It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! It’s been a while, so it’s a long one.
First up, Kidical Mass in Tacoma is awesome and adorable.
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Pacific Northwest News
- Bikes good for businesses, group says | Business in Vancouver – Former bike lane opponents change their tune after seeing all the new bike business.
- Is Seattle Really Seeing an Uptick In Cycling? – Another awesome and super in-depth look at Fremont Bike Counter data, this time from Jake Vanderplas.
- The Eastside Rail Corridor | The Urbanist
- Sound Transit’s Long Range Plan: Or How to Cook a Train | Seattle Transit Blog
- PPB Chief Reese takes a shift with downtown bike patrol – BikePortland.org
- Speed cameras: Driver teaches city a lesson about speeding in Seattle school zones | The Seattle Times – Apparently those school zone speed cameras has two too many words on them, so lawyer gets away without paying.
- Warning signs use radar to detect bicyclists » Biking Bis
- Rocking the walking: Millennials drive new urban spaces | KING5.com Seattle – I think they meant to say “don’t drive”
- Bike-to-transit mobile trip planner launches in Portland – BikePortland.org – I want for the Seattle region
- The Arboretum’s Ramps to Nowhere by Jen Graves – The Stranger
- Northgate Pedestrian/Bike Bridge – safety & personal security – City Comforts, the blog
- Law allowing motorcyclists to run red lights goes into effect | KING5
- Running a stop sign could cost you $87 | Cascade Bicycle Club
- City leaders focusing on bike lanes, $15 an hour as Seattle goes down toilet – The Dori Monson Show – Dori blames seeing a “pregnant drug abuser” downtown on bike lanes. Once again, proving that Dori is not even good at being a shock jock (he’s too obvious with his dumb statements)
- Renton teen recovering after life-threatening hit-and-run | KOMO News
- Personal Privilege and Biking: It Takes More than a Bike Lane to Start Riding | Washington Bikes
- A new multi-day bike tour guide for Washington state » Biking Bis
- Silly Hilly’s Recommendations for the Central Area Greenway | Cascade Bicycle Club
- Carless in Seattle: How it feels to ditch it and get there other ways | The Seattle Times – A fun read, even if the author seems to dismiss biking as a real transportation option (even after it proves to be among the fastest ways to get around)
- Enumclaw Bicycling: Racing and Pie | Washington Bikes
- Bicyclist struck, killed by SUV on Hwy. 20 near Oak Harbor | KOMO News
- 2014 Seattle Summer Streets – Alki – an album on Flickr
- Seattle adding speed-enforcement cameras at 5 schools | Seattle Times
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The city shouldn’t be allowed to close a bike lane and sidewalk like this. Close car lanes first. pic.twitter.com/9QJatUUe93
— Ben Schiendelman (@BenSchie) May 28, 2014
- Cycle Track Showdown by Ansel Herz – The Stranger
- Landlord looks to reduce car ownership by buying a shared car for its tenants – BikePortland.org
- Could ‘presumptive liability’ keep Seattle cyclists safe? | KING5.com Seattle
- SDOT Blog » Designing Streets for Safety – Plans for a safer Lake City Way
- My Ballard » Salmon Bay School wins K-8 Golden Pedal Award
Halftime show! Parking craters are awful and destroy American city centers.
Parking Craters: Scourge of American Downtowns from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.
National & Global News
- 14 ways to make bike lanes better (the infographic) | PeopleForBikes
- Dallas appears set to repeal its bicycle helmet requirements for adults | Dallas Morning News
- Ohio Puts the Squeeze on People’s Right to Walk | Streetsblog USA – Worst idea ever.
- Portlander’s ‘protected intersection’ concept gets first on-street demo (in Minneapolis) – BikePortland.org
- Daily bike trips in Chicago reach 125,000, exceeding car traffic on busy Chicago streets | Active Transportation Alliance
- Surprise! People Aged 60-79 Are Behind More Than a Third of the Biking Boom | Streetsblog USA
- This Year San Diego Added 39.1 Miles of Buffered Bike Lanes | BikeSD
- Human Transit: Transitmix: a new tool for armchair transit planners (and pros too?) – I played around with it and created a new bus line (46) from Mount Baker Station to Ballard via the CD and Capitol Hill. It’s probably not actually a good idea for a bus line, but it was fun to make and see the costs.
- New Research Suggests Separation Key to Protecting Cyclists From Pollution | Streetsblog USA
- The “Worst Cities for Driving” Include a Lot of America’s Best Cities | Streetsblog USA – Seattle’s in great company!
- Why Women Don’t Cycle | FiveThirtyEight
- Crime Drops on Louisville Streets Converted From One-Way to Two-Way | Streetsblog USA
- What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse | WIRED
- Head Injuries Didn’t Rise in Bike-Share Cities. They Actually Fell – CityLab
- Copenhagenize.com – Bicycle Culture by Design: Innovative Elevated Cycle Track in Copenhagen
- Fighting for TIGER: Thousands of Trail Supporters Speak Out – RTC TrailBlog – Rails-to-Trails Conservancy
- The protected bike lane ridership bump, city by city (infographic) | PeopleForBikes
- Finally! A Kid’s Seat for Bike-Share | Streetsblog USA
- The Accidental Protected Bike Lane | Streetsblog.net – Oops! Toronto accidentally makes cycling safer for a block.
- France experiments with paying people to cycle to work | Reuters
- While the Economy Grows, Americans Continue to Drive Less | Streetsblog USA
- How Much Do You Spend on Bicycling Every Year? | Bicycling
- Traffic Droid cyclist names and shames errant drivers with cameras on his helmet and bike | Mail Online
- Citi Bike needs to pay about $1 million in lost parking revenue to New York because their stations take up spots – WSJ.com
- US cities start pushing protected lanes into new territory: downtown | PeopleForBikes
- School relocates using only bicycles | KXAN.com
This is an open thread.
Comments
4 responses to “Bike News Roundup: Tacoma has reached Kidical Mass”
I was riding through SODO earlier this week, and thought about how awesome an elevated bikeway would be there: cars get the Spokane St. Viaduct; why not an elevated bikeway across the area as well? It could connect the end of the mountains to sound trail with the E. Marginal bikeway to the west, with no trains or traffic in the way.
I know. Cool idea, but totally unrealistic. It would probably cost the equivalent of a couple weeks of taking care of the stalled TBM. But I can dream, can’t I?
By the way – thanks for linking to my bike stats article, Tom! I thought it was pretty funny that we posted basically the same thing on the same day…
jeeze Tom, don’t you have anything better to do? I just don’t know where to start, well, open with a joke.;
This is from some movie I halfway watched once; “What do you call 1000 lawyers lying dead on the bottom of the ocean?”
School zone sign too long? how about:
“School Zone 20”
Period. Full stop. 24/356, since ideally schools will be in reasonable proximity to places where children live 24/356, oh, might change that 20 to 15 as well.
Very specifically, a “motorcycle” may go through a red light if the sensor doesn’t detect them, but the bicyclist must sit there and rot? WTF! Since state law requires vehicle detectors to detect bicycles (and motorcycles) , I used to assume that if one didn’t, it was “not working” (lawfully anyway) and this section from the state drives manual would apply; “If a traffic signal is not working, come to a complete stop, then yield to traffic as if it were a four-way stop”, but actually the law (RCW 46.61.183) reads: ” traffic control signal that is temporarily without power on all approaches or is not displaying any green, red, or yellow indication to the approach the vehicle is on”. Well, that does explain the need for the new law, but again, WTF! specifically “Motorcycles” implying NOT non-motorized bicycles ?!
While looking up the law, if found something interesting, while I used to think the stop signs at cross walks on the Burke Gillman were a ridiculous cause of confusion because pedestrians (yes, on the trail pedestrians have to stop at the stop sign too) have the right of way upon a cross walk., so stop sign at a marked cross walk seems absurd. But that “upon” (RCW 46.61.235) is the key, if you are just approaching, but not “upon” the crosswalk you don’t have the right of way. Still a cause of confusion though, car drivers see a marked crosswalk, a big yellow caution sign showing pedestrians and bicyclists but hey, you don’t have to stop (unless your direction of travel just got a new stop sign)
“lies, damn lies and statistics” I see you linked to the rebuttal of the “bike share associated with increased percentage of head injuries” , but even that seemed a bit light on objective data. I’m more interested in what the motivation was for the first study, the authors (local people BTW) essentially said something to the effect; “we had an idea and found data to support it” Why would you even do that?
And to close with a joke: http://xkcd.com/552/
Amusing but not surprising to see Seattle lose a case over lax MUTCD compliance. SDOT seems to consider a lot of MUTCD standards advisory at best.
The wording of a sign may seem like a silly, nitpicky challenge, but the whole point of having a uniform national standard is to make it easier for all road users to comply with the law. When one city chooses to ignore the standard, safety behavior that’s normally automatic requires conscious thought. That slows down reaction times and reduces compliance.
What if a city thought red was ugly, and made all their STOP signs orange instead? Same shape, same words, but not the same sign. Drivers would need more time to identify the sign and comply with it.
At least for bicycle facilities, SDOT is supposed to be taking safety standards more seriously now; the BMP Update included a mandate that all BMP facilities comply with national, state, and local safety standards and guidelines. That would be quite a departure for SDOT.
Trying to justify lawyer attitude is pathetic.