Floyd A. O'Reilly Blog: The Monday Roundup: What Amazon wants, street harrassment, overcoming eyerolls, and more

Monday, October 30, 2017

The Monday Roundup: What Amazon wants, street harrassment, overcoming eyerolls, and more

This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by Showers Pass. Don’t miss their annual warehouse sale on November 11th.

Welcome to Monday. Here are the stories that caught our eyes last week…

Problematic panacea: Victoria Transport Policy Institute Founder Todd Litman shares his top reasons to be skeptical of autonomous vehicles, including the Zombie Kangaroo Costume Challenge and the Titanic Safety Dilemma.

Wolf Whistles and Creepy Compliments: The Safe Routes to School National Partnership has resources that will help decrease and prevent the all too common phenomenon on harrassment while biking and walking to school.

“Vision Zero” easy to say, hard to do: A few years ago Vision Zero came into vogue and many mayors issued proclamations about it. Now we’re seeing that many of them were just blowing smoke.

More pricing policy momentum: A commission tasked with digging into mobility pricing for the metro Vancouver (Canada) region says the time is right to make some modes more expensive.

Dying for better bikeways: Montreal was by far the best city for cycling in North America years ago; but advocates think they’ve fallen too far behind and they want safer infrastructure (sound familiar, Portland?).

Paris loves e-bikes: Velib bike share was one of the largest and earliest success stories. Now all 20,000 bikes in the fleet will be upgraded to electric-assist.

3-D zebras: The internet has gone mad for this 3-D zebra-striped crosswalk painted in a town in Iceland, created in hopes of getting people in cars to slow down.

The middle finger heard ’round the world: A woman riding a bicycle staked out Trump at his golf course and followed his motorcade with the specific goal of flipping him off as he came by. She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams:

A woman on a bike gestures as the motorcade with US President Donald Trump departs Trump National Golf Course in Sterling, Virginia http://pic.twitter.com/sPhxzAaqAZ

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 29, 2017

Overcoming “eyerolls and stinky attitude”: Don’t miss this great interview with Portlander Aqua Dublavee about what it’s like to face fears as a new rider. It’s part of an interview series by Friends on Bikes.

What Amazon wants: The NY Times delves into what the behemoth company in a second headquarters city — and a lot of it has to do with being a place where employees can thrive without using a car.

Lawmaker, lawbreaker: Oregon State Rep Julie Parrish got pulled over and cited for distracted driving — a law she supported in last year’s legislative session.

Scope of distraction problem: Bloomberg has a sobering report about how the lack of federal data on the role of smartphones in traffic crashes is making it harder to tackle this public health epidemic.

Distracted walking a crime too: On October 25th the city of Honolulu, Hawaii became the first in the United States to begin enforcing a law against using a cell phone while walking.

Trackless rail: China has launched an urban train that runs on an invisible line underground. Imagine the reduction in injuries and improved safety of our streets if we had these in Portland!

This is the Thursday Night Ride: Excellent local photographer Eric Thornburg has come out with a beautiful short film that captures the who, what and why of Portland’s TNR.