would be neat if the choice between driving or biking a couple miles was just a few dollars vs some extra minutes, not "and also climb over a mountain to avoid getting your life threatened with cars but also still get your life threatened anyway" #InducedDemand#CaptiveDrivers
Of course we forget to think of the people who don't have the choice to drive, because people in the US are too obsessed with punching themselves and their children in the face with bad policy just to ensure that being poor sucks.
@szeis4cookie Barbur leads directly to Multnomah and that's how the train used to run, so it's the most efficient (would be able to get there without much climbing at all if not for the freeway.) But Capitol Hill Rd and Troy still gets lots of cut-through car traffic because the cars dept isn't allowed to ever put something in the way of cars 🙄
2/3rds of financial cost of stranded assets would be borne by the very same assholes who are raking in 98-100% of benefits from said fossil fuel "assets"
Current state of the #cargoBike "#bagAndDrag" / #bikeTowing setup, if the kids' bike tire wedges into the #xtracycle#edgeRunner cargo rails, you don't need to strap it at the bottom. It's best with 3 good points of contact on the wheel and the fork to be able to pivot. Experimenting on this strut/compression bit: the white PVC won't survive outside, going to be grey, but needs a different arrangement of the strap to draw tight, (and some rubber on the ends?) #bikeTooter#bikeParent#nPlus1
printing out a year worth of DOT press releases so I'll have something to whap #drivers over the head with when they honk to tell me they never got those memos
@bikescape standard practice would be to stripe an avoidance line diagonally from the edge and across the obstacle. Taller poles are easier to avoid (they never get completely obscured by someone on a bike in front of you), maybe add a reflective post on top?
What should we do about the vast majority of drivers being unable to operate a vehicle safely? Taking their license away is considered "cruel and unusual punishment", and many of them would keep driving anyway. (Direct your scorn at traffic "Engineers" and electeds, most people are just trying to survive in a system which coerces people into driving.)
New SFMTA update on #ValenciaStreet denounces scofflaw cyclists for using the center bike lane when it’s clearly marked as under construction. All the crashes are the fault of “some individuals,” not SFMTA. #bikeSF
@DrTCombs okay sure, but the problem isn't that some urbanists have fantasies, it's that geometry hates cars, and that we have a finite amount of space, and that the planet will kill us all if we don't quit cars, and that our government was/is constructed by racists. Forcing developers to provide parking is not doing anybody any favors, even in the short term. The inequity needs to be addressed, but it's far too easy/comfortable to (ab)use it to overlook non-drivers entirely.
@DrTCombs 👉 by expecting those with the fewest alternatives available to them to make bigger sacrifices than the rest of us. 👈 that's the basic injustice of our government, so the problem needs to get fixed at a level above the zoning code and transit and transportation. I'm not saying it should be fully top-down though, some of this needs to be figured out literally on the street. Municipal banking, tactical urbanism, other ways to enable investment+ownership by residents.
@DrTCombs I think a fair bit of the (very understandable) frustration with not having alternatives to driving is that there is nothing they can do with the current system of transit and "active transportation" planning (and failing to actually build or at least connect in a useful way). We (in Portland) have adopted plans but seem to think we're still going to use the freeway building machines (the DOT) to deliver them + ppl will somehow ride a bus without 10x more bus drivers?
@DrTCombs I will say that the "transportation wallet" and "biketown for all" bikeshare assistance have seemed like a good way to balance some of the parking changes in Portland, but we still do a 💩 job of covering the inequality as a whole from the city/county/state level and prefer to make it some exclusive burden of the city transportation bureau (in conflict with climate directives, but cars still come 1st too) 🙃
All Cops are #drivers
"despite the driver making an illegal turn, being unlicensed and uninsured, and having a long history of traffic violations, the Portland Police Officer who handled the case declined to issue a citation or arrest and appeared to politicize the incident by telling the victim to take up their concerns with Portland City Council."
what's a good tool for managing/sharing social media posts for a couple/few volunteers? Can you get one app to author and schedule posts on different platforms?
"The automobile has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving & parked, it devours urban land, leaving buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous & ugly traffic."
—James Marston Fitch, NY Times, 1960.
I got your "$4B #transportation backlog" right here #Portland. Put your #trafficEngineers' #CompleteStreets fever dream planning documents in a barrel and burn them for heat. You're never going to build an entire #BikeWayNetwork at $30M/mile, and look at them sit on their hands on E 82nd transfer (as bloated as Barbur, sans train.) "Fixing Our Streets" is a cars project, free #Parking is theft, and #ClimateDenial is foundational to #PBOT's entire budget. #StrongTowns
Some asshole teenager on a citibike buzzed me on the sidewalk. I was mad for all of 10 seconds before I remembered that in most places in the US, that same kid would have a learner's permit and would be buzzing me in a crosswalk with his parents' 2 ton SUV. Or worse.
"Previous generations of cool roofs were generally low-tech: the equivalent of a fancy can of white paint or gray shingles. These work.
But for practical and aesthetic reasons, not everyone wants a white roof. New products approach the performance of white material in dozens of colors, including black."
The more advanced materials can pay for themselves in less than a year, at least in hot climates
Congratulations #StrongTowns#Portland celebrating 1 year, 6:30 July 11 at Gorges on SE Ankeny (note also board games Sunday at 4 and 11am July 8 hangout downtown)
🚨 STOP ODOT’S BACKROOM HEIST, HELP US RIGHT-SIZE INTERSTATE BRIDGE INVESTMENT
The freeway lobbyists have included a $1 billion allocation of General Obligation Bond funds for the proposed Interstate Bridge Replacement in an amendment to House Bill 5005. This amendment dropped over the holiday weekend, a day before two work session votes on the legislation, the week before session ends. #ORleg#ORpol#NoMoreFreeways#ClimateAction#Portland#pdxBikes
Never let your government get away with claiming that #bikeHelmets are "the first rule of bike safety".
Rule number one is infrastructure, and the 2nd is air+brakes+chain mechanical soundness of the bike, upright geometry of the bike, traffic awareness, ride with fingers on your brake levers and having practiced emergency stops, twenty is plenty... Helmets are for stunts or a footnote to "don't fall on your head" rule that applies to walking moreso than biking.
@creepy_owlet@slyborg I'm not sure how a reasonable person read what I wrote, about well-studied results of government policy, as saying you personally shouldn't wear one. Knock yourself out.
@cdrum@CargoBikeLife@qag police have license plate readers just tracking every plate seen from each cruiser. Toll cameras, many other places to log your plates, which is supposed to be how drivers are held accountable...
