Happy Tuesday everyone. We’ve got a short week, so let’s get right into it.
Here are the most notable stories that came across my desk in the past week…
School bollards: When PBOT gets serious about school streets (notice I said “when,” not “if”) I really hope they order a bunch of these pencil bollards to keep drivers away. (Detritus of Empire)
Shared streets law: Washington has passed a new “shared streets law” and I’m jealous. It allows cities to establish speed limits as low as 10 mph and removes the requirement for pedestrians to cross at crosswalks and corners. It unleashes the possibility for “woonerfs” statewide. We need this in Oregon! (The Urbanist)
It’s the bike share: A key to London’s massive growth in cycling rates is their Lime bike share system, which has 30,000 bikes and offers “zippy” e-bikes that offer an easy and convenient way for folks to get around. (The Economist) 🔒
Is this why they call it a HAWK signal? 🤣: A zoologist has document a hawk in New Jersey that uses a pedestrian-activated crosswalk signal as a hunting aid. (The Atlantic)
Bye bye flex posts: The City of Denver says plastic posts that protect bike lanes are too ugly and hard to maintain, so they’re replacing a bunch of them with rubberized curbs. (Westword)
Best kind of bus driver: Seattle bus operator Nathan Vass (who was keynote speaker at Oregon Walks fundraiser event two weekends ago, by the way) is all about community and has written a book about what he’s experienced driving routes many other drivers try to avoid. (KUOW)
Fatality trends not good: “Since an all-time reported low of 623 bicyclist deaths in 2010, we’ve seen an 87% increase in bicyclist deaths with consecutive all-time records for the most deaths in the last two years of available data.” (League of American Bicyclists)
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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Fatality Trends: Death rates started to go way up in 2010/11. Up until then my flip phone and Blackberry basically only made calls and some basic text, then features got added and phones started expanding in size and complexity very rapidly. But we aren’t distracted, are we? Oh no… it’s clearly some plot involving speed, the auto industrial complex, certain politicians, etc., because clearly from the LAB the trend really started not in 2010 when Obama was president but much later the other Obama guy got re-elected in 2012, or was it in 2014? Let me check online… Mr. T didn’t start his first term until 2017, 7 years into the death spiral, so it couldn’t be him…Gosh, I’m so confused!
I have come to the conclusion that phones are the reason for the increase in crashes. I don’t know the solution, besides getting people out from behind the wheel.
A set of very powerful sequenced EMP’s to annihilate all smart phones and the infrastructure that enables them?
A fundamental shift in physics such that electronics and ICE’s don’t work?
A computer virus that starts killing anyone wearing airpods via their phone?
A zombie apocalypse – the zombies end up eating anyone who doesn’t pay attention!
An alien apocalypse! Anyone using a phone will get a hyper velocity spike on their location!
An AI apocalypse – hunter killer robots home in on phone signals and kill any human stupid enough to use one.
Even if using a phone became a death sentence I’d wager a significant portion of the human race would *still* not be able to put them down.