Welcome to the week. Here are the most notable stories we came across in the past seven days.
LA bike shop owner battles fires: My heart goes out to everyone in Los Angeles as devastating fires continue to rip through the city. This account of a bike shop owner connects the tragedy to something we can all relate to — including a shot of a burned-out bike stand and a bike shop owner losing sleep because a customer’s bike was burned to a crisp. (Bicycle Retailer)
Welcome to the revolution, JT!: Just when you thought Coach Balto’s bike bus couldn’t be hyped any further, pop star Justin Timberlake showed up the day before his concert at Moda Center to ride with the kiddos. (The Oregonian 🔒)
Never too late: How many adults have you met that say, “Oh I’m not a cyclist,” or “I don’t bike”? This article is a great example of how, when given the right opportunity, almost anyone can get into riding and reap the benefits of bicycling. (The Guardian)
Enforcement vs design: This was a disappointing article because it falls into the trap of piling on popular targets (nonprofits and activists) while never mentioning how police voluntarily reduced enforcement to make a political point and how city road agencies also reduced emphasis on enforcement during the George Floyd era. Yes a lot of folks want to focus on design and sometimes that pendulum swings too far away from enforcement, but I’m in a lot of activist circles and have never felt as much anti-enforcement sentiment as the author of this piece tries to portray. Like most things, the truth is grey and in the middle, but it’s not as click-baitey, so we get articles like this. (The Atlantic 🔒)
E-bikes are “secret weapon”: Except for the misnomer that a $2,600 e-bike is “pricey,” it’s really great to see an article extolling the virtues of e-bikes as car replacements in a non-cycling media outlet. (Mother Jones)
Go by bus!: New federal statistics say transit ridership was up across America by over 17% in 2024. That’s great news! Now let’s keep the momentum going by giving buses a larger slice of the budget. (Mass Transit Mag)
Pricing progress: It appears that congestion pricing in Manhattan is going well and we can’t wait to see the first official reports of its impacts. For now, check out how it has impacted bus service. (Streetsblog NYC)
EV terrorism: An important piece that gets real about the threat posed by very heavy electric trucks and how city leaders should respond to their use if we want to keep streets safe. (Slate)
Time for “mobility lanes”: New report from Canada shows what I’ve been saying for many years now: E-bikes and other devices have changed the game and we need to change the rules of how we plan for them! Also, we should stop using the term “bike lanes” and shift to “mobility lanes”. (Bike Hub)
Take highways out, don’t widen them: “Through a climate lens, highways are the linchpin of our carbon-intensive car-driven transportation and land use system.” (Fast Company)
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.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Yeah he really has no right to ever do anything positive again.
He should have DWI tattooed on his forehead and be shamed for life.
Grace and forgiveness are just Capitalist concepts that should banned in your new Socialist utopian society you constantly advertise for.
Bring back the Gulags, right comrade?
What’s socialism got to do with this? There’s nothing about that in the comment. Also, who owns “Grace and forgiveness”?
Absolutely, and fill them with all the boy-bands and crappy pop singers we can find.
I’m so confused. Is supposed to be a coherent argument against an -ism?
Timberlake just garnered Bike Bus more positive press and awareness that this site or any advocacy group ever has. Thanks to the local mainstream local media, a lot of people might now see this as a good means of getting their kids to and from school, not to mention some exercise. Always seek the imperfections and the negatives you diehard alternative transportation warriors!
TLDR:
Cities should maintain bike streets and mobility lanes so that e-bike riders have safe routes for travel, because of increased speed.
Regarding e-bikes as a secret weapon:
My round trip commute from Milwaukie to downtown Portland is about 15 miles. Without my e-bike, I would not ride it regularly. So I agree that e-bikes have changed the game.
Regarding the findings about multiple use paths (decreased pedestrian comfort, increased numbers of faster, powered wheeled vehicles) in the Bike Hub article:
On my e-bike, I am much more sensitive to the quality of pavement on my ride, thanks to the increased speed. I rode over a pothole on SE 17th (at Bybee) and broke my arm last spring; after 17 years of bike commuting, that’s a first! So I’m avoiding roads with bad pavement, even if those roads are the “bike routes” (such as SE 19th and SE 17th).
On the flip side, while riding my e-bike, I am far more comfortable taking the lane on a street with some traffic, *because of* my increased speed. So now I ride SE Milwaukie Avenue into town: the pavement is better, and I am traveling fast enough that cars behind me don’t seem too aggravated and aggressive.
When I ride home, and I’m in less of a hurry, I usually take the Springwater. I enjoy the pleasant scenery *and* the fact that the pavement is smoother than any of the aforementioned streets. I know that’s illegal, but since I get passed by roadies on unpowered bikes regularly, the law is kind of senseless.
Here’s the point: if cities want to preserve space for pedestrians, they should maintain the actual streets! I’d be way more willing to ride SE 17th or 19th into town if there were smooth pavement, fewer obstacles (speed bumps with no bike cut-outs), and perhaps fewer aggressive cars (for some reason, there are more angry-passing cars on 17th than Milwaukie).
These kinds of shifts might be coming too fast for every city to adjust quickly, but is it really asking too much that our city’s recommended bike streets not have extremely rough pavement with wheel-eating potholes??? Would it then be any surprise that riders crowd into remaining safer facilities?
I believe Portland’s decreased ridership numbers are a result of a death by one thousand cuts. Camps, social unrest, lighter post Covid traffic, work-from-home, electric cars… these all play a role in recent years. One element that’s been important*since the very beginning of cycling advocacy* is the quality of riding surface available to us riders. You can’t go wrong with good, smooth pavement.
The LA fires are simply horrific.
Decades of government climate denialism coming to a head showing without a doubt that the climate crisis is indeed here in the Global North as it has been in the Global South and East for awhile now. One can hope that this is a wake up call to start spending funds and time to prepare for mitigation of the climate crisis that is here rather than spending those funds on some optimistic dream of preventing it some years/decades down the road.
The essentials are providing water to the population for when the power grid goes down. To prepare the Metro for a similar fire storm as LA is enduring as the northwest continues to dry out, more cooling centers for longer summers, preparing evacuation plans and abilities to get large numbers across the Willamette and vastly more trees planted and maintained.
Most critically its time to face climate deniers head on and say it is time to spend money on projects that will help the population at large survive what is happening rather than giving out precious funds for feel good, but ultimately ineffective goals.
As an example the role out of big, heavy EV’s as SOVs is a waste of time and resources when Smart cars and the small, vastly fuel efficient diesel cars sold and enjoyed in Europe that already exist and don’t weigh several tons each can with the stroke of a regulatory pen be imported and sold in N. America. Electrifying the masses barely works now, let alone as the grid deteriorates while given over to special corporate interests such as data farms and AI research without much in the way of funding for improvements.
Finally, emphasize to everyone that cycling is the best way to get out of an urban (and suburban and rural) bad situation and to help others.
https://bikeportland.org/2022/08/17/carry-shit-olympics-draws-cargo-bike-enthusiasts-to-north-portland-361748
Bicycles are indeed the finest bug out vehicle created thus far. The scenes of abandoned cars being bulldozed aside to make way for emergency vehicles can be a wake up call to city planning and for city evacuation planning.
The situation in LA is horrible and there is much to be learned from it.
While I agree that climate change is a huge contributing factor to the intensity and timing of the current LA fire storm (particularly timing as it relates to a prolonged winter drought), it’s worth talking about the ways in which this would be a massive issue regardless of climate change.
The fire ecology of Southern California has been deeply impacted by American settlement. In the Pacific Palisades/Malibu area, Santa Ana winds always occur in the same way and a spark is barely even needed to ignite when chaparral is allowed to grow uncontrolled. Precolonial societies in Southern California (and much, if not all, of the continent) routinely used fire as a means to manage undergrowth, drive game, and improve pasture. Removal of fire from land management practices in the early 1900s has been a proximate cause in most, if not all, of the apocalypse fires in the American west in the last 100 years.
This is mostly to say that some of the problems that face LA are just regular old corruption and land speculation, and so they may or may not translate directly to Oregon (famously free of corruption and land speculation /s). That said, more proactive fire management especially in places like Forest Park is almost surely justified.
And I agree – riding a bike is a great place to start, and we (as advocates/people in the community) should have a thoughtful discussion about how to manage the need for electrification and the likelihood that investments will be eaten up by (functional) monopolies like Intel/Google.
Yea I would certainly argue there needs to be a connection between private real estate home owners quest for never ending land value vs the public good of not having our city burned to the ground. Aside from how the ideology of private homeownership in California is tied to its massive investment in car infrastructure, continually building more fuel to burn and relying on private citizens to maintain their super burnable foliage is very directly tied to Climate Change. Wrote a bit more about this and Mike Davis’ predication of this horrible crisis. https://inaction.substack.com/p/the-west-side-burns
Can someone clue me in as to why? Where does this term come from and how is it less confusing? Does the term “mobility” suddenly not apply to motor vehicles?
Because I think we should make it clear that vehicles other than bikes are welcome and use these lanes. I also like LIT Lanes for Low Impact Transportation Lanes. And it’s not about clarity IMO, it’s about building a stronger and larger coalition of interested parties who sees themselves reflected in the lanes, so that we can create more pressure and urgency to widen them and make them more protected, and so on. So I’m not set on a particular name yet, I just think we should move beyond “bike lanes”
I wish we had separate “human powered, but wheeled” and “motorized 1- and 2-wheeled vehicles that are not traditional motorcycles” lanes, in addition to cars, trucks, and buses lanes.
Call me selfish, but I don’t like sharing the bike lane with high-powered bicycle-shaped motorcycles.
Are any of the battery-powered vehicles considered to be “bicycles” in regard to the law that bikes must use a bike lane if it’s available?
That law has problems, and it would be even worse if you’re having to share the bike lane with people on non-human-powered vehicles who don’t even want to be there (as has already been true with human-powered bikes who would prefer not to ride in bike lanes.
Watts, you are ahead of the “game” with this thought. During my summer vacay I was able to visit and talk with Dutch transpo planners and engineers who are pivoting to what you suggest: human powered lanes [old protected bike lanes] and motor lanes [old car lanes with cars, trucks, mopeds, e-scooters and e-bikes]…this is occurring as they design and enforce the 19 mph (30 kph) inner city arterial speeds. They are having to retool their roadways because they were too successful in Amsterdam over the last 30 years: higher population density + limiting roadway widening outside of the right of way + e-bike / e-scooter tech revolution. Currently its a dangerous messy mix of oma fiets, bakfiets with Super 73 mini motorcycles in the 2000s era protected bike lanes – in my experience vs past trips.
https://www.intertraffic.com/news/road-safety/amsterdam-30-speed-limit
I feel about this roughly like I feel about a lot of the weird angst around what you call non-electric bikes now that e-bikes are popular. You just say “bike”. Most of the lanes and paths we have work fine if users basically behave like people on bikes. Basic transportation biking under human power is a pretty good way to describe the normative behavior, so just go with it.
Similarly lots of stuff happens on sidewalks that isn’t strictly walking. Wheelchair users in particular have some different requirements for the infrastructure like curb ramps and smooth surfaces. The sidewalk works as long as long as people mostly act like they’re walking… or, if they are moving a little faster (whether running or on various wheeled devices), as long as they don’t impede people walking, and are generally safe and polite around people walking.
Inventing a wonky TLA or appropriating “mobility” to mean “hehe not cars” just puts the politics into the name. If the politics are bad for bike lanes that’s not because of a few people on scooters don’t see themselves in bike lanes, it’s because a lot of people in cars can’t see any other way. They’ll attach all that bad politics to this new name, too, doubly if the name itself implies that their favored mobility solutions aren’t part of “mobility”.
COTW!
I think the original term “bike lanes”, from 1970s roadway engineers, was meant as an inside joke – they were simply painted white edge lines designed to keep car traffic away from the curb – since they weren’t wide enough for a car, they called them bike lanes.
Time for Mobility Lanes:
I have been thinking about this and how Portland is actively missing the boat as they plan and design the North Park Blocks Extension and the Green Loop. All of the proposed designs have the green loop cutting through and bisecting the park instead of using the ROW. This is meant to be a route for cycling and it is important that it connects TO the park, but having relatively highspeed cyclists cutting through the middle of a park is bad for the park spaces and for the cycle route.
I commute into downtown over the Broadway Bridge, and it is currently a great example of PBOT designing anti-bike bike infrastructure: they have a cycle-only signal which sounds nice until you realize there is no green time built into the cycle, it is only triggered by a bike showing up, so bikes are guaranteed to wait for a light. This is annoying (as are the aggressive raised stripes at the bridge lift gate locations- the cars don’t have those!), but the proposed design will be so much worse. IF the park is successful, it will be full of people walking and kids playing and the bike route will go right through the middle of them! No that e-bikes can go 20 mph uphill, PBOT and PP&R needs to wake and realize that the Green Loop is transportation and placemaking, and for that to work, some separation and segregation is required.
“Mobility Lanes”?
Since switching to an e-bike I pass others about as often as I get passed, whether by just people on bikes or those on some e-whatsit. The e-bike era was well under way when I switched which had a lot to do with my choice to change lanes when passing a bike.
My perception is that some e-bike riders don’t have much experience, a few lack humility, and one-wheel riders in particular have skewed notions about risk. My worst anecdote concerns a one wheeler who passed on the solid paint stripe and honked a really grating horn about the time he matched up to my rear wheel. Who needs that?
I’m expecting any day to hear about police officers patrolling on e-bikes. My only concern is that even bike cops haven’t been putting in the time as street riders and they’ll likely show up on 1000 W mini motorcycles with a medium case of car head. If we had a few sensible rules and the police were cruising bike lanes at about 18 mph it might not be a bad thing.
If I were making the rules I’d limit bike lanes to 20 mph and yeah, ban one wheelers. Those who are able to cruise above 20 mph can perfectly well find a gap in car traffic to pass clean in the other lane. We all know you’re never going to get a ticket, it’s basically a request to just act like a human.
One wheelers? Look at their gear, they know it’s sketchy. Those machines have the power to cruise with most car traffic so let them do that. If they cared to hold at 20 mph in bike lanes and not strafe people on the MUP I’d be happy to drop the case.
Technically E-bikes are mopeds: motor + pedals. But ODOT-DMV says my scooter is one, even though I never have found any pedals.
Go figure.
Just in case someone else did not already post the link to the GFM page for Steve’s Bikes, here it is:
https://gofund.me/7f864dd0