It’s time for the weekly Bike News Roundup!
First up, former city planner for Vancouver BC Brent Toderian was the keynote speaker at the Downtown Seattle Association’s recent State of Downtown meeting. Toderian makes a strong case for embracing livability and density. He also rips into the deep bore tunnel (he says Seattle should have just gotten rid of the highway) and makes it clear that if Seattle wants cycling to be a serious mode of transportation, we have to separate bike lanes from general traffic (“adult males are willing to ride in essentially unsafe conditions. Women, seniors and kids aren’t stupid. You have to make it actually smart as a choice”). It’s nearly 19 minutes long, but definitely worth watching:
Pacific Northwest News:
- BikePortland.org » Local shop now offers hot tub rentals, delivered by bike
- Shops We Love: Ride Bicycles | Detours Blog
- Bicyclist Killed After Struck by Taxi Van in Pasco – KNDO/KNDU Tri-Cities, Yakima
- A Year of Action: CSG is One Year Old! | Central Seattle Greenways
- KOMO News sues to uncover true cost of WSDOT 520 mistakes | KOMO News – Cracked 520 bridge pontoons will cost more than total state funding for biking and walking safety. Better raise the bike tax to pay for it!
- BikePortland.org » Hunch leads to purchase of stolen bike and a happy ending
- Bikes and crafts: Easy DIY handlebar bag « Cascade Bike Blog
- State admits costly mistakes on 520 bridge | The Seattle Times
- Good News: Demand-based Parking Can Be Adjusted Based On… Demand! – Seattle Transit Blog
- Another view of Columbia River Crossing: Opponent’s animated image shows before, after of project at Jantzen Beach | OregonLive.com – Yikes!
- Suspect Allegedly Raids Downtown Movie Theater, Leaves at Least One Mt Dew Richer | Slog – Also, steals employee’s bike.
- Thank you for a wonderful, not-so-Chilly Hilly! « Cascade Bike Blog – Few things are more awesome than a ferry filled with bikes.
- Vancouver invests $50,000 to develop bike helmet dispenser
- Store Manager and So Much More! in Seattle, WA, 98101 – Want to work at the new Timbuk2 store?
- Ballard among top bicycling neighborhoods in commuting map | Ballard News-Tribune
- STB Wins Municipal League Award – Seattle Transit Blog – Well-deserved!
- Bellevue: What Makes for a Livable Downtown? – Seattle Transit Blog
Halftime show! Here’s taking neighborhood greenways to a new level: After school playtime street closures on select UK residential streets:
Playing Out from Playing Out on Vimeo.
National & Global News:
- Driving Declined During the Recovery | Sightline Daily – Driving is going down, and it’s not because of the recession.
- Boston and Minneapolis-Saint Paul Maps Show Bikeshare’s Transportation Impact — Mobility Lab – Can’t wait to see the first Puget Sound Bike Share version!
- U.S. DOT to Challenge AASHTO Supremacy on Bike/Ped Safety Standards | Streetsblog Capitol Hill – Got lost in the acronyms? Basically, US is starting to question the road engineering guidebook that got us into this dangerous mess. This is good for people who bike.
- Bikeleague.org Blog » Bike Law University: Helmet Mandate Laws Thornier Than They Seem – Did you know the League of American Bicyclists is against all-ages helmet laws?
- Why a Bicycle Tax Might Not Be Pointless After All – The Atlantic Cities – Hmm…
- Cycle Bridge Enschede | BicycleDutch – A Dutch intersection with cycle tracks we would drool over isn’t good enough for them, so they build a bike bridge.
- Metro Police 1 : Go Getter 0 | What a Bicycle Can Do!
- Bike-Corral Debate Exposes Tension in a Brooklyn Community – NYTimes.com – A bike corral taking away customers is like an iPod taking away music. It holds many customers, all fit into the vehicle storage space previously used by just one.
- Carbon tax: Treasury nominee Jack Lew says Obama won’t propose one – Even though China will…
- Undercover bike officers target unsafe drivers | WOAI: San Antonio News
- Anna Catherine Dr to Summer Rain Dr – Google Maps – It would take nearly 2 and a half hours to walk from this Florida suburban home to the home with which it shares a back yard.
- Failure to indict truck driver for death of a cyclist reveals bias – Editorials – The Boston Globe
- The Moped Menace in the Netherlands | BicycleDutch – I don’t understand why scooters not needed for mobility assist reasons are allowed on their cycle paths. We wouldn’t allow them on our trails.
- State will rip out Robert Moses Parkway in Niagara Falls – The Buffalo News – Oh, the sweet poetry.
- Cyclists in Dublin double – survey – The Irish Times – Either years ago, rainy and hilly Dublin had a similar percentage of bike commuters as Seattle does today. Now they are fast approaching ten percent.
This is an open thread.
Comments
12 responses to “Bike News Roundup: In Vancouver, Walking > Biking > Transit > Freight > Personal Car”
“adult males are willing to ride in essentially unsafe conditions. Women, seniors and kids aren’t stupid.”
Going off the idea that adult males are “stupid”, it’s safe to assume that anything else this person says is comparably useless. Next.
To be fair, it was just a laugh line, over-exaggerating his underlying point, which is legit.
To the best of my knowledge, his underlying point is correct and research-driven, even if you may not like his humor.
e.g.: http://journal.sjdm.org/jdm06016.pdf
He phrased it that way to get a laugh. I know men are blamed for everything nowadays but we don’t have to get offended. What he meant was that adult males are overconfident compared to others.
But what he says overall is good. I live in Vancouver and for the most part it’s a really nice place to live. Some of that is because of its natural location and it’s in Canada but a lot of it has to do with the policies and design that he’s talked about.
“Stupid,” I think, was meant to be humorous. But it’s a scientific fact that testosterone tends to cause risk-taking. It’s why insurance companies charge more for young male drivers than young female ones.
On that map in Florida, even some schools and businesses suffer that problem to a lesser degree. The people living closest to the actual school buildings (at the backs of their lots, because of course the parking is in front) have to walk several blocks around, then through a parking lot to the entrance. Of course businesses and schools wouldn’t choose locations back in the farthest reaches of the street network, which makes any more granular use-mixture unlikely.
Much of this development has sidewalks… some totally empty cul-de-sacs have a sidewalk all the way around. A great example of how sidewalks are not the same as walkability. You need the facilities, and they need to go somewhere.
There’s something I was thinking of recently. That the term “inner city kids” in the U.S. means disenfranchised people (often along racial lines) whereas in Canada, and Vancouver in particular, the term isn’t used but if it was it would mean something entirely different. The kids growing up in downtown Vancouver are not at all disenfranchised.
If you design for kids you are doing it right. Freaky. That is EXACTLY the line I developed in my submission to the Future Melbourne submissions. Sadly our government here consists of morons and idiots – who do not understand the f=difference between doing it well and doing it badly.
Yo, has anyone around here been using the currently empty north-side lanes of Broad Street to get across Aurora and Mercer (essentially to get between SLU Park and Seattle Center)? A couple days ago while out running I noticed the possibility (albiet temporary) of this route (I was in one of those situations where poor planning left Broad Street as my best route across Aurora, and after climbing the stairs down to its dingy sidewalk noticed there was nothing stopping me from running down the middle of the road) so I tried it out on bike the next day. It’s an awesome traffic dodge! Starting from southbound 9th approaching Mercer, jump on the sidewalk and turn right, then once you’re past the barrier hop the curb into the street for a super-fast trip to Harrison/Taylor.
I’ve done it, but it’s not very dependable. Often, it is full of construction crews, and they seem to change the way traffic works through there all the time. But you’re not the only one taking advantage of the closure that way (just not something I could recommend as a dependable route)
Ah, that’s good to know. I’m not downtown every day, so I guess I just happened to catch it on a couple good days.
[…] explaining Vancouver BC’s transportation strategy, former planner for that city Brent Toderian said their decisions are based on a framework that prioritizes people on foot first, people biking […]