Hi again everyone! I know it’s Tuesday, but I wasn’t feeling up to working yesterday. I had my total knee replacement surgery Friday and after a really great first day, I had two hard days of pain and pill fog. I’m feeling better today so, fingers-crossed, I should make only forward progress from here on out. And I’m eager to get back into the work groove!
Here are the most notable stories that came across my desk in the past week…
U.S. bike production: A company that makes bicycles in Santa Barbara, California is surging just as Trump’s tariffs cause cold feet throughout the bike industry. (Bicycle Retailer)
Bentonville’s bicycling: Turns out when billionaire heirs of the Walmart fortune are passionate about something and they treat one city like a petri dish to see how much of it they can grow, amazing things happen. (Also, isn’t this really old news? Portland lost two companies to Bentonville in 2019 and 2020 respectively.) (NY Times)
Bike lane lawsuit: In a case with parallels to BikeLoud’s lawsuit against the City of Portland, a safe streets advocate in Los Angeles is suing that city for what he says is a failure to build promised bike lanes. (LA Times)
Houston, we have a problem: It’s bad enough the City of Houston tore out protective elements of an important bike lane, but then they added salt to the wound by saying they’d replace it with sharrows. (KHOU)
Tokyo > Boston: An American professor and his family who’ve lived several years in Tokyo are able to be carfree thanks to the Japanese city’s focus on transit and its strong regulations and pricing mechanisms on car use. (WGBH)
Cargo bike buying guide: This is a very solid overview of the most popular cargo e-bikes and what you should think about when you’re thinking about them. (Ars Technica)
Stop the madness: A columnist implores everyone to “stop the car-brained insanity” of buying oversized SUVs and trucks and hopes that the Trump tariffs might put smaller cars in a more favorable light. (The Guardian)
Speed governor progress: Washington is the latest state to pass a bill that requires reckless, speeding drivers to install a speed governor device in their car as part of their probationary period following conviction. (The Urbanist)
Video of the Week: Everyone was buzzing about this excellent video that breaks down why expanding roads and freeways is a terrible decision and how it leads to so many negative outcomes — yet despite the science that backs up those views, we continue to do it. (Global Cycling Network)
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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Welcome back Jonathan! As an old Santa Barbara boy I thought u might have caught BRAINs overlook: “Stinner has about 10 employees at its 3,000-square-foot facility in Santa Barbara.” …its really Goleta even if their mail says SB. [I was shocked yesterday when I read that the largest US bike frame maker was in SB…cost of living etc.]
“HB 1596 would allow drivers convicted of reckless driving, or three or more moving violations, at least one of which is excessive speed, to install and use technology that limits a motor vehicle’s speed based on the applicable speed limits, in lieu of license suspension.”
Why not just require this technology in EVERY motor vehicle? Why wait until a driver has been convicted, perhaps multiple times? The fact the vehicles are designed and manufactured to be used recklessly and illegally is asinine as well as deadly. We can easily change this … presuming there is actual will to save lives.
(On a separate note, the article about Bentonville was especially weird to read after the video shared in BikePortland comments last week about how Walmart and other big box retail stores destroy towns. Except the one the Waltons live in, apparently.)
“Why not just require this technology in EVERY motor vehicle?”
100% agree, but why can’t Oregon even take this one baby step?
If they need a victim of traffic violence to name it after, they have a long list to chose from.
Since it’s a bill, other legislators have to vote for it. A blanket requirement to retrofit all cars with governors wouldn’t be politically popular and might not be feasible to implement (e.g., manufacturers might not be able to meet such a huge spike in demand, governmental regulators wouldn’t have the staffing to implement such a program that confirms the speed regulators are up to spec)
A nice companion article to the Guardian SUV article is David Zipper’s article on a study that looked at the impact of growing car/ SUV size and vehicle throughput. Car bloat is an often overlooked aspect of both induced demand and causes of congestion. Unimaginative nihilists may believe that the doom loop of US consumers and the automotive industry that exploits them is a fixed law of the universe, however, regulating vehicle size and weight would be enormously less expensive than building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to accommodate bloat. While legislators in Salem look for ways to pay for roads, they should seriously consider a realistic Weight/ Size based accounting to complement road use.
“Between 1995 and 2019, Levinson and Gao found that the number of SUVs on Twin Cities freeways jumped tenfold, rising from 3.65% of all highway vehicles to 30.8% (the number and share of pickup trucks were comparatively stable). According to their calculations, the surge in SUVs led the average throughput on area highways to decline 9.5% over those 24 years, falling from 1,850 to 1,673 vehicles per lane per hour.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-25/bigger-heavier-suvs-worsen-traffic-congestion-in-us
Hurray for posting! Now go do your physical therapy homework.