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It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Lots of good stuff floating around the web lately, so let’s get right to it.
First up, Vox created a short and punchy video report outlining “how highways wrecked American cities.” Definitely worth the 4:38:
Pacific Northwest News (more…)
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Your bike is your ticket to fun every weekend in Seattle, of course. But it’s even more so this weekend as June brings a lot of big rides.
So read this post, then shut off your screen, stop working and start biking.
May is Bike Everywhere Month and you did it! You rode you bike more than you ever thought possible – to work, to school, for fun – and now, let’s drink to that! Join us at Peddler Brewing Company in their fantastic outdoor Beer Garden and celebrate the best way to get around – by bike!
Event: End of Bike Month Party
Date: Friday, June 3, 2016
Time: 4:00-8:00pm
Location: Peddler Brewing Company, 1514 NW Leary Way, Seattle, WA 98107
Who: Everyone’s welcome, Peddler is all ages!Features: (more…)
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Amazon has fired dozens of bike couriers with little warning, apparently planning to deliver one-hour and two-hour Amazon Prime Now packages by driving in Seattle traffic instead. Good luck with that!
Needless to say, many of the couriers who just got fired are angry and worried about making rent, the Stranger reports. (Bike courier contractor US Dispatch advertised some of these job openings on this blog)
Seattle was apparently somewhat unique for having Amazon bike deliveries (though at least New York also has/had Prime deliveries by bike), according to Geekwire:
Industry insiders estimate that the move will affect about 60 bicycle couriers who carried packages for Amazon’s one- and two-hour delivery program in the city. One contracting firm told couriers in an email that the bike delivery program in Seattle was an exception, and that Amazon’s shift to full vehicle delivery was intended to create a more uniform process for its Prime Now cities.
This seems like a mistake for so many reasons. Bike delivery is a fast, pollution-free, low-congestion way to move goods relatively short distances. It’s a brilliant option for a service like Prime Now, which focuses on serving dense urban areas.
Shifting all this work to vans also means more traffic and more loading zone use. That’s not only bad for other delivery drivers who need those spaces, but it seems rather expensive to pay drivers to sit in traffic or circle city blocks looking for a parking spot. As one courier told the Stranger: (more…)
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In 2014, the internet was abuzz about a handful of creative, forward-thinking and sometimes very strange bicycle designs from five U.S. cities all competing for the Oregon Manifest Bike Design Project. The prize: Fuji Bikes would put the winning design into production. That’s a big prize.
With an automatic-shifting, belt-driven, e-assisted, brush-fendered concept, Seattle’s DENNY bike — by design firm Teague and Taylor Sizemore — won by popular vote. Take that, Portland!
Sure, the handlebar lock and turn signals were a little strange. And the brush fenders, well, I’m not so sure about those. But the video for it was very cool, and I’m a sucker for a sleek front rack and integrated, automatic lights (I wish this were standard for city bikes). So the surprising number of online fans waited eagerly for it to go into production in 2015.
Seriously, I can’t tell you how many people emailed, tweeted and facebooked me about this bike.
Well, after a year of delays, Teague and Sizemore announced this morning that Fuji will not be producing the DENNY after all. (more…)
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Family members of Desiree McCloud spoke with KOMO for a powerful story about her untimely death on Yesler Way near 13th Ave.
Desiree crashed May 13 while biking westbound on Yesler with friends. She was passing a friend on the left when a friend saw her wobble and fall hard over her handlebars. The police report and SDOT note that it is not clear whether she crashed due to the streetcar tracks, but that is a very common cause of over-the-handlebar crashes along the South Lake Union and First Hill Streetcar lines.
Desiree’s brother Cody has also crashed on streetcar tracks, he told KOMO.
News of her death last week after several weeks in the ICU drew a flood of beautiful remembrances from friends. Desiree clearly touched a lot of lives both as a friend and through her work with the Girl Scouts.
Her family is putting pressure on the city to make sure the street is safe for biking so nobody else is hurt the way Desiree was.
“I don’t want any other parent to have to go through what I went through,” Desiree’s mother Penny told KOMO. “I don’t want anyone else to lose their future on something that’s so preventable, something so ridiculous.”
Watch the full heartbreaking report: (more…)
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Seattle Channel’s City Inside/Out produced a quality segment on the city’s recent bike plan cuts and the public protest against them.
The episode begins with a five-minute intro report outlining how the cuts came about and what people protesting the changes think about them (Spoiler: They don’t like ’em). The intro features interviews with Davey Oil of G&O Family Cyclery, Shirley Savel of Familybike Seattle, Cathy Tuttle of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, Councilmember Sally Bagshaw and my amazing partner in life Kelli Refer of Cascade Bicycle Club.
Yours truly is on the panel discussion that follows, along with SDOT Project Development Director Darby Watson, Councilmember Mike O’Brien and Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board Member Phyllis Porter.
In the end, SDOT is promising to get back to work on the downtown network when in the next month when the Center City Mobility Plan released a report on future bus mobility needs. Meanwhile, I pushed for the city to hit the ground running and make some major connections to 2nd Ave in 2016 (specifically, north to the new Westlake bikeway, east to Broadway or at least the bike lanes at 9th and Pine, south to Dearborn and west to the Alaskan Way Trail that heads towards West Seattle).
Cascade has launched a petition pushing for four main points needed to make sure the bike plan gets back on track: (more…)
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