• Bicycle Advocacy
• City Planning
• Climate Change
• Economic Development

Who Killed the CRC?

CRC is dead, says Oregon Governor Kitzhaber… Who will claim the kill?
WA state Senator Don Benton (R) or Robert Liberty, ex-1000 Friends of Oregon

• Climate Change

Obama Targets Tuesday for big Climate Announcement

We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Addressing the threat of Climate Change – YouTube.

• Active Citizenship
• Bicycle Advocacy

Portland’s Bicycle Revolution Started With A Lawsuit

One would think that by 1990, the year I helped start up the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and 20 years since the passage of Oregon’s landmark “Bicycle Bill,” that every street and highway in Oregon would include sidewalks and bike lanes…

• Bicycle Advocacy
• City Planning

Les Francais et le Velo: The French Go Cycling

The French and bicycles bring so many conflicting images to my mind. The iconic photo of the Frenchman riding a country road with the obligatory baguette sticking out of the basket, in stark contrast to Daniel Behrman‘s horror stories of 1960s Paris in his classic, The Man Who Loved Bicycles, of the scurrying bicycle mounted serfs scattering before the car-crazed on the Champs Elysees. Then I read of Paris, Paris!, putting in a massive Bike sharing program, following the lead of Lyon and then being joined by  Nice, Toulouse, Rennes, La Rochelle, Orléans, Montpellier, Lille and Aix-en-Provence.

I was intrigued.

What is bicycling really like in France today…

• Active Citizenship
• Economic Development
• Smart Resource Use

Community and Furniture Building in Rural Japan

Up in the hills between Osaka and Tokyo is a small village that is pretty typical of much of rural Japan. Beautiful old houses, forested hillsides, a river running through it and silence. The woods are quiet because it is cheaper to import wood from Indonesia than to cut and process here. The town is quiet because many of the houses are empty…

• Bicycle Advocacy
• Non-car Mobility

Useless Devices that Make Us Feel Good

Bicycle helmets are kind of like those airplane seat cushion “flotation devices.” They are endlessly hyped yet rarely needed and of dubious usefulness when deployed. Whether crashing at sea or getting hit by a speeding car, neither the seat cushion nor the bike helmet will save your life. Its funny, we heavily regulate airplane design […]