Floyd A. O'Reilly Blog: The Monday Roundup: Hand signals, glowing bikeways, safety vigilantes, and more

Monday, October 10, 2016

The Monday Roundup: Hand signals, glowing bikeways, safety vigilantes, and more

Solar “Dutch style” bikeways at an intersection on Texas A & M campus.
(Photo: Texas A & M Transportation Institute)

This week’s Monday Roundup is brought to you by Bicycle Fitting Services, who reminds you that it’s the perfect time of year to dial-in your fit for maximum power and comfort.

Welcome to the week. Before we get started, here are the best stories we came across last week…

Onion on arm signals: If you need a quick laugh after last night’s depressing presidential debate, check out The Onion’s treatment of hand signals.

USDOT talks tough on Vision Zero: But it’s mostly just talk. Still. A big show was made of federal commitment to road safety, but we’re not holding our breath that they have the guts to do what it takes to really tackle the problem.

Begging for change: A man waited 26 minutes for a “walk” signal in Seattle. Thankfully he recorded it and shamed SDOT into examining the cause of the delay.

Water taxis gaining steam: NYC is planning one and now another one has been approved between San Francisco and Berkeley. Can you imagine a water taxi connecting St. Johns and north Portland to the South Waterfront and downtown?

Same roads, different rules: The headline to this piece in the LA Times says everything you need to know. And our response to it is a resounding, “Yes!”.

“Dutch Junction” in Texas: Texas A & M University just completed what they call the first “Dutch-style” non-signalized intersection in the U.S. Oh, and it has solar luminescent green coloring.

Poland’s glowing bike lane: Luminescent bike lanes are apparently a thing right now. Not to be outdone by Texas, Poland has a new bikeway that glows blue after sunset.

Dealing with Portland growth: Randy Gragg absolutely nails this piece about Portland’s astounding growth and how to deal with it.

Design cities for maximum access: Designing post-highway era cities requires more than simply replacing highways with light rail (which is what many cities are doing now). “Each community must define accessibility on its own terms,” says Next City.

Uber, don’t mess with public transit: Jarrett Walker of Human Transit is a man after our own hearts. His response to an Uber ad that insulted public transit was spot-on. You can replace public transit with bicycling in his explanation and it applies just the same.

Carnage ticker: It’s good to see the horrible trend for U.S. road safety make national headlines. It’d be even better if we took real steps to get control of it.

Bikeways don’t cause traffic: We heard it in the Better Naito debate and it’ll be brought up a lot as Portland deals with its congestion problem. Here’s a piece in The Guardian that dispels the myth.

White, black and biking all over: Portlander Elly Blue has come out with a second edition of her great Bikenomics book. She published an excerpt in YES! Magazine titled, “Why Bicycle Justice Isn’t a White Guy in Spandex.”

Carfree NYC?: New York City May Bill De Blasio is floating the idea of prohibiting driving on a major Manhattan thoroughfare to improve road access for other users during a shutdown of a major subway line.

Bike theft prevention success in BC: A focused effort to reduce bike theft on Granville Island, a popular destination in downtown Vancouver BC, is working.

Safety vigilantism: San Franscisco is the latest city where citizen activists have erected unsanctioned bike lane protection because they’re fed up with city government that isn’t doing enough to make streets safe…

… And oh look, it worked: The City of San Francisco will let the unsanctioned plastic posts stay, “until it follows with its own set of permanent change.”

Trek president gets political: John Burke, President of Trek Bicycles, seems to have a political career on his mind. He took to Huffington Post last week to share the 10 questions he’s like to ask our presidential candidates.

Bicycles as political tool: A group of “Kung-Fu trained feminist nuns” is on a ride through Nepal to bring an end to human trafficking.

Tweet of the Week: We’ve been hearing a lot about the vast increase in auto traffic on Portland roads. It’s a major issue with far-ranging impacts, one of which is described in the tweet below by Gwen Shaw:

Every AM on bus I hear this: "Used to take 20 min to get into downtown, now it's over an hour. Too many cars-Soon, we're gonna be like LA."

— Gwen (@Gwennieshaw) October 6, 2016