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)
Yea no way you could retro fit that, like 23% of cars on the road are older than 20 years, some are even 75+ years old.
I do wonder how well this technology works even in new cars, I assume it uses GPS but I find on cloudy days the GPS in Portland is often off by a block or so when driving which wouldn’t work well when speed limits can change sometimes drastically in less distance.
Issues with your car GPS probably have more to do with the fact that the manufacturer has severely diminishing returns on fidelity. So no sense in making a super accurate unit, if within a block is mostly good enough for most people. For geofencing, there’s a higher degree of fidelity needed so it would be more expensive. But I am under the impression that there would be no technical barrier, and that GPS is used for this kind of thing already
I’m pretty sure it’s an inherit issue with GPS.
1. Heavy Rain and Dense Clouds
Although GPS signals can generally penetrate clouds and rain, extremely heavy precipitation can attenuate these signals, leading to reduced accuracy. This attenuation is more pronounced in tropical regions with intense rainfall but can also occur in areas like Portland during heavy downpours.
2. Urban Canyon Effect
Downtown Portland features narrow streets flanked by tall buildings, creating what’s known as an “urban canyon.” These structures can block or reflect GPS signals, leading to poor GPS accuracy. This phenomenon causes GPS signals to bounce off buildings before reaching your device, resulting in errors in location data. When combined with weather-related signal attenuation, this can further degrade GPS accuracy. Additionally, wet surfaces from rain can enhance signal reflections, exacerbating multipath errors.
Usually some sort of mathematical filter, the data you get is inherently noisy so it gets run through something that could potentially:
So lets look at what it takes to accomplish this feat. First everyone says look the EU is doing it. First only on new cars starting with the 2024 model year. The minimum solution is to trigger an audible alarm when the speed limit is exceeded. So many of the new cars have no system that will actually reduce the speed.
I looked online for such technology that can be retrofitted to an older vehicle. I found many articles about looking into it, but talked more about the difficulties of actually creating such technology. Part of the problem is the generation of the vehicle itself. The easiest ones to control speed is on vehicles that use an electronic control on the throttle body. The majority of the cars switched in the 2000s. Prior to that you could retard the engine timing with the ECU which is how the early traction control systems worked. That would get you back to about 1996 models. Prior to that all bets are off.
The next problem is determining the speed. So GPS is one method. I still us a Garmin GPS in my car and I do keep the maps up to date. But that said I have a number roads where no speed limit is displayed or its wrong. Even Portland when the speed limits have been changed it can take several months before the GPS database has been updated. Next would be cameras to read the speed limit signs. Then compliance would begin once it sees a sign. The camera software also needs to be able see and decode school zone signs. They can have flashing lights or the hours when the zone is active. The worse one being “When Children are Present”.
So this legislation makes them all feel good as if there were doing something good. But someone should have asked the question can it be done.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. Capping at max urban highway speed in Portland for the interstate and 30 everywhere else would be a great start. Fine tuning beyond that would be great but not needed to get the ball rolling.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/speed-limits
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
While you are about it, try closing down those types of businesses that encourage drivers to buy SUVs to carry all their “bulk buys” such as Home Depot and Costco, by charging a land tax (as opposed to a property tax).
I don’t think you can really lump Home Depot in with that movement. People are generally going there to buy specific things for specific projects. If I go to Home Depot or Mr. Plywood, I buy the same amount.
Also, your average Costco run can fit in a compact car. Maybe not with the entire family in tow. I’ve only ever done Costco runs with an older wagon-sized vehicle.
Apparently ‘murricans have zero agency when it comes to not being vehicularly violent planet-destroying d***s. The unimaginitive nihilists are your neighbors, friends, and family that keep on consuming these disastrously moronic McSUVs and McTrucks AND the amoral sociopaths in ‘murrican C suites who have shifted production to these monstrosities for short-term profit.
“Apparently ‘murricans have zero agency when it comes to not being vehicularly violent planet-destroying d***s.”
Says the guy who thinks it is patently unfair to put traffic cameras in the most dangerous locations because people there apparently can’t control themselves.
Either people have agency or they don’t.
Soren: cameras wherever needed throughout Portland as a way to address perceptions of bias
Watts and the “likes”: the “fair” solution is to have cameras disproportionately target POC and poor people (while sparing the mostly-white professional class)
If your goal is to reduce the number of crashes as much as possible, it only makes sense to put the cameras in places where the problem is the worst. For every “just to be fair” camera, people will die who wouldn’t with a more data based policy.
As we discussed elsewhere, advocacy from people like you and Avalos allowed my neighborhood to jump to the head of the line, even though our safety problem is much less severe than that elsewhere in the city. It’s not at all fair that we got cameras ahead of more needy locations, but I’ll happily take them.
Watts: A few cameras placed with a bias towards communities of concern is fine.
Soren: More cameras everywhere to address perceived spatial bias is better.
Soren: cameras wherever needed throughout Portland as a way to address perceptions of bias
So your interest in cameras doesn’t even include the safety aspects they bring? Your big concern is whether the perception of bias (and not even if its actual bias) exists because of where they are placed?? Really?!?
*”wherever needed” based on driver-caused homicide and severe crash statistics
So now we agree that camera should be placed based on need rather than on demographics as you were saying earlier?
I believe that the current piecemeal approach invites biased enforcement and that larger numbers of cameras should be installed to lessen any actual or perceived bias.
It seemed in your earlier (and more spirited) comments that you supported the piecemeal approach when you seemed to support (although it was difficult to understand what you were trying to point out through the vitriol) Avalos’ hesitation to place speed cameras where the danger spots are in favor of using race and or economics to decide where to put them.
So it seems now that you support placing the cameras where it is most dangerous and going out from there? Thats great!
I hope that the City Council will also see the wisdom of that and instruct PBOT to do so.
Another fair and balanced ex-military poaster.
Until we find a way to manage a huge number of speed cameras (which I think will be effectively never for various mostly non-technical reasons), we still need to make choices. In the moment, those choices are to prioritize based on need or based on demographics and politics. So while “we need cameras everywhere” is an easy answer, it doesn’t really address the issue at the heart of the decisions we’re making today.
The question boils down to whether saving lives is a higher priority than some sort of demographic “justice”. I’m selfishly happy “justice” prevailed in my case, but I also know someone somewhere else in Portland is going to die unnecessarily as a result.
That is indeed justice, but more of the poetic sort.
Hurray for posting! Now go do your physical therapy homework.
Cargo Bike Buying Guide: Ah yes, the SUVs of the bicycle world, even their write up looks like something from Ford or Dodge, but substitute cargo bike with SUV. I personally own a Surly Skid Loader with a “cargo” motor but rarely haul anything beyond groceries, and most of the time use it for regular riding, and most of my friends (none with kids) use their cargo bikes for their daily work commute or for leisure rides (among retirees who can actually afford one of these). It would be interesting to find out how many cargo bike owners actually have (younger) kids or real cargo to haul around, and how often they use them as such rather than as a substitute for their acoustic bike. I know they exist, several people on BP have written articles about using them as such, but are they the exception or the rule, percentage-wise?
The super-sized McSUV and McTruck phenomenon is a quintessentially north ‘murrican expression of consumerism so a turn towards tiny subcompacts is very unlikely. Monstrously-sized personal-trucks and SUVs are so desired by the public that smaller “cars” are no longer manufactured in ‘murrica,
The raw materials that are used in auto manufacturing are commonly imported (25% of steel is imported into the US). Smaller vehicles use less raw materials, so might be more preferable to consumers on cost grounds.
Granted, this is already true, so a rise in the price of steel seems unlikely to drive consumer trends too much. But if huge trucks become literally unaffordable even with the ridiculous financing offered these days, then that may force the market to move.
“It’s wrong to call these supersized vehicles sport utility vehicles (SUVs): a large proportion of them are not used for anything sportier than a supermarket run. Rather, we seem to have crossed over into emotional support vehicle (ESV) territory.”
Why does it mater? Most sports cars aren’t ever driven on a race track either. Would it make it better some how if all the SUVs were out driving on twisty dirt forest roads for recreation or something?
Many sport cars or off road vehicles that are used most for recreation, such as jeeps etc. aren’t really heavier because of it. The weight issue isn’t really relegated to these vehicles either.
In 1985 a 4-door VW weighed ~2,200 lbs. Today it’s over 3,000 lbs with only 10% more interior space for 33% more weight.
Compare an Ioniq 5 (electric SUV) with an Ioniq 6 (electric sedan) and they weigh nearly the same.
Encouraging lighter vehicles would be great but it seems weird to call out SUVs like this explicitly.
I realize this is not the point you’re making, but I’ve known a ton of people who have owned Jeeps, and none of them have used them for off-roading or recreation, or at least not primarily. Jeeps and other “recreational” vehicles are mostly used for normal driving.
“Portland lost two companies to Bentonville in 2019 and 2020 respectively”
From the article, the owner had been living in Arkansas since 2018, and the people who wanted to buy the shop couldn’t or didn’t. It closed. Did it re-open in Bentonville? The linked article sounds like the owner moved on and is working at a different shop now. Seems like we didn’t “Lose a business” to Arkansas as it…just closed.