It’s time for the Tuesday Bike News Roundup: Now with 100 percent more Wednesday! As always, this is an open thread.
First up, a Capitol Hill group made a park at the corner of Denny, Summit and Olive for $20. They call themselves the Renegade Planners Collective, the most feared public space piracy group in the city. Land Use Code inspectors shudder at the mere mention of their name…
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Pacific Northwest News:
- North Seattle Slams Plans for 900-Car Parking Garage at Northgate Mall | Slog – Boo!
- Sell on BikeCraft – Any crafty folks in Seattle selling on BikeCraft Online yet?
- King County’s ‘Complete Streets’ Hopes To Reverse Health Effects Of Sprawl
- Hop on board the BoltBus: An inside look at the West Coast’s super cheap bus route – GeekWire
- BikePortland.org » Hundreds gather to remember Kathryn Rickson
- Kent’s Bike Blog: Avoid The Suicide Slot – After Kathryn Rickson’s death, this old post deserves another read
- My Ballard forum post describes woman who thinks it’s funny to let her dog chase people biking in Discovery Park.
- West Seattle Blog… » Video: Seattle Summer Streets, & spring showers, at Alki
- Where Are the Women Bike Commuters? | Sightline Daily
- Fremont Greenways – Finally, Fremont has a neighborhood greenways group
- BikePortland.org » Electronic bicycle counter coming to Hawthorne Bridge – Portland set to get bike counter around same time as Seattle. They’re always copying us.
- Everything you wanted to know about bike counting but were afraid to ask | Taking the Lane
- Drivers lost 33 hours stuck in traffic last year — an improvement | The Seattle Times – Bicyclists, meanwhile, enjoyed their time biking, so no time was “wasted.”
- Critics asking SPD to back off jaywalking tickets | KOMO News
- Seattle’s roadside rain gardens plan expected to cut sewage overflow | KING5.com Seattle
Halftime show! Remember Ian, founder of Bicycle Benefits? Here’s a video tracking his awesome Muffin Exchange project in Madison:
National & Global News:
- Pedaling to Prosperity: Biking Saves U.S. Riders Billions A Year – Forbes – Word.
- Turn Your Bike Into a Rolling Garden – Momentum Mag
- How to Not Kill a Cyclist – The Morning News
- Two new U.S. Bicycle Routes approved » Biking Bis
- Are Bicycle Proponents Spinning Their Wheels? | Sean Warner – What to do when things like “logic” and “research” seem to have little affect on a debate.
- Baillieu slashes construction of cycling projects – Melbourne gets huge cut in cycling funding despite recent growths in usage
- Bikeleague.org Blog » Why Every Bicycle Counts and What We Can Learn from Fatal Crashes – I don’t know how I feel about this. If we were tracking all roadway deaths regardless of mode, then that would be an interesting project. But bringing more attention to already devastating deaths of people cycling could have the backfiring effect of making cycling seem more dangerous than it is. Memorial seems best left to the local community, friends and family. Though, of course, tracking the data to learn from it does seem like a good idea.
- What Drivers Really Think About Bikers: The History and Psychology of Sharing the Road – GOOD
- Cyclelicious » Students suspended for biking to school – Unbelievable. They even had a police escort, and the officer didn’t see any issues. And I thought MY school principals sucked… UPDATE: The principal has backed down, reversed suspensions due to parent and school board anger.
- Copenhagenize.com – Bicycle Culture by Design: New York’s New Marketing FAIL – The illustration of a city with 30 mph roadways included in this post is awesome.
Comments
9 responses to “Bike News Roundup: ‘Renegades’ make illegal Capitol Hill Park, chill in it”
There is a brand new parking-lot-turned-park literally a half block away from there. Summit Slope Park on the corner of Summit & E John St. It’s fantastic, green, picnic tables, growing beds, no cars & way less smug. If you going to just randomly choose a pop-up park there are about 150 better, more deserving locations in the city to make that exact statement. #JustSayin
We think about the downside of bringing more attention to cyclist deaths all the time — it’s why it took us so long to start tracking them, and why the site is and will remain so separate from the League site. We don’t want to deter casual cyclists who come by our site to learn how to ride in traffic, or to celebrate Bike Month. At the same time — we need to see this data, analyze the data, and work to end the crashes. Having staff do the site but keeping it far away from where casual cyclists are likely to stumble onto it was our middle ground. Here’s hoping in a few years it won’t be needed at all.
Thanks for the response!
The site still sucks. There is no way to add more death statistics to it. It looks like one of any million sites trying to collect money for some pitiful cause.
On the NYC signage stuff… not far from where I work there’s an intersection with signs warning pedestrians to watch for turning vehicles. I’m considering getting some reflective tape and some sharpies and fixing those signs to tell turning vehicles to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk.
Kent’s article on the suicide slot is a good one. The trap I fall into is city riding, there is a line of cars waiting for the light to change and most are turning left. I ride up the right to pass them all, the light changes to green. The temptation is to keep riding on the right of the lineup but I usually pop back into the line up one or two cars before the corner. That way the car behind me is usually watching the car in front of them, and hence will see me. Secondly the car at the intersection is looking left to see that it’s clear and will turn right. Yes it annoys the cars behind but it’s better than dying and sorry guys, I’m not waiting 3 light changes so you all can turn left before I get a chance to go straight or turn right myself. (turning left, I wait my turn.)
The INRIX report on traffic congestion is measuring the wrong things. It assumes a “normal” free flow of traffic at highway speeds, and reports that any time spent traveling at slower speeds due to congestion is “wasted” time. It does not take into account the public investment that enabled the “normal” speed to increase from somewhere around 25-30 mph in pre-freeway days to the 60-65mph norm today. It also assumes that there is no cost, monetary or social, to increased driving distances – so that cities with greater sprawl and longer driving distances are rated as less congested than compact cities with shorter, slower distances. See the critique published a couple years ago by CEOs for Cities: http://www.ceosforcities.org/research/driven-apart. (Side note: I was confused by the Times report that the company generating the data, INRIX, is based in Kirkland. I thought these reports came from the Texas Transportation Institute. Turns out the Texas Transportation Institute partners with IRNIX, so they’re really the same thing.
I agree that those reports are totally misleading. However, I like the idea that such time in a car is “wasted,” as they phrase it. It totally is! That’s why I prefer to bike: My time is never wasted (OK, almost never).
Meanwhile, you may find this interesting, especially if you’re interested in the Missing Link legal wrangling or the Alaskan/East Marginal adventures: http://bikeportland.org/2012/05/23/a-freight-advocates-perspective-on-recent-fatal-collision-72177