The Monday Roundup: Best carfree cities, school choice and mode choice, helmet law repeal, tolling, and more

This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by The Bike Index, the nonprofit tool and community that has recovered thousands of stolen bikes.

Here are the best stories we came across last week…

Doing it right: Former (that’s important) Bicycling Magazine editor-in-chief absolutely laid into the infamous cycling “Rules” kept by Velominati.

Paying to drive fixes congestion: This NY Times column argues that all the technology in the auto world won’t solve congestion. The only thing that will is making driving more expensive.

Bikeway widening: Instead of widening auto-only highways, smart cities are creating more bike-only “highways.” Berlin is building bike “superhighways” hoping to mimic success of the concept from London.

Car ads kill: A regulatory body in the UK ruled that a Jaguar ad encouraged dangerous driving. We’d love to see similar actions by the US government, but we aren’t holding our breath.

The unpaving movement: Omaha, Nebraska made a bold move to address its street funding shortfall. Instead of repaving projects, they’ve opted for unpaving projects.

The toilet plungers worked: Remember the story we shared earlier this month about the use of toilet plungers as a DIY way to bring attention to the need for a protected a bike lane? It worked.

Mandatory helmet laws are dumb: BikeBiz (UK) reports that Bosnia has become the first-ever country to repeal a mandatory, all-ages helmet law.

Living without a car: Real estate company Redfin used Walk/Transit/Bike Score data to determine the best American cities for living without a car. For some reason Portland didn’t even make the list.

Blaming victim advocates: A lawyer in Brooklyn laughed off a plea deal for the man who hit and killed a bicycle rider, saying the 15-year prison sentence was politically motivated by, “Vision Zero, the bicyclist lobby, the advocates.”

More school choice, less mode choice: Too many people driving kids to school is a huge problem nationwide and school choice policies make it worse.

Blacks, Latinos, and fear: Important reading from the Better Bike Share Partnership explores research on how fears of racial profiling manifests in the decision to bike or not among Blacks and Latinos.

Wednesday Night Spins: In Crystal City, Virgnia a new weekly racing series has taken off. The appeal? A chance to race in a large group on the smooth concrete of a multi-level parking garage.

Better streets, faster: The City of Boston has a new program that empowers neighborhood residents to organize and petition for traffic calming projects. The hope is improvements will happen much quicker if the City can hit the ground running.

Staying in front of AV hysteria: Some good advice for cities grappling to stay ahead of corporations and lobbyists that want autonomous vehicles to become the mode of choice in urban areas.

Parking in bike lanes: It seems like an intracable problem, but advocates in the Washington D.C. area might have found a good way to tackle it: a combination of ParkingDirty.com, traffic-cams, and crowdsourced data-gathering.

— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org

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