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It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Lots of good stuff floating around the web these days, so let’s get started.
First up, this 1995 video by the Seattle Department of Engineering (now the Department of Transportation) is a pretty fascinating glimpse into safe streets efforts in Seattle 20 years ago. It even includes actual tree hugging. If you don’t have 15 minutes, fast forward to the 12:30 mark for the bike stuff and a cameo by Bill Nye.
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Streetcars and bikes have gotten off to a rough start in Seattle. Planning that neglected bike safety has led to many injuries, especially on Westlake Ave and Jackson Street. We have written about the need for protected bike lanes when streetcar tracks go in, and we will continue pushing for them.
But in this post, we’re going to look at what it will be like to take your bike onto the First Hill Streetcar when it begins service (there’s still no official start date for the delayed line). And so long as the streetcar’s not at crush-capacity, it might actually be pretty easy.
Unlike the South Lake Union Streetcar, which has no designated bike space, the new streetcar trains have two bike hanging spots. And the space across from the bike hanging area is an open accessibility priority space, so a hanging bike probably won’t get in everyone’s way like on Link light rail (especially if you’re a taller person).
And because all the streetcar stops load at street level, there are no stairs or elevators to navigate to roll on. So it’s easier to get on than Link and no need to do battle with a sticky bus bike rack arm. This could prove to be the easiest bike-on-transit option in Seattle. (more…)
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Bikes vs Cars is a new documentary that attempts to lay out the global and local problems caused by car culture and car infrastructure in our cities and how people in cities across the world are pushing back, often while pedaling around their cities on two wheels.
The film is screening at the Grand Illusion in the U District December 4 – 10, and the 7 p.m. Saturday show will include an after-film chat with yours truly and some other bike advocates, including Kelli from Cascade.
The name of the film is a pretty big turnoff, for sure. It’s a faulty framing for having a complete and productive transportation conversation. What about walking? Transit? And I suspect that will be at least part of what we talk about Saturday. I was able to see an advance screening, but I won’t give away too many of my thoughts ahead of Saturday’s chat. You just have to join.
If you really want to read a review, Seattle’s own Josh Cohen wrote a review recently for Next City.
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This is part two of a series looking at the first year of usage data from Pronto Cycle Share. Pronto organized a “data challenge,” and the submissions they received go deeper than you might expect.
The Pronto Data Challenge received a whole lot of heavy statistics and graphs from insightful people trying to figure out what Seattle bike share users can teach us about cycling in the city, and more. We touched on this a bit in Part One, and we will dive deeper later in this series.
But today, we’re going to take a step back with Daniel Muldrew, who decided to take bike share station data and turn it into music. Before we explain how it works, let’s listen to Independence Day, 2015:
Here’s how Muldrew explains his process: (more…)
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Bike theft is up, at least on UW campus.
“It’s our number one property crime on campus,” said UW Police Deputy Chief Csaba Maczala. “That’s a good thing, since violent crime is down. So I’m glad we most have to deal with property crime.”
So the UW Police reached out to community partners and hosted a Bike Theft Symposium Tuesday to come up with some ideas for how to decrease thefts and increase the chances victims will get their bikes back.
Officer Keith Jackson presented a very achievable goal of reducing theft reports 15 percent by the last quarter of 2016.
The annual cost of bike theft on campus? $118,354, and that’s not even counting parts stolen off bikes or bikes that are stolen but not reported to police. We know this because part of their effort to focus on battling bike theft so far has been to gather and analyze data to see if they can find patterns to target. (more…)
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This is part one of a series looking at the first year of usage data from Pronto Cycle Share. Pronto organized a “data challenge,” and the submissions they received go deeper than you might expect.
Did you know there are hills in Seattle? And did you also know it rains here kinda often?
It’s true, and there are bike naysayers who say investing in biking is pointless because people won’t bike up hills or in the rain. And sure, these are certainly factors in whether people choose to make a trip by bike, but there are still a whole lot of people who are not deterred.
Jake Vanderplas, a West Seattle safe streets advocate and very smart person, entered a lengthy analysis of Pronto trip data that earned him the “Most Insightful” award in the organization’s recent Data Challenge. And he found that both hills and weather affected bike share trips just about how you would expect.
But first, we have to separate two kinds of users: Annual members use bike share like a typical transportation system, so you see more traditional commute patterns with peaks during the morning and evening rush hours. If it’s a weekday, the vast majority of riders are members using the bikes for “regular” transportation.
On the other hand, short term pass holders are more likely to be making a non-commute trip, and many of them are probably visitors or locals giving the system a try. On a weekend, the majority of trips are made by short-term users.
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