think that the relationship is there, so I remain open to the possibility.
It’s funny how some people will accept any old hearsay about violent criminality among unhoused people, but dismiss peer-reviewed transportation research based on telephone surveys. Anyway, here’s a paywalled study where people reported their travel behavior around 4 and 12 months after Sacramento’s bikeshare system was installed. It concludes that “36% of bike share trips substitute for car-related modes”. A 2018 City of Portland survey found a similar mode shift for e-scooters.
The authors also drafted a policy brief outlining their findings, one of which was that bike-share in Sacramento led to a reduction in VMT of 2.8 miles per user per day on average.
I generally accept reports of experiences that are very similar to ones I have had myself. While I have not experienced someone wielding a battle ax on a bike path, I have seen enough people with any number of other scary looking weapons that I don’t dismiss that report out of hand. You are free to do so.
Self-reported retrospective transtion data, while easy to collect, is notoriously unreliable. I’m not just making that up, you can ask anybody who works in the field. If you want reliable data, you use travel diaries.
Drawing an equivalency between beleiving someone’s personal experiences and understanding the inherent limitations of retrospective transportation survey data is not intellectually sound.
I stand by my statement that I am willing to publicly fund bike share and related things to the extent they reduce CO2 emissions. It seems implausible to me that over 1/3 of bike-share trips are replacing a car trip, but if that’s the case, then it’s very likely that like bike share is reducing emissions, and I would support funding a build out to the point where we get diminishing returns. I will trust professionals to make a judgment about the availability and quality of data.
Never said anyone’s experiences should be dismissed out of hand. But basing judgments about entire groups of people on one person’s subjective experience is a form of hasty generalization, a.k.a. jumping to conclusions. And that is not intellectually sound.
Agreed. Please re-read the comment you linked to. The only conclusion I drew was about the specific person in the story. But I’ll draw another conclusion about an individual now. You really want to pick a fight with me.
I have so many posts you could choose from. Can’t you at least find one that is open to a coherent critique? I like to debate, but I much prefer a capable partner who can understand my arguments and find the flaws in them, not someone who just makes stuff up. That’s no fun.
Frankly, whether anyone is having fun is not my problem. But if you interpret mild sarcasm as hostility, that probably says more about you than about me. To me a claim like “some people are indeed on the street for economic reasons, but many because of issues with addiction and mental illness” is clearly a generalization based on anecdotes such as “someone wielding a battle ax”. I fail to see the point of that statement otherwise. Maybe someone more capable can unravel the brilliant logic on display here.
Maybe the claim comes from reading?
https://blanchethouse.org/portlands-homelessness-crisis-one-mans-path-out/
The same study found that 38.5% of people experiencing homelessness say they are suffering from mental illness, 26% from physical disabilities, and 37.5% from substance abuse disorders.
So the mental illness and substance abuse (which have a tendency to blur together) equal 76% of the homeless. The physical disabilities add up to more than 100% so probably it wasn’t just the physical disability that caused the houselessness.
The people that are houseless due to sudden misfortune or long term unemployment/underemployment have an excellent chance of seeking and getting help from one of the numerous programs designed to help them or get help moving to a more affordable area. The ones that don’t get help and have a tendency to remain on the streets or camps are those that are debilitated by mental illness, drugs or both.
At Willamette National Cemetery the Veterans Affairs had a program to get veterans “back on there feet” by providing temporary housing until they could get permanent housing and to remain in the program they had to work at the cemetery or the hospital. Paid tax free as well and it was a good deal! We usually had 8-15 or so at a time at the cemetery and each one had some rough stories of houselessness/drug use/jail and were glad to be done with that life. The successful ones managed to stay “clean” for the most part and moved on while some didn’t.
The take away is that houselessness does not exist in a vacuum and the problem is bigger than not enough houses. If people don’t want to or are prevented from living within society’s boundaries than all the housing in the world won’t help.
Hey jakeco969, if you calculated the 76% in your comment by summing the individual percentages, this estimate is an upper bound for the fraction you want since it double counts cases that reported both mental illness and substance abuse disorder. It is likely a significant overestimate since, as you say, these things ‘have a tendency to blur together’.
“It is likely a significant overestimate“
Hi Micah,
If all you want to see is one thing, numbers aren’t going to stop you, and I guess other people’s lived experiences (such as the subject of the story the numbers came from) aren’t either.
As for me I worked with (as in beside them talking with and sweating or freezing together) a continually changing cast of people breaking free from drugs (any and all), houselessness and hard times for almost 5 years. I was absolutely ready for my first 3 days in jail having been coached by a lot of them:-)
As I said in my post, lack of housing isn’t the overall issue. It’s an ability to live in housing that’s the issue.
If you have personal experiences that would cause you to think that the majority of those on the streets or camps are but a gift card away from shelter if only it existed for them i’d be glad to hear it.
“… lack of housing isn’t the overall issue. It’s an ability to live in housing that’s the issue.”
That’s an insightful comment which squares with my experience. One of my longest neighbors was a personable man who lived in the forest for, I don’t know, 15 years. Did odd jobs for people, worked out back at the grocery store.
I hadn’t seen him in a while when I bumped into him walking someone else’s dog. I asked him where his dog was. “Back in my apartment.” With the recent push for increased supply of subsidized housing, he had finally gotten a place and seemed really happy.
Similar situation with another man I helped financially for about a decade.
Both men were drug-free, friendly men who just couldn’t succeed in today’s society. Both are now proudly housed.
But they are also each very different from the drug-addled, mentally ill folks you see suffering in the streets. Many of them don’t appear able to reintegrate into society.
Dude, my comment was about Bayes’ Theorem — it’s not like I was bagging on midwesterners :-). I’m not contesting your broader point that many people out on the street have significant needs beyond housing or dismissing your experience, which sounds informative.
I love quantitative reasoning more than anything in the world (that’s why I was keen to point out the hole in your deduction), but I don’t think the issues we’re arguing about can be settled with statistics. As Watts has said, they are subjective. I do think plentiful affordable housing tends to create environments that make it more feasible for people to successfully transition from incarceration or street life into ‘straight society.’ I think my brother would have struggled if my parents hadn’t arranged (i.e. paid for) a place for him to stay.
“I do think plentiful affordable housing tends to create environments that make it more feasible for people to successfully transition from incarceration or street life into ‘straight society.’“
I would agree with you on that. Really the only way the Compensated Work Therapy the VA ran that I’ve discussed was successful was the guarantee of housing at the end of the road and the support they got from the rest us, their therapists and peer support. Without the housing, there wouldn’t be as much incentive for many of those guys (only 1 female participated during that whole time) to participate so I see your point.
LOL, my friend had a brother like that as well, I never really thought about how he would have ended up if the parents hadn’t financed his life, which of course plenty of people don’t have wealth to help in that way. Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that.
As far as those pesky midwesterners, one of these days I’ll have to share some (not quite slurs, but close) comments about “them” I developed from being stationed there for far too long:-)
No, it’s not. It’s a generally recognized description of the problem, unrelated to the anecdote itself, which I used as a framework to help situate the anecdote, with the goal of refuting the general notion that people are primarily on the street for economic reasons. Some are, but many/most aren’t, a general statement that has nothing to do with Battle Axe Man. He’s just an example of someone who most likely isn’t.
I would expect so.
Now that we’ve overanalyzed the semantics of my comment to death and beyond, do you want to comment on its substance?
Your case (“someone wielding a battle ax”) is clearly a caricature. I see plenty of folks out on the street who present a perfectly agreeable demeanor, so I think it’s kind of a dick move to present that as the full reality of street life. I’m not denying that there are lots of folks that are in really bad shape and are scary out there. I’m also not denying that there are avenues to get help. I’m just saying there are a lot of sad stories that end on the streets.
I do too; it was not my intent (nor do I think I did) claim that psychotic and violent/violent adjacent behavior was the norm for people on the streets. It definitely is not.
What I do claim is that while economics may be the primary issue for some folks on the street, many people there face bigger problems, including addiction and mental health, and what many need is residential treatment, not more tents and tinfoil.
And yes, many of those people are agreeable and pleasant to talk to. They deserve better than what our very well resourced government has been willing or able to provide.
Hi Watts, this is a reasonable view that I largely share.
I would add that lack of housing causes a lot problems, and if housing were cheaper I think a lot of people could avoid living outside and better manage their other problems like mental illness, addiction, etc. So ‘economics’ contributes to a feedback loop that amplifies the social burden posed by people that are currently unhoused. Rich people also experience mental illness and addiction, but they are not widely vilified by chamber of commerce types.
What people need when they don’t have any place to live is clearly subjective. I think the views of people that are unhoused should hold more weight than other stakeholders (e.g. ‘taxpayers’ or the mythical ‘small business owner’) for the simple fact that the houseless obviously have the most skin in the game. This leads me to favor voluntary programs and puts me into direct conflict with current vogue of encampment sweeping. I agree that residential treatment (or other best practice interventions) are likely to be more effective than self management.
We can argue about the whether the government is ‘very well resourced’, but the Portland metro area is to be commended for the level of funding allocated to address these problem. I fully agree that all the stakeholders deserve better than what is currently being delivered.
I think we agree that people generally know what they themselves need more than someone looking at their situation from the outside, though I might make an exception for addicts and the seriously mentally ill, who often don’t. I am totally in favor of giving people whatever help they need if they are willing to work constructively to get out of the hole they’ve fallen into, whether they’re there because of bad decisions or bad luck.
I’m all for “voluntary options”, but I do not support the notion that anyone can set up camp anywhere they want, and when people do so in places we’ve decided are off limits, and refuse to leave voluntarily, I don’t know what the alternative to sweeping is. Either we have sweeps or we accept the idea that there are no limits on camping. I don’t see a middle ground.
Oregon spends twice per capita on mental health/drug treatment issues than Massachusetts does (for example), and has worse outcomes. Whether double the level of spending of a rich pro-social state justifies my characterization of “very well resourced” is up to you, but it indisputable that we are not getting good value for what we are spending. I don’t blame people on the street for this, I blame our often inept state and county leaders.
What a tale of courage featuring Fariba and Yulduz Hashimi! It shows how love of cycling is universal and absolutely highlights the indomitable spirit of the sisters who could have been killed without repercussions while they were training. Kudos to all involved, the sisters, the terrifying dash to freedom with Allesandra Capellotto through Abbey Gate and subsequently being taken in by the Israeli team. With any luck their presence at the Olympics for all to see torments the misogynistic insanity that is the Taliban government and inspires women all around the world.
I forget Jake, did you serve in Afghanistan?
No, i went to Iraq. I tried to volunteer for Afghanistan after I got back, but there weren’t any slots available for my MOS.
I can’t get over how brave those sisters and their friend were and continue to be. It was frantic trying to get people out of the country. They are fortunate to still be alive for their “crimes” of living while female and to continue to showcase the strength of Afghan women. I can only assume makes them targets to this day. I still feel that while the reason to go into Afghanistan was a lie, the coalition really improved people’s (especially women’s) lives and I wanted to be part of it. Many Oregon soldiers have served there and their stories were inspiring compared to what we were doing in Iraq. It broke my heart to see it end how it did with so many good Americans and Afghans killed at Abbey Gate and men falling from our cargo planes. I’m glad that those who could get out did and I’m sad for those trapped there.
PS. I’m not trying to start a discussion on who caused or how the evacuation happened. The focus on the sisters heroism is enough for me.
Thank you for the Streetsblog LA article on Kamala Harris taking on San Diego’s crappy climate plan. What she did in sticking her neck out for sensible transportation decarbonization is a huge big deal.
I’m a San Diegan, and I cut my advocacy teeth in SD in the late 1980s fighting for a growth management strategy in response to the region’s incredible sprawl. One of our guiding lights was Oregon.
I can’t tell you how nasty the politics are down there, Portland is a romper room play pen compared to SD. Yet Harris stepped in, called out all the nonsense and forced SANDAG to come up with a new plan. Wow!
Wait a second, if you read the brilliant political commentary here and also famous Pundits that were held up here as Gospel, the democrats needed a big open primary to select someone else or they are doomed running against Trump and the weirdo he selected as running mate.
So don’t get carried away, the political excitement in the Dem party is not what Pundits expected so of course it’s not really happening.
She’s hot shit, isn’t she? And the past week has rolled out beautifully. I’ve never seen the Democrats display such discipline — I guess that’s what spontaneous enthusiasm looks like.
She is a good candidate this cycle, riding the wave after Dobbs and also ran to the left of Bernie Sanders in 2020.
She is pivoting well, it’s unfortunate how wrong the always commenting crowd here was a week ago. Crickets now…..
It looks like you’re needling me and others to say something. I said before that I think it’s unfortunate that there was no competitive process, but that ship has sailed. There’s nothing more to say or do at this point, except watch it all play out, and hope Harris’ role in the Biden administration and the positions she took in 2020 don’t bite her too hard.
I’ll start paying attention again after Labor Day.
Her positions are apparently worse than Trumps in your view and need to be cleaned up.
Your MAGA hat is pretty tight
This is a joke, and you are a troll. This entire attempt to stir up an argument is an obvious troll with no meaningful content.
She’s not that great. She’s better than Biden and I’m glad for that, but don’t expect everyone to share your willful ignorance and uncritical partly loyalty and cheer leading.
https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-more-liberal-bernie-sanders-senate-record-analysis-shows-1524481
We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to play pretend. She’s a step up from Biden.
The article does identify a critical problem for Harris — one of her biggest vulnerabilities in the general election is appearing too far to the left. I don’t think she is, but the “more liberal than Sanders” bit isn’t going to help sway wavering voters in Pennsylvania.
Actually, it will help sway them, but in the wrong direction.
The Harris campaign is not going to try to sway Trump voters. Their path to victory is expanding HER base.
Cat ladies and a lot of other people support Medicare for all and other positions.
She won’t get the old white guy vote, she doesn’t need them.
The response to her on this website clearly shows that.
She’s motivating a lot of voters who were going to stay home when the only two options were two guys born before the Korean War.
Hey, I’ve got old, young, and middle-aged white men in my family who will be voting for Harris. Harris needs every vote, it’s not a good move to turn people off because of some group average.
I never did expect the WHITE dudes at BP to support her.
After all, none of you lost any of your rights because of Trump.
No big deal for you guys.
Oh good. Unfettered racist bias in big, bold letters.
What’s stopping you from taking JOHN V’s excellent statement that…
…and take the win that’s being provided?
That’s a generalization ok? “WHITE dude” is a broad category and we’re not all for that second individual.
Right out of the blocks Kamala (comma luh) Harris is head and shoulders more qualified than plenty of other people who have held the office. She’s running toward the better ideas of what the USA is about and she doesn’t have to talk down to us to get it across.
Seymour Hersh in 1969 exposed the massacre of South Vietnamese villagers by U.S. troops in the hamlet of My Lai. He subsequently received a pulitzer prize for his book
“My Lai” and he has gone on from there.
If VP Harris is so competent, why didn’t she notice President Biden’s cognitive collapse that has been ongoing for several years? She is complicit in a circle of silence that lied to the nation for years. Who is in charge of the government? Do you think it is Biden?
Most of your comment is unfounded nonsense. Post your sources.
Sources besides the article I provided, watching the presidential debate and common sense?
LOL.
Trump is a walking talking Dementia case.
An incoherent rambling mess of a human being.
Your concern trolling about Biden is noted.
The MAGA crowd has a twofer with the freak show that is JD Vance.
Maybe you can get Seymour to investigate why Vance changed his name 3 times among all the other weird stuff.
I get that you hate trump and don’t care that the DNC is ignoring its own democratic process to see him removed. In fact, with the biden/Harris approach to shunning the press and the DNC ever eager to continually rewrite its rules I’m surprised that you still think the republicans are the threat to democracy.
I’m actually fine with that though, what I don’t get is the insistence on telling us that we shouldn’t believe our own lying eyes and that Biden and now Harris are so wonderful when they clearly aren’t.
They are however not trump which is saying something.
Joe Biden is a great president. He’s clearly slowing down, but your conspiratorial implications (‘Who is in charge of the government? Do you think it is Biden?’) are inflammatory and unfounded fox news talking points.
Hi Micah,
Sometimes “conspiratorial” can also be spelled as “stuff I don’t want to think about”. I’ve seen a lot of lies in real time during my government and military service and many of them by team Obama/Biden during the war so I don’t give them much grace. Obama was famous for droning the crap out of thousands of people (I’m sure some of them were militants) and somehow an absolutely innocent aid worker and nine of his family were droned after the Abbey Gate attack. Oddly enough, for days it was maintained that the strike was righteous until the lie couldn’t be sustained. A strike from a Reaper is usually an Executive decision.
Those in power lie a lot and I don’t know why people are so eager to believe their press releases.
Most likely were. One was an American teenager who was specifically targeted (not an incidental casualty). I’m not sure how, or if, this was legal (he had rights under the Constitution that cannot be summarily terminated by the president no matter how many bad things he may have done), but it happened (and was well reported on, so this is not the weird conspiracy stuff that a lot of people seem to believe).
Most people like to believe what “their team” tells them.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
“The strike was the last under Obama (that we know of). The 542 drone strikes that Obama authorized killed an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians. As he reportedly told senior aides in 2011: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine”
I certainly hope you get a chance to read that short article, again, these are the open source strikes so unclear how many more there are and also unclear if the militant vs civilian casualties are so cut and dried.
If you think I’m criticizing Obama/Biden for a murderous drone policy because of politics, you clearly haven’t seen enough drone imagery of the collateral deaths. I’m criticizing them because they did horrible things and so many people either give them a pass or are ignorant of it. Are you okay with just accepting all those deaths as necessary without questioning if they were?
Did you read much about the last acknowledged drone strike in Afghanistan? Who gave the order that killed those 10 innocent people? Did they pin it on some underling or did Biden finally get his chance to drone folks just like his old boss? Is wondering if Biden gave the order to murder those 10 people conspiratorial or is it a legit question knowing his history with drones?
Of course Biden gave the order. I’m sure he was told they thought they knew who they were targeting, but that it’s never 100%. I would never want to be in the position of making a decision like that.
It’s probably worth presenting the counter argument; in a war or similar conflict, people are going to die, both the people you’re trying to kill and some innocent bystanders as well. That’s the nature of it.
With drones, you minimize your own side’s casualties (drone operator’s psychological trauma notwithstanding), and also the number of innocent bystanders. Some of these strikes are so precise as to kill just a single occupant of a vehicle, but even when less precise weapons are used, or when you target the wrong person, the number of people killed is much lower now than it used to be, or compared to sending in a platoon of Marines to kill some terrorist.
Mistakes are always going to happen, but reduced casualties and more precise targeting could be regarded as a grim form of progress.
I appreciate your awareness of the trauma endured by the drone pilots. Too many even in the military don’t understand what they go through simply because they are not in personal danger when if anything it makes the trauma worse.
I guess we are going to disagree on how many mistakes are going to happen before they become systemic to a culture and if the attempts were even worth it. Drone strikes in support of active combat are one thing, targeted attacks are completely different in my view. The front line soldiers have done an amazing job under extreme duress to help people with daily life and to prevent predation by bad elements. Meanwhile the higher ups in the Pentagon, House and White House play murder games and give money away to contractors that directly undo the hard work put in to win “hearts and minds”. It’s very frustrating and at some point I quit thinking of all the mistakes and wrong identifications as acceptable.
The difference between us and them is that they try so hard and say and do whatever comes to mind to be in that position. Then they screw it up and expect us to forgive and understand that it’s difficult, all the while hoping we forget they wanted to be in that position and that they should be held to a much higher degree.
You’re essentially asking what rate of mistakes is acceptable, and I don’t have an answer.
On the one hand, war is messy, and even though we have much more powerful technology, people still make mistakes, get sloppy, etc. On the other hand, we’re talking about people’s lives, so maybe no errors should be acceptable.
But, as I’m sure you know, inaction can sometimes be just as bad as the wrong action.
What I’m asking is what level of competence should we hold our leadership to. Many here don’t seem to care how competent the person is who they place in charge as long as they are on the correct team.
That is the frustrating part for me. Excuses are made and slogans said and the faithful nod along without any serious consideration to what is actually happening in the real world, not just the policy speak realm.
The drone deaths/murders/whoops wrong person were simply a way to highlight the lack of care that people have when “their “ candidate is the one committing the atrocities or war crimes or whatever other unfortunate events “their” person is committing.
I expect high competence but not omniscience. When you’re dealing with very complex human systems, sometimes things go wrong, even when you make the best decision you can with the available information.
I do believe we need a single standard for decisions like this, regardless of “team”. But it is very hard to apply when so much of this happens behind closed doors, especially in this age when there is so little institutional trust.
Does the system work? I really have no way of knowing.
A solid statement through and through. One I do not disagree with or feel that it needs any additions. Thank you for a pleasant discussion!
Obama definitely ordered the murder of civilians by drone strike. Trump ordered even more. One of those people is currently running for president, and it isn’t Obama.
Obama ordered the assassination of an American teenager, which raises some thorny constitutional questions (see the 5th and 8th Amendments, which apply to both Obama and the target) that I have never seen directly addressed. I consider my right not to be targeted and killed by my government to be pretty fundamental.
It is not relevant what a completely different person, such as Donald Trump, may have done or not done. Nor is it relevant that Trump is running for president.
Believe it or not, Trump is immaterial to this discussion. But it is true (as far as I know), but also not relevant, that Trump never ordered the assassination of a fellow American (and a minor at that), which is, to me, a very serious act. And if he had, it would raise exactly the same questions.
What Trump did or did not do is totally immaterial to a discussion about Biden/Harris vs. Trump. Okay then.
Also, Trump never ordered the assassination of a fellow American? You sure about that?
Who’s talking about Biden/Harris vs. Trump? Not me, and not in this thread. And I don’t care about your conspiracy theories.
The person I was replying to was talking about it.
Oh yes, your concern about the democratic process in the democrat party is touching and cute.
She is pretty much a unanimous choice for democrats.
Will she last against a 78 year old felon will be answered in 100 days.
Not one member of the democrat party is complaining about her being the nominee.
This kind of weird talking point is why the Weird label is attaching to Republicans.
Democratic Party. W. Bush started calling it by the wrong name, probably inadvertently (the Bush family had language challenges), and it has stuck around as a pejorative. Democrats are members of the Democratic Party.
Okay, I have an open question to all then as I’m finally starting to realize and internalize how far apart our news sources are.
Query to all…..
If Biden is a great president and in good health, why did he suddenly drop out of the campaign after declaring for months he was in it to win it?
That’s it, not a gotcha question. I’m curious if anyone will give it a shot.
As an aside to BB, I just have to know your favorite news/political site as I am very curious to check it out. I thought I at least glanced at a fair representation of news, but clearly I am missing a few.
He dropped out because he was losing the election and politics is about winning. The right wing talking point about the coronation of Harris is rich coming from people who belong to a Cult.
He is certainly declining but capable still.
Apparently aging is a mystery to you. If you have a parent they do not go imbecile overnight, sorry.
Aging is a process and Biden is aging. His statements yesterday in front of cameras about the Supreme Court were lucent and right on target.
I watch Fox News mostly for the laughs, seriously.
Fair enough, thank you!
Do you feel up to expounding on why he was losing if he was capable? Also, still curious what your serious information go to site is.
BB, Jake, I think your exchange is becoming unproductive. BB, I just trashed your most recent comment.
We’ve got three more months of the campaign, so I’m sure you will both have other chances to tangle, but for now, let’s call it quits.
BB, Jake, I think your exchange is becoming unproductive. BB, I just trashed your most recent comment.
We’ve got three more months of the campaign, so I’m sure you will both have other chances to tangle, but for now, let’s call it quits.
My favorite news site is bikeportland.org!
🙂
It’s my favorite too!
“The DNC is ignoring its own democratic process to see [Biden] removed.”
Bizarre claim. Biden voluntarily withdrew from the race. Was he pressured to do so? Sure, that’s how politics works. Whatever the DNC’s faults, delegates can nominate whomever they want.
“I’m surprised that you still think the republicans are the threat to democracy.”
Republicans, including the current Speaker of the House, tried to overturn an election and continue to peddle the lie that it was stolen. Nothing the Democrats are doing compares to that.
I recently noticed several prominent Portland “climate movement” organizers musing on social media that reducing vehicle miles traveled could be more important than electrification.
Ironically, a recent Streetsblog piece directly addressed their “ride bikes or diesel transit and solve the transportation emissions crisis” thinking by depicting data from a recent NREL Nature Communications publication:
Source of data: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/84161.pdf
Please note that VMT reduction was a rounding error for the high EVMT scenario and that VMT reduction alone was completely insufficient. The tiny effect of VMT reduction would have been even more of a rounding error if high EVMT was >95% (an electrification level consistent with IPCC mitigation pathways that stay under 2 C).
Unfortunately this innumerate and anti-science society is failing to electrify transportation (necessary but not optimally sufficient) and to reduce VMT (important and optimal with deep electrification).
What I’m taking from your chart is that even with an overall growth in VMT, electrification will have a vastly higher impact than driving less, and that doing both is only marginally better than electrifying alone.
Is that correct?
Yes…as the percent electrification increases the effect of reducing VMT decreases.
Reducing car VMT, of course, has many societal benefits that are not captured by an accounting of CO2e.
Weird that that figure doesn’t show LOW EVMT + Net-Zero Grid w/ & w/o VMT Reduction and HIGH EVMT + Base Grid w/ & w/o VMT Reduction
Does it account for mass adoption of full size SUV EVs and pick-up trucks? 10,000lb vehicles that consume 2-4 times the energy of a small EV per mile?
I hope this doesn’t happen, but if it does, the adoption of EVs would have an even more pronounced benefit over their gasoline counterparts as to magnify the impact of widespread adoption.
The benefits actually decrease as the vehicle gets heavier, because the battery weight increases as a total percentage of vehicle weight. A heavier vehicle requires more batteries to go the same distance, which makes it even heavier. Gasoline or hybrid drivetrains don’t have the same scaling issues.
These very large, heavy EVs are also going to pose infrastructure and safety issues.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/as-heavy-evs-proliferate-their-weight-may-be-a-drag-on-safety
I agree that at some point there may be diminishing returns. Whether today’s vehicles are on the cusp of that point, or far from it is not something you can reason about without data. And even when you’re well past some point where lines cross, electrification will still make sense (as it does for heavy trucks).
Regardless, electrifying is an absolutely essential task for our country and the world. The first-order necessity completely dominates any second-order effects.
If we can find a way to shrink vehicles in that process, all better, but increasing popularity of large vehicles is not a reason to slow down.
I find those giant pickups/SUVs as disgusting as you do.
I guess Streetsblog is part of the evil conspiracy to promote EV cars and SUVs over bikes and transit???
Also, it’s kind of sad that someone would argue that renewables, which are far cheaper than fossil fuel generation, somehow won’t become the dominant energy generation source. It’s almost as if Market Urbanists™ would prefer that we fail at climate crisis mitigation as long as there are more people cycling in the post-apocalyptic remnants of our civilization.
What are you talking about? I pointed out that the graph omitted two scenarios that I think would have been interesting to see modelled. You managed invent a whole lot of opinions and arguments on my behalf, none of which I made.
“HIGH EVMT + Base Grid w/ & w/o VMT Reduction”
You asked to see what the results for high EVMT looked like with base grid which is completely ridiculous, for the reasons I outlined above.
I did ask that. The rest of what you wrote is in response to a made up person you felt like arguing against. As for whether it’s “completely ridiculous”, that’s very much a subjective opinion. You might not think that’s a likely scenario, but it is all the same a scenario that would be interesting to see modelled.
Well, that’s good news if accurate, for the people who insist on changing nothing.
I wonder, is this accounting for the whole lifecycle of the vehicles (manufacturing, lithium extraction, etc)? Obviously we could get tailpipe emissions to zero this way, I’m just curious how much of an impact the resource extraction and manufacturing have.
It’s good news for everyone.
If you read the results section you’ll see that the author’s assume that ev adoption is coupled with a deep decarbonization strategy which includes a massive reduction in vehicle transportation demand in order to achieve net zero carbon emissions. Reducing vmt or shifting to transit is absolutely necessary. renewable electrification is important, but it will never get us out of climate change hell without curbing consumption and SOV travel.
The graph shows what would happen without a massive reduction in VMT as is indicated clearly on the graph using data from the cited publication.
Advocates who drive fossil-fuel-burning vehicles and/or use fossil-fuel-burning transit constantly make this claim and it’s really @#$%ing wrong.
PS: I switched to vegan diet and have used bikes as my primary mode of transportation since the late 80s when I became absolutely freaked out at the way this society was just shrugging its shoulders about the climate crisis. At the same time, my own personal consumption decisions mean f*** all for decarbonization and I make these choices only because it helps me retain some small hope that a better world is possible for people in the global south.
Yes, it’s absolutely essential for transportation decarbonization while reducing VMT is optimal but not essential for fantastically-rich imperialist and Fordist nations. I obviously hope the USA becomes less fantastically rich and less hyper-capitalist but wishes are for fools who dream of a better world…
The graphic you shared does not come from the article, though the attribution claims that it is based on data that came from that source. I suspect that whoever created the graphic was cherry picking. In the article, the authors said that 88% of the possible paths to transportation decarbonization involved massive reductions in vmt (accompanied by massive increases in renewable power generation that would be equivalent to replacing ALL of the existing non renewable and renewable American power generation). So it would seem that your graphic was produced by highlighting the lowest probability scenarios.
“At the same time, my own personal consumption decisions mean f*** all for decarbonization and I make these choices only because it helps me retain some small hope…”
Give yourself some credit. Somebody has to be first. Somebody has to be able to say ‘My diet is vegan and I go everywhere on human power, it’s fine’. Somebody has to go in a restaurant and ask for their vegan entree. Somebody has to find necessary goods that aren’t based on animal agriculture or huge energy inputs and buy them so that producers can start building market for those things.
Unfortunately the market can’t work while the real cost of what we’re doing isn’t included in the price. Activists wouldn’t be so fuzzy and inconsistent about ICE vehicles if gas was $23/gallon.
If the real cost of motor fuel was on the pump we’d have passenger rail to the coast, the mountains, Central Oregon, etc. There’d be fifty trains a day to Vancouver and nine to Salem. Our legislators wouldn’t have to drive to work.
Paved separated grade long distance bike routes would move from being a glass pipe dream to a viable community development project.
If gasoline cost $23 a gallon, we’d all be driving electric vehicles. I doubt any of those other things would come to pass; the realities of running a train in America would be largely unchanged.
There are people driving ICE vehicles, on occasion, who would never buy a new EV. A lot of people now living came to environmentalism by way of being parsimonious. If your parents grew up in the depression of the 30s you have a little bug in your brain that won’t let you spend 30K on a motor vehicle, however sweet the tech.
If we’d had a $3.00 gas tax since 1980 more people would have been riding the trains that did exist, as well as modes like Amtrak’s Thruway Buses.
We’d have data that would support more departures, more trainsets, new routes on old train lines that are reopened and ultimately new lines to places that haven’t seen a train in 100 years.
I wouldn’t be so sure. $23 per gallon is pretty compelling, and even for the most diehard, the gasoline infrastructure would be gone, so it would be logistically difficult to keep your vehicle fueled. There are a few folks out there who use weird fuels for their cars, but it’s a lifestyle.
Perhaps, but we didn’t.
Theoretically, the USA is a society with a government so something as toxic, deadly, economically costly and ecocidal as an ICE vehicle could become illegal.
I’m speaking theoretically, of course, because the USA is truly exceptional when it comes to ignorantly not doing the right thing.
I doubt it will become illegal, but once a certain threshold is crossed, the gasoline vehicle economy will collapse rapidly. Automakers will stop designing new models, gas stations will close, prices will rise, and everything will reorient towards the new reality. There will be some who cling to the old ways, just as some people still drive Model A Fords, but numbers will shrink into irrelevance.
It’s inevitable, and just a question of time.
I agree that we will remain exceptional and will not join the long line of countries that have already banned gasoline powered vehicles.
That’s why there’s so much emphasis on reducing VMT on this blog. Obvious bias on a cycling website aside, reducing VMT is on almost no one’s radar outside of transportation/urbanist special interest circles, despite the fact that reducing VMT has other, non-environmental benefits (transportation network efficiency, public safety, public health, gov’t finance…).
Meanwhile, the idea of a zero-emissions-vehicle mandate is so prolific–despite it really only being waffled about–that opposition to it is a significant political football.
We need both a ZEV mandate and a major push to reduce VMT; neither is enough alone.
I obviously very much agree but there does seem to be a generalized antipathy towards electrification because, depending on government regulation, it could preserve some degree of societal car use. Hilariously, this antipathy is often coming from organizers and advocates who own and drive fossil fuel-burning SUVs.
I very much agree. I personally view VMT reduction as the low-hanging fruit for immediate decreases in emissions just as a reduction in methane emissions is the low hanging fruit for immediately reducing global heating.
That being said, I am also very aware that the USA is a Fordist society where hyper-consumption is the norm and that it’s possible a meaningful reduction in VMT will not be politically feasible.
Is there really antipathy to electrification, though? Who in this sphere is actively campaigning against it? I think there’s frustration with the single-minded emphasis on EVs in the mainstream, e.g., the absence of any kind of support for e-bikes, and the popular obliviousness towards walkable/bikeable cities. It just leaves a lot of external benefit on the table vis a viz reducing VMT.
There’s also the issue that it seems pretty reasonable to assume that, at least given current technologies, American levels of consumption are not possible to provide globally, and there’s no reason that Americans should be able to consume as we do if not everywhere can (without total ecological collapse). As you say, this is not a conversation that Americans are politically primed to have….But we can either start to acclimate ourselves to reality, or there’s a good chance that it will be imposed upon us from the rest of the world at some point, and we’ll have earned it.
“It just leaves a lot of external benefit on the table vis a viz reducing VMT.”
This is true; but the projects of electrification and VMT reduction are only loosely coupled, if at all. Electrification is something we can benefit from immediately (it will greatly reduce some classes of driving externalities), and requires minimal social changes to do.
VMT reduction is a much longer term project requiring physically changing our cities and broad social behavioral change. It’s worthwhile, if it can be achieved, but we can’t delay electrification until after VMT reduction takes hold.
Electrification is happening, but it’s oddly opposed by those on the left and the right, for different but nonsensical reasons. VMT reduction is not happening, and I’ve seen no appetite for even the most modest of the social changes required to get started.
An awful lot of liberals and progressives (including the blog editor) view “lithium” as one of the dirtiest and most ecologically-destructive mineral ever mined while, in a magical feat of cognitive dissonance, ignoring the impact of the 3-7 ton steel+aluminum fossilized hydrocarbon goop-burning SUV their household drives.
I’m vehemently for reducing the ecological and economic injustice associated with all mining but fixating on lithium (or sodium) when iron ore, bauxite, and fossilized hydrocarbon goop are far more damaging to both the environment and the economic future of sovereign peoples is really absurd (and especially so given that lithium only makes up a percent or two of batteries by weight and given that sodium is growing as an alternative battery cation).
I own and drive an EV, but I’m under no illusions that it’s actually a solution in isolation without massive government intervention at every level of power generation, material production, distribution, and consumption. Even if you converted every single personal transportation vehicle to an EV that was powered by carbon free energy tomorrow while holding everything else equal, you still wouldn’t get to net zero. Electric cars are small pieces of a massive puzzle.
One of the two tweets I was responding to in my OP referred to EV buses so when I used electrification I meant electrification of all transportation, not just the ****ing fossilized algal-juice-burning SUVs that so many battery skeptics drive.
Sure… but I used “necessary”, not “sufficient”.
EVs are a critical piece in that puzzle, and adopting them (and quickly) is necessary (but, as you say, hardly sufficient). I don’t really understand why so many people here (not necessarily you) are nay-sayers and skeptics.
The Quartz article “E-scooter and e-bike injuries are soaring” is meaningless unless you talk about rates of crashes. Absolute numbers don’t tell you anything.
It should go without saying and without remark that if you double the number of people doing a thing, the number of people hurt while doing the thing also doubles, barring some kind of bias in the increase (like if ridership doubles but say only old people are doing it).
If twice as many people started walking to the grocery store instead of driving, I would expect the number of injuries while walking to the store to double, but that doesn’t really say anything.
Or at least, it isn’t surprising. The way the headline is written, it seems like it’s supposed to sound scary. I suppose it means there is a larger group of people who could all be protected by the same types of changes. E.g. if only one person scootered, it might seem like a waste to build them protected infrastructure, but with more people doing it, it makes more sense. Either way, all I’m saying, is I wish they didn’t write headlines like that.
Sure they do; they tell you how many people are getting injured doing something (obv.).
Take an enormously risky activity, base jumping: if the death rate is 1 person per 100 jumps (not sure what the actual rate is), that risk might be tolerable if there are only 1000 people doing it. If base jumping suddenly becomes very popular, the number of deaths is going to skyrocket, even if the rate stays the same, and suddenly we have a health crisis on our hands.
Small numbers can disguise risks, or at least make them less important to society as a whole. 1000 people doing something risky is categorically different than 1,000,000. This is especially true if the people getting hurt skew young, as, I suspect, they do with scooters (lifelong cognitive impairment impacts a 20-year-old more than an 80-year-old).
actually, without context they aren’t terribly useful.
Are there more injuries per mile with electric micro-mobility devices than an ordinary bicycle?
What proportion of them are single person crashes vs. 2 vehicle collisions?
Are we seeing an increase in risky behavior on them, or is this a result of more people using infrastructure that is not designed with ULV’s in mind.
Base Jumping, Free Climbing and other extraordinarily risky past-times are not even in the same ballpark as commuting on an ULV – the one has inherent dangers that can’t be mitigated by anything we as a society can do and is utterly and completely optional. The second has risk factors we can mitigate through infra-structure design, enforcement of traffic laws and education (in order of decreasing effectiveness as well as decreasing cost and time to implement) and for many of us is *not* optional.
Base jumping was an analogy, not a comparison of something with a similar risk profile. And I agree that the absolute number of injuries is not, in itself, sufficient information, but it is a useful indicator that we need to start paying attention, and start collecting the kind of data you suggested.
I clicked the link to the Colorado story and chuckled when I saw the (apparently coincidental) banner ad directly above the headline.
David Brooks said “mass hypnosis” transformed KH from the most dump-worthy VP ever to savior of all things good and holy.
I think White House voodoo turned poor Joe Biden into a zombie.
Where is Hunter Thompson when we need him to explain these things?
Beyond gonzo!
I can’t remember who it was, but one of it’s occupants compared the White House to a cold cinder-block prison, complete with prison guards. I feel very sorry for anyone insane enough to actually want to get elected to serve time there for the next 4 years. In comparison, I’ve heard that Number 10 Downing Street is rather cozy.
re: your call-out:
You must not have noticed the date on the article? “Introducing the Nexus for Eugene Sustainable Transportation,” …October 28, 2021
CAT was quietly doing really cool stuff in Eugene for a long time, and almost as quietly walked away. BP is pretty focused on Portland but it’s not wrong to play catch up if something slips by your notice.
Yeah, talk about burying the lead! CAT closing happened almost 3 years ago. The real story is how strong and healthy the organizations are that filled the void (plus some) that was left when CAT closed. Shift Community Cycles, Cascadia Mobility, and BEST are doing some amazing things in our community! As someone who got their start at CAT in the 90’s and credits it with setting me on my career path I can say that what is happening now in Eugene with these non-profits is even more impactful and exciting!
https://www.shiftcc.org/
https://www.cascadiamobility.org/about-2
@jonathan – You should come down soon for a visit.
yes sorry. I don’t know this topic as well as I should. Someone shared that news with me so figured I’d put it in the roundup and spread the word. I’d love to do a Eugene reporting trip sometime. Maybe this fall.