It’s time for the weekly Bike News Roundup! Here are some tips for winter biking in Chicago, which is way colder than Seattle. Here, I would suggest just wearing whatever you would wear to go for a walk in the cold. Investing in good gloves and wearing extra socks could be a good idea, though.
Winter Biking Primer from Streetfilms on Vimeo.
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Pacific Northwest News
- Inslee calls for innovative transportation package that includes bikes « Cascade Bike Blog
- After a successful first season, Bikelava rolls into a bigger, better New Year « Cascade Bike Blog
- What Happened to the Neighborhood Blogs? by Anna Minard – The Stranger – In which I talk to the Stranger about life in independent online news and my appendix
- New bills in Leg re: helmets, veterans and child crisis care | Seattle Times – Motorcycle helmets are back on the agenda (not bike helmets, don’t worry)
- Group files petition to divide Seattle by council districts | Seattle Times – I’m uncertain about this
- Seattle Department of Transportation: Center City Connector – Transit Alternatives Analysis – Downtown streetcar connector conversations starting. Great chance to expand downtown cycle track network.
- UXBlog | IDV Solutions’ User Experience: People Dots: Seattle Area Commuting
- “I love Seattle, and I love biking. I want those to mesh together.” « Cascade Bike Blog
- How to Combine Bicycles and Public Transit — Walk Score Blog
- Call for submissions: Bikes in Space | Taking the Lane
- Stolen Motorcycle On Queen Anne Leads Police to More Motorcycles, Bikes, and Computers In Eastlake | SPD Blotter
- Yeah, we’ve got an agenda « Cascade Bike Blog
- Can We Finally Declare Peace in the ‘War on Cars’? – The Atlantic Cities
Halftime show! Video of the recent NACTO conference in New York:
NACTO’s “Designing Cities” 2012 NYC from Streetfilms on Vimeo.
National & Global News
- Michele Traverso, Driver In Hit-And-Run That Killed Aaron Cohen, Sentenced To 364 Days In Jail (VIDEO) – Family was expecting much more time.
- Can an App Get People to Walk More? – The Atlantic Cities
- Road Diets Are Changing American Cities for the Better | Streetsblog Capitol Hill – They even work in Orlando!
- The Urban Country Bicycle Blog: Paying Employees To Bike To Work
- DC Bike Lanes in National Spotlight Thanks to Inauguration | Washingtonian
- LaHood Says He’s Staying On as Transportation Secretary – Bloomberg
- Over a Barrel: Why is City Hall barring Pedal Pub from operating? | Grid Chicago – Sound familiar?
- Voice-Operated Texting While Driving: As Unsafe As It Ever Was – The Atlantic Cities – Hands-free is NOT a solution to the problem.
- House Transportation Subcommittee Chairs Announced | Transportation Issues Daily
- Bicimetro Eco Bahn: Elevated Bike Tunnels Let Cyclists Soar Above Congested City Traffic | Inhabitat – Huh?
- City Transport: It’s About Moving People, Not Vehicles | Perspectives on development
- Could These Crazy Intersections Make Us Safer? – The Atlantic Cities – How traffic engineers will destroy the world (if we let them)
This is an open thread.
Comments
7 responses to “Bike News Roundup: ‘There are lots of different ways of transporting people’”
Preface: I ask this in all seriousness, and not as a way to start a whole bike helmet discussion.
Question: what’s the rationale for removing a mandatory motorcycle helmet law? Is it along the lines of “adults can make their own risk decisions?” Or is there a debate in the motorcycling community about whether helmets actually provide meaningful protection, as there is in the bicycling community? I presume that the science is pretty clear about the protective effect of a motorcycle helmet when crashing a motorbike at 30, 40, 50 mph. Protective of the head, at least.
Again, I’m not soliciting everyone’s opinion about whether bike helmets are good, bad, or ugly; just wondering about motorcycle helmets. Until I saw this link about the proposed WA legislation, I wasn’t aware that there was still a running debate about the subject, but I also don’t follow that stuff.
If you think helmet laws are sticky issue in bicycling communities, you haven’t seen anything yet.
The issues are very different due to the dramatic difference in speed (12 mph vs 60), which is why you rarely see them tied together.
The arguments I hear most often from anti-motorcycle helmet folks is the freedom to choose argument. Adults should be able to take a risk if they want to, the argument goes. I highly doubt the bill will get very far, but it’s a sign that it’s still a live topic in Washington.
Some also feel that the restriction of their vision and hearing by a helmet reduces their awareness of traffic.
That hit-and-run story is just awful. 364 freaking days. This (likely) intoxicated person almost assuredly would have received a harsher punishment for staying at the scene of the crime than for leaving. In a very real sense, this sentence rewards the decision to leave the scene. This will always seem like the right choice to the wrong person until we get serious about cracking down on hit-and-runs, whether or not someone dies as a result.
It’s not a matter of having new laws on the books. We already have the laws we need. It’s a matter of (a) convincing prosecutors to bring charges more often, and (b) convincing judges to issue tougher sentences to those convicted. Unfortunately, how we go about doing those things is not obvious to me.
The punishment for hit and run should be the maximum punishment you could potentially receive for drunk, reckless driving. You left the scene, so we can’t know if you were impaired, therefore we assume you were.
Couldn’t get the video to play, but I have to say that for me the most unpleasant parts of cycling in cold weather have always been the windchill on my face, and what inhaling cold air through my mouth does to my lungs.
The article promoting alternative road designs that fail to support pedestrians, cyclists, and transit in even the most basic way as solutions for suburban roads misses a big point and a big opportunity. American suburbs aren’t what they used to be. They’re ports of arrival for immigrants, they’re where the poor move when they’re displaced by gentrification. They’re places that need cycling and transit and well thought-out growth more than ever, not one-sided road expansion.