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.
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.
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!
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?
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.