I got a cool email from a reader the other day letting me know that he was stopped by NBC News while biking in the 2nd Ave protected bike lane the other day and interviewed for what ended up being a segment on falling gas prices. Colin Petkus talked about saving money by biking to work, and the 2nd Ave bike lane got a cool shot on national news.
“Not sure where they got that figure about saving $500 a month on parking, though…” he said. Check it out:
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Pacific Northwest News
- Mountains to Sound passes out of committee – Daily Record: Uppercounty – Closer to becoming a “National Heritage Area”
- Lawmakers looking to toughen law against distracted driving | HeraldNet.com
- Decongestion Tolling for Downtown Seattle | Seattle Transit Blog – This could be a smart way to fund transportation and make the city center a more pleasant, less congested place to be.
- Stalled Bertha’s tunnel project 70% done? | The Seattle Times – Spoiler: No.
- 13 Ways Bicycling Got Better in Washington in 2014 – Washington Bikes
- Pedestrian struck by vehicle in Milton dies | www.kirotv.com – Terrible, and not really an “accident.” It is negligent to provide no safe place on a major road for a person to walk. Our condolences to the woman’s friends and family.
- How much do we spend on fossil fuels? | Sightline Daily – Why do we spend twice as much on fossil fuels as we do on education?
- Iva Jean is closing. Thank you so much for your support and inspiration. – Sad news
- A big discussion about whether you should wear a bike helmet gets it wrong from the first line. : TreeHugger – In response to this feature in The Stranger.
- Bike commute in 2015: five tricks to help you stick with it | Cascade Bicycle Club
- “Bike lady” brings smiles in her van | Cascade Bicycle Club – Help Cascade buy a new van to support their education programs! I can confirm, the old van was shitty.
- What I Learned from Walking Around Lake Washington in Two Days | Slog
- SeaTac Airport: Getting There By Bike – Washington Bikes – New bike racks are cool, but we really need to work on safe bike routes to get there.
- Q&A: Earl Blumenauer is a little bit worried for the city he helped build – BikePortland.org
- Become a better bike advocate in 2015 | Cascade Bicycle Club – Eastside advocacy boot camps coming up.
- Tweet of the Week: “I am traffic.” | The Urbanist
- 3 more reasons Seattle is stuck in a fustercluck | Grist – Follow up to Seattle’s unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck
- Not guilty plea in deadly Lake Sammamish crash | KOMO News
- More Puget Sounders get parking benefits than transit benefits | The Urbanist – One reason people choose to drive: The government pays them to do it! Hmm…
- Trails and More #1 in Washington State: Bicycling By the Numbers – Washington Bikes
- Guerrilla traffic diverters installed – then removed – on SE Clinton – BikePortland.org
- Bellingham man sentenced after police find $46k in stolen bikes | The Bellingham Herald
- McGinn-era tunnel study proving true: Bertha project was ‘high risk,’ geology a challenge – Puget Sound Business Journal
- Real Change News | A bumpy ride – Councilmember Rasmussen takes a spin around Pioneer Square in a wheelchair. It’s awful. Seattle’s residents with mobility issues deserve better.
- Meet Kyle Rowe, SDOT Pedestrian and bicycle transportation planner | SDOT Blog
- Runaway Bike FOAM Bike Wash by Runaway Bike Industries — Kickstarter – Seattle company’s newest bike care product.
- Pedestrian fatally struck by 3 vehicles on Bothell-Everett Highway | KOMO News
- After success of 3rd Avenue demonstration in Old Town, real changes are coming – BikePortland.org
- Tweet of the Week: Nobody walks a half mile to cross the street | The Urbanist
Halftime Show!
There’s something mesmerizing about this time lapse footage of a person driving around Seattle. It’s amazing how much of the city’s detail you lose when you’re on major roads behind a windshield. You only really get glimpses of humanity when the video maker is stopped at stop lights. Obviously part of that is due to the time lapse. But a lot of it is due to the fact that you lose a sense of place when streets become mere pipes for cars.
National & Global News
- What Would a National Vision Zero Movement Look Like? | Streetsblog USA
- An Auto-Oriented Manhattan | Analysis – This is awesome.
- rdig.pdf – More than you ever wanted to know about road diets. SDOT contributed to this Federal report.
- Whoops! How Planners and Engineers Badly Overestimate Car Traffic | Streetsblog.net – How can you be 4,500 percent wrong and still keep your job?
- An Interview with Monica Garrison | Bicycling – Founder of Black Girls Do Bike
- America’s Streets Are Safer for Drivers, But Not for Pedestrians – CityLab
- Diocese: Bishop at wheel in fatal hit-and-run | AP
- Bike vs. Car: Parking Spot Edition – CityLab – Seattle featured
- The case for tearing down urban freeways – Vox – Seattle featured again (this time it’s bad, though)
- Newark Mayor Ras Baraka to Rip Out City’s First Protected Bike Lane | Streetsblog.net
- Young boy is 4th to die after car crashes into church crowd | KOMO News – In Southern California
- The Simple Change to Truck Design That Can Save Lives | Streetsblog New York City – Seattle and/or Washington State should become a leader on this.
- Complete Streets Engineer and Intern Run Over on a Columbus Sidewalk | Streetsblog USA
- Keep Streetsblog Going Strong – Donate and Enter to Win a New PUBLIC Bike | Streetsblog New York City – A good cause.
- Car plunges through roof of California home | KOMO News
- Rails to Trails poll: American Voters Expect Federal Investment in Walking and Bicycling – Regardless of political party, Americans think walk/bike investements are a good idea.
- Amazon reportedly testing one-hour bike delivery program in NYC – GeekWire
This is an open thread.
Comments
12 responses to “Bike News Roundup: 2nd Ave bike lane makes NBC Nightly News”
“Not sure where they got that figure about saving $500 a month on parking, though…”
Really? When some garages charge $20/day? If you only work five days that’s $400 a month.
Some apartment complexes charge quite a lot for a parking spot too. That would be another couple hundred dollars.
Hum. Not sure this is great news, long term – low gas prices, that is. Back to buying SUVs….
possibly. The 1973 gas crisis lead to a long term change in the kinds of cars americans buy, even when gas prices stayed pretty low for decades after. With any luck, most consumers will remember what $4/gallon gas was like for years to come.
I think auto makers, at least, won’t be so eager to jump on the all-SUVs-all-the-time bandwagon again, because of how fragile it made their bottom line.
Much as I would love to be wrong…. a quick look around finds this, for instance:
http://fortune.com/2014/11/06/gas-prices-car-sales/
Yikes, pGolay. That’s a scary article. Good (and worrying) find.
I know this is no more than anecdotal, but most aggressive behavior I experience while biking is from large vehicles. All the times I’ve been honked or yelled at has been pickups. Most of the times I’ve felt endangered by a passing vehicle has been trucks. Why a truck driver might think it OK to pass a vehicle that could easily catch and crush within a foot of a cyclist boggles me, yet it keeps on happening to me. I guess I’ve secretly hoped for higher gas prices for a while now.
Where the hell is Newark and how do I ensure I never go there?
My sister has a huge gas guzzling macho-complex truck (the word “truck” spoken with a deep voice) that her beer guzzling ex boyfriend coerced her to buy. When they split up she wasn’t able to sell it because nobody wanted to buy a gas guzzler. Now that the gas prices are coming down maybe she can finally get rid of the thing.
If you think that regular cars are burdens, you should try to live with a huge truck. Even just parking the thing takes a few minutes if you don’t want to break things around you.
I spent $26 on transportation last year, what would that buy me in the car world?
I spent $26 on one new tire last year…. but I also repaired my busted frame, (twice at $300 each reweld), new chainwheels $75, new chains (2 @ $35), new cogs (1 @ $75), other new tire, $26, new tubes (3 @ $8), new cables for shifters (2 @ $15) new brake pads (4 @ $10)… and so on… bicycling isn’t free if you put in the miles commuting…. at 4.8K only missed the 5K mark because of the broken frame.
Yikes, at prices like that maybe it’s time to look into doing some maintenance yourself.. I’m all for supporting local repair shops but that’s a little high.