It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Here’s some of the stuff floating around the web that caught our eyes recently.
First up, Adonia Lugo at the League of American Bicyclists hosted a fantastic conversation about the term “invisible cyclists,” a wishy-washy term often used to describe low income and/or undocumented people who use bikes to get around but are often left out of urban cycling conversations. But is the term itself marginalizing?
It’s a long video, but a great conversation. You can also check out the online conversation on the League’s website:
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Pacific Northwest News
- Employment « Cycle Swift – Swift Industries is hiring!
- Signs of Bike Tourism in Eastern Washington | Washington Bikes
- ST3 Funding Options | Seattle Transit Blog
- Riding on the Mama Ship | People on Bikes – A great new Seattle blog by Eric Shalit featuring everyday folks on bikes.
- Video of bike lane citation in Ashland highlights controversial Oregon law – BikePortland.org – We may have a helmet law, but at least we don’t have a silly mandatory bike lane law. Ugh.
- People Don’t Like To Bike Uphill — And That’s Where Pronto’s ‘Rebalance’ Comes In | KPLU
- Leary Way is an accident waiting to happen, Ballard can do better | The Urbanist
- Car2Go considers bike rack pilot program in Portland – BikePortland.org
- How I stole my bike back – BikePortland.org
- SDOT Blog » Streetcar Connection for Center of the City
- Sally Bagshaw » The Westlake Cycle Track: A way we all can get where we need to go
- Lake trail design nearing completion : Sammamish Review
- My Ballard » Locals encouraged to be aware during “Drowsy Driving Awareness Week” – Did you know it’s Drowsy Driving Awareness Week?
- What I learned pedaling the Pronto! Marathon | Crosscut.com
- Teamwork nets bike thieves and recovery of $46,600 worth of stolen bicycles – City of Bellingham, WA
- *Jobs* Nine New Jobs with WA Department of Transportation | Makin’ It Happen
- Family of 7-year-old hit-and-run victim urges parents, drivers to be more careful | Q13 FOX News
- molly moon’s homemade blog: biking to work!
- Family survives harrowing car crash: ‘I wish it was a dream’ | KOMO News – This family was in one of at least nine cars smashed in a terrifying three-block crash on Rainier Ave Halloween night. Despite the immense scale of the damage and the ten people sent to the hospital, the person responsible was arrested, then released.
Halftime show! For something completely different, the Akron Metro wins:
National & Global News
- Actually, biking has been getting dramatically safer as Americans ride more | PeopleForBikes
- A Time to Give Cranks | Bicycling – Elly Blue writes about Cranksgiving, featuring quotes from yours truly.
- Bhutan: A Higher State of Being | The New York Times
- Kathryn Bertine: The Fight for Women’s Equal Share of the Road | The Bicycle Story
- Don’t Drive? It’s Getting Harder to Vote in Texas | Streetsblog USA
- Stolen Bike Hotspots and How To Avoid Bike Thievery – HotPads Blog
- Boardman: Why I didn’t wear a helmet on BBC Breakfast
- Shannon Galpin: Riding to Revolution in Afghanistan | The Bicycle Story
- Jaime Lerner and His City of Children | Slog
- Four-Lane Death Roads Should Be Illegal | streets.mn
- Man Charged in Hit-Run Halloween Deaths of 3 Teens – ABC News
As always, this is an open thread.
Comments
5 responses to “Bike News Roundup: ‘Invisible cyclists’? Maybe you’re just not looking”
Another one for you, Tom, that Gordon Price just posted. http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/green-party-no-more-bike-paths-in-parks/
I asked Seattle City Light for an update on the ongoing and upcoming construction to the Burke-Gilman near UW. The section of trail between Brooklyn Ave NE and University Way NE has been closed for months — it was supposed to be open by June, but it’s now more than four months behind schedule. The latest update is that it should be finished by the end of November.
The section of trail to the west of campus, between the University Bridge and the City Light substation just south of trail near Dunn Lumber, will be closing in a week or two, and will remain closed through the end of the year. The initial plan, as reported here, was to detour cyclists into traffic on NE Pacific, which didn’t seem like a great idea for a variety of reasons. Thankfully, that plan has been modified: cyclists will still be detoured onto NE Pacific, but there will be a dedicated bike lane. I assume this lane will accommodate bi-directional bike traffic, although I don’t have any more details. I’m also not sure what the detour means for pedestrians, as there is not a sidewalk along Pacific (for parts of it, at least).
Recognizing the problematic nature of the term “invisible cyclists,” I’d like to propose a different term for another marginalized group: “RISIBLE Cyclists.”
Recumbent Riders
In
Solidarity
In opposition to
Bicyclo-
Linguistic
Erectro-centrism
The term “RISIBLE Cyclists” calls attention to the underserved community of recumbent riders, who pass unseen beneath the upright-centric (or “erectro-phallocentric”) gaze, as (re)produced in the discourse of bicycle advocacy.
“Who pass unseen beneath” is the problem. That is why I don’t have one even though their design is vastly superior. When bikes are separated from cars everywhere, I will happily change over. Meanwhile I would rather be a bit over the top.
I got a recumbent trike around seven years ago, but haven’t touched it since learning how to ride upright two-wheelers. The idea of riding it in traffic doesn’t appeal to me.