page 46, Issue #3
-Charles Stuart
In Los Angeles, an elderly woman was ticketed for not being able to cross 4 lanes of traffic (about 75 feet) before the light changed. Mayvis Cole, the elderly woman, suggests the Los Angeles Police Department officer should have gotten off his motorcycle and helped her “when he saw me struggling” instead of writing a ticket. [source]
Chris Hardwicke continues to get press for his proposed “Velo City”, a glassed in network of elevated bike lanes connecting the suburbs of Toronto to downtown. The plan calls for the tubes to follow existing rail and hydro corridors. Hardwicke is having difficulty finding funding, and some folks say the idea is bullshit because of the immense cost of such a project. Hardwicke disagrees, “The question is, do we need to be more ambitious to effectively make change?” (Chicago, London, Colorado, and Japan are looking into this.) [more here and here]
The 6th annual bicycle film festival will take place in NYC on May 10-14 and will later be showing in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, London, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, and Milano. The deadline was for submissions was February 17th. Better luck next year. [source]
Lance Armstrong is planning on running in the NYC Marathon on Nov 5. He says he’s filling a void in his life. [source]
Bicycle day is April 19. On this day in 1943 Dr Albert Hoffman dropped acid and then road home on his bicycle. On his ride home he started tripping, this being the first ever acid trip. His experience is documented in his book LSD: My Problem Child. [source]
Sunday, May 28th is Bike the Drive. Lakeshore Drive will be closed to cars and bicycles will bike the Drive car-free. Lakeshore Drive is quaintly named but it’s far from it—it’s a multi-lane highway separating the shores of Lake Michigan from Chicago. [source]
A 6 year-old boy riding his bicycle on a Chicago South Side street was struck and killed by a white sport-utility vehicle. As Shatwon Enochs rode out of an alley around 12:40PM he was struck from behind. Shatwon was pronounced dead at 1:49 at the University of Chicago Hospital. The driver fled the scene. An arrest has been made. [source
and related]
Filmed by Bike, an annual film festival in Portland, Oregon was attended by 550 viewers at the Clinton Street Theater, while 250 were turned away. 44 films were submitted. [source]
70% of adults and 50% of children in King County, Washington wear bicycle helmets—the highest incidence in the nation. [source]
Portland now has signs stating estimated pedal times on common routes. The city received the $128,000 grant in 2000. 6 years later the signs are finally up. [source]
20 years ago when the Renaissance Center was built in Detroit there were no front doors. You had to drive into the parking garage. Only 54 million people used mass transit in Detroit during 2002, compared to 600 million in Chicago and 3.3 billion in New York City. [source]
A company in Portland is planning a “regional bike facility grander than anything Portland has seen.” Bike commuters throughout downtown would be able to take advantage of the facility. [source]
Got some interesting and curious news that affects bikes?
crankedmag 