It’s time for the Bike News Roundup! Here’s a taste of some of the sweet (and not-so-sweet) bike-related and bike-adjacent news floating around recently.
First up: StreetFilms visits Vancouver, BC, giving an overview of how Seattle’s neighbor to the north made itself into a truly multimodal city.
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Pacific Northwest News
- After investing millions to improve traffic flow, Seattle’s ‘Mercer Mess’ improves by 2 seconds – Puget Sound Business Journal – Of course, increasing job demand (in addition to lots of new parking garages and poor bike/transit access) since the start of the project also contributed. But the larger point is valid: Investing primarily in car movement does not scale well. And once the feeble increase in capacity is full, it’s full.
- The Portland Plan: Down with McMansions, Up with Abundant Housing Options | Sightline Institute
- Biking in Downtown Seattle with Kids | Family Ride
- Making Vision Zero Real » The Urbanist
- Electric bicycles raise concerns over trail access | KING5.com – I’m not a mountain biking expert, but the best solution here is somewhere in the gray area. We need to protect non-motorized trails from high-power motor bikes (which could make the trails unsafe for other users and erode support for new trails), but some e-assist bike access could safely open these recreational opportunities to more people. Where do you draw the line?
- A Waterfront Stroad is Regrettable, but Losing Transit Priority Would Be Worse | Seattle Transit Blog
- West Seattle Blog… | WEST SEATTLE CRIME WATCH: Bike theft on video
- Car that crashed through Kent apartment had to be lifted off victim | The Seattle Times – Terrible and terrifying. Our condolences to the man killed inside his own home.
- My Ballard » Chamber to transition into “Ballard Improvement Area” next year – This change is a good opportunity for the new BIA to take a new stance on the Missing Link and direct some of its new resources towards welcoming trail users to shop at local businesses.
- What to Do When Discounted Transit Is Still Too Expensive – Next City
- Seattle builds lots of new apartments, but not so many parking spots | The Seattle Times – Woohoo! But we can still do better. Most of the city still requires far too much parking.
- Denmark’s Largest City Is Winning the War on Cars – Slog – The Stranger
- Move Seattle Wins in ST3 | SDOT Blog
- A new campaign aims to make helmets available for Biketown users – BikePortland.org
- Bus riders step in as driver has fatal heart attack on viaduct | The Seattle Times
- Cycling Is Getting a Lot Safer in American Cities Adding a Lot of Bike Lanes | Streetsblog USA
- Portland Debuts BIKETOWN for All – Community Cycling Center
- Flare Pro – Next Gen Light for Cycling, Hiking, and Running by Orfos — Kickstarter – Seattle-based company’s second line of bike lights. Kickstarter includes lots of gratuitous Seattle-area scenes (including inside the Snoqualmie Tunnel).
- Guest Editorial: Now More than Ever, Seattle Must Welcome Upzones – Slog – The Stranger
- Remembering Those Lost To Traffic Violence » The Urbanist
- Best New Restaurants of 2016: Peloton | Restaurant Reviews | Seattle Met – Confirmed: This bike shop has great food. They also have coffee and beer. Basically, you should probably just go live there.
- Sunday Video: Diverging Diamond Interchange Comes To Washington – The Urbanist – The “diverging diamond” works great so long as everybody is inside a car. People walking (and biking on the sidewalk/path)? Well, you’re technically accommodated, but you’ll have to cross double the number of intersections. This is all so people turning don’t have to wait for you. See also this video (includes a solid Star Wars reference). The status quo for nearly all highway interchanges is terrible for people walking and biking. But this is not the solution.
- Architects Are Designing Parking Garages That Can Convert Into Housing | WIRED
- Using Uber, Lyft in Seattle? You’ll wait longer if you’re black, study finds | The Seattle Times
- Amtrak rolls out train-side check-in for bicycles on its L.A.-Seattle route – LA Times
- Pierce County, Wash., Transit Deploys System to Help Buses Avoid Collisions with Pedestrians, Bicyclists | GovTech
- West Seattle Blog… | UPDATE: Bicycle rider taken to hospital after 47th/Genesee incident
- What’s Next for Seattle Subway | Seattle Transit Blog
Halftime show! SDOT Director went on an AARP-sponsored daytime talk show to discuss Vision Zero.
National & Global News
- America Is Building More Three-Car Garages Than One-Bedroom Apartments – Bloomberg
- Episode 12 – Tamika Butler | The Bicycle Story
- Trailnet pitches plan for connected paths along St. Louis streets | Along for the Ride | stltoday.com
- Thousands of ‘Fancy Women on Bikes’ defy intimidation to claim the streets of Turkey – Women in the World in Association with The New York Times – WITW
- Nobody injured on Black Friday after car crashes into store | North Jersey – The store literally had high-vis vests for sale in the front window. The irony.
- Truck smashes into Iowa Wal-Mart store killing 3 people | AP – Three people.
- Sadiq Khan to spend £770m on London cycling initiatives | Environment | The Guardian
- Potential pollution exposure reductions from small-distance bicycle lane separations | Science Direct – A often-forgotten benefit of giving bike lanes more space from general traffic.
- Bike Index’s November 2016 bike recoveries
- At long last! Join Gov Nixon & MO State Parks Dec 10 for grand opening of 47-mile Rock Island Trail/Katy to KC Connector | Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation
- Five things about the cycle track pilot project ahead of council decision on its fate | Calgary Herald
- Flexible Roadway Design Key to Safer Streets | Department of Transportation
- An Unlikely Success Story: The Failure of the North Minneapolis Greenway — Strong Towns
- Minneapolis leads bike-friendly cities in cutting bike crash, injury rates | Star Tribune
- Africa’s First Bike-Share Just Launched in Morocco – CityLab
- No, Trump Won’t Be “Good For Cities”` | The C Is for crank
- Chicago entices cyclists with plan for floating, solar-powered bike path | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian
- Trump Picks Road Industry Lobbyist to Lead Transportation Transition | Streetsblog USA
- It’s Time to Steal the Indy Cultural Trail – nextSTL
- Has the ideal low-cost bike lane separator finally been found? | PeopleForBikes
- Angry driver knocks local radio host off his bicycle during charity ride – 10News.com KGTV ABC10 San Diego
- Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps – NYTimes.com – That might be oversimplifying things a bit.
This is an open thread.
Comments
7 responses to “Bike News Roundup: Seattle’s multimodal neighbor”
Re: eBikes on National Forest trails story
See RCW 46.61.710, Mopeds, EPAMDs, electric-assisted bicycles, motorized foot scooters—General requirements and operation or WSP’s eBike FAQ.
There are still lots of place in Seattle where people can’t legally operate an eBike because they are signed “No Motorized Vehicles” and they are completely prohibited from sidewalks statewide. This includes large segments of the BG Trail, the portion of the Elliot Bay Trail on Port property, and much of the Interurban Trail. I haven’t heard of any enforcement but this is another circumstance where technology has surpassed regulation.
I’d like to see a way to have low power or moderate speed eBikes permitted but the rest of the state need regulatory action on the subject just as much as the US Forest Service.
ebikes are not bicycles. This distinction should be maintained.
Making regulations that allow for low-powered, or pedal assist, electric motorcycles (a better term) on bike lanes, MUPs, and other city infrastructure is a great idea. Allowing them on non-motorized dirt trails in city, county, and state parks, National Forest, DNR, or any other jurisdiction where bikes, hikers, and possibly equestrians mix is a horrible idea.
Facilities already exist for motorized recreation vehicles. Electric motorbikes can use these facilities. “[Opening] recreational opportunities to more people” in this case would essentially be creating a new class of users in protected areas with **no practical ability** to enforce power restrictions. We need to stand strongly with the USFS on this issue – it has many long term ramifications those outside the environmental and mountain bike community are not aware of.
Human powered vs. non-human powered, that’s where the line is drawn and that’s where it should remain. There should be no compromise.
Those bike lane separators in the link near the bottom look ridiculously unsafe. I baffled as to why they are being promoted besides “they’re cheap”. A paint-only lane would be safer than using those.
Agree, those little lumps appear to pose a significant diversion crash hazard, especially when used on a curved approach as shown in the PFB article.
At least they’re white, not pavement-colored, but they’re not reflectorized, and are low enough to be invisible to a following rider. (And how well does white work for conspicuity in places where there’s snow or heavy frost?)
Perhaps they’d be safe if you stuck a reboundable delineator post on top of each one, tall enough to be visible through other riders and over other vehicles, but as-is, they clearly aren’t crash-safe and don’t meet FHWA safety guidelines for raised dividers.
“After investing millions to improve traffic flow, Seattle’s ‘Mercer Mess’ improves by 2 seconds – Puget Sound Business Journal”
Fair enough but “After investing billions in light rail, how much have/will average commute times improve throughout the region for transit and or car drivers”? Of course we are told that it is reliability and not commute times that matter when considering light rail so lets apply the same standard to the Mercer revamp.
I keep seeing this headline pop up and it is perfectly illustrative of the poor reporting/understanding traffic congestion receives. The distortion only increases when you add cycling/transit to the discussion. (This is also a perfect example of induced demand: capacity increased and demand increased accordingly.)
Yes, travel times only improved two seconds but capacity on the corridor went way, way up. From an earlier article with the same deceptive headline but more facts:
“The corridor has an average of 30,000 more cars a day than it did two years ago.”
Well if you increase capacity by 30k and manage to reduce throughput time to boot that is a slam dunk. Why is this being reported on as a failure?
link to said article,
http://komonews.com/news/local/mercer-mess