Floyd A. O'Reilly Blog: The Monday Roundup: NYC aftermath, vision zero fire truck, Uber’s strange ad, and more

Monday, November 6, 2017

The Monday Roundup: NYC aftermath, vision zero fire truck, Uber’s strange ad, and more

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This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by Left Coast Bicycles, offering mobile bike repair at your home or workplace throughout the Portland Metro area.

Here are the best stories that came across our desks last week:

Auto industry funds anti-walking propaganda: Treehugger breaks down how America’s “culture of fear” — filtered through an American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons PR campaign supported by auto manufactuers — is shifting blame for unsafe streets away from drivers and onto walkers.

Beer bikes banned: Amsterdam has outlawed those huge, pedal-powered “beer bikes” after many complaints of rowdy tourists made them a “nuisance”.

Residential bike parking: Portland’s ubiquitous blue bike staple racks rarely reach into residential areas. We need more places to park near homes. What to do? The Dutch use “bicycle hangars” and other neighborhood facilities.

Vision Zero fire truck: San Francisco officials purchased new fire engines with many features that aim to make them safer for use in dense urban areas where lots of people walk and bike.

Bicycle traffic school: The southern California city of El Monte has long allowed auto users to get traffic ticket fines waived by attending a safe driving class. Now bicycle users can do the same thing.

Dockless bike share in Minneapolis-St. Paul: In a place where the existing, kiosk-based bike share system shuts down in winter, dockless bikes could fill an important gap in mobility needs.

Normalization of speeding: An entire article about driving over the speed limit and “gunning it” (an interesting phrase given all the talk about cars as weapons) that completely ignores the fact that driving too fast for conditions is dangerous.

Not speeding is the problem? Really?: An article that relies on a police officer as its single source of expertise tries to make the case that we’d all be safer and happier if everyone drove faster. (Fact check: That’s not the case at all. Higher speeds mean more people will be killed and injured.)

It’s our fault: Finally, despite the willfull ignorance of Donald Trump and his friends, the U.S. government has told the truth about climate change: It is caused by humans.

DUI-E: I like the way Washington has reframed distracted driving violations as “driving under the influence of electronics.”

AVs are not so smart: A driverless shuttle van being used as a demo at the Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress in Montreal malfunctioned. Conference goers got out and walked.

New York City Terror Attack Aftermath

Make trucks harder to get: Lloyd Alter at Treehugger (and others) think we need to make dangerous vehicles like SUVs and trucks much harder to come by.

Car-centric infra the problem: We need to ban cars from dense downtown areas; or at least get rid of the majority of them. Think that’s crazy? Many great cities are well on their way.

Safe street activists FTW: Many articles focused on the fact that — given the new era of weaponized motor vehicles — perhaps its time for public and politicians to embrace the ideas of transportation reform activists. Writing in the NY Times, Yonah Freemark puts is clearly: “By redesigning streets, we can protect pedestrians and cyclists from both careless drivers and malicious ones.”

Terrorism = everyday traffic violence: For New Yorker Teka Lark, it doesn’t matter what motivates a person behind the wheel, we need to stop bowing to the motor vehicle menace: “The authorities would rather pedestrians and cyclists die than force motorists to slow down and go the long way around.”

Push for bollards: After the attack, NYC City Council rep Ydanis Rodriquez renewed his call for more bollards to protect bike paths and other public spaces.

But not like this: The City of New York placed jersey barriers on the Hudson Greenway Path (and soon at 56 other locations); but the installation is completely wrong and an insult to people who walk and bike.

Uber’s ad: And finally today, check out the new ad from Uber — and remember this is a company that encourages people to use cars in cities. Am I missing something?