It’s time for the weekly Bike News Roundup.
First up, a filmmaking couple on a bike tour of the world were killed when a pickup struck them in Thailand. Mary Thompson and Peter Root were documenting their travels on their blog Two on Four Wheels. One of their videos was recently accepted by the Filmed By Bike Festival, which is planning a tribute to them. Here is a video or their travels in Central Asia, posted last month:
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Cycling Central Asia from twoonfourwheels.com on Vimeo.
Pacific Northwest News:
- Why Middle-Aged People Walk into Traffic | Slog – There is a lane of street parking on the other side of the road here. Obviously, that should go, and a temporary walking space should be created. This should always happen. How do we change these rules?
- BikePortland.org » At bike share event, City begins crucial search for sponsors – Sounds like things are running behind schedule in PDX. Likely won’t launch until 2014, when Puget Sound Bike Share hopes to be online.
- Sound Transit to increase secure bicycle parking « Cascade Bike Blog
- Chicago, Seattle Mayors Spar Over Bike Lanes, Tech Workers | Streetsblog Capitol Hill
- Washington Bike Plans | Bicycle Alliance of Washington – BikeWA has created a database of links to different bike plans across the state. How cool!
- Invitation to the Party | Everyday Rider – Must-read. Elly Blue compares creating an inviting city for bicycling to throwing a kick-ass party.
- Girls, 2 and 4, found near highway hours after crash killed mother | The Today File | Seattle Times – Absolutely devastating.
- As crossing guard recovers, crosswalk remains dangerous | Ballard News-Tribune – Let’s fix this crosswalk today, and every one like it near our city’s schools.
- Speaking of which, here’s a tweet from the mayor during his State of the City address Tuesday:
This year we will develop a school road safety analysis & action plan. We’ll study conditions and plan improvements across city. #SEASOTC
— Mayor McGinn (@mayormcginn) February 19, 2013
- Making It Up As They Go: The plan to pay for the CRC is both fact and fantasy
- Comparing the effects of infrastructure on bicycling injury at intersections and non-intersections using a case–crossover design — Harris et al. — Injury Prevention – Study that finds, among other things, that traffic circles aren’t great for people on bikes
- Will Chicago’s cycletracks steal high-tech jobs from Portland and Seattle? | Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin
- Growing Bicycling in the Yakima Valley
Halftime show! The Urban Country posted this video of an icy 19-car pileup in China, where the risk of dying in traffic is nearly twice as bad (measured in deaths per car) as in the US.
National & Global News:
- Cyclists react with anger after grand jury returns no indictment in Wellesley bike crash case – The Boston Globe
- Couple Shot at Over Stolen BMX Bike: Deputies | NBC 7 San Diego
- Mayoral Candidate Has Bicycling Vision For St. Louis – Kansas Cyclist News Blog – In the city with the second-highest number of freeway lane miles per capita, a mayoral candidate puts his bike commuting front-and-center
- Air Pollution Linked to More Severe Heart Attacks – The Atlantic Cities
- China, world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, will tax carbon – Quartz – A real life carbon tax! And from a nation that seemingly has more to “lose” than the US. Hmm…
- LADOT Ready to Embrace “Floating” Bike Lanes for Westwood, But Is West L.A.? | Streetsblog Los Angeles – Floating bike lanes are odd. I say just make the parking permanent and keep the bike lane against the curb…
- Making Your City More Walkable? That’s Not “Zoning” | Streetsblog Capitol Hill
- Cops among Florida’s worst speeders, Sun Sentinel investigation finds – South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
- London Cycling Campaign | Holland in the 1970s – They didn’t start with cycle tracks, they started with “people-friendly home zones.” Sounds a lot like neighborhood greenways to me!
- Project for Public Spaces | Walking is Not a Crime: Questioning the Accident Axiom
- ‘It’s like we live on the highway’ | Q13 FOX News – I can’t help reading this story and thinking, “What about the guy who died!?”
- Safety Council: Traffic deaths surged in 2012 – The national trend of declining traffic deaths reversed last year.
- Alliance for Biking & Walking: Dr. Enrique Peñalosa Delivers Keynote Speech at Recycle-A-Bicycle’s 3rd Annual Youth Bike Summit
- Bike Maps That Give Riders the Info They Actually Need – The Atlantic Cities – Here’s something we don’t write everyday: Can Texas teach us something about making effective bike maps?
- Times Square is NYC’s Happiest Place; Hell Is the Nation’s Saddest Word – “Bike” is one of the top ten happiest words on Twitter. Duh.
This is an open thread.
Comments
One response to “Bike News Roundup: Cycling Central Asia (RIP Mary and Peter)”
Regarding the walking-in-the-street-due-to-construction thing: it straight up sucks. My favorite current example of this is on Ballard Ave, right in the heart of a major commercial corridor with heavy pedestrian traffic during the evening and poor street lighting. There’s a large, ongoing construction project that has closed the eastern sidewalk for months. It’s also a no-parking zone, which makes it at least sort of tolerable to walk in the street past the construction — you can sort of walk in what would otherwise be the parking lane. But the worst part about it is that, after 6pm, it becomes OK to park there. So then, not only do you not have a sidewalk, but on top of that, it’s dark out and you have to walk around a lane of parked cars, even further out into the street, just to continue on your way.
This could easily be improved with some big orange plastic bollards creating a 24-hour walking lane in the “parking lane.” It would cost almost nothing. I contacted SDOT about this several times and never received a response. Frankly I have thought about just doing it myself on several occasions, especially on a Friday or Saturday night when the sidewalks are packed.
A little bit of Googling turned up that this exact same issue came up in 2009, and at that time, the city had recently conducted an audit about this issue and found itself lacking. The (seemingly straightforward) plan was to *at least* post information about sidewalk closures on the SDOT website, so at least you could plan your walking route based on sidewalk closures. It’s now over three years later and that has yet to happen.
http://www.king5.com/news/local/59772417.html