Welcome to the week. We are just three days away from the return of BikeCraft. It’s 3:00 to 8:00 pm on Wednesday, December 17th at Migration Brewing on N Williams Ave. I hope you can make it, and I hope you’ve told all your friends to come too. Our vendors have been working hard to offer lots of wonderful things. See you there!
And now for the weekly roundup of the most notable stories from around the web in the past seven days…
Traffic violence: A man (a noted musician) was walking his dog when he was hit and killed by a woman who has had over 100 previous arrests — 82 court warrants and 40 traffic citations. (CBS News)
Tariff trouble: Ex-Portlander Gabe Tiller figured he’d pay $300-$400 in fees to get his new MTB frame from a European brand. But the fee was over $4,000 and now he’s stuck in UPS/USA tariff policy hell. (Singletracks)
Hit and run organizing: There’s a new nonprofit whose mission is to raise awareness of, and battle the scourge of, hit-and-runs. They also have a fantastic name: Fighting HARD (Hit and Run Driving). I learned about them via Streetsblog. (FightingHard.org)
Price of admission: There’s an interesting conversation about whether or not there should be an admission fee to line the roads to cheer riders on major races like the Tour De France. (NY Times)
Overreach: This is what can happen if you let e-bike narratives and anti-bike discrimination run amok: A bill in New Jersey would require all e-bikes to be licensed and registered. (NJ.com)
Playing politics with roads: A Republican-led effort to defund ODOT took a major step forward when organizers turned in over 200,000 signatures to the Secretary of State. (Oregon Capitol Chronicle)
History lesson: Sit back and enjoy this tale of what cycling was like in and around the Montavilla area over 120 years ago! (Montavilla News)
Tale as old as time: Nearly half of the members of the board that oversees transit in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area don’t even use the service. (Star Tribune)
Carfree research: Surprising results from a nationwide survey presented in published research reveals that way more Americans than you probably thought — nearly one fifth! — are interested in living carfree and an additional 40% are open to the idea (Human Transit)
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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200,000+ Oregonians — Democrats, Republicans, Independents and NAV’s — signed to put the $4.3 Billion dollar tax increase before voters.
People feel overtaxed. Not every problem is solved by raising taxes when there are real efficiencies to be had without firing essential workers. Threatening layoffs to force a yes vote isn’t honest debate.
This isn’t partisan. It’s direct democracy. Let the people decide.
Two things can be true at once: Yes a lot of people are pissed about new taxes and don’t want to pay more to a government they don’t trust. Also, this entire effort is led by Republicans who are using it to catapult Drazan to office. They care more about political power than roads and transportation. Watch once this passes how quickly all these R leaders forget this issue and move on.
Republicans are threatening to chop ODOT in half or starve it for some purpose of their own. Weirdly, this agency shows up as only four percent of the state budget. I’m attracted by the idea of breaking things like sidewalks, bike infrastructure, transit, and trains out of the hidebound carhead bureaucracy so that public investments in those things can be considered in their own right instead of waiting for a diet of crumbs under the table of bloated freeway projects.
Overreach on e-bikes: I’ve said this before, but in their space requirements, their physics, and their user profile, e-bikes are more like bikes than cars, but this is an attempt to regulate them using methods that have already failed to keep car users safe for themselves and others.
Cars are over powered. Cars take up a huge share of urban landscape. Cars are a danger for people outside who have nothing to do with the car user. Anything you can say about e-bikes is true of large motor vehicles, times one hundred.
I’m actually in favor of e-bike users generating a revenue stream. I’m in favor of e-bike users and all bike riders having ready access to insurance that is PRICED IN PROPORTION TO THE ACTUAL HAZARD. The reason we don’t have bike rider insurance right now, in my opinion, is that the amount of money involved, compared to the overhead, is just not large enough to interest insurance companies.
It might be cheaper for government to supply bicycle insurance as a social benefit than it would be to establish a bureaucracy for regulating bicycle insurance providers. Remember that it was going to cost at least $250 Million to set up an office of tolling new freeway expansions. That may be only a middling PR sort of expenditure around ODOT circles but it could be a low estimate!
Oh no Gabe! Miss riding with ya dude.
Love the Montavilla article. A reminder that there were bicycles on Portland’s thoroughfares before there were cars on Portland’s thoroughfares. So it’s not that we are trying to add expensive bike infrastructure to motor vehicle streets today; it’s that we’re suffering from a legacy (and present-day) adding of expensive motor vehicle infrastructure to bikeways!
Clarifying the statistic from the Jarrett Walker blog post: It’s not nearly one-fifth of Americans that are interested in living car-free, but rather one-fifth of urban and suburban US car owners.
Today, over 100 million Americans out of a total population of ~340 million do not drive. This includes children, people with disabilities, and older adults who have stopped driving.
Needless to say in this venue, it’s awesome to know that the pool of people who drive and are interested in dropping the habit is so large. I just don’t want the very large pool of people who are already there to go unnoticed.