Part of my not doing advocacy anymore was a desire to understand why I didn’t want to do it anymore, to understand how my relationship to riding had changed from a time when advocacy felt like an essential part of my choice to ride. I had a sudden flash of insight this week while I was […]
Category Archives: Transportational Cycling
What comes out of the spaces
Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood. —Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love Space. Quiet? Yesterday I wrote the first sentence from […]
Road $$ is not cycling $$
There’s a problem with transportation funding framing. The problem is exemplified by the notion that we have enough money to build and maintain roads, but not enough money to build out bike facilities. Frankly this doesn’t make any sense, and no one should be allowed to say it ever again without being strictly challenged on […]
How not to be a jerk: pay attention to signal timing
When I had a sprained ankle, I got passed a lot on the bike. And I noticed, even more than I had noticed before, that after people passed me, I frequently caught up to them. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have passed me, but it does mean that when they passed me dangerously, or when […]
Low-stress route choice
I decided to quit public advocacy for a while (time TBD), but one of the things I decided is that I’m going to keep writing stuff here if I feel like it, just focusing on my personal experiences and not trying to get attention for them. I can’t turn off my advocacy brain so I […]
Why I never want to hear “Sorry, I didn’t see you” again
Here’s what people usually say when they almost kill you in traffic: “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” Here’s why I never want to hear it again: 1) I assume you didn’t see me, because I assume it wasn’t your goal to run into, hurt, or kill me. Most people don’t set out into traffic with […]
PBOT needs to be solution-oriented
In Saturday morning’s Oregonian neighborhoods section, there’s an article about the safety and traffic conditions on NW Cornell. It contains the line: The society would like to see a stop sign or a crosswalk signal, but Costello isn’t optimistic. “I had a PBOT engineer tell me that realistically, it’s not going to happen until someone […]
Why I can’t be arsed to support a cycletrack on SW 12th
True to my blogging history, let’s start with a linguistics digression: “can’t be arsed” is my favorite British phrase. It means “can’t be bothered”, but is somewhat less polite. I can’t be arsed to support a cycletrack on SW 12th. I can’t really be arsed to oppose it, either, because who wants to oppose bike […]
Why I’m an Options Ambassador
PBOT’s Transportation Options division is recruiting for new outreach volunteers — Options Ambassadors — for 2012. A few weeks ago Andrew at PBOT asked me if I would be willing to share why I volunteer with Options as part of their recruitment. I think my response is slated for a brochure or email because I […]
SW Broadway cycletrack impressions
I’ve been curious about the cycletrack on SW Broadway since it opened a few weeks ago, and today I decided to go check it out on my way back from SE. My impression of it was overall positive. It’s fairly clearly striped, and most of the left-turn boxes seem to be well-placed, although one of […]