More Indianapolis roadways converted to two-way in an effort to improve travel and safety
"A stretch of College Ave from Market Street to St Clair Street will be open to drivers headed north or southbound in February...Two more downtown roads to receive two-way upgrades include stretches of New York and Michigan streets. $20 million will be invested to convert the streets between College Avenue and Ellenberger Park."
More Indianapolis roadways converted to two-way in an effort to improve travel and safety
@INCapChronicle_Unofficial Yes, the books "Exit Here” by Jason Meyers , “Fade” by Lisa McMann, “l8r, g8r” by Lauren Myracle, and “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” by Laini Taylor are very dangerous! Kids, under no circumstances should you go to Loudmouth Books on 16th Street in Indianapolis, for example, to get copies of these books, no matter how easy it is!
Watched a few reaction videos to Murray Head's "One Night In Bangkok" and I think I might start a "Explaining the Lyrics" PeerTube channel 🙄
@marick It brings up, though, the interesting question of permalinks. It's great that you're linking to other people's work, but is there any point if the domains expire next year and you end up with a bunch of dead links on your post?
Credit where credit's due, OSU is really good and probably would have won even with better refs. They'll go far. IU is so much better at home.
Holmes stands absolutely still to set the pick, called for a foul
Really nice replay there of Bargesser standing straight, getting knocked into next Wednesday, and no call made
Announcers sure are excited about Ohio State's ability to commit fouls that aren't called 🙁 #IUHoosiers #iuwbb
This is IU's third road game against a top ten team...they got drubbed in the first two. Third time's the charm?
Indiana wetlands
Wetlands are areas of land that are saturated with water, either seasonally or permanently. Swamps, bogs, and marshes are all wetlands. Here are examples of each in Indiana:
* Twin Swamps Nature Preserve located in Mt. Vernon
* Pinhook Bog is a bog located in northwest Indiana. It is home to one third of Indiana’s rare or endangered plants.
* Celery Bog (which is actually a marsh) in West Lafayette
What is a wetland and why are they important? - Hoosier Environmental Council
@DannyStaley Island Time by Simplified 
Island Time
I think #IndianaUniversity has done a good job providing bikeways in the center of campus. But for some reason they don't mark *anything*. Here's the recommended design for a shared path, but the only place this exists is for about 100 yards next to the auditorium.
Will happy hour return for Hoosiers?
Indiana is one of only eight states in the country that bans all and any happy hour deals. Lisa Hutcheson testified against the bill, pointing out “In 2023 in Indiana, there were 817 deaths due to impaired driving – that is 19% of all traffic crash deaths"...better alternatives to driving I think would be the solution there. More bike shares, bike lanes, and buses.
Ooh, #IndyEleven signed Augustine Williams and Tyler Gibson! So I'd guess the starters will be
Keeper: Oettl
D: Boudadi, Diz Pe, King
MF: Blake, Lindley, Quinn, Gibson
F: Guenzatti, Martinez, Williams
That's pretty formidable. Oettl had some real bonehead plays last year before getting hurt, and Williams will have to overcome the Indy striker curse, but I'm excited!
Jasper wins Strongest Town contest
"Once the necessary underground work was complete, locals returned to the square to find it a welcoming gathering place. The new, fresh design now features narrowed driving lanes; wider sidewalks; “outdoor rooms” with benches, street trees, and potted plants; a social fire pit; music; painted alleys to compliment the center area; and many detailed elements to make the square an enjoyable third place."
This Town Actually Gets Things Done. What Makes It Different?
My new video riding down the B-Line to Switchyard Park
Bionic Dragon at Yogi's while watching #IUHoosiers #iubb . Looking good for the home team!
I had a picture there but it got eaten by IU's wifi 🙁 Meister and Holmes played Twin Towers for several minutes in the first half - never seen that before. I suppose the plan is for Meister to start next year. #iuwbb
Parrish still with crutches and a boot today, still wearing pink for breast cancer awareness though! Bargesser should be fine as her replacement. #IUHoosiers #iuwbb
@kkuchta working on that. Pass the chili cheese fries?
South Shore Line's Double Track Northwest Indiana project is 97% complete.
"The almost $650 million project that includes 16.9 miles of a second track is estimated to be complete in May. The new track will go from Gary to Michigan City.
Construction of the Miller Station building is underway and should be finished later this month...Construction of the new Portage/Ogden Dunes high-level platform is almost done."
Pretty exciting, @pollak ?
Double-track project 97% complete, according to latest update • Northwest Indiana Business Magazine
Protesters Rally at Eskenazi Museum of Art After Cancellation of Palestinian Artist Samia Halaby’s Exhibit
Photo Essay at the Bloomingtonian
State Senator Aaron Freeman's anti-transit, anti-pedestrian bill watered down slightly
"The Senate...added the creation of a task force to study the impact of those lanes.
Critics of the bill say it micromanages Indianapolis city government and could kill the proposed Blue Line, the city’s bus rapid transit system.
In addition to studying the impact of dedicated lanes, the bill was also amended to study the impact of no-turn on red signs."
Senate adds no turn on red language to bill prohibiting dedicated lanes
Irvington businesses pull support for bill that puts Blue Line into question
"Last week, some Irvington business owners endorsed the idea during a committee hearing and received backlash.
Then over the weekend, they reversed their stance, saying conversations in the community changed their opinion.
Those businesses include Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza, Black Sheep Gifts and Irvington Wellness Center."
Irvington businesses pull support for bill that puts Blue Line into question
@SeanCasten One of the coal plants mentioned in this article is Clifty Creek in Madison
Another older woman brings up bicycle counters, says she doesn't feel safe riding anymore 🙁 Electric tricycles FTW! Typical driver perspective - says she likes the project though. Worried about congestion and says she never sees anyone biking or walking 🙄
A few people worried about losing trees, trashcan placement, road closures, utility poles. I think the speaker has stopped answering in detail to move things along 😀
That's the end! Very positive overall, should be a good project.
Next speaker is concerned about walking, thinks it's dark and dangerous. The usual question about emergency vehicles.
Speakers are almost all positive, with many minor concerns and questions. One property owner asks about the sewer line :) Business owner asks about effects to his business, repeats the emergency vehicles question (still says he likes the project). Interesting question about protecting pedestrians with trees goes unanswered. Several people bring up safety for children.
Lane widths to be 11 feet to accommodate fire engines and buses, no change to number of lanes. Sidewalks to be bigger and protected bike lanes added.
Sidewalks are kind of scrawny, except across from the park. Bus stops look nice. New street lighting (hopefully no light pollution). Speaker asks how many people want to ask questions - lots of people raise their hands.
Ron Brown speaks for the Bloomington Bicycle Club - he likes it.
Hanging out at the 2nd Street design meeting. Let's see what they have to say...both the presenters and the public 🥁
Found in the Parks Board Meeting Minutes. Tim Street sounds a little frustrated! 😂
"Tim Street, Administrator
Building and Trades Master Plan was in process. Continued to collect feedback on Gateway feedback. Griffy Loop Trail celebration would be held for completion of damn crossing."
For the third time in two years, the future IndyGo Blue Line project is on the chopping block at the Indiana Statehouse due to its use of dedicated bus lanes.
The hearing on Senate Bill 52 drew dozens of business owners, transit advocates and city leaders on both sides of the issue to the Statehouse, though the crowd leaned heavily toward opposing the bill.
#HoosierMast #Indianapolis #BusRapidTransit
What's the future of the IndyGo Blue Line? Here's what to know.
Why do we have right-on-red, and is it time to get rid of it?
Atlanta, Denver, Indianapolis, Washington, DC, Raleigh, North Carolina, and other major cities have recently proposed or passed laws banning it in parts of their busy downtowns or citywide. They believe it will protect people walking and biking amid the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in more than 40 years.
How the 1970s oil crisis created the right turn on red | CNN Business
Moore-McNeil at her usual spot on point with Bargesser replacing Parrish on the wing. Not sure they shouldn't reverse those. #IUHoosiers #iuwbb
davunderb on X: "My first time in #MackeyArena . Nice cozy feel, but I had no idea that all the seats were benches except for a small high dollar donor section. No wonder #Purdue fans are so grumpy. Go #IUWBB!"
😹
Sydney Parrish is on crutches?! 😧 #IUHoosiers #iuwbb
@mekkaokereke I wonder if we should still let them read Harrison Bergeron.
I've read the phrase, "You've got another think coming" twice in two days, in Robert Parker's God Save The Child and Douglas Clark's Premedicated Murder. If that's really not the name of the Judas Priest song, it should have been.
@thekitmalone I have a few bucks I want to donate to a political cause. Any recommendations?
Solar Panels Attract Tornadoes, and Other Facebook Wisdom
"In rural Carrol County, Indiana last week, I happened to listen in briefly on remarks at a County Commission meeting discussing wind and solar energy.
As familiar as I am with the entire range of bogus anti-clean energy talking points, I did hear a new one.
“Solar panels attract tornadoes.”
#ClimateChange #Solar #CarrolCounty
Indiana: Made for High-Speed Rail
"Indiana is special for two main reasons.
1) Indianapolis is centrally located, surrounded by many nearby cities and towns.
2) The Fort Wayne Line, running next to Route 30, is a critical link between the Midwest and East Coast in a national, high-speed rail network.
Indiana has made a first step towards a modern passenger rail network by expanding the South Shore. It’s time for a statewide program."
Deeply disappointing’: Anti-censorship groups call out IU’s cancellation of Palestinian artist's exhibit
The NCAC’s letter to Whitten also went unacknowledged, Larison said, and she’s heard that IU is not changing its position.
“This is deeply disappointing to us,” Larison said. “It's very foreboding that this is something that other public universities might consider or be emboldened to do as well.”
Map shows Bloomington’s most dangerous intersections for pedestrians
Resident Mark Stosberg combed through 20 years of crash reports to find out how safe the city is for people on foot.
Stosberg’s report shows the top five intersections in Bloomington for pedestrian crashes.
The worst place is the intersection of Dunn Street and Kirkwood. Looking at data from the years 2003 through 2022, there were 16 pedestrian-involved crashes at the Dunn/Kirkwood interchange.
Map shows Bloomington’s most dangerous intersections for pedestrians
Jazz at The Vault
This is a new pub at the Indiana Memorial Union and I like the ambience a lot. I'll be back, and maybe even often.
The Indiana Legislature loves guns
"Certain elected officials and their office employees could soon be allowed to carry a handgun inside the Indiana Statehouse — a right already extended to lawmakers and their staff."
More handguns in Indiana’s Statehouse? Lawmakers seek to expand carry rights
The Indiana Legislature hates schools
"The committee also heard testimony from worried schools and supportive fiscal experts on legislation extending a cap on school operating referendum levies...The biggest losers would be Indianapolis Public Schools, with a loss of $12.5 million, and Carmel Clay Schools, with a loss of $8 million. An additional 21 school corporations could miss out on at least $1 million each."
House panel moves retiree 13th check, hears concerns on school referenda levy cap
The Indiana Legislature hates libraries
"Indiana Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would drastically change the way public libraries are funded and limit the types of events and activities they can host. The legislation could also potentially result in decreased funding for library services."
Indiana libraries face drastic funding changes, limits to activities in Senate bill
@neoczo No surfing!
Indiana University Cancels Major Exhibition of Palestinian Artist
We made the New York Times!
The first American retrospective of Samia Halaby, regarded as one of the most important living Palestinian artists, was abruptly canceled by officials at Indiana University in recent weeks...“I write to formally notify you that the Eskenazi Museum of Art will not host its planned exhibition of your work,” Brenneman wrote in the Dec. 20 letter.
Bloomington Peace Choir singing at the library
@Jonricha He's not *good* for sure, but not as bad as I feared. Doctors aren't sure yet what will need to be done.
@aceade That's what the post says. Is it that important to copy it into the alt?
At Methodist Hospital. Grandnephew got hit by a bus 🙁
Car in the bike lane. They're planning on some small barriers this year to stop this from happening so much. #BikeTooter #BikeLanes
In this episode of Seinfeld, Riker is having trouble sleeping, and Data's poetry reading is not successful.
Wait, is this actually Star Trek?
@jlharter How do I boost this four million times?
Cancelation of Palestinian artist's exhibit at Eskenazi Museum of Art.
Indiana University's Eskenazi Museum of Art has canceled a planned February exhibit featuring works by Samia Halaby, who is Palestinian-born visual artist. An online petition calling for the reinstatement of the exhibit has been set up. So far, the petition has received over 7,000 signatures.
Jan. 12, 2024 | County commissioner races | New city council leaders
Wetlands Threatened by I-65 & County Line Road Development
"Developers submitted a request to rezone nearly 200 acres of farmland that contained historic wetlands and old forests along County Line Road and I-65 to construct a large industrial complex along the I-65 corridor. Many of the natural areas are not incorporated into the proposed development, contrary to the principles of the I-65 & County Line Road Strategic Plan."
#IUHoosiers women down 5 at the half. Penn State is freaking FAST. Coach Moren is going to find the required adjustments before the finish though.
@hannu_ikonen Or as Charles Schulz put it, "I love humanity. It's people I can't stand."
State Senator Aaron Freeman is a big supporter of local governments, unless they don't do what he wants
#HoosierMast #INLegis
Republican state senator moves to void Indy’s no-turn-on-red ordinance
No #iuwbb sound at Crazy Horse
At Crazy Horse to watch #IUHoosiers but can't get sound. Apparently they're bigger football fans than IU fans here.
@JasonThorne The Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans is nice.
Academic celebrity Neri Oxman plagiarized from Wikipedia and other sources without any attribution
"A thorough review of her published work revealed that Oxman's failure to cite sources went beyond that — and included multiple instances of plagiarism in which she passed off writing from other sources as her own without citing the original in any way. At least 15 passages from her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation were lifted without any citation from Wikipedia entries."
Population growth restricted to just a few counties
"From 2000 to 2022, Hamilton, Hendricks and Marion County alone accounted for half the state’s population growth...the other counties that accounted for more than 5 percent of the state’s population growth were Allen, Johnson, Boone, Clark, Hancock and Tippecanoe."
What is it about these counties that have made them so successful in attracting new residents?
#HoosierMast #economy
Commentaries - Weekly Commentary with Michael Hicks
The Sierra Club has a lot of great reports and papers, which they hide deep inside a file repository so no one can find them.
Duke Energy owns part or all of the Clifty Creek (Madison, Indiana), East Bend (Rabbit Hash, Kentucky), Edwardsport (Edwardsport, Indiana), Gibson (Princeton, Indiana), Kyger Creek (Gallipolis, Ohio), coal plants. Each of these plants has one or more generating units which have not committed to retire prior to the end of the decade.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/SierraClub-CoalUtilityFinancingReport.pdf
Indiana Workers Logged 1 Billion Extra Unpaid Hours in 2023
Talk about your violent crime epidemics...
"According to the survey, Indiana employees contributed a striking 213% more unpaid overtime in 2023 than in 2022. The data, compiled from a study of 3,000 workers, unveiled significant increases in labor hours without compensation across the state.
On average, Indiana workers devoted an additional 4.7 hours per week to unpaid overtime during 2023"
Study: Poverty drove learning loss
"A new analysis of so-called learning loss in Indiana schools tells a familiar story: Students in high-poverty schools have seen the biggest declines in test scores since the COVID-19 pandemic...a significant correlation between learning loss and the percentage of students who qualified for free or reduced-price meals, a measure of poverty"
Unbelievable first half from the IU women. 50 points and a perfect (!) first quarter. #IUHoosiers
Rushville receives infrastructure safety grant
"In October 2023, Rushville received a $787,600 award to create an action plan along SR 3 that addresses surrounding safety and infrastructure concerns, with a goal of reducing the rate of serious and fatal accidents. The grant will allow the city to hire a full-time employee to coordinate and manage the project and engage community stakeholders in the planning process."
#Rushville #UrbanPlanning #Infrastructure
SS4A grant to address safety in tri-county area traffic corridor
@chronicallydave @bloomington_in It would have been nice to get *some* policy discussion, after Thomson spent the whole campaign talking in these same vague generalities. I'm assuming that she won't start implementing the Republican statehouse agenda, at least.
The most dangerous intersections for pedestrians in Bloomington
"The intersection with the most pedestrian crashes within Bloomington was at the intersection of Dunn Street and Kirkwood, by People's Park, with 16 crashes involving pedestrians.
Most of the crashes have a primary factor of "failure to yield" and "Driver DRR", which appears to be the code for distracted driving."
by @markstos
The most dangerous intersections for pedestrians in Bloomington, Indiana
Activists urge Indiana to act on pollution violations at coal plant that's no longer closing
"The Merom coal plant in Sullivan was supposed to shut down in May 2023. Now that a coal mining subsidiary has purchased the plant, activists say it could run indefinitely and needs to be held accountable for water, air and solid waste violations."
#HoosierMast #coal #environment
Activists urge Indiana to act on pollution violations at coal plant that's no longer closing
New design for Building Trades Park
Looks nice! 2nd Street traffic between the park and Hopewell is going to be problematic if they don't do something about it though.
@bloomington_in #UrbanPlanning #parks
Building Trades Park Master Plan Concepts by Mader Design, Dec. 7 2023
Highway Boondoggles 2023: Habitat Devastation in the Hoosier State
"The controversial Mid-States Corridor is a proposed 54-mile new-build highway connecting I-69 near Crane Naval Depot in Martin County, Ind., to I-64 near Dale, Ind. Slicing through a largely rural part of the state, the highway would devastate thousands of acres of farmland, wetlands and forests and destroy or degrade critical wildlife habitats"
Highway Boondoggles 2023: Habitat Devastation in the Hoosier State — Streetsblog USA
Is there any organization out there that's doing a decent job lobbying in the statehouse against Aaron Freeman and his anti-environment cohorts?
Education After High School Is the Path to Middle-Class Life
"For young people, I think the evidence points heavily towards continuing education after high school. I recognize there are loud voices in the state saying “you don’t need to go to college.” I think these voices are terribly misinformed, or they have the interests of someone other than the student in mind."
@TransportationHistorian Aaron Freeman is giving Todd Rokita a run for his money as the worst person in Indiana.
@KrissyKat "When the new residents from California see trash on the street they wonder why more isn’t done to clean it up..."So, you want your taxes to go up," Pierce said he tells the new residents. "You want more government?"
That sounds like an attractive place to live 🤨
@liztai I've never found anything better than a paper notebook. The apps I've tried take enough time to enter data that it takes me out of the rhythm of the workout.
Leaders and legacies: The rich history of those buried at Greenlawn Cemetery
"In a nearly forgotten area along the banks of the White River in downtown Indianapolis lay buried gems of the past. These gems are the human remains of notable leaders who lived extraordinary lives...Greenlawn Cemetery opened in 1821 and closed to new burials in 1890, when, according to city records, the cemetery was full."
Neighbors with a spectacular Christmas gift for the 'hood
Here is the track list for the AudioTrip "Swanky" song pack:
🎵 "Boys Just Wanna Have Fun"
🎵 "Cherry On Top"
🎵 "Howlin' At the Moon"
🎵 "Love Undercover"
🎵 "Swanky"
(Just another thing that it takes ten minutes to find online anywhere)
@IndyStar_Unofficial Bloody vikings
@ilinamorato It would be cool if they would make a Barcelona superblock out of that artsgarden intersection!
Just added a mailing list to my RSS feed with
Kill the Newsletter! . If this works well it could be super useful!
@reginagrogan Drives me nuts when games do it. "Your wuffletree flower has blossomed! Click here to claim the nectar!" 🤬
@ilinamorato You can tell it's been mismanaged because stores are leaving? Or did SPG make other missteps?
Michael Hicks says Israel losing its war would be disastrous for the U.S. economy. But since their winning condition appears to be reducing Gaza to a sheet of glass, I don't quite see how or why.
Hey now, Trump will be a dictator only long enough to ensure all power is consolidated in the presidency and that he never has to leave office.
@NickGates Fame bores me. But my follow list is chock-full of interesting people!
Genocide: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
* Killing members of the group;
* Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
* Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
@detritus Maybe you should have offered to take their kid as well.
#IndianaUniversity auditorium telling us our Straight No Chaser tickets are no good. Straight No Chaser to the bank to stop payments if they've double-charged us!
So many people want me to subscribe to their email newsletters, when I'm already subscribed by RSS. I wonder if I should start subscribing and auto-deleting them.
@KrissyKat Someday...
O’Hare flights that could be served better by trains
This is kind of pie-in-the-sky, and I really prefer longform articles to this kind of hyperlinked infographic...still, conceptually, I love the idea!
https://www.hsrail.org/blog/ohare-flights-served-better-by-trains/
Well. Certainly better than what's there now.
Move over, Carmel. This proposed sunken highway-roundabout for Indianapolis is massive
@KrissyKat It was definitely folk-rock. Certainly not country in the Luke Combs sense, but maybe a little of Merle Haggard in there.
I suppose everyone besides me knew that Luke Combs covered "Fast Car" and made it a big country hit, but now that I know I'm fascinated by the dynamics of it. An absolutely straight cover, didn't even change the "Working as a checkout girl" line and now it's country?!
Plans underway to bring Amtrak back to Louisville and Southern Indiana
"Mayor Craig Greenberg announced Friday the grant will be the first step in bringing a passenger rail service back to the region. The grant will fund research into the viability of creating the 115-mile corridor between Louisville and Indianapolis.
The potential track would include new stops in the Indianapolis International Airport, Jeffersonville and Columbus."
Plans underway to bring Amtrak back to Louisville and Southern Indiana
It's a bit of a meme that when you become a parent you're supposed to know everything, even though you're really just out there winging it like everyone else.
I was kind of hoping that grandparents really did know everything, though. Unfortunately as I reach grandparenting age, I suspect I'm in for a disappointment 🤨
A brilliant idea from Texas that Indiana should adopt also: make vouchers for public schools.
"Gov. Greg Abbott’s insistence on a voucher program can easily be passed with one simple amendment. Let the students and their parents have the option of paying the $8,000 voucher to the public school of their choice. I suspect most students will choose to stay with their public school with its unmatched programs for athletics, choir, language, band, AP courses, etc."
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/YAZ43S2UORGR7GLGOTIVIDV35Y.jpg)
Letters to the Editor — Trinity River park, Medicare, Dallas Zoo, Israel, public schools
Manufacturing Matters, but Not for Creating Jobs
"The only factory job growth Indiana has seen in 23 years is among high school dropouts. So, after almost a quarter century of focus on advanced manufacturing, and more than $10 Billion in tax incentives, we have a less well-educated factory job force than we had in 2000. Advanced manufacturing jobs require a better, not less well-educated workforce. We have squandered that chance."
Hundreds of Trucks Flock to Bloomington for Rally Saturday Night
I..have no idea what this is about.
"Many trucks, valued at tens of thousands of dollars and unaffordable for many, were predominantly large farm-type trucks adorned with bright LED lights capable of blinding other drivers, along with some equipped with train horns. The smell of diesel smoke permeated the parking lot. Indiana doesn’t have vehicle emissions standards."
Among the many, many reasons the #IUHoosiers miss Grace Berger is that they have no one to shoot a pull-up jumper anymore. Threes and Mackenzie Holmes will take them a long way, but probably not *all* the way.
Planning will get underway for a daily run of the Amtrak Cardinal route through Indiana. The Cardinal runs from Cincinnati to Chicago with stops in Indianapolis, Lafayette, and other towns.
"Daily Cardinal Service, increasing service frequency from three days per week to daily on Amtrak’s current service to Cincinnati between New York City, Washington, DC and Chicago, IL via the States of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois."
@ilinamorato People may remember Aaron Freeman as the big oil flunky who was so badly outmaneuvered by Indianapolis on the No Turn On Red lights issue. He also received an F grade from the Sierra Club for his opposition to conservation and a D for his opposition to sustainable energy.
Fantasy Morality
"In the original Dungeons & Dragons rule set, the orcs were simply "ontologically evil", that is to say, born with a kind of "evilness" in their essence. It was therefore not only justified, but a moral obligation for paladins to kill them on sight. If they didn't kill them on sight, they would risk losing their "good" status, and being kicked out of the Order of Paladins. Pretty brutal stuff, if you think about it."
Dec. 9th: Don't miss the Bicycle Garage Indy Toy Ride to and through the Christmas Nights of Lights!
The 7-mile ride starts at the Avondale Meadows YMCA and goes via 39th St. and the Fall Creek Trail to the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Toys will be collected at the event for the 23rd Annual YMCA Holiday Toy Drive.
Open to bicyclists of all ages and decorated bicycles are encouraged!
#cycling #HoosierMast #Indianapolis
https://www.bgindy.com/about/bicycle-garage-indy-toy-ride-pg2048.htm
Who Gets to Play in Women’s Leagues? Great overview of the difficulties in deciding who is eligible and who isn't.
Just because I've looked it up a dozen times and it's hard to nail down. the song "Rank Chick" appears on Buddy Charles' 1985 LP, "Jive's Alive" but is inexplicably unavailable on YouTube.
@leyrer What chat are they using that doesn't keep a full history?
"Americans are behaving as if they are in the midst of a very strong economy. But, that is not what they are telling surveyors"
Feeling nostalgic, so I put on an old Christmas movie. Can you believe how much space they had in airline seats in "Die Hard" ?
Well, well. Another NCAA soccer tournament, another loss on penalty kicks for #IUHoosiers . #MastodonFC
Dash 4 Shelter today, fundraiser for Wheeler Mission
Men's Services | Homeless Shelter for Men in Bloomington
My website's been down for months, a terrible disappointment to the four people who occasionally visit it I'm sure. I thought I'd just uploaded a bad file for the index or something. But finally went to figure out how I'd broken it today, and it turned out to be a config issue on the provider's side 😕 Should have checked it earlier!
You can always count on Greg A to tell it like it is 😂
"Cms Sgambelluri and Sandberg exclusively represent people in car-bound neighborhoods who oppose any change that prioritizes localized transportation near downtown and campus. Cm Rollo represents a group of people who are explicitly opposed to the very existence of the overwhelming majority of the city (a shocking alignment!), and Cms Sims and Smith simply don’t listen"
Column: A better blueprint for Bloomington city council meetings
Shorter Washington Post: Hey ladies - racist, misogynistic, fascist, homophobic young men need love too!
Mid-States Corridor makes list of top highway boondoggles
It's a proposed 54-mile new-build highway connecting I-69 near Crane Naval Depot in Martin County to I-64 near Dale. It will cost around a billion dollars and threaten thousands of acres of forests, farmland and wildlife habitat.
Highway Boondoggles 2023: This Year's Poster Children for Bad Projects — Streetsblog USA
Ouf, tuned in Notre Dame vs. Western Michigan for the overtime and they're playing in the snow. Oh well, I suppose both teams are used to it. #MastodonFC
I don't think Virginia has a matchup on the field that Indiana doesn't win one-on-one. Hoosiers up 1-0 in the 70th. #IUHoosiers #MastodonFC
Indiana's focus on attracting low-paying and unskilled jobs is causing issues attracting other kinds of workers
Attorney shortages in Indiana create 'access to justice problem'
Indiana University, a professional sports franchise with side hustles in research and education, looks set to pay Tom Allen $20M to not coach #IUHoosiers #HoosierMast
@WesternWayneNews "Scientists project that Indiana’s seasons, agriculture, and economy will continue to be affected by extreme weather, droughts and flooding without action in response to climate change." Well said!
#WikiLoc trails in Indiana
Perspective: People’s Park, born out of the tumult of the late 1960s, is no more
"The park still exists. However, the days when a human grab bag of disoriented drug users, teenagers, transients, drunks, drug dealers, disaffected locals, and wayward hippies roamed the lot are long past. Walk past the park nowadays and you are lucky to see one or two people eating on one of the benches or milling about."
The man and the macaw
Joe Porowski has never looked for an animal, but they always find him. A community grieves for the loss of Bloomington’s bird, Charlie.
https://bloomingtonian.com/2023/11/19/the-man-and-the-macaw-by-audrey-vonderahe/
Lexie Bargesser is the best pure point guard on the team. She can't start over Moore-McNeil though, Chloe's all-around game is way better.
What do you suppose you shout when you want Julianna LaMendola to pass you the ball? I'm guessing something like, "Hey ALF!" #IUHoosiers
@reginagrogan #1. Maybe #2 if you give it more action, arms raised, knees bent.
Steve Inskeep on NPR letting Netenyahu dehumanize Palestinians without pushback - calling them "animals" and "monsters"
The Indiana Black Expo and the Indianapolis Urban League ask leadership at Newfields to explain the resignation of Dr. Colette Burnette.
"Dr. Burnette opened the Newfields doors to many African American organizations and the entire community...we were looking forward to expanding the partnership with Newfields in 2024, which has now come to a complete halt."
As a big fan of art museums, I am really disappointed in the Newfields leadership.
"The truth is, we aren’t different than everyone around us. The people of this state disagree with Indiana government on both issues. Hoosiers oppose the abortion ban the Indiana General Assembly passed last year. Hoosiers also oppose the ban on marijuana. If the question were asked here like it was in Ohio, the result would have gone straight-up Buckeye. "
@KrissyKat That's interesting. Any idea how INGOP is faring?
@wdlindsy Odds are Tuberville will also immediately drop his opposition to military nominations if TFG is in a position to put in his own people instead.
Bloomington Launches a Pilot E-Bike Voucher Program with Incentives Up to $1,000
"All residents may qualify for point-of-purchase vouchers of $500, as long as they meet the eligibility requirements. Low-income residents who provide proof of income may qualify for increased vouchers worth $1,000 towards an e-bike. This program is launching as a partnership with the Bicycle Garage and Revolution Bike and Bean."
Better than no bike lanes. But still, meh.
"INDOT wants to add a painted bike lane in both directions from the State Road 46 bypass to where 10th Street intersects with Pete Ellis Drive and Discovery Parkway. That’s about a 0.19-mile stretch of the road."
City Limits: Why add bike lanes to S.R. 45? What do users think?
"If polls didn’t exist the narrative would be about how Republicans are in total disarray after six consecutive years of election losses and embarrassing underperformances, and their former president is now facing 91 criminal charges after inciting an insurrection. That’s reality."
- Ahmed Baba on X
@Itchy I'm actually more fascinated by Brandon Sakbun being elected mayor of Terre Haute. If the mid-size cities are swinging Democratic, the Republicans could be in trouble.
Indiana law now allows open beverages in designated areas.
Hoosier cities have to create their own Designated Outdoor Refreshment Areas, or DORAs.
Jasper and Mishawaka are eyeing some new DORA's.
Michigan and Ohio already allow this, so it's good that Indiana is hopping on board too.
#HoosierMast #UrbanPlanning #beer
https://stateline.org/2023/11/06/i-felt-so-naughty-new-open-carry-alcohol-laws-boost-downtowns/
IU administration plans to sever Kinsey Institute from the university
(The Kinsey Institute is the premier research institute on human sexuality and relationships and a trusted source for critical issues in sexuality, gender, and reproduction)
We're starting to see their plans to turn the university into a right-wing stronghold take fruit.
#IndianaUniversity #KinseyInstitute
Researchers decry admin plan to sever Kinsey Institute from IU
You can take the B-Line to the new library, but it's not paved south of Country Club. Country Club has a nice MUP, so I might recommend going south on Rogers for a couple of blocks, then slipping onto Ryan Road where there is a hidden sidewalk that takes you to Batchelor School.
Go through the library parking lot to get to bike parking. From the sidewalk, there's a weird switchback to get there but it's inconvenient.
Things I learned on my perambulations today:
19th street is a nice route between Dunn and Walnut. You avoid part of Cherry Hill and there's more space than on the 17th Street Multi-Use Path.
Speaking of that, the MUP is finished all the way to the roundabout. Very nice!
@dsacer It may be pretty accurate for a response rate-adjusted stratified sample of registered voters on the L2 voter file that was selected in multiple steps to account for differential telephone coverage, nonresponse and significant variation in the productivity of telephone numbers by state.
Pollsters: For this survey, we randomly dialed 10,000 phone numbers.
Of the eleven people who answered their phones, six said they would vote for Biden, four said they would vote for his opponent, and one was undecided.
We applied sophisticated statistical techniques to this data, and our conclusions are: It's a horserace! They're neck and neck! Tune in next week for updated results!
New Food Desert Emerges Overnight in Impoverished Bloomington Neighborhood
"The Our Way C-Store served hundreds of residents, particularly those living in the Crestmont housing project and the nearby Union housing complex. This area hosts one of the highest concentrations of low-income housing in the City of Bloomington, making the store’s closure even more impactful on the vulnerable population it served."
Not much more to say, 101-61 with five minutes left. The second team is playing lousy defense so they'll need to work on that. #iuwbb
First #IUHoosiers women's game of the year. Scalia gets the start in place of Grace Berger, who's playing for the Fever now. Starters build a 20 point lead in the first five minutes and the subs come in. Arielle Wisne and Lily Meister look to be in better shape than last year. Frosh Lenee Beaumont on fire early. #iuwbb
Second flat tire of the year on my bike. Giant piece of wood on the bypass side-path shredded both the tube and tire. Last time was on the bypass as well. Don't bike there if you can help it - all the debris thrown up by the cars going by is deadly.
@KrissyKat We did that. We had to refill the bowl a few times, and gave away four or five potatoes.
Lower Cascades advocates back historic status for park
Apparently it's mostly a play to make sure cars can still drive through the park. Seems to me that if the road is that historic, we shouldn't let people drive on it. And then there's this:
"Older guys like me, I’m done riding my bike,” Sturbaum said.
I hate seeing that! Get yourself an ebike, Chris, and get back out there!
#IUHoosiers Paige Webber taken down in front of the box, should have been a red card but no call. In shock, keeper Gerstenberg spills a save and Penn State goes up 1-0. #MastodonFC
Was planning on watching #IUHoosiers soccer on B1G+ but getting "Error 210, stream not found".
Support just says there's a technical issue, but they don't know what Error 210 is. I suppose it's really 404 Not Found or 418 I'm A Teapot or something. Oh well, the women are playing too. #MastodonFC
@todd Let me the first to welcome you to our cult! 😉
@stevegis_ssg ikr!
Pacers Bikeshare to bring Electric Bicycles to Indianapolis in 2024
"The e-bikes are funded by a federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grant of $1.2 million through the City’s Department of Public Works."
"Pacers Bikeshare bikes are available at 50 stations via the BCycle mobile app, by walking up to a station kiosk or by purchasing an annual pass."
Well. Guess #IndyEleven needed Asante and Blake after all. #CHSvIND @uslchampionship
Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia ask Supreme Court to halt Biden cross-state smog plan
"The rule, announced in March, requires 23 states to reduce emissions in power generation and other industries to help reduce smog and other air pollution in neighboring states. The plan covers much of the country, including California and several Western states and a large swath of the country from Texas to New York."
Group of GOP-led states asks Supreme Court to halt Biden cross-state smog plan - Roll Call
@tofugolem It's a Russian cartoon from 1953. 
This Restaurant Serves Only One Person (1953) Framed Poster
#IndyEleven player mugged in the box, no penalty. SAFC player knocked over 30 feet from the ball, that's a penalty. @uslchampionship #MastodonFC
@brian Buying a bike is fun.
Any way to get Mastodon to stop putting closed polls in my notifications?
What's the big idea of letting cars back on Kirkwood?
It used to be so nice! @bloomington_in
@platypus and ruin the thrill of the hunt?!
Indiana redistricting earns ‘D’ grade in national report card
Common Cause Indiana leader Julie Vaughn: “Moving forward, it is critical that we not only make it easier for Hoosiers to make their voices heard in redistricting but also pass redistricting standards that make it more difficult for lawmakers to draw maps driven by political concerns instead of the public interest.”
@SteveThompson I wonder how culdesac has its water supply set up.
Indiana University to Transform into a Major Defense Industry Research Institute, Announces President Whitten
"...represents a significant shift in the university’s focus, which emphasized the arts and humanities under Herman B. Wells, raising questions about the implications and potential outcomes of this endeavor."
"IDEM asks for feedback on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in series of public meetings"
Low-hanging fruit would be to shut down the coal plants and build high-speed commuter rail from Louisville to Chicago.
After that the steelmakers would be the worst offenders. Not sure what to do about them though.
#HoosierMast #environment #transit
IDEM asks for feedback on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in series of public meetings
City staff corrects the committee: We're discussing the purpose of the commission, not merging them. Commissioners feel their purview includes micromobility as well as bikes and peds (Scooters, hoverboards, etc.)
Meeting ends.
Discussing ebikes going 35 mph on the trails🤨I can't even get that fast going down Woodlawn. You'd need a seriously juiced bike to be doing that!
Some discussion of the stroad-nature of the B-Line - some people using to it to get to places, some using it to hang out. Add a center stripe? Some "slow" stencils?
Now discussing merging bike/ped and traffic commissions. That would certainly make it easier for the city council to ignore them 😂
Intersection design passes. It's not much, a pedestrian-activated flashing light, some electronic speed warning signs. Not a bad start.
Grimes bridge is closing for repairs.
Discussing the biker who hit a pedestrian last month. Apparently he was going down a steep hill without brakes. How do we get people to maintain their bikes better, especially low-income folks? Some discussion of how to enforce existing rules.
Listening in on Bike/Ped commission again. Couple of people last time objected to speed humps on Saratoga; the city got lots of emails supporting them though. Morningside Greenway design passes.
Then the Hillside/Olive intersection is being considered. There is definitely a consensus that crossing Hillside on foot or wheel is a pain.
Got a trackback from the BikingInLA blog
@tofugolem 100 years later and white Americans are still afraid of a slave rebellion.
Michael Hicks: By 2021, Indiana's cuts to higher education reached almost $600M a year. Meanwhile, Mississippi was bumping their higher ed spending by $750M a year.
Within ten years, Indiana will be a poorer and less well-educated state than Mississippi.
@leopardboy Which York is that? The one in the UK?
@chronicallydave @bloomington_in
My take: http://blog.benfulton.net/2023/10/bloomington-city-council-hamstrings.html
Bloomington City Council Hamstrings Award-Winning Bike Lanes
"Going west, the hill between Dunn and Walnut isn't nearly as much fun. It's a bit of climb, but at least you can focus on pushing the pedals and not losing momentum as you go up. That is, until the new stop signs are implemented. These will force bikes to stop dead, a third of the way up the hill, and stop dead again two thirds of the way up."
#cycling #BloomingtonIN #UrbanPlanning
http://blog.benfulton.net/2023/10/bloomington-city-council-hamstrings.html
@sgv Sorry, I meant date, time, and location 😀 I haven't found those anywhere yet.
@prernatalvaar You bet! The revolution is at 6:30 AM sharp tomorrow morning. Don't be late, it'll be a beautiful day!
Lafayette church lends bikes to international Purdue students
The Salt and Light Christian Fellowship Bike Loan program rents out bikes for students to use during their time at Purdue. Students make a deposit of $50 to $150, which is returned with the bike.
They have over 100 people on the waiting list.
Well, it didn't fail, so stop signs are back. Hopefully it will fall to the next council to remove them again.
Amendment passes. The ordinance under questions is now, add stop signs to Dunn and everywhere else. What happens if it fails? No one's really sure.
Other councilmembers suggesting that stop signs won't inconvenience bikers. Amazing.
Councilmember Rosenbarger asks why this amendment showed up on the agenda 6 hours before the meeting. A very good question! 🤔
Councilmember Sandberg, for the second time, suggests that there are bikers who would support stop signs on the 7-Line. I don't believe it. Too much additional muscle power required to get up the hill. Maybe they're all ebikers?
Councilmember Flaherty suggests that the mysterious constituents who want the stop signs may just not have had time to show up tonight for this meeting. They sure showed up at bike/ped when Hawthorne was under consideration!
Steve Volan asks why not put stop signs on 3rd Street to aid pedestrian crossings there? Agreed!
Bloomington City Council meeting. Dave Rollo introducing an amendment to try to put stop signs all over the 7-Line
@sgv What are the details on your talk at Collins?
Cool decorations. Wonder if they actually drive it?
#BloomingtonIN #halloween
Mike Braun, Republican senator from Indiana, is one of just nine senators to vote against sending checks to our soldiers, sailors and Marines. Vote him out. #shutdown #HoosierMast
@swilua I saw a play at a Halloween show when I was about 10 where the protagonist was a woman. It wasn't until years later that I read the story, but it's still a bit jarring to me when someone refers to her as a male 🤨
@reginagrogan I wouldn't use them, unless maybe it was an eight-hour flight. But in that case I would hope the plane had regular outlets.
@NefariousAryq @leopardboy @brian @ScottStarkey Same, but I'm paying extra for .Net web apps that I was very excited about 20 years ago. Extricating myself is going to be a chore.
Hoppopotamus at Red Lion Grog House, #indianapolis #beer
@ScottStarkey @brian I note that FastMail doesn't allow domain transfers in. Who are you using for your domain registrar?
Molly Pritchard, the OSU keeper, with a Save of the Week candidate. Batted a header from the six over the bar, lightning reflexes. #16 Indiana looking like their stay in the top 25 may be a short one. #MastodonFC #IUHoosiers #Buckeyes
Interesting parking commission discussion on Atwater. It goes from two lanes to three between Park and Faculty, which I never noticed. Should the extra lane be devoted to parking? A bike lane? Or do we wait for a full study of the Atwater corridor?
@reginagrogan Not a good place to meet cuddly bearded developers? 😉
Chronic absenteeism reflects COVID’s harm
"One in five Indiana K-12 students were chronically absent from school in 2022-23...The rate was down from the previous year, but only slightly.
"It’s no surprise that chronic absenteeism nearly doubled in Indiana during the COVID-19 pandemic, when illness, quarantines and caution kept many students home. But the slow rebound in attendance suggests missing school has become the new normal."
Drafting Table Rezolute IPA at Grand Trunk Pub, Detroit #beer #detroit
@funnelfiasco Ordered! I'll let you know if it's any good 😉
A new EPA Rule would require coal and natural gas plants to store 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions underground in about a decade. A committee of the state legislature listened to utility lobbyist arguments against the rule this week. They didn't invite anyone to speak who supported the rule.
#HoosierMast #INLegis #Environment
Indiana regulators concerned about technology, speed needed to comply with power plant rule
@opal @ian And, if you dial 867-5311 you reach Jenny's twin sister.
@kg6gfq I'm sure you're doing it right, but it's that thing about "if I've bookmarked them" that trips me up. #IThinkTheAvatarWasBlue #OrMaybeGreenish
@todd I'd guess those who follow the #MastodonFC tag would know some Dutch chants 🙂
These kids today, you say "thank you" and they always respond "of course!" instead of the proper response, "no problem" like I said when I was young. #GetOffMyLawn
Descarga Five with a steel drum going there on the right. #jazz #SteelDrum #BloomingtonIN
"Controversial thesis: If the highest paid person in your university or college is the basketball coach or the football coach, then it is not a university, it is a sporting franchise with a side hustle in tertiary education." - Michael F. Bird on X
"This is the first major accident involving an e-scooter this year."
Hey WFIU, how many major accidents have involved cars?
#bancars #BloomingtonIN #scooters
😂 😂 speaker now discussing how polite and friendly the Morningside neighborhood was to work with. As compared to who, I wonder?
Now someone complains about having speed bumps on Saratoga. Amazing.
Greg Alexander is disappointed that the project won't help with crossing Third Street. Me too!
Speaker is disappointed at the slow pace of bike lane improvements.
Somebody else worried about Saratoga.
Who is this whiny guy? Won't stop yapping about more public comments.
Commissioner: "Any further discussion will just reduce the safety of the design and that's contrary to our role as commissioners." Peanut gallery: "AS DICTATORS!"
Move to approve, and second. Peanut gallery: "SHAME ON YOU ALL!"
Motion passes. Moving on to the Morningside greenway as the peanut gallery stomps out.
Oh, here we go again. Let's spend two hours on whether we can put a couple of speed bumps on Hawthorne!
Another commenter suggests that speed bumps are a deterrent to bikers. Bike guy tries to explain they can go *around* them. She pivots to complaining about bumpouts.
Now a bunch of people want to public comment. Public comment is closed. Public commenter wants someone to motion to reopen public comment.
@kennysmith @nytimes Could you give us a quote or something for context? All I'm seeing is the link.
@shauna @LinuxAndYarn @NWSLrainbow@nwsl.club @nwsl Looking forward to our Super League team in Indianapolis!
@wfyi_unofficial Indiana could do more to prioritize attracting, retaining diverse teachers? 🤔 Yes, yes, for example we could stop putting old white guys in the state legislature. #HoosierMast #INLegis
Watching the Louisville - Indiana Proximity Association Football Contest (College Women's Edition) IU up 1-0 early. #lipafc #MastodonFC #IUHoosiers
@kennysmith Hate to think what that would have cost if he'd lived in the States.
@OswaldBuzzbald Pretty good I think. Crisp and refreshing, but with enough of a kick to be more than just love-in-a-canoe.
Your guide to the IU men's soccer team
The blond white guy is Sam Sarver.
The blond Black guy is Collins Oduro.
The dark-haired Black guy is Maouloune Goumballe.
The nine foot tall defender is Hugo Bacharach.
The keeper is JT Harms.
All the others are just randomly interchangeable, I think. #IUHoosiers
@dancinyogi I don't follow sports, but I follow teams.
"Make no mistake, American migration is being driven by the quest for nice places to live. Families are willing to pay more to live in places with good schools, parks, safe streets, and expensive housing. Indiana should be able to succeed in this environment. Right now, most of the state isn’t."
Jimmy Buffett, in addition to his feel-good Caribbean rock style, was a brilliant storyteller. Listen to "Far Side of the World", "Earl's Dead" or "Cussin' Island", as well as the hits "He Went to Paris" and "A Pirate Looks at Forty". The joy he brought to the world was immense and he will be terribly missed. RIP Jimmy.
And on to watch the soccer team play #5 Washington, with a GameDay Lager in hand. I lead a rough life, let me tell you 😉 #iuhoosiers @soccer
Dunn Meadow would be an ideal place for a concert if it weren't for all the cars.
Swinging with the Btown Bearcats
#BloomingtonIN #jazz
@reginagrogan I was hiding behind a bush somewhere most likely 🙂
@reginagrogan From the collapse of the Soviet Union to the 2000 presidential election, we really felt like we were making great progress. Then Al Gore stepped aside for the good of the country, Bush took over, and everything went to a hot place in a hand basket.
@KrissyKat Something safer for pedestrians. Speed bumps, or a red light you can trigger. The engineer thinks it's too big a road for that.
Watching a crosswalk design city meeting. Plan for Hillside/Olive intersection is crosswalks + a flashing yellow light + a speed indicator. The crowd doesn't think it's enough.
Listening in on the city budget meetings. It's so weird not to be able to put in comments as it goes on.
@gwiz @bloomington_in I sent them 25 bucks for a membership last year. Not sure that I ever got anything for it.
3 Little 500 cyclists hit by cars in three days this week
Beta Sigma Psi rider and sophomore Conor Furlong was hit by a car on 2nd and High Street on Aug. 21; a sophomore Phi Mu rider was hit on David Baker Lane by a driver who left the scene the next day. Finally, on Aug 23, a driver on Law Lane struck Phi Kappa Psi rider and sophomore Hunter Jones.
#cycling #Little500 @bloomington_in
@JonR I'd be there all the time if I lived nearby, but I wouldn't go real far out of my way to get there. I didn't notice if they had gluten free but there was a pretty wide variety.
Pew Buster double IPA at St. Joseph Brewery in #Indianapolis (The brewery is in an old Catholic church) #beer
@todd What's wrong with Obsidian?
@uslchampionship It's a special power I have, to always be wrong in my soccer toots. I must never use it for evil.
#IndyEleven down 1-0 to a team that has given up 15 more goals than they've made this season. Have an ailing soccer team? Play Indy on their field for an instant pick-me-up! @uslchampionship
New crosswalk across 17th at the bypass. Won't make the bypass any less terrifying to cross, but it's another option! #BloomingtonIN #cycling
No Parking signs on Southern Drive - Very much needed as emergency vehicles and garbage trucks don't have space to get through; but commissioners were concerned with notification of the relevant residents.
Request for new signage on 11th/Fountain and Crescent/Fountain Intersections (The intersections will be rebuilt next year to account for the new B-Line connections)
Approved 7-0, after questions about "New Traffic Pattern" signs and timeline. (There will be such signs, and the construction will be done next year.)
When will it be constructed? Utility relocation has started, construction next year
@mekkaokereke Contigo Jenni
Bicyclist hit, killed by Anderson city vehicle driver
"According to APD, preliminary details show that Barton was riding her bike eastbound on 19th Street when the crash occurred.
“While crossing, [Barton] collided with the Anderson City truck traveling southbound,” APD said in a release."
WTF Harrison Robledo? Kicked the opponent right in the midfield and now #IndyEleven down a man for the second half. @uslchampionship #MEMvIND
Some notes on the traffic commission meeting:
City's trying to get a grant from the Safe Streets For All people, but the transportation plan doesn't include a "Safe Streets" statement - a couple of people volunteered to work on that.
Responding to a speeding complaint, city wants to add stop signs on Driscoll. These are tiny little streets and it's hard to see how people could speed there 🤨 Motion passes anyway.
@thekitmalone If you do that second one you will be loving me too!
#IndianaUniversity trustees are going to vote on "an amendment to President Whitten’s employment agreement" this week. Do you suppose she's going to give back some of her salary to support grad student workers?
Could someone tell the El Paso announcers there's a soccer game going on? #IndyEleven @uslchampionship
@aggiepm Ask and you shall receive.
@kennysmith @mimarek @bmacDonald94 You're welcome.
@glutto @georgetakei White male property owners is the goal. Just like in the good old days.
@sgv Will you continue on the traffic commission next year or is your position ex officio?
Bloomington street mileage
Bloomington has
● Streets: 239 miles
● Bicycle Lanes: 39 miles
● Sidepaths: 22.9 miles
● Sidewalks: 251.3 miles
(Per a report made available by @chronicallydave )
https://bsquarebulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2023-06-07-pavement-sidewalk-conditions-.pdf
People tell you to go out and join a local government commission so you can make a difference, but I couldn't bear listening to these people every couple of weeks. Thicker-skinned souls will have to pick up my slack.
Suggesting that bikers won't like the speed bumps that are laid down specifically so they can go around them 🙄
Interesting question: Commisioner Tarricone wonders if the habit of putting greenways in rich neighborhoods is playing a part here. I'm sure it would have been much easier to put it in a poor neighborhood away from the NIMBYs! #nimby
Watching the Bloomington bike/ped committee meeting. They're talking about Hawthorne again so the NIMBY's look to be out in force. #cycling
Michael Hicks is funny. He so desperately wants to support conservative ideas with data. All his data keeps showing him otherwise, but he just can't admit it.
Fouls in the box on consecutive plays for Miami against #IndyEleven, no calls. Ref needs to call something eventually. @uslchampionship
Police stage illegal raid on Kansas newspaper office
"In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home"
The search warrant violates federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists.
Hanging out at the IU soccer exhibition match. None of the players are wearing numbers but Sarver continues to be blond and Hugo Bacharach appears to be really tall. Hoosiers are preseason #2. #IndianaUniversity #MastodonFC
@Chaotica @musictraveler @breadandcircuses Ban private jets. Ban new highway construction. Build high-speed trains. The solutions are obvious. The will to defy the companies that are destroying the world in the name of profitability is lacking.
#IndyEleven now sitting in 8th place, with a +2 goal differential. The two teams ahead of them combine for -19. Surely that has to come back and bite them eventually?
Somebody stole 360 hot dogs from Bryan Park in Bloomington last week. Then on Monday someone stole 40 bags of potato chips from the Chocolate Moose.
I can't imagine who could (burp) do such things.
Hillside & Olive/Weatherstone Intersection Improvement Project
Bloomington will begin the public outreach process for a lower stress crossing at the Hillside & Olive/Weatherstone intersection. There's a drop-in meeting at the intersection August 16 from 4:30-6:00pm.
#UrbanPlanning @bloomington_in
Hillside & Olive/Weatherstone Intersection Improvement | City of Bloomington, Indiana
City of Bloomington Announces Installation of 50+ Parking Corrals to Enhance Micro-Mobility and Pedestrian Safety
They're setting up places to put scooters and e-bikes, and apparently users will be required to start and end trips in them. Probably a good idea, but I hope they won't take away a lot of sidewalk space for them. It would be better to devote a couple of parking spaces instead.
@todd 🤨 Taxes are necessary to provide a motivation for using the currency. Otherwise it would become useless and inflation would spiral out of control.
@dragondaddy In Bloomington, it's Morgenstern's bookstore. Books of course, but also book clubs, a cafe, live music and wine. #BloomingtonIN
@uslchampionship Jack Blake with an impressive demonstration of Indy's ability to not score goals.
@uslchampionship Trilk getting the start over Oettl tonight. Not that defense has been much of a problem for #IndyEleven
@Free_Press I wonder if they explained to the scouts how much carbon emissions it took to fly them all there.
NPR: Next up, David Folkenflik reports on how more and more people are turning off the news and we don't know why. But first, here's another story about Donald Trump! #npr
@artefacts@liminalisland.xyz Loki, but I'm not sure *which* betrayal was most important.
Taylor Swift coming to Lucas Oil! I hope everyone going to the concert takes advantage of the Indianapolis Bus Rapid Transit.
#swifties #indianapolis #transit
Taylor Swift is an unlikely public transit icon | CNN Business
@ifixcoinops Interesting toot, although I was sure I had my server setting on "English only"
Look at Africa represent in the World Cup! Nigeria, South Africa and Morocco all through to the knockout rounds! #wwc2023 @wwc
@upmultimedia RJ Barker's Call of the Bone Ships. Amazing world!
@brian @jaireeo @DigitalScholarshipIUI @thekitmalone Sorry I missed it! Is there a recording or transcript?
DNR biologists discover young Hellbender in Blue River
(Personally, I deny everything)
"This discovery is significant because over the past three to four decades, only adult hellbenders have been documented in the Blue River. The presence of a young salamander suggests that conservation efforts and rearing programs are accomplishing their goals for the recovery of this endangered species."
#HoosierMast #BlueRiver #biology
https://bloomingtonian.com/2023/07/31/dnr-biologists-discover-young-hellbender-in-blue-river/
@brian You're not blocking the BBC instance, are you? I want to follow that!
Carmel right-wing group stymied in attempt to steal #LGBTQ books from library
@uslchampionship Memphis up 2-0 on Pittsburgh. Every time somebody starts to pull away from the pack this year they fall apart. #MastodonFC
I tell a lie, here is the link: 
EVENTS
New Albany - Louisville bridge closed temporarily
"Late on Wednesday, the Sherman Minton Bridge, which has been undergoing a long-term repair and rehabilitation project, was closed when engineers discovered necessary repairs to a bearing and pier supporting the upper deck. The issue had not been previously visible during routine inspections."
I suggest they close the upper deck to cars completely and leave it for bikes and pedestrians 👍
Indiana House Rep. Robert Behning, who received an "F" grade from the Sierra Club for his lack of support of democracy and justice, is insisting that IPS sell two of their closed school buildings to charter schools for $1. Vote him out.
#HoosierMast #CharterSchools #INLegis
IPS says they don't have to sell closed school for $1, lawmaker disagrees
PostModern Jazz Quartet playing Thelonious Monk tunes at Morgenstern's tonight. I looked for some sign that it was happening online, but I think website updates have gotten too difficult. The World Wide Web is just not the place to look for news anymore; you have to be on a private channel like reading email or following on Facebook.
@taylorlorenz "He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning." - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
10,000 cars a day average in Bloomington, not only on College and Walnut, but also Tapp, Rogers, 2nd, 10th, and Country Club. I'm not sure who's running this War on Cars, but I would like to speak to the manager.
#WarOnCars #BloomingtonIN #traffic
@harleygold I'm ready! #wwc2023 #MastodonFC
@uslchampionship Bob Lilley benched three players at halftime 😂 Would have loved to see that halftime meeting!
@uslchampionship One of the worst offenses in the league now up on the best defense in the league 2-0.
I've started @uslchampionship if you'd care to give it a follow @SacBattalion @misterfrumble @aggiepm
@uslchampionship Aodhan Quinn with a 40-yarder!
Boy, the people I disagree with politically sure say a lot of silly things.
Your 2023 USL W League champions #IndyEleven #MastodonFC #HoosierMast
@misterfrumble Grace Bahr has two dudes carrying her around to celebrate. She must have really done a number on her knee.
@misterfrumble #NCC forces a lot of balls into the box hoping for an Indy mistake. I'm guessing that's not going to happen. #mastodonfc
#IndyEleven women playing for the championship! No score at halftime #MastodonFC
@TonyStark Read this #WestLafayette #BloomingtonIN College towns can drive the change. #hoosiermast
Residents to rally against closure of Lower Cascades road
"Mayor John Hamilton wants to convert a 0.6-mile stretch of Old State Road 37 to a biker-pedestrian trail, but some members of the public say that would restrict public access to Lower Cascades."
This a weird freakin' hill to die on. A tiny little road on the outskirts of town, who cares? Let's close downtown Kirkwood to car traffic, I say, then you can rally against that!
Police seek driver of pickup that hit bicyclist and left scene on Ind. 48
"Howell and witnesses said the truck was stopped at a red light when the driver accelerated quickly and turned right, hitting Howell as he rode on Ind. 48 headed for the Karst Farm Park trail...police are keeping an eye out for the truck that hit Howell, described as a late-model tan-metallic Ford F-150 pickup. "
Police seek driver of pickup that hit bicyclist and left scene on Ind. 48
USL to vote on implementing promotion-relegation!
Apparently they want to add a new league between the two existing, and are considering applying for first-division status for the Championship League. That would certainly make it much more interesting than watching Millionaires League Soccer.
@brianrlawson To make progress we need to get rid of the corrupt, incompetent, hateful people in the state legislature. But then I go and look at the Indiana Democrats web page and see this, and I despair.
"We're rebuilding Party infrastructure from the ground up so we can hit the ground running in the 2022 elections."
@dougmasson Should work. I think I had to order the same part.
A biker is dead after being struck by a vehicle in a hit and run at E. 34th Street and Leland Avenue, around 11:30 p.m on Saturday.
In 2012, Smart Growth America rated Indianapolis’s Complete Streets policy the best in the nation. So why were 150 pedestrians killed by cars in the last five years?
#Indianapolis #UrbanPlanning #CompleteStreets
https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/124523-whats-incomplete-about-complete-streets
Slip F-18 at Bahia Mar. Travis McGee is there in spirit. #books
@thekitmalone I saw one years ago of a cornfield with a basketball goal on a pole in it. There was a ball flying toward the goal but the shooter was hidden by the corn. Have an AI build that 🙂
@pollak souvenir of my visit to Dresden! #SaturdayMug #ZIH
#IndyEleven women moving on to the championship! A 91st minute goal against an exhausted San Francisco team. #INDvSVG #MastodonFC
Monroe County's Fullerton Pike to be extended over Clear Creek
"The 524-foot structure—which will feature a 6-foot median, a 10-foot multi-use path and a 5-foot sidewalk—will span Clear Creek Trail and the creek itself...the construction project is expected to start after April of 2024, and take until the end of 2025 to be completed."
This will be handy for access to the nearby middle school and library branch.
#BloomingtonIN #UrbanPlanning #BikeLanes
$8M in county bridge bonds OK’d, library sidewalk connections won’t be as late as feared
@internet_ginger The Bloomington look is amazingly suave and sexy with a general air of sophisticated confidence. We can't help it, it's just the way it is 😎
Senators Chris Garten, Mark Messmer, and Linda Rogers authored this year's wetlands destruction bill. They all stand to make a great deal of money from it.
Lax ethics rules allow Indiana lawmakers to ignore potential conflicts of interest
"The Indiana General Assembly is passing more laws tied to environmental matters, while many of those same lawmakers have economic interests in the building trades, utility companies and real estate firms, and receive large sums of campaign donations from the industries that stand to benefit most from the laws."
Lax ethics rules allow Indiana lawmakers to ignore potential conflicts of interest
@KrissyKat You may be eligible for a subsidy!
I don't know what Huston does up there, but he got his grade for voting against Sierra on exactly two occasions. He missed two votes and voted "Present" on eleven others.
Just two Indiana state legislators received an "F" grade from the Sierra Club for their work in destroying the environment, encouraging pollution, and toadying up to Big Oil interests: Senator Travis Holdman of district 19, and Representative Todd Huston of district 37.
Rainbow smoke at #IndyEleven Pride Night #MastodonFC
That's a nasty press from Minnesota Aurora. Indy was getting some balls over the top early but was on the back foot a lot of the first half. #MNvIND #MastodonFC
@KrissyKat I don't. But I have a 50x optical zoom camera that I try to have nearby for outdoor excursions. Works pretty well but no way I could have it on me all the time.
Library patrons take pride in book display amid backlash
"Whitley County residents held an event Friday to support Peabody Public Library’s Pride Displays.
Starting at noon, the “Proud Peabody Patrons for Pride” event planned to check out every book on the library’s Pride displays to support LGBTQ+ residents."
(Whitley County is just west of Fort Wayne)
@TerribleMaps Oy.
I think it's a bit silly to post screenshots of social media from other sites. Easier to copy and paste the text with a note of attribution.
Spouse broke her foot last week. Learning some things about mobility for people on knee scooters now.
Decent shot from Hernandez there, but the Birmingham keeper slipped. They're slipping and sliding all over though the grass looks good on camera. #SAvBHM #MastodonFC
@leopardboy Turned out we had just enough time to pull out the lanterns and set up the emergency phone charger before it came back on 🙂
@leopardboy 140,000 Duke customers without power. 140,001 including me.
If you want to see Messi play in Cincinnati August 23rd, the cheap seats are going for $350. #Cincinnati #MastodonFC @soccer
Haze all over Bloomington today as Canada wildfire smoke covers the area. Temperature coolish, not much sun. Air Quality Index around 205, worst I've seen it #ClimateDiary #bloomingtonIN
@IzabelaKaramia Llamas spit.
@aggiepm do what now
Caught in a lil rainstorm and had to take shelter in a playground
@jesse @mordremoth I'm not clear - is DILF the project you're actively working on?
@thekitmalone The obvious thing on a trapeze!
Really though, we didn't need Moms for Liberty to quote Hitler to know that they're a hateful, objectionable organization.
Purple Haze at Howlin Wolf in New Orleans #NewOrleans #beer
Indy's attack tonight is looking good, but too many miscommunications trying to set the ball up for a strike. If they can clean that up they could be dangerous.
Entry Experience at Miller Showers. A roundabout where College and Walnut come together.
Courthouse Square: Remove curbs so everything is the same height. A "Flush" street. (They were ordered not to remove any parking).
And that's about it. Pretty straightforward I think, but the courthouse design looks pretty nice.
Time for the design presentation for College and Walnut!
Apparently they had a lot of people saying, "NO BIKES!"
Split into four districts: South, Downtown, North, and Miller Showers
Pine tree concept: Replace one lane with a protected bike lane.
Elm Tree concept: Protected one-way bike lane, two-way car lanes
Sycamore Tree concept: Two-way bike lanes, two-way car lanes
Oak Tree concept: Bike lanes on either side of two-way car lanes
@KrissyKat David's story in the Bible is pretty intriguing. It reads like two separate propaganda efforts, one right after he killed Saul and assumed the kingship and then another a little later in life. Then there's a third chapter: the old king writing his memoirs and reminiscing about all the mistakes he's made in his life.
Group 5 likes bike paths, the b-line, wants accessibility, parking. Miller showers underutilized. Dislikes loading/unloading. Likes one-way system, wants more outdoor seating and restaurants, calmer traffic.
That's it for tonight. Thursday will be for presenting design ideas which ought to be fun.
Speed
Group 4 likes historical plaques, bumpouts. Dislikes convention center land bank, speeders, noise, people driving the wrong way, blocking whole lanes of traffic. Wants connections with surrounding areas, better utilization of Fountain Square Mall, dedicated bike lanes, scramble crossings, trees. Bus lanes.
Small group time is over. Group 1 likes the stores, dislikes speeders, wants more bike infrastructure.
Group 2 likes the ease of driving and one-way pairs, and historical buildings. Dislikes abandoned spaces and lack of trees. Wants wider sidewalks, performance spaces, bike lanes, places to sit.
Group 3 likes one-way streets, the square, Miller-Showers. Dislikes speeders and noise. Wants ways to see pedestrians, places to "be". More intentionality in the aesthetics 🤨 More ways to control
Talking about slowing motorists to under 30 mph, hallelujah
One-way paired streets are worst option
Discussing "person capacity" rather than car throughput.
Now the in-person people are getting into small groups.
Wow, some lady has been talking for five solid minutes, no notes. Crabbing about something I think.
The gist was NIMBY, I think.
50% of trips downtown are driving alone, but a significant number are walking.
150 crashes a year, consultant says that's a lot.
Accessibility issues
Sidewalks are narrow and dangerous in places.
An analysis of College between 5th and 6th: 75 percent for cars, 25 for peds.
Arterials go right through the downtown. 😬
She showed some before/after pictures of a city and then asked where it was - someone in the audience answered and I have no idea what they said 😧
Watching the College/Walnut corridor study on CATS.
Pointing out that doing nothing is a possible option.
Pedestrians and deliveries/loading are recurrent themes.
Goals: safety for bikes, pedestrians and buses, and also cars if there's time.
1907 was first paving; they were made one-way in 1956 (that was ordered by the state)
Daily volume 7k - 17k vehicles which isn't too different from 50 years ago.
@simsymbiote Indy Eleven! We were expecting great things from the new coach, but it's been a slow process 😕
@thekitmalone Aftermath?! Went by Military Park on my way to the soccer game and it was *popping*.
Soccer Saturday drinking game:
Drink when Greg Rakestraw asks, "What's it like?"
Drink when a guest says "obviously".
Chug when they interview someone from a paying sponsor.
@uninventive@universeodon.com
@uninventive@universeodon.com This guy has fallen hook, line and sinker for the upper class effort to turn members of the working classes against each other.
Messi joining Inter Miami is going to be like Landon Donovan passing to Hat Trick Rick. #MastodonFC
Leslie Kiesling red card ♦️ No idea what happened but #IndyEleven women up one for the next 55 minutes. #MastodonFC
@MaraAlis Get an ebike and hit the trails!
Fort Wayne woman accused of striking bicyclist and leaving scene
"Huddleston told investigators in the court documents that she was just driving and “having a good time listening to her music.” She thought she struck a pothole and heard a noise, according to court documents.
It wasn’t a pothole. It was the bicyclist, investigators say, who was rushed to the hospital"
Slap on the wrist, I'm guessing.
‘Thought it was a pothole’: Fort Wayne woman accused of striking bicyclist and leaving scene
City has put up a nice public comment summary on the planned High Street multiuse path. Very much looking forward to this project!
https://bloomington.in.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/High%20St%20Project%20update%202023-06-07.pdf
Seven Oaks Classical School in Ellettsville received a 5-year extension to its operating charter from Grace Charters LLC, a nonprofit formed by Grace College and Theological Seminary to authorize charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately operated. The board met on the Grace College campus in Winona Lake, Indiana, nearly 200 miles from Ellettsville.
#HoosierMast #Education #CharterSchools
Weirdest game I ever saw. Like watching Little League.
I don't watch that much college baseball, but I think seven HBP in four innings is a tad excessive. #iubase #RoadToOmaha
Charleston red card ♦️ in the FIRST FIFTEEN SECONDS has Indy a goal up and a man up #CHSvIND #MastodonFC
Bloomington's Gold Bike-Friendly status renewed for another four years
"Residents there are also heavily involved in promoting safe streets through a traffic calming program that seeks to lower speeds on roads with high bike and pedestrian traffic. In their application, Bloomington indicated 54 percent of their roads have a signed speed limit of 20 MPH or less."
#BloomingtonIN #cycling
https://bikeleague.org/league-of-american-bicyclists-recognizes-45-cities-and-towns-with-new-and-renewing-bicycle-friendly-community-awards/
@leopardboy Nice! Where do we sign up?
@e_urq This happened in Fort Wayne
Educational Attainment, the 21st Century Fund and the Future of Schooling
"It is true that you don’t need a college degree to be successful. If you are very smart, industrious and lucky, you’ll do just fine without one. For the rest of us, a middle-class income mostly means finishing college. We’d all be wise to ignore folks who say otherwise."
Summer in #BloomingtonIN
@JonR No, unless it caught a bus up from Bloomington 😆
They put Grace Berger in and the Fever are burnin' #wnba #IndianaFever
Beautiful little red fox hanging out in the 'hood. Hope it's finding enough to eat.
Two minutes in and we've got an injury stoppage. #INDvLOU #MastodonFC
@qurlyjoe @tofugolem I came here to say exactly that
State Pols Make Safe Streets Activists in Indianapolis See Red over Right Turns
"State leaders in Indiana have blocked the state’s largest city from banning right turns on red even though it would help increase safety for the city’s most vulnerable road users — just the latest example of a state bigfooting city officials over basic street safety...drivers turning right pose a clear danger for pedestrians, cyclists, and other road users."
State Pols Make Safe Streets Activists in Indianapolis See Red over Right Turns — Streetsblog USA
This from Slate is good.
Samuel Alito’s Assault on Wetlands Is So Indefensible That He Lost Brett Kavanaugh
Samuel Alito’s Assault on Wetlands Is So Indefensible That He Lost Brett Kavanaugh
"The Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to the nation’s wetlands by rewriting a statute the court does not like to mean something it does not mean"
"The majority crossed through the word “adjacent” and replaced it with a new test that’s designed to give landowners maximum latitude to fill in or build upon some of the most valuable ecosystems on earth."
Samuel Alito’s Assault on Wetlands Is So Indefensible That He Lost Brett Kavanaugh
Or, you know, not. Putting in Nathan Worth seemed to be a turning point.
On paper, Lou City has 17 points to Tulsa's 10, so it looks like this game should be a blowout. But if you look a little deeper, both teams have a negative goal differential, so it might not be as one-sided as all that.
... but on the pitch, Tulsa looks pretty bad. I think they would be thrilled with a 0-0 result. #LouVTul #MastodonFC
@atrupar Definitely something we see here at home too - the state has told Bloomington they can't annex property and told Indianapolis they can't outlaw right turns on red.
@BrianJopek After concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms?
The Supreme Court and 'The Shadow Docket'
"The shadow, or emergency, docket, is the way many cases today, sometimes hugely consequential cases, are decided, without full briefing or oral argument, and without any written opinion."
"In just four years, the Trump Justice Department asked the court for emergency relief an astounding 41 times, and the court actually granted all or part of those requests in 28 of the cases."
This is weird. The new #USL women's soccer league wants to be a top tier league along with the #NWSL. Can the USA support two leagues?
Sent in my feedback on the College/Walnut corridor study #BloomingtonIN #UrbanPlanning
http://blog.benfulton.net/2023/05/college-and-walnut-survey-responses.html?m=1
RIP, Mom.
Indiana state lawmakers.
Michael Hicks writes great stuff, but he never provides links so it's next to impossible to follow up on it.
"Indiana has a number of natural amenities, but we don’t do especially well in the characteristics that most Americans appear to prefer. We rank poorly for January temperatures and hilliness. We rank much higher on water frontage and on state/local recreational areas. Our trail systems receive special focus in many places."
@kennysmith Where did that happen?
Vallilan Katu IPA overlooking Lansisatama in #Helsinki.
@INCapChronicle_Unofficial It would help keep the damage to a minimum, I guess.
"Are shorter legislative sessions coming to Indiana?"
Admittedly a bit warmer than I'm used to
If you go to Bangkok Thai in Bloomington, order a Busted Knuckle and be sure to fist bump the owner. #BloomingtonIN #ThaiFood
For forty years I've thought Judas Priest correctly named their song, "Another Think Coming" but apparently I was mistaken.
@IndyStar_Unofficial Indiana legislature is the worst. #INLegis
@KrissyKat There are a few around. I'd like to see some bikes too, not sure if they'll do that or not.
#IndyEleven...didn't lose. That's a step forward. #MastodonFC
Wow, @IMCU I think Zach made a really terrible financial decision here. Thousands of dollars in debt, thousands more in yearly maintenance...he should have stuck with his bike. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwam_hswwHU
Missed this entirely: Bloomington is requiring its scooter companies to provide 25% sit-down scooters or e-bikes.
"Throttle-powered, seated vehicles are favored by older riders, women, and people with disabilities. Many of these traditionally underrepresented riders prefer seated vehicles because they provide a greater sense of comfort and don’t require the need to stand or pedal"
Corridor study for Bloomington's College and Walnut Streets underway
"The adjacent one-way roads are a key north-south connection. But between 100 and 200 crashes happen on the roads every year."
Pretty straightforward that they need to be two-way streets, as was recommended by the consultant the last time this was studied. There's a lot more precedent for that now though.
City Limits: Corridor study for College and Walnut Streets underway
Evansville man on a mission to make sure every child can have a bicycle
"A couple kids were riding bicycles, and there was a couple kids that didn’t have bicycles that started talking to me. I asked the two boys where their bicycles were, and they told me that mom couldn’t afford to buy them a bicycle. I told them to come back in a couple days, that I would get on Facebook and talk to my family and friends."
#cycling #HoosierMast #Evansville
Man on a mission to make sure every child can have a bicycle
A Fad-Tastic and a Hop-Shaka-Laka at Ethereal Brewing #lexington
Pies and Pints, Lexington. Tried a Mirror Twin Sun Striker and a Gravely Pineapple Debaser #beer #kentucky
@WizardOfDocs Yeah, but not MLS. Pay-to-play leagues don't hold my interest. #USL #IndyEleven
Team Melanzana wins the 2023 Women’s Little 500 bicycle race for the second year in a row
#cycling #BloomingtonIN #HoosierMast #Little500
https://bloomingtonian.com/2023/04/21/melanzana-wins-the-2023-womens-little-500-bicycle-race/
@KrissyKat ASCII 68,65,68 = DAD 😃
@KrissyKat It's the NIMBY'S who want to do this, just to make sure there're no stinkin' speed bumps in their neighborhoods slowing down their SUV's 🙂
What's a good hashtag to talk about council meetings? #BloomingtonCouncil is good but doesn't show which Bloomington, but #BloomingtonINCouncil is a bit of a mouthful. Maybe we should get together with all the other Bloomingtons and choose our own #hashtags 😀
@KrissyKat Residents choose where they go. The street department actually does the work.
Bloomington City Council will introduce an ordinance giving themselves veto power over neighborhood resident-led traffic calming programs.
City's doing an EV Ride and Drive event on Saturday to encourage people to buy EV's. I would so bring my #ebike if I could make it. 😕
Well, well, well. Two goals in five games isn't going to get #IndyEleven many wins.
Traffic calming devices to go up on Maxwell between Woodlawn and Henderson this summer. Should make for a nice ride!
#biketooter #TrafficCalming #UrbanPlanning #BloomingtonIN
Grace Berger to play for the Fever! #iuwbb #IndianaFever #wnba
Indiana basketball: Grace Berger selected 7th overall by Indiana Fever in WNBA Draft
Book banning planned by the state legislature
Disseminating to minors any matter that is “harmful to minors” is a felony, but if it's disseminated by educators, or with an educational purpose, it's legal. The Indiana State Legislature is considering removing those exceptions.
Ruben rye IPA at Mashcraft
NPR just did the dumbest story ever on why TFG shouldn't be prosecuted. They actually pulled out "But Hilary wasn't prosecuted for her emails!"
Angel Reese Can Shine as Brightly as She Wants
"When Reese, who is Black, gave Clark, who is white, a dose of her own medicine, the reaction wasn’t so enthusiastic. The LSU sophomore was subjected to such intense vitriol online that you would have thought she had used her hand to smack Clark."
(Sorry if this is paywalled. I don't think the Atlantic does gift articles)
@lotographia Caterpillars are just babies, and ladybugs would smile to your face and then knife you in the back. Dragonflies are big dumb galoots. I think it has to be a firefly.
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan.
"From the low-bank shores of Lake Michigan in the north to the fat bends of the Ohio River in the south, from the rural folds of a county where Abraham Lincoln grew up in a small house that nurtured big ideas, to the windowless shack along the tracks where Louis Armstrong cut his first jazz record, the Klan infested Indiana."
When the Klan Ruled Indiana – And Had Plans to Spread Its Empire of Hate Across America
A Bicycle Tour of Taiwan, in Bloomington
The Cycling Taiwan bicycle tour will begin at the IU Sample Gates on Kirkwood Ave. and end at the Ferguson International Center on Eagleson Ave. Cyclists will stop at four locations along the way, each representing a different region of Taiwan.
Kirkwood is closed to cars for the summer! Yay!
@harleygold whatcha gonna do about #22?
EGG SANDWICH WATCH: Conditions are right for an egg sandwich, but no sandwich has been spotted at this time.
0-0, full time. The five early #usl games combined for six goals 🤨
@Eamon1916 @lynneverson wonder why they left the ranch and mayo
It's cold. It's miserable. But it's opening day! #IndyEleven #usl
Caitlin Cark, man.
https://jezebel.com/womens-march-madness-game-destroys-nbas-ratings-1850278683
@KrissyKat I heard there were some injuries on the scanner last night. Hopefully not as bad as in Sullivan though.
Tornado in McCormick's Creek State Park, another near Wolf Mountain Road #INwx
@SallyStrange @DeanBaker13 No, just that the Fed predicted in January of 2020 that the workforce would be 168M people today, and it's not. It's closer to 164.5M.
@DeanBaker13 @SallyStrange Where do you get that? I see 168M projected, 165M actual.
NPR reports on the "Missing Workers"
According to the Fed, there are 3.5 million people they expected to be working or looking for work based on pre-pandemic trends but who are just not there.
* Half a million of them died.
* About a million would have been migrants, but people aren't or can't migrate anymore.
* Two million mostly retired early or are staying home and caregiving or aren't healthy enough to work.
We found the 'missing workers' : The Indicator from Planet Money
@harleygold Really an unbelievable story. Satan on the rampage at Huntington College. #HoosierMast #Huntington
@brian Oh, it tasted great 😋 I suspect the fruit would have been slightly better for my diet, though!
No fruit in the house so I put caramel sauce on my yogurt instead. C'est la vie
A new regional alliance, Project 46, named for the state highway linking Bartholomew, Brown, and Monroe counties, will attempt to address climate change.
(I think a good first step might be to replace the highway with a passenger train)
From the Kerry Thomson mayoral campaign: "A driving force in..no multiplexes in single-family neighborhoods and only a limited number of duplexes being allowed in these same neighborhoods."
So it sounds like Kerry will be another advocate for rich people in their fancy neighborhoods. That's unfortunate, but at least she hasn't come out as directly opposed to bike infrastructure like Sandberg. Hobson's choice.
Rebellon's shot didn't go in the goal, but it did go in a food truck behind the stands. I hope they brought him back a sandwich or something. #usl
30MPH wind in Detroit for #IndyEleven. 🌪️Get the ⚽ 20 feet in the air and it's anyone's guess where it goes! #usl
@ross @dougmasson Same! Except, 35 years.
Guy on Earth Eats said he started his place because he couldn't find a decent Chablis in town. I wonder if he checked with any of the local wineries 🤨
![Small Favors features local ingredients [replay]](https://indianapublicmedia.org/images/eartheats-images/nick-d.jpg)
Postmodern Jazz Quartet playing at Morgenstern's Bookstore
A two-way protected bike lane on the north side of 2nd Street from the B-Line to Walker Street is in the works. The bike lane plan is hidden under the title "Modernization and Safety Improvements" so I hope they can do it quick before the NIMBYs notice!
#BloomingtonIN #BikeLanes #UrbanPlanning
West 2nd Street Modernization and Safety Improvements | City of Bloomington, Indiana
@EdCates Fake news. It was rigged. I demand to see the manager. Provide the source data or it didn't happen.
Same conclusion; recommend a stop sign on Dunn and nowhere else. There was definitely a sense that the stop signs were punishing cyclists for something that was the fault of drivers.
I think that kills the plan dead. But it will still come up before the city council which has more reactionaries, so we'll see what happens.
Now listening in on the Traffic Commission on the same subject. It will be interesting to see if they come to the same conclusion as Bike/Ped.
Bike/Ped commission met last night. City engineer wanted to add five stop signs across the 7-Line bikeway. Public comment was furious. Commission voted to recommend just one stop sign, on Dunn Street.
Yep, they were good seats. Nothing more to add. Not thinking about this any more. Good seats.
Now these seats are the thing!
Bike repair stations on the IU campus. I had no idea!
Maintenance: Bicycles: Transportation Demand Management: Indiana University
Steve Hinnefeld drops this in as a by-the-way, but man 🤨
"Conflicts of interest are common Indiana’s citizen legislature, where many lawmakers have careers or businesses that may want favors from state government. There are builders on the regulatory committees, educators on the education committees, lawyers on the justice committees, etc."
I have to admit I thought #Stanford would make the Sweet 16 😬
@KrissyKat Yes and no. The global elite is concerned only with keeping everyone but themselves in subjugation. Skin color is only a useful ruse to keep the lower classes fighting amongst themselves.
The #iuwbb game of "Get it inside to the center who never misses" is actually still working.
😂
Holmes not starting. Eagles 4-5 from 3 so far 😬
View from row 42. I hope all those empty seats aren't for no-show football season ticket holders. #iuwbb
"Sincere Carry" ?
Tyler Pasher hasn't slowed down any from when he played for #IndyEleven #USL
@IndyPedCrisis Wow, that's a good article. Can't believe the mayor said changes would be expensive, I bet there are a dozen things he could do for less than $100,000 that would make a big difference.
Why would you want to line dance to "Country Girl Shake It For Me" anyway? Rude song.
Paywalled, but guessing from the headline, we all knew it was coming.
"College students rethink Indiana as lawmakers push far-right laws"
Stanford, with FIVE losses, picks up the #1 seed on the women's side. At least when they lose before the Final Four they'll know what it feels like. #Stanford #overrated
Yannick Oettl starts his Indy career with a saved penalty kick! #TBRvIND
#IndyEleven season opener! #USL #TBRvIND
PizzaX driver cruised up the walking path and parked on the plaza between Ballantine and Jordan 🤨 #PizzaX #BloomingtonIN #IndianaUniversity
Down on Indiana Avenue
Wes and Jimmy, man they played the blues.
I guess they were only passin' through
That's my window on the world.
Anyone catch the Wes Montgomery special on public TV this week?
Just got an email from the Kerry Thomson campaign touting her accomplishments in blocking the elimination of single-family zoning and building lots of Habitat for Humanity houses. I wonder how far the city had to sprawl to get those built while still making sure the rich people got to keep their fancy plots? #BloomingtonIN #UrbanPlanning #KerryThomson
Bloomington mayor asks city council to consider road closure in Lower Cascades Park. I don't see this happening. It's a nice idea but pretty unpopular; and the park isn't reachable in 15 minutes by foot from...anywhere, really.
#HoosierMast #BloomingtonIN #UrbanPlanning #RoadDiet
Hamilton asks city council to consider road closure in Lower Cascades Park
@harleygold But computers are so much easier to work with than kids!
Projected Starting #IndyEleven (4-3-3): GK – Yannick Oettl; D – Younes Boudadi, Adrian Diz Pe, Jesus Vazquez, Robby Dambrot; M – Jack Blake, Cam Lindley, Aodhan Quinn; F – Solomon Asante, Sebastian Guenzatti, Jonas Fjeldberg
@pollak @NefariousAryq ooh, yeah. Do one asking for replies.
@KrissyKat I wrote a letter to Todd Young when he was my congressman. He wrote back and said, "Thanks for your opinion. I disagree and will be voting accordingly" 🤨
Contaminated waste from East Palestine train derailment coming to Putnam County landfill
"The Environmental Protection Agency also announced that two new hazardous waste sites will receive some of the shipments — an incinerator in Grafton, Ohio, and a landfill in Roachdale, Indiana.
According to its website, Roachdale has a population of around 1,000 people and is located in northeastern Putnam County."
#HoosierMast #EastPalestine #Environment
Contaminated waste from East Palestine train derailment coming to Putnam County landfill
Here's a discussion about the Supreme Court's ambition of creating a Christian theocracy in America, a goal shared by the Indiana state legislature. #INLegis
@harleygold Didn't like the result, but did you see the women's game against Iowa? Instant classic!
A Indiana state Senate bill aims to ensure Indiana doesn’t transition away from coal “too quickly”.
Sen. Jean Leising (R-Oldenburg) is sponsoring the bill, which prevents coal plants from closing down just because they're environmental disasters or way more expensive than renewables or even gas. She wants them to stay open as long as they have a useful life.
Indiana uses more coal than any state other than Texas.
#INLegis #HoosierMast #coal #ClimateCrisis
Bill aims to prevent reliability issues when coal plants close early
The Indiana State legislature is requiring public schools to make textbooks free, while not giving them any additional money to pay for them. Private schools, of course, can continue to charge as much as they like for books.
#HoosierMast #INLegis #PublicEducation
Indiana has two different housing problems: oversupply in rural counties; undersupply in the cities. Better transit would seem to be the ideal solution, but the legislature has plans to subsidize builders instead, because who ever heard of transit giving campaign contributions?
#HoosierMast #UrbanPlanning #INLegis
@TheTootOfBob Went to verify that in the dictionary but the word wasn't in there 🤨
@Mrfunkedude On the contrary. That reaches the level of Groucho Marx wordplay.
Indiana couldn't set stricter coal ash rules than federal ones under state House bill amendment
The bill would make it so the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation doesn’t have to follow new state rules for its ponds at its Clifty Creek coal plant until it can meet federal requirements.
The waste leftover from burning coal can have toxic heavy metals like mercury, cadmium and arsenic that can pollute local drinking water sources.
Indiana couldn't set stricter coal ash rules than federal ones under state House bill amendment
House Republicans vote to block public funding from Kinsey Institute at Indiana University
Rep. Lorissa Sweet (R-Wabash) offered the amendment to the state budget bill and alleged, without proof, that the institute and IU are currently sheltering sexual predators.
#HoosierMast #IndianaUniversity #InLegis
House Republicans vote to block public funding from Kinsey Institute at Indiana University
@chronicallydave@masthead.social Full credit to mayoral candidate Susan Sandberg for coming out against bike infrastructure. Hopefully we can get her out of there now.
3 Bloomington mayoral hopefuls speak at first forum
@ilinamorato Seems like a big chunk of the money is going to housing. I wonder if it would make more sense to have guaranteed housing instead of guaranteed income.
Indiana lawmakers sidestep climate solutions conversation yet again
I particularly like this line from the article: "The committee’s chair, Sen. Rick Niemeyer (R-Lowell), told youth activists with Confront the Climate Crisis not to get discouraged." Yes, youth activists, we in the legislature will be long dead by the time it's a real issue, so there's no need to worry at all!
#HoosierMast #InLegis #ClimateCrisis
Indiana lawmakers sidestep climate solutions conversation yet again
Maryland took down Iowa tonight. That gives #iuwbb the outright Big Ten championship...I think for the first time ever?!
@eyebee In Bloomington, IN it is 60F. Biking without gloves today. We should also be in the middle of winter. #ClimateDiary #BloomingtonIN #HoosierMast
Holmes is easy to defend. Just put a player in front of her, another player to stop her spinning left, and a third player to stop her spinning right. Simple! #iuwbb
Bit disappointed in the lack of #iuwbb content here on the 'don, but the birdsite has a good dozen commentators who are all saying the EXACT SAME THINGS. 🤨
Great Lakes reach record lowest ice extent for this time in the season
On Feb. 13, the combined ice cover across the Great Lakes was 7.3%, breaking the old record from 2002. The historical average for ice cover season-to-date is 40%.
The region is nearing the average peak of ice season, but instead, ice levels are going down due to abnormally warm, near-record air temperatures.
#GreatLakes #ClimateChange #ClimateDiary
Great Lakes reach record lowest ice extent for this time in the season
Sparkling Botanicals booth at last year's #Cincinnati #Coffee Festival
Five Simple Fixes for a Deadly Intersection in Indianapolis
They analyzed an intersection in Indianapolis, Indiana, where a cyclist was killed when a driver ran a red light.
A. Connect Shopping Centers
B. Close the Redundant Entrance
C. Close Redundant Entrances and Connect Properties—Yielding an Incubator
D. Widen Median—Resizing Travel Lanes
E. Reduce Excessive Entrance Widths
#UrbanPlanning #Indianapolis #HoosierMast
POSTER!!! #iuwbb
https://bloomingtonian.com/2023/02/17/indiana-womens-basketball-defeats-michigan-68-52/
Another day, another win over a ranked team. #iuwbb
@broad Sorry if I was rude. I'll try to be more temperate in the future!
@broad I won't follow links to the bird and I won't boost toots that contain them. Also there are all these @ references that don't seem to lead anywhere 😀
@broad posts a lot of interesting stuff but it looks like it's all just birdsite cross posting.
Two T's in ten seconds on the Indiana bench. #iubb
NET basketball rankings explained, kinda, sorta. Shows five components and how they're calculated, but doesn't explain how they're weighted together.
Got my sign. It appeared in my yard one day while I wasn't looking 😀
@chronicallydave@masthead.social superb hawks! #superbhawk
Ordered a Kerry Thomson yard sign a couple of weeks ago. Wonder if I'll get it.
Not sure if Thomson is really going to be on the right side of the density and transportation issues that Bloomington has, but anyone would be better than the horrible Susan Sandberg, and Don Griffin hasn't raised much cash yet.
Caitlin Clark: "A foul? Me? I committed a foul?" 🙄 #iuwbb
https://bloomingtonian.com/2023/02/10/gallery-indiana-university-womens-basketball-beats-iowa-87-78/
The #Ohio train #derailment underscores the dangers of the plastics boom
"Despite the combustibility of vinyl chloride, industry lobbyists have successfully limited many trains carrying the chemical from the most stringent federal regulations.
The industry group American Association of Railroads, of which Norfolk Southern is a member, has also fought stricter safety standards including an updated braking system."
The Ohio train derailment underscores the dangers of the plastics boom
@wayword@masthead.social @grammargirl I guess these dictionaries are in the Lilly Library now. #HoosierMast #LillyLibrary #IndianaUniversity
@dougmasson Signature win for the Hoosiers! #iuwbb
@dougmasson Monster game! Wonder who'll be guarding Caitlin Clark. #iuwbb
@MicroSFF really though after the 20th or 30th rereading you've noticed the flaws.
@crooksandliars Shouldn't your utm_medium be Mastodon?
Michael Hicks on Indiana hospital monopolies
"Prices for routine medical procedures are among the highest in the world...The monopolization of Indiana’s healthcare industry is so extensive that the six biggest hospital systems are no longer really hospital systems. They are in fact, diverse conglomerates that have acquired so many physician practices, clinics and outpatient services that no new hospital system can enter the market."
#HoosierMast #hospitals #INLegis
@leopardboy @qag @brian Oh, Indiana Avenue could be amazing! They could revive the great jazz clubs and do something cool with the Madame Walker theatre.
@qag Hoosiers, wouldn't it be awesome if Indy took cars off Indiana and Massachusetts Avenues? #HoosierMast #indianapolis
@remi Wasn't so bad, was it? 😀
A grumpy message to the #Tennessee State Legislature. I approve.
"What they get from the Legislature are obsessions about drag shows which they’ve never seen, interfering in the freedom of families they’ve never met to make their own decisions about their children...and they push “classical education” they can’t explain and is more about injecting their political and religious beliefs into our public school classrooms."
Tennessee Legislature to Memphis and Nashville: Just Say Thanks | Smart City Memphis
Bloomington power grab by a bunch of NIMBY's
#BloomingtonIN #HoosierMast #cycling #UrbanPlanning
Referred to committee: Should city council remove member of Bloomington’s traffic commission for “posting obscene and inappropriate statements…”?
@bleakfuture @reuters Republicans criticize Biden and blah, blah, blah
#iubb last win vs. a #1 team was in 2013, according to the ESPN graphic. It would be interesting to see that stat for all teams.
Apropos of nothing, how about that UConn - South Carolina women's game tomorrow? That should be a barn-burner.
Indianapolis has won a grant to help fast-forward the build-out of their mobility networks.
"(Indy) will receive $50,000 in Accelerated Mobility Playbook (AMP) technical assistance...this assistance includes a community-specific mobility audit of the city’s current state of practice and an action plan for improved implementation and partnership."
Sooo..Anyone know anything about this?
Today the music died.
The Day the Music Died - Wikipedia
@parisba Finally I can be myself!
Activists Demand Change After Fatal Crash in Indianapolis
"The “No Turn on Red” signs erected...are routinely ignored. In fact, a citizen-led traffic report conducted at the site—on 86th Street by the Monon Trail entrance—revealed that within a 280 minute period, 86 vehicles turned right on red and one even turned left on red."
#HoosierMast #cycling #Indianapolis
The US Dept. of Transportation just announced Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grants. Not a penny for Indiana though. We prefer unsafe streets.
@thekitmalone I read online where it says you're wrong about that
@dougmasson @ross I'm sure they're waiting to sell the naming rights for a few million bucks.
via @broad
Indiana is failing to put enough money into its air pollution prevention program. Republicans love that!
If they don't put more money into it, the federal government will take it over. Republicans hate that!
How will they resolve the quandary???
Hey #SiriusXM justify to me the playing of dumb country ballads on your Road Trip Radio station. You want us to all fall asleep and crash??
@ben The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
IU women's basketball is a powerhouse.
"Facing a top-five team in a critical conference home game, Assembly Hall did not hope. It did not dream. It did not pray.
Assembly Hall expected, and Assembly Hall received. This program has made winning at the highest level of this sport, something almost unfathomable here a decade ago, business as usual."
Nights like this are special, but not surprising. IU women's basketball is a powerhouse.
HUGE game tonight. #6 Indiana hosts #2 - and overrated - Ohio State.10k crowd at least!
The best of the Big Ten is clearly Indiana and Iowa. Caitlin Clark and Mackenzie Holmes are amazing. Ohio State is just now getting to the meaty part of their schedule. Indiana over Michigan and Iowa over Ohio State last night, then IU plays OSU on Thursday and we'll see how things shake out in the rankings next week. #iuwbb
Finally this meaningless Big Ten Network men's basketball game is over and maybe we can watch some ranked teams? #iuwbb
"What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there...
I can think of no greater honor than to go to jail for providing books to children.
@broad Even better would be providing transit, housing, and complete streets so they don't have to drive themselves to work.
NPR's Here and Now is reporting that fewer members of Gen-Z want careers in skilled trades: as electricians, construction workers and medical technicians. But Michael Hicks says 86.4 percent of all the net new jobs created in Indiana this century went to adults who’d been to college. Anyone understand the contradiction? Anyone know how to talk to Hicks?
Bloomington takng feedback on Hawthorne & Weatherstone Greenway
"(The Hawthorne Greenway) is meant to create a safer north-south connection between IU’s campus and the neighborhoods south of Hillside by installing traffic calming structures. The goal is to get people to drive around 15 miles per hour in neighborhoods."
Drop a note to the city if you live around. This is an important part of the Bloomington bike grid.
#HoosierMast #cycling #BloomingtonIN
@broad I can't make heads or tails out of that. Did the judge make an error?
Senate panel to consider ‘universal voucher’ bill
"An Indiana Senate committee will consider a proposal this week for a universal private school voucher program that would be open to any elementary or secondary-age student in the state."
Vouchers are terrible public policy.
#INLegis #HoosierMast #privateschool
Bloomington Peace Choir performing at the library #BloomingtonIN #mlk
This team has a legit shot at winning it all this year. Never felt like they've had the height to compete with the Connecticuts and Stanfords of the world before, but this team does, and when they're on it's like watching a buzzsaw cut through cheese. #iuwbb #HoosierMast
Indiana Lab Worker Fired Following Vicious Threats To Rep. Eric Swalwell, Family
"An Indiana lab worker has been fired by his company following threats he allegedly posted against Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and his family.
Those threats and others came hard on the heels of another attack on Swalwell by new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as he again vowed to bounce Swalwell off the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence."
Indiana Lab Worker Fired Following Vicious Threats To Rep. Eric Swalwell, Family
Sydney Parrish popping a 3 for the Hoosiers #iuwbb #HoosierMast
https://bloomingtonian.com/2023/01/12/gallery-indiana-womens-basketball-beats-maryland-68-61/
Time for #IndianaUniversity women's basketball vs. Maryland! Huge game in the Big Ten standings. #iuwbb
@bibliotecaria What was the topic? Asking for "Books about sentient robots" gave me a good six or seven existing and excellent choices.
Bay Area considers removing bike/ped lanes from Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
"Bay Area transportation planners are taking another look at what it would take to open the westbound shoulder of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for commuter traffic...Critics, mostly commuters and their employers, say traffic is worse than ever, while supporters maintain the path is a successful multimodal connection between the North Bay and the East Bay."
Richmond-San Rafael Bridge managers reexamine westbound lane options
Cincinnati Streetcar backers will unveil nine new potential routes
"If the entire system were built, it would serve 16 Cincinnati neighborhoods, as well as six Covington neighborhoods and nine in Newport."
“All nine could be built, and there wouldn’t be duplicative efforts. We’ll have an overall system map that could be the 30-year goal,” Matt Butler said"
Urban Planning, But Add Some Afrofuturism
"From food deserts to tree inequity, racist planning practices have left Black neighborhoods devoid of amenities that promote health and well-being.
But a new crop of urban planners is rising up to change that, using a blend of imaginative vision and practical solutions with roots in Afrofuturism. In reimagining our cities, Afrofuturism expands beyond being an artistic or literary genre."
@glightly I've decided on #CarsRuinEverything
@qag I knew I should have patented that idea when I thought of it.
Fairfax County, Virginia drops some road widening projects from long-term, regional plan
And here's another one!
"transportation plan that no longer includes widenings of Route 29 in the Merrifield area, New Braddock Road...at the same time, the county added some projects, including Orange and Yellow Line Metrorail extensions and the Route 7 bus rapid transit (BRT) system, that it hopes will pave the way for a less car-centric future."
Instead of widening the Long Beach 710, LA Metro plans to upgrade streets, bike lanes and bus stops on nearby roads
I suspect there will be more pushback, but this is pretty great. It might include priority bus lanes, bike and pedestrian improvements, public greenspaces and more on Long Beach Boulevard, and bus stop improvements such as solar-powered arrival time displays, shelters and drinking fountains
Zach Bryan rides a bike!
From X:
"Went and got some mushrooms and blasted ‘lawyers guns and money’ 60 times with my girlfriend while riding a tandem bike in Amsterdam today this has to be sandbox mode"
U of Illinois engineering students mastermind bike for boy
Hats off to a trio of University of Illinois engineering students, who designed a fully custom bike, complete with adaptive handlebars, gear hub and frame, to allow an eight-year old boy with a form of dwarfism to ride a bike for the first time.
#cycling #UniversityofIllinois
@elisse I'm enjoying Berry Gordy's autobiography.He comes across as very kind and humble, but who's to say ? 🤷
"Nikki Pelosi had the power to stop World War II on Jan. 6, 2020 and did nothing.
Thanks, Obama."
Valley Metro opens new service line in northwest Phoenix
"The project showcases the first elevated rail station in the city with a bridge going over Interstate 17.
It will run west from 19th and Dunlap avenues and curve north on 25th Avenue, then west on Mountain View Road to where the old Metrocenter Mall is. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego says the light rail will bring in new investments."
@BenRossTransit Is there a transit alternative to driving across the bridge?
@capntransit This is good, right?
@BigGrove I suspected it was something like that 🙂
Detroit's QLINE touts big ridership boost in '23
Ooh, a dedicated transit lane! Brilliant idea!
Lisa Nuszkowski: “Our investments in service improvements, establishing closer connections with residents, businesses, and events along the route, and the continued development of our locally operated team made reaching this milestone possible. We are grateful for our riders, supporters and team for helping make this goal a reality.”
Lousy insinuating snide article about Cincinnati's very nice streetcar. I left a happy comment.
"Cincinnati Council Member Mark Jeffreys...Jeffreys said that the time is right because of the record ridership numbers the system has been seeing.
"Not only for special events, but I think a lot of folks are using it for everyday usage, to go to the grocery store, Kroger. So, it's exciting to see," Jeffreys said."
Cincinnati weighs streetcar expansion amidst questions over ridership numbers and funding
Ouf. Biking in LA blog gets bragadocious.
"Czech carmaker Škoda’s We Love Cycling website offers advice on how to keep riding your ebike through the cold and snowy winter months. Or as we call that in LA, somewhere else."
@pleaseclap Congratulations on the one-week anniversary!
Red-Light Running Then — and Now?
(This is from back in 2000)
"(Minnesota) seventh grader Lydia Sorenson, who counted red-light runners for a science project...She said that before the study, she had expected to see maybe 10 red-light runners total. But 14 drivers ran the light on the first day alone. There were 70 total in the nine hours she counted, which she extrapolated to 217 a month — 2,604 a year."
https://streets.mn/2024/01/18/red-light-running-then-and-now/
Montgomery County, Maryland would gain faster bus service under budget proposal
"Montgomery County bus commuters would get 28 miles of new, faster lines under a $580 million expansion of the county’s bus rapid transit (BRT) system...would represent a tripling of the expedited bus service that the county rolled out on U.S. Route 29 in 2020."
A mid-century relic of Virginia’s pedestrian infrastructure, next to the church-gas station, is coming down this summer
"One of Rosslyn’s few remaining skywalks is set to come down as part of an effort to realize a walkable corridor from one end of the neighborhood to the other...demolishing a skywalk over N. Nash Street, near the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church building and Sunoco gas station dubbed “Our Lady of Exxon.”
Traveling near and far toward low-carbon cities
In his book Near to Far, vehicle designer Dan Sturges suggests that we need to distinguish local, low-speed, lightweight vehicle travel, what he calls Tier 1, from long-distance, high-speed, heavy-vehicle travel, what he calls Tier 2. A third, Tier 3, involves going to airports and flying on jet planes
Biden administration steps in on Caltrans’ Highway 99 expansion in Fresno
"Citing potential procedural mistakes by the Federal Highway Administration, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has ordered a reevaluation of the agency’s decision to exempt two interchange expansions, on North and American Avenues, from a Clean Air Act analysis."
Highway 99 project in Fresno takes second look at air quality
The Best New U.S. Bike Lanes of 2023
Great pictures in this article. I really want to go visit all these places!
"From bustling cities to small towns, communities from coast to coast amplified their commitment to better biking with an unprecedented surge in safer, more comfortable places to ride in 2023...thousands of additional projects planned across the country"
How to Make New York City More Car-Friendly 😂
"* Take out the two bad traffic lights under the green one.
* Why do bicycles (slow cars with no windows) have entire lanes dedicated to them? What’s next? Lanes for skipping rope? Hopscotch lanes? Lanes dedicated to pugs with GoPros riding skateboards? Sounds a little silly to me.
* Central Park? I couldn’t find anywhere to park in that place! Pave it."
#NewYork #cycling
How to Make New York City More Car-Friendly
Wisconsin senate passes bills targeting naked bike rides
"Lawmakers in the state Senate approved two bills that seek to ban naked bike ride events...It comes in response to a naked bike ride event last year when the Madison Police Department received multiple complaints alleging a 10-year-old girl participated in the event. However, the Dane County district attorney later determined no state laws were broken."
https://www.cbs58.com/news/senate-passes-bills-targeting-naked-bike-ride-events-in-wisconsin
Chicago is coming off an “incredible year for cycling”
They've installed 27 miles of “new and upgraded protected bike lanes,” built 18 miles of neighborhood greenways, and distributed 1,900 free bikes.
"The Divvy bike rental system is at an “all-time high,” up 70% since 2019, David Smith said. Overall bike trips on an “average weekday” have increased by 120% over the same period."
🤨 I don't understand this. By the end of the century the southwest will be virtually uninhabitable. Why would people be moving there?
#ClimateChange #PopulationControl
Thousands of U.S. Cities Could Become Virtual Ghost Towns by 2100
Welcome to This is Not Cool
Climate Denial Crock of the Week rebrands with a new look.
@KawaTora I would need a whole bike store of used bikes to ram all of them 😜
@ascentale @xtaran I sing while riding, which occasionally leads to embarrassment if I have need to keep the GoPro recording afterwards 😳
Much of what looks like poor public perception about the economy is actually just Republicans angry that Donald Trump isn’t still president.
(Gift article)
@killick The Atkins books are worthwhile? I've been avoiding them as obvious ripoffs.
This Transit Agency Almost Spent $50 Million on a Parking Garage. Now They’re Looking at Housing Instead.
"Even the most hopeful critics of the investment expected the parking garage to return. After all, it was five years in the making and the archetypal “zombie project.” To the surprise of many, six months later...SEPTA specifically inquired about transit-oriented development, or in this case, multi-family housing. "
#Philadelphia #transit #housing
SEPTA Almost Spent $50 Million on a Parking Garage. Now They’re Looking at Housing Instead.
2023 smashes record for world’s hottest year by huge margin
Prof Andrew Dessler, at Texas A&M University in the US, said the record set in 2023 was not surprising: “Every year for the rest of your life will be one of the hottest [on] record. This in turn means that 2023 will end up being one of the coldest years of this century. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
I hate posting links to X. But does anyone know the original source of this video? (Pedestrian nearly gets hit by a car, then bollards rise up out of the road and a giant mace smashes the car to bits)
Stopping Interstate 11 through Arizona.
"Transportation officials face a troubling choice in one of the southernmost sections of the road’s 280-mile route: ramming through populous downtown Tucson to the east, or decimating the fragile Sonoran desert to the west, bulldozing many of the iconic giant cacti where the owls make their nests in the process."
Can This Tiny Owl Defeat One of America's Biggest Highway Projects? — Streetsblog USA
Why Cities Need to Invest in Active Mobility for the Climate and Economy
"A report from ITDP and the World Bank that calls on urban stakeholders to acknowledge the importance of active mobility infrastructure...the report emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to active mobility, focused on infrastructure networks that are supported by complementary elements such as bikeshare programs, bicycle parking, and capacity building"
#UrbanPlanning #BikeLanes #BikeShare
https://www.itdp.org/2024/01/02/why-cities-need-to-invest-in-active-mobility-for-the-climate-and-economy/
@BenRossTransit Another good reason not to drive!
I've heard about the "Missing Middle" in housing lots of times, but I've never seen this nice graphic.
Kentucky electric cars now pay two taxes where gas cars only pay one
'First, EVs will have to pay an additional $120 registration fee every year, over and above the normal registration fees for all vehicles....But on top of this, public EV charging stations in Kentucky now have to pay an additional 3 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity distributed, and an additional 3 cents for those chargers that are on state property."
Kentucky electric cars now pay two taxes where gas cars only pay one
When it comes to safe streets, Springfield, MA has done everything wrong.
"If I had the opportunity, I would fire the entire senior staff and start over. If state law allowed, I’d support litigating them into bankruptcy. This is the definition of gross negligence, the worst incompetency I’ve seen, and I’ve traveled to every state meeting with engineers, traffic safety officials, and advocates."
Just Another, and Another, and Another Pedestrian Killed on State Street
@markstos @samth @bloomington_in I travel 11th & Fee a lot. Tons of pedestrians, people pulling in and out of the garage and the business school, and you're at top speed when you get there southbound. I'm not too surprised.
DANG! Chicago's Dickens Avenue Neighborhood Greenway completed
"A contraflow ("wrong-way") bicycle lane makes biking east on the one-way westbound segments of Dickens safer and legalizes it. Sidewalk extensions and raised crosswalks shorten crossing distances, calm motorized traffic, and help keep drivers from turning fast around corners. And the speed limit has been lowered from 30 to 20 mph."
@neilm I've been using LibraryThing since the beginning, and I'm happy with it. Can't really compare it with the other.
Golf cart sales surge as US families find unlikely alternative to second cars
"Golf carts are becoming the second car of choice for families across the US, with the market anticipated to surge to more than $2 billion (£1.57 billion) within the next few years.
In retirement villages, residential communities, university campuses and small towns, it is becoming commonplace to see people driving themselves around in golf carts."
#golfcarts #CarsRuinEverything
Golf cart sales surge as US families find unlikely alternative to second cars
A new mayor in Nashville provides hope for biking in the city
"Nashville faced an unexpected distinction in 2023 – it was crowned America’s worst commuting city, surpassing urban hubs like New York and Los Angeles."
New mayor Freddie O’Connell is apparently a trusted advocate for the cycling community. I have a trip to Nashville tentatively planned this summer, so hopefully I can try some biking around town and see what it's like.
https://thecontributor.org/a-new-mayor-and-the-path-to-bicycle-friendly-streets/
NYC Streetsblog: Mayor Adams failing spectacularly to construct bike and bus lanes
"Adams failed...to meet a legal mandate to construct 50 miles of protected bike lanes and 30 miles of protected bus lanes. What happens now? Nothing. And therein lies the problem."
"Far from meeting the established benchmarks, the city under Mayor Adams has run away from high-profile fights, delayed and slow-walked contentious projects"
In 2023, Mayor Adams Basically Erased the 'Streets Master Plan' - Streetsblog New York City
Merry Christmas to the Dallas Mavericks! Players, staff receive electric Mercedes bicycles from Luka Doncic
I wonder if the vertically advantaged got custom fits for their bikes.
Merry Christmas from Luka: Mavericks, staff receive electric Mercedes bicycles from Doncic
Ohio Judge charged in crash with bicyclist
"Judge R. Scott Krichbaum has been charged with reckless operation and overtaking/ passing vehicles headed in the same direction after he allegedly struck a bicyclist...traveling northbound on Sharrott Road, and Kirchbaum's car was heading in the same direction when he allegedly hit the bicyclist."
#ohio #cycling
Mahoning County Judge charged in crash with bicyclist
@DrTCombs Or perhaps "building" at the rate they seem to get hit😜
@DrTCombs What should they say instead?
The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be: Changing Trends and Their Implications for Transport Planning
This is a very technical report with lots of charts and graphs detailing trends in transportation over the last hundred years. I think the biggest takeaway is that Peak Car happened about 15 years ago.
#UrbanPlanning #transportation #cars
@Transportist No, at the top where it says "As always you can follow on Mastodon or RSS." The RSS link doesn't work.
@futzle We're on a deadline. There's a schedule to meet here.
@Transportist Your RSS feed doesn't seem to be working.
Ohio’s 2023 Energy Corruption Recap
Recapping legal actions in the wake of Ohio’s biggest ever bribery and Racketeering case, generically known as the HB 6 Case, since it involved bribing legislators to help pass House Bill 6, a measure that forced Ohio ratepayers to subsidize failing nuclear and coal fired power plants.
@pwaring 1
"To me, jaywalking signals an unmet need..the rising death toll demonstrates what’s at stake. Darting across the street to catch the bus might not signal the need for a new crosswalk, but it speaks to how a bus’s (in)frequency innervates risk-taking. Families crossing mid-block signals a need for more access points and slower speeds, best expressed through physical interventions and not just a bright yellow sign."
@var @itsshevee My Magnum Cruiser is five years old now, no problems. Class 3 with throttle and adjustable pedal assist.
Found it. 2009 MUTCD Text Redline with 11th Edition Changes
Regulations.gov
As far as I can tell, there's nothing stopping people from taking the discount and then taking the subway in to see the show. I'm all for it.
New Orleans Bikeshare Program Surpasses 300,000 Rides
“Blue Bikes is a proven transportation solution that is revolutionizing the way that residents of New Orleans move around town. Seeing families, workers and visitors embrace this fun, affordable, and healthy way to explore our city is a clear message that New Orleanians are committed to building a more equitable and sustainable future, one pedal at a time.”
@enobacon Maybe they do now, in this decadent era
@Alwaysbustbike Did the developers eat the remediation cost then?
@markwedel why didn't she like it?
@emptyflask Just that, huh? 😜
@enobacon @jcriecke I didn't notice that. I wonder if anything's changed in the last few years.
E-bike advert banned as it ‘discredits entire car sector’
‘Some images in the reflection of the car are, in our opinion, unbalanced and discredit the entire car sector. The images of factories/chimneys and an accident create a climate of fear so they will have to be adapted.’
https://www.cyclist.co.uk/news/e-bike-advert-banned-as-it-discredits-entire-car-sector
Is there any way to do a "git diff" between the old MUTCD and the new one? I haven't found a good detailed analysis of the changes yet.
@ProcessParsnip "The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne" is a pretty good cozy. Two women investigate a murder in London, 1700.
The weirdest thing about the Substack kerfuffle is the number of people who seem to be trying to make a living out of writing opinion columns and posting them on the Internet.
I think the single most uncomfortable spot on the Lafitte Greenway is where it crosses under I-10. They should tear that monstrosity down like yesterday.
A New Orleans neighborhood confronts the racist legacy of a toxic stretch of highway
@lynneverson So you went from Elkhart to Boston and back again? Any particular line?
Thinking about a scenic train trip for spring break 2024. Anyone have a trip they particularly enjoyed?
Caltrans and the state of California held a major media event on Malibu Monday, but a city clamoring for changes to Pacific Coast Highway was left empty handed.
No new speed study has been conducted, or will be conducted soon.
No change in the speed limit.
No changes in design.
Caltrans safety manager Lee Haber said right now, that the state cannot lower the speed limits on PCH.
Illinois Supreme Court reaffirms the 1998 Boub V. Wayne case that endangered bike riders
"Not only did this ruling make it harder for bike riders to recover damages if they crash on a poorly maintained Illinois road, it also discourages municipalities from protecting people on bikes by building bicycle infrastructure, because, counterintuitively, that makes them more likely to be held responsible if a cyclist is injured."
This is interesting. Carmel, IN diverting money from the parks department to build downtown green space. The city's master plan prioritizes more suburban parks instead.
#UrbanPlanning #parks #CarmelIN
Paywalled article:
"Rich people are always writing finance articles that are like, "You know how you can have more money? Stop paying for those little things that give your life a bit of joy while me and my friends continue to pay you a non-living wage." - @JeremyCShipp I think on X
@waldoj @andrewvandam Looks like around 65% of vehicles sold are trucks.
@Cbfoley My bike is five years old, kept inside but occasionally left out or ridden in the rain as needs must. 0 battery problems, but I did have to replace the pedal sensor at one point.
@globalmuseum Too easy to confuse 2 and 200 IMO.
Highway Expansion Project Not Approved by California Transportation Commission
"While we're putting passenger vehicles and light duty trucks onto express lanes, we're then creating more capacity for trucks to go on those lanes, but the [environmental analysis assumes] that there will be no more trucks. ...it will and can induce truck traffic. Those truck impacts are ignored"
@aagot @forteller It's unfortunate that you don't have good infrastructure nearby, but your city may have plans for providing some - a lot of cities are now. And give an #ebike a try!
@alng Maybe the horses were just about to get on their bikes
@mbonsma We're gonna need a bigger table.
@benlk Odd there's nothing planned for a Columbus-Indianapolis Amtrak route.
Advocates for safe and livable streets were outraged at a feature story in Friday's San Francisco Standard by senior editor Astrid Kane that justifies hatred of cyclists. From "A Bike Lane Moved, and This San Francisco Neighborhood Erupted," under the subheading "Why Do People Hate Cyclists So Much?"
S.F. Standard Fans Anti-Bike Hate - Streetsblog San Francisco
I'm curious to know what kinds of safer roads this guy designs. No mention anywhere of separated bike lanes or traffic calming devices, but lovely platitudes about legislation and wearing bright clothing.
#cycling #Florida #UrbanPlanning
Distracted driving can be deadly for bikers, pedestrians | Commentary
Gifts not to buy for cyclists to avoid a festive faux pas...although if anyone wants to get me the handlebar-mounted barbecue grill I wouldn't say no.
All I want for Christmas is... not this. Gifts not to buy for cyclists to avoid a festive faux pas
@guyholmes Depends where you are, I guess. My commute is straight uphill, so in my case it would be "Sometimes I just ride along wheezing to myself, enjoying the burn in my legs" 😜
Everything this writer's wife learned from her first 100 miles e-biking to work
“The more I ride, the more I get used to it. In the morning it’s actually a relaxing experience. Sometimes I just ride along singing to myself, enjoying the wind in my face. I also like that I’m being active and pedaling a little bit so I get some body movement in before I start the day. It puts me in a good mood each morning.”
Everything my wife learned from her first 100 miles e-biking to work
A very pessimistic take on all the new rail line investments announced this week.
"I expect the money to, in 10 years, be barely visible as intercity rail improvement – just enough that aggrieved defenders will point to some half-built line or to a line where the program reduced trip times by 15 minutes for billions of dollars, but not enough to make a difference to intercity rail demand."
The United States Learned Little from Obama-Era Rail Investment
@bikepedantic The bakfiets of Theseus?
As always, PopeHat has the best perspective on free speech.
"The college presidents did a rather clumsy job of saying, accurately but unconvincingly, that the answer depends on the context. Stefanik and every politician or loudmouth who wants you to hate and distrust college education and Palestinians pounced on it. And many of you fell for it. You — and I say this with love — absolute fucking dupes."
https://popehat.substack.com/p/stop-demanding-dumb-answers-to-hard
Why 2023 was the year of the e-bike and not the self-driving car
(How David Zipper comes up with a fresh article on biking a couple of times a week is really beyond me)
"All signs indicate that a city full of e-bikes would be safer, healthier, cleaner, and less congested than one dominated by cars—no matter how they are driven."
Grand Theft Auto – the staggeringly successful and desensitising video game where players steal cars, drive recklessly, run people over at their leisure, and generally do heinous things – is adding BIKE LANES!
Okay, this is a new one on me.
Pissoirs in America: The Essential Role of Public Facilities
"A practical and innovative solution to this issue lies in the introduction of pissoirs - simple, semi-private, open-air restrooms. Originally a European concept, pissoirs offer a discreet and environmentally friendly option for public facilities, helping to alleviate the immediate problem."
https://millennialdream.substack.com/p/pissoirs-in-america-the-essential
New Orleans 'Bonnabel Greenway' will connect the lake to Metairie Road. Some worry it's not safe.
"Van Vrancken said the “Bonnabel Greenway” path, which weaves around the oak trees on the neutral ground, was a fitting compromise. Though it is technically a walking path, it was designed to so it can easily be expanded into a bike path when more money becomes available."
#NewOrleans #cycling #UrbanPlanning
The 'Bonnabel Greenway' will connect the lake to Metairie Road. Some worry it's not safe.
How Chapel Hill and Carrboro are going car-optional
"There are currently 25 miles of greenways and 15 miles of bike lanes to help people get where they need to go in Chapel Hill and Carrboro."
"Chapel Hill Transit provides free bus services for the community, students, and workers including a senior shuttle that provides transportation to various assisted living communities."
#NorthCarolina #cycling #UrbanPlanning
https://www.southernenvironment.org/news/how-chapel-hill-and-carrboro-are-going-car-free/
Not finding any good articles on #daylighting on here, so here's one.
NACTO: "Intersection design should facilitate eye contact between street users, ensuring that motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit vehicles intuitively read intersections as shared spaces.”
#UrbanPlanning 
How to Daylight Your City’s Intersections (and Why It Matters)
California Coastal Commission stalls bike lanes on deadly road in Point Loma
"The thwarted bike lanes in Point Loma demonstrate how the Coastal Commission, and the laws that created it, can make sustainable transportation infrastructure more cumbersome and expensive to install near the coast than elsewhere in San Diego."
California Coastal Commission stalls bike lanes on deadly road in Point Loma
Florida Manager apologizes for drinking and then not driving afterwards
#florida #cycling
City manager apologizes for bicycle incident | News-Leader, Fernandina Beach Florida
No felony charges to be filed against driver who killed two cyclists
"Goodyear police say Pedro Quintana-Lujan, 26, was driving a pickup truck hauling a trailer on Feb. 25 when the vehicle crashed into a group of bicyclists on the Cotton Lane Bridge...one bicyclist died at the scene and another died at a hospital. Nearly everyone in the 20-person cycling group was injured."
County attorney kicks case against driver in deadly bicyclists crash to city court
@willowbl00 The things we consider violent crime are racist in and of themselves. The real crimes are things like toxic waste dumping, wage theft, and tax evasion.
Rising crime statistics are not all that they seem
@paulknightly Never buying another car. #ebikes and rentals will do me!
@IndyPedCrisis @NefariousAryq Do you suppose it's related to the "No Turn On Red" signs, i.e., drivers who still expect to be able to turn on red and pedestrians who expect them not to?
Here's what my city has to say about cars:
"Pedestrians should receive the greatest priority, because they are the most vulnerable and the most space-efficient road user. Conversely, single-occupancy vehicle drivers should be the least prioritized, though safe motor vehicle access should still be provided."
So #BanCars doesn't quite cover the goal. Not sure what better hashtag there is to describe it though.
Empty parking lots, one with a NO PARKING sign in front of it. Bloomington IN 2023 #BlackFridayParking
@futurebird You can always tell an honest politician though - once they're bought, they stay bought.
It's just two days away! That's right...the #BlackFridayParking challenge! Get out there and post pictures of all the empty parking lots!
NPR's Michel Martin talks to Ganesh Sitaraman about the challenges of air travel. He is the author of: Why Flying is Miserable and How to Fix It.
(You fix it with high-speed rail, sir)
Flying has become miserable — but it hasn't always been that way
Tampa is moving closer to extending the streetcar
"The proposed streetcar expansion isn’t geared toward tourists; it will provide a reliable transit option for our residents and enable us to accommodate more people in our urban core...An expanded transportation spine will realize a future of living, working and playing car free from Ybor City, Water Street, downtown and deep into Tampa Heights."
A Louisville man is dead after allegedly swerving his bicycle into the path of a car Monday night; but the Biking In LA blog wonders,
"It’s possible the victim really did swerve in front of the car. But it’s more likely the driver drifted to the right and was startled to suddenly see a bike rider directly in front of them, and assumed the rider swerved, with no witnesses to contradict it."
If anyone knows more I'd be curious about this.
LMPD: Man dead after swerving his bicycle into path of car on Crittenden Drive
Uninformed people claim Chicago's Augusta protected bike lanes are dangerous
""Rubio, who [illegally] parks on the street outside her home... [is] now dodging car traffic on one side and bike traffic on the other as she tries to get her small children out of the car," Barnes states. That is, Rubio feels endangered by the completely mundane task of checking for traffic, albeit bike traffic, before crossing the street."
"Government needs to approve, fund, and build active travel safety projects as if they were a burned out section of the I-10 freeway" - John Bauter on X
They give up an unbelievable amount of space to car storage in the French Quarter. #NewOrleans #BanCars
@colby Which pivot towards Python is this?
Blue Bike worked really well last time I visited #NOLA . This time, maybe one #ebike in five has a working, charged battery 🙁
@dancinyogi I can read and write cursive, but I often forget how to make the capital J's.
@bikepedantic Cute kid!
It's pretty straightforward. You can vote for Biden in 2024 and find a younger, more progressive-minded candidate to vote for in 2028; or you can vote against Biden in 2024 and never have the opportunity to vote again.
@davidzipper That's interesting. My town put in a bike lane and dropped the lane widths on that street to 10', but drivers didn't slow down a bit.
Someone should make a primer on #ebikes. It would include:
* Why hills aren't an issue
* Why weather isn't an issue
* Why age isn't an issue
* Why cargo isn't an issue
* Why you can ride them in big cities
* Why you can ride them in little towns
* Why you can ride them in the countryside
@InkySchwartz If every dealership had a little area where they sold E-bikes, I think I would be pretty okay with that :)
Know what would be really useful? Bike stores should take cars as trade-ins. #cycling #BikeTooter #bancars
@lioracle Did the network live up to it's reputation?
Memphis has not been considered a bicycling haven. How it's changing, from safety to access
"On the surface, Memphis has many issues that prevent bike culture from thriving. Bike lanes are poorly maintained, pedestrian deaths are higher than in many major cities, and there is little funding for improvements."
I liked riding around the downtown in Memphis, and I'm looking forward to visiting the new park.
Memphis has not been considered a bicycling haven. How it's changing, from safety to access
Why we need fewer driverless cars and more carless drivers 😂
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2023/10/04?ct=v&cti=2032442
@carrideen Do they use email for anything that they aren't forced to? Maybe a private Discord server would be more intuitive to them, although I think Canvas has a similar feature and it isn't very popular.
Which comes first in East Lansing: Parking or affordable housing?
"A clash between surface-level parking and affordable housing ended in favor of the former as the City Council voted 3-2 against a mixed-used development at 530 Albert St., the site of a paid surface-level parking lot...with the exception of the six Saturdays each fall when MSU hosts home football games, there is enough space for visitors"
#EastLansing #UrbanPlanning #Parking
Which comes first in East Lansing: Parking or affordable housing? - City Pulse
@anubis2814 I would have made a great viscount
Progress toward a driverless future hits the brakes
"Autonomous vehicles could make cities more livable, equitable and safe. Cruise and its competitor Waymo say their data shows these cars perform better than human drivers."
Just to be extra safe, though, they should put them on rails and maybe make them a lot bigger so they can carry a lot of people at once.
#Transport #UrbanPlanning #DriverlessCars
@AndyKotlarz @Mastopoet That would work even better with cargo bikes.
@SRLevine @Lyle But if I lived on a busy stroad without sidewalks, I'd be very likely not to make that choice if I didn't have to!
Strong Towns has a program where they go back and analyze crashes and recommend changes to the street design to avoid them in the future.
https://actionlab.strongtowns.org/hc/en-us/categories/11667330940948-Crash-Analysis-Studio
SUVs Are Deadlier Than Cars — But on Fast Arterials, Pedestrians Die No Matter What
Tennessee's "117-percent increase in pedestrian deaths between 2009 and 2019 was tightly correlated with an increasing number of crashes on straight, multi-lane roads with speed limits over 35 miles per hour in urban and suburban areas"
#transportation #Tennessee #bancars
Study: Yes, SUVs Are Deadlier Than Cars — But on Fast Arterials, Pedestrians Die No Matter What — Streetsblog USA
@LadyDragonfly @guncelawits @futurebird The latter of the two is probably the lesser of two weevils
Nice of Jungle Jim's to give us a reminder of how we can't get to their store.
@joelepstein Sure, if they live in the cities instead.
@ZachWeinersmith I've taken to scheduling emails and messages for after the weekends rather than sending them immediately. Can't really avoid sending them because I'll forget.
The single most deadly roadway for bike riders in Los Angeles and Orange counties, the Pacific Coast Highway, claimed the lives of four Pepperdine students on Tuesday.
"The overly wide traffic lanes, high speed limits that were nearly universally exceeded, slip lane right turns and roadside parking were all necessary to prevent excessive traffic congestion, or so we were told."
Jim Jordan would be a woefully incompetent Speaker. There's no question of that. The point of him getting the gavel is so he can further TFG's plans for a coup and dictatorship.
It's ok to be outraged by this article, but do read the last paragraph before you write your angry letters.
Driver who ‘intentionally struck’ bicyclist in Parma wanted, police say
"Police said he man was behind the wheel of a silver Chevy Trax when he hit the bicyclist at Ridge Road and Gilbert Avenue on Oct. 4.
After striking the bicyclist, the driver took off and headed north on Ridge Road and then turned right onto Pearl Road, according to police.
Police did not report the condition of the bicyclist."
Driver who ‘intentionally struck’ bicyclist in Parma wanted, police say
@benfinch I think beer is fine. But they shouldn't sell petrol.
Discouraged by pushback from the car culture set? Read this:
"Millennials and Gen Zers, who will soon dominate policy-making circles, want walkable communities and lives without cars. That’s good news for the future, but sets up a clash with the naysayers who still have a grip on power (and community boards).
But the revanchists should be aware: their culture war risks backfiring. The abortion fight is a telling example."
Hey, Bike Haters, You Will Lose the Culture War You're Starting - Streetsblog New York City
Ooh, I love this. Ride your bike and drink coffee. #biketooter #coffee #Coffeeneuring
‘They pay for themselves’: why more Australian families are ditching cars for e-bikes
"In 2017 when states and territories adopted uniform laws on the use of e-bikes, about 9,000 were sold in Australia. Since then sales have doubled each year...While car trip costs include petrol and tolls, “e-bike trips cost in the cents”, Bourke says, noting the average bike costs about 15 cents to charge up."
‘They pay for themselves’: why more Australian families are ditching cars for e-bikes
Six Southern California cyclists have been killed in this past week.
@ordinoides "Can suddenly decide to act as a pedestrian with no accountability" 😂
Trucks are for wimps.
https://www.gocomics.com/jen-sorensen/2023/08/23
@failedLyndonLaRouchite @thomasconnor If you just ask people if they would rather pay for something or have it free, I imagine they would mostly prefer it was free.
@greenhombre It's 30MPH I think; but realistically speed limits don't have much bearing on how fast people actually go.
@alpinejoe @mobileharv wonder how things have changed in the eight years since this article was written?
Nadine Arslanian Menendez, the wife and co-defendant of recently indicted Sen. Robert Menendez, struck and killed a man while driving in New Jersey in 2018.
The Record and The New York Times, citing police reports and police dash cam video, reported that Nadine Menendez, who was dating the senator at the time, was found by police in the small borough of Bogota to be “not at fault” in the crash in the because the victim, Richard Koop, was #jaywalking.
Menendez’s wife struck and killed a man while driving in 2018, reports indicate
Beverly Hills plans some paint-only bike lanes on Beverly Boulevard...still better than the sharrows that traffic commission chairman and self-described "avid cyclist" Ron Shalowitz suggested instead.
The plan calls for bike lanes to be added to either side of the 0.3-mile stretch of Beverly Boulevard between Santa Monica Boulevard and Doheny Drive, as laid out in the city's 2021 Complete Streets Plan.
#bikelanes #BeverlyHills #UrbanPlanning
East Lansing is seeking input for bike lanes and pedestrian paths. A link to the survey in the article below.
#EastLansing #BikeLanes #UrbanPlanning
East Lansing is seeking input for bike lanes and pedestrian paths
Now what's up in Dallas? 55 miles of planned trails suddenly removed from city plans without explanation.
#Dallas #trails #UrbanPlanning
https://lakehighlands.advocatemag.com/2023/10/02/dallas-55-mile-bike-trail/
With no explanation, the D.C. government has delayed enforcement of $200 tickets for drivers who block bike and bus lanes.
"Transportation officials say they are extending the warning period indefinitely, citing a desire to have more time to educate drivers while offering little information about the future of a program that aimed to speed up buses."
D.C. delays issuing $200 tickets to drivers blocking bus lanes
71% increase in San Diego biking since 2019
A new report on biking trends across the country found the San Diego metropolitan region saw a 71% increase in biking from 2019 to 2022 — the second largest increase in the country.
The report from consulting firm Streetlight Data is based on national travel surveys and anonymized cell phone location data. It also measured a 37% increase in average daily bike trips across the country.
Report finds San Diego saw 71% increase in biking since 2019
@davidnjoku Does anybody ride bicycles or ebikes in Nigeria? Any bike trails or bike lanes? #ebike #cycling
@Hypx Hydrogen powered bikes? Wow, that is a terrible idea.
If the best 10,000 managers in the country all went off to live on an island, would the result be Atlas Shrugged or Animal Farm? I suspect no one would even notice, frankly.
@SRLevine You should do yoga once a week, unless you're really busy. Then you should do yoga twice a week.
The bike share offers a three-day pass for $15, which is as good a deal for visitors as I've seen anywhere. There aren't enough ebikes - I think I read somewhere that they were getting more - and the ones I did find were half-charged or less. I never did manage to run one out of charge though.
Detroit: Incomplete. I was able to ride up and down the riverfront and that's really nice. I rode up the Dequindre Cut Greenway for a few blocks - a bit odd that there are only a few exits from it 😬 - and a few scary blocks downtown on an unprotected bikelane. I need to make more attempts to reach destinations to give Detroit a grade, but the downtown streets are badly in need of a diet.
@kennysmith No planes? Clean air, clear skies, less global warming? Bring it on!
@capntransit @njpolicy Think NJ's transit is ready for NY's congestion pricing?
From DavidGilbert4U on X:
Is there a name for the feeling when all you want out of life is to hunker down and eat pizza and watch movies but you also want to break new ground in your profession but you also want to quit society to live in the woods but you also want to go explore the world forever
@LilahTovMoon I think I might buy Boston Strangler season tickets even though I live 1,000 miles away.
Road Diets and Older Adults
"Overall, implementing road diets resulted in slower speeds on each of the three streets...drivers with amyloid plaques in the brain drove more slowly than drivers without. What was surprising, though, was that implementing a road diet caused the healthy (amyloid free) drivers to slow down but there was no slowing of the drivers with amyloid plaques."
#RoadDiet #UrbanPlanning #STLouis
@mobileharv Life is cheap in Maryland.
@ascentale A1. I am in Detroit, where I rented some bikeshare ebikes and rode around the riverfront. Very pretty, though some geese were more confrontational than I would like. The bike share needs more ebikes and the downtown away from the river needs slower, smaller roads.
@PatrickRerat Interesting! Wish they would have split leisure into "trips with a destination" and "biking for fun" though.
Extreme Weather Is Forcing Redesign of World’s Busiest Airports
"Airports around the world are relocating sensitive electrical equipment to rooftops to protect it from flooding, reinforcing runways to handle extreme temperature swings and revving up air conditioning as climate change complicates operations."
Ooh, I know! Perhaps they could redesign them into train stations!
@benlk @heartlandurbanist_channel Thanks, I'll look at those!
Added the BikePortland and No More Freeways feeds to my feed reader. They are great but...I don't live anywhere near Oregon. Where are the feeds for the Midwest?
@cbdawson I live in a hilly area, so I like riding to work without having to shower when I get there. I like running errands without getting caught in traffic or waiting for red lights. I like riding on a trail where I'm not sucking exhaust or hearing traffic roar, and not being so tired at the end of it that I don't want to ride again for another week.
@cbdawson I wish I'd known to buy an ebike many years earlier than I actually did.
In Memphis, Tennessee, a remarkable new public park has just opened. Filling 30 acres along the edge of the Mississippi River with active, social, ecological, and architectural spaces, it could reframe the city’s fading connection to the riverfront. It could also set a new standard for what waterfront parks can do.
@JonnyT @chrisphin This is true, but often it's only the interviewer who knows where his next paycheck is coming from.
The Bush administration failures, missteps and lies post 9/11 are well documented, but the incompetence began well before then. Their refusal to acknowledge the threat posed by al-Qaeda and insistence on hiring loyalists rather than competent professionals left a hole in the national defense you could drive an airplane through. And they did.
@mobileharv I applaud your restraint, sir.
Hit by a car, or hit by a driver? NPR discusses the reasoning behind their headline.
@adamm_ If you build it, they will come.
"Make no mistake about it: We are At War now ― with somebody ― and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy."
Hunter S. Thompson on 9-11.
Chicago's new protected bike lanes on Belmont are a game changer
"Thanks to new concrete-protected bike lanes on Belmont, one of the city’s most unpleasant and dangerous intersections is now a choice route for people traveling on two wheels."
Running about a mile from Kimball to Campbell, the new lanes provide safer passage for bike riders under the Kennedy Expressway and over the north branch of the Chicago River.
#Chicago #cycling #BikeLanes
https://chi.streetsblog.org/2023/08/30/the-new-belmont-protected-bike-lanes-are-a-game-changer
@gwagner Ye cats, @Streetsweeper , 38% parking downtown?
I say tear the whole thing down and replace it with a light rail line.
"A multi-billion dollar plan by the Nevada Department of Transportation to widen and reconstruct US-95 in Downtown Las Vegas is meeting resistance from residents worried about the negative impact it will have on their property values and health."
@randahl Probably true. But I've found that the hashtag #FindAlternativesToCarsThatWorkForEveryone isn't very popular.
@randahl That is good, but not nearly as good as Denmark's efforts to minimize car travel in favor of walking and biking instead. #Denmark #cycling #bancars
President Biden announced plans for a new rail and shipping corridor that will connect India, the Middle East and Europe — a long-term push to improve the way goods, energy and information moves across borders.
Now if we could only get him to build a rail corridor in THIS country
#trains #g20
At the G20, Biden joins forces with India and the Middle East, sidelining China
Ugh, PBS, this is awful. "Cars are super expensive. Can anything be done?" "Naw." "Are people switching to other modes of transportation?". "Not my daughter for sure!"
Is the era of inexpensive cars over? Why auto prices are on the rise in America
@dfrancis @DrALJONES ahaha I would have loved to hear that discussion!
@DrALJONES I thought her writing was pretty darn good, except for the 20-page Galt speech, of which I have never been able to get through more than a quarter. But I will freely admit to having no taste 🙂
via @timmy : Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy
The National Hurricane Center has issued their most aggressive intensity forecast ever for a newly-formed tropical depression: a Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph winds in five days.
Tropical Depression 13 poised to become a powerful hurricane » Yale Climate Connections
@geoff_green Very nice! What are the parking minimum requirements in Chapel Hill?
Small cities are being cut off from the air travel network? Hey NPR, they need to build train lines not airports.
More small airports are being cut off from the air travel network. This is why
@rebeccawatson "Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti." So the mountain looks like...another mountain? 🤔
@futurebird The pickup idea is a pretty cool one. Saves users the trouble of loading up a vehicle and carting everything to the recycle point.
@jentrification There's still sex, but I'm sure they're working on something.
Building a custom bike for Shaquille O'Neal
"The end result, coined The Thomson Beast, was constructed out of titanium and featured "triple tree forks" with handlebars that were 1.3 inches in diameter to fit his large hands.
The wheelbase was ultimately over 55 inches and included a top tube of over 29 inches."
NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal's incredible 36-inch custom bike revealed
Paris bans rentable electric scooters. My knee-jerk reaction is that they should dedicate some car lanes to them instead, but Paris is doing such a good job already in minimizing car traffic. Not sure what's going on.
Paris is the first European capital to ban rentable electric scooters
@bluerootsradio Peter is right that the younger generation isn't interested in voting for MAGA. But the MAGAts know this, and it's why they're working so hard to stop the younger generation voting. If they succeed, it won't matter what their opinions are.
Usually European biking headlines are like, "BELGIUM OPENS NEW 100 MILE BIKE TRAIL SYSTEM IN CAPITAL" and American headlines are "BIKES BANNED DOWNTOWN AFTER DRUNK DRIVER KILLS CYCLIST" so in a way this is kind of refreshing.
Cycle lanes scrapped in south-east Spain as council takes pro-car stance
Review of a ride on Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Trail. Sounds like great fun!
Yale, Fordham, and Boston College banning #ebikes on campus
"The two main issues at the heart of the debate around e-bikes and e-scooters on campuses relate to fire safety and collisions with pedestrians."
Yeah, let's make sure they stay in cars because that will be so much safer 🙄
Why more college campuses are starting to ban electric bikes
@compost Learned a lesson about changing my compost spinner after a big storm. A soaking mess of black fly larvae and corn cobs 🤢
@bikescape what does that mean? Is it just a regular wall plug next to the car charger?
Speed limits don't matter
"While crash frequency and severity did correlate with higher speeds, the most statistically reliable trends that emerged had nothing to do with property damage or personal injury. It was enforcement outcomes that were most demonstratively impacted. In other words, when speed limits go up, fewer people get tickets; when they go down, the opposite happens."
#UrbanPlanning #bancars #SpeedLimits
Traffic engineering claims another victim
"John Rearick's death was a result of by-the-book traffic engineering and road design, and he wasn’t the first victim on this corridor. It turns out, 18 other pedestrians had been hit by drivers.
The absence of sidewalks forced pedestrians to walk perilously close to speeding vehicles, putting their lives at constant risk. And the presence of five car lanes encourages drivers to floor it."
https://speakeasy.substack.com/p/traffic-engineering-claims-another
@enobacon No, I went by it pretty quickly at the time and only remembered that it was good later on when something else reminded me of it. Wish I had for sure!
@enobacon I saw a toot a while ago that had a pretty good response to this, don't know where it is. The avatar was kind of bluish if that helps.
@AlaskaWx @samth Interesting that the highs don't show as all that high on Wunderground. I saw a prediction of 99 for yesterday but it only says 90.
Low temperature in #BloomingtonIN last night was 75 degrees (22C). That is the hottest low I can remember. Even during the worst of summer heatwaves it usually gets down to 65-68 or so. Really bad for the people sleeping rough or without AC. #ClimateDiary
This writer uses a wheelchair and wants more bike lanes
"The comments sections of every social media post about these upgrades are littered with insincere cries about the removal of car parks...Well planned, inclusive and accessible infrastructure benefits all members of society, especially the marginalised. Lack of cycle infrastructure is negligent, ableist and ageist. "
Sticks Not Carrots Needed To Get Drivers Out Of Cars, Say Climate Scientists
“The most effective thing we can do to reduce cars in cities is to use carrots and sticks to reduce car use and increase public transport, walking, and cycling. But carrots alone are not sufficient to overcome the entrenched infrastructure and incentives, which today favors car use.”
#UrbanPlanning #BanCars
Sticks Not Carrots Needed To Get Drivers Out Of Cars, Say Climate Scientists
@benlk Sounds like the city has some good ideas for what they want to do. Do you think they can force it through the NIMBYs?
@colby We wanted to put a couple of speed bumps on a quiet street and designate it a bike route...the local NIMBYS went into rage mode.
@forpeterssake @kairyssdal "People who had cars fare better on multiple different factors than people who didn’t. They tended to move to higher-opportunity neighborhoods, places with lower poverty rates. They were twice as likely to find a job and four times more likely to remain employed."
I wonder if they would have seen a similar effect if they'd studied people with #ebikes instead.
What Will it Take to Close Cleveland's Market Avenue to Cars for Good?
"In the four years since Market Ave.'s brief identity as a pedestrian street, questions as to how to try again to close the avenue off are resurfacing in earnest, as the support for the avenue's permanent closure grows in its collective intent. But, as in 2019, quagmires continue to arise."
You’re a Cyclist Who Was Just Struck by a Car Driver. Here’s Why It Was Your Fault
You’re a Cyclist Who Was Just Struck by a Car Driver. Here’s Why It Was Your Fault
The US Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices is getting a new edition. NACTO says to look for these changes (I can't figure out, though, if these are expected changes or just hoped-for changes.)
* Elevate the goal of eliminating serious injuries and deaths
* Don't set speed limits by looking at how fast cars go
* Reform signals to make street crossings safer
* Remove restrictions on colored paint for crosswalks
@SRLevine Can you zip them into a single file before storing them?
Republicans in the House are so worried about their narrow majority they're warning members not to do any activities that could endanger themselves
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) told Republicans on a caucus conference call, "Please take care of yourselves. We do not need to lose anybody else."
He went on to explain that he saw Rep. James Comer (R-KY) biking over the weekend.
"Stay off the damn bike," Emmer said.
GOP leader so paranoid of losing majority he demands members not ride bikes and risk injury or death
The surprising rise of electric golf carts as ‘second cars’ in the US
"Modern electric golf carts now offer smooth and silent rides with ranges sufficient to cover daily short commutes comfortably. There’s no gasoline engine to require regular maintenance...Many states now have laws allowing golf carts to be driven on public roads with speed limits of up to 35 mph, provided they meet certain safety requirements."
The surprising rise of electric golf carts as 'second cars' in the US
@mbonsma Tell me cannon is a description of how fast you can go and not something boring like the name of the road.
John Steinbeck on #interstates:
"No roadside stands selling squash juice, no antique stores, no farm products or factory outlets. When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing."
@kevincianfarini #BanCarCentricDesign ? Not sure it will catch on.
@profchander When they're grown and gone you'll look back and laugh and realize it was more like 99%.
Colorado's statewide e-bike rebate program launches Wednesday
"The rebate application portal will open for the first release at 9 a.m. Wednesday and close at 1 p.m. Aug. 21. During this application window, interested Coloradans will register their email in the system. Once the window has closed, applicants will be randomly selected to complete their application to receive a rebate."
Colorado's statewide e-bike rebate program launches Wednesday
New Ohio Law Promises to Tear Down Neighborhoods for Highways
"For decades, Strongsville has pushed for an interchange at Interstate 71 and Brunswick’s Boston Road, while Brunswick pushed back in an effort to preserve its growing neighborhood"
"State Representative Tom Patton overrode the system, ignored local desires, and dictated the interchange be completed through the law."
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/08/10/new-ohio-law-promises-to-tear-down-neighborhoods-for-highways
@SRLevine That's an odd thing. Do they justify it somehow?
@rgulick I've never done that, but I max out at maybe five miles at those temperatures.
@capntransit @davidzipper I wasn't sure if that was a live account or just an X mirror.
@rgulick Ooh, hate that. Hope we can normalize eTrike usage so there's not a stigma attached. Does it have any protection from the cold weather?
@samth @markstos I would go pretty far out of my way to avoid 3rd, at least east of High Street. 😬 She's nervy!
@samth @markstos What's your choice for route from the Ballantine Bike Hub to Target? I'd say 7th all the way to Kingston but I hate crossing 3rd Street there.
From David Zipper on X:
In 6 days, the NY Times has run 4 articles about e-bikes -- all negative.
A few other stories the paper might consider:
🔹 E-bikes pollute far less than even electric cars
🔹 Compared to autos, e-bikes pose minimal risk to other people
🔹 Unlike cars, e-bikes provide exercise
Data suggests fears of bike lane-induced vehicle traffic nightmare on Old Georgetown Road are unfounded
"Overall traffic flow has been unaffected: “In the northbound AM and PM peak directions, travel times along the entire corridor increased by about 60 seconds since implementation of the bike lanes...Southbound, travel times initially increased, but have since reduced to the levels before the bike lane project.”
@chrisphin @vaurora That's a weird field to find that few choices in though. What about "Doctor" or "Sergeant" ?
Well done Indianapolis! No more turning on red in the downtown Mile Square. Had to outmaneuver State Representative and anti-local-government activist Aaron Freeman to get the job done.
(Possibly paywalled)
No-turn-on red signs are coming to downtown Indianapolis. Find out where
"You can’t change the United States from a country that builds subways for $2 billion/km in New York and $1 billion/km elsewhere to a country that does so for $200 million/km if all you ever do is talk to other Americans...it’s even harder to sell infrastructure when it’s said to cost $300 billion to turn the Northeast Corridor into a proper high-speed line, where here it would cost $20 billion."
Pete Buttigieg, Bent Flyvbjerg, and My Pessimism About American Costs
@leopardboy @NefariousAryq I know! It's a Ford F-250, right?
@samth @markstos @bloomington_in The hills on Hunter don't bother me (on my ebike) nearly as much as the stop signs. But a good route south of 7th and north of Sheridan would be nice.
@codykirkp
@MathCancer
@kmakice
@schmonz
@RuthMalan
Are all Bloomingtonians. Some of them may have left town though.
@markstos On this server or just anywhere?
@markstos Henderson and Hunter. It's finished now, but the switch from one way to two-way is weird and will take some getting used to.
@MileslyObservant Things are tough on husbands 🙁
EBike incentive programs in North America
North American cities need to push for secure bicycle parking
"As more professionals opt to bike to work, the question looms: where do these bikes go during the workday? Many downtown office buildings and commercial spaces lack the infrastructure to accommodate this influx. Without adequate facilities, these bicycles end up chained to poles, stacked against walls, or worse – left at home."
https://momentummag.com/north-american-cities-need-to-push-for-secure-bicycle-parking/
Smidgen of progress here. Fall 2023 now announced as the go-live date for California's ebike rebates.
California E-bike Incentive Project | California Air Resources Board
I mean, who would want a nice park when you could have an off-ramp instead? San Diego City Council approves diverting park improvement funds to freeway off-ramp repairs
San Diego City Council approves diverting park improvement funds to freeway off-ramp repairs
@Bman @tmalesys Oh, that's useful. I've been wondering how common bike/ped fatalities are. Looks like almost exactly a ratio of 150:1 cars to bikes.
@snk does "BUILD MORE BIKE LANES!" count as actionable feedback?
@mobileharv Risk of injury and death comes from exactly one place: being hit by a car. The speed of the bike means diddly squat.
@pvonhellermannn Coincidentally, over a quarter of the £530,000 donated to Rishi Sunak last year was from supporters with interests in oil, gas and aviation.
Rishi Sunak accepted cash from fossil fuel investors in campaign to become PM
@ttpphd I'd prefer to think that Henry was on his way to the grocery store or cafe, and didn't feel any need to use a car for those trips.
@carrideen Best of luck in your new position!
@BrentToderian Interact with people who respond to our toots.
"It's not my duty as Mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. It's the same as if you bought a cow, or fridge, and then ask me where you're going to put them."
~Miguel Anxo, Mayor of #Pontevedra, #Spain (7 times re-elected).
(via Cycling Professor on X)
@ryanhoulihan vive la différence!
How Auto Debt is Holding Millions of Americans In Custody — Sometimes Literally
"For the average American, a lifetime of car dependency often begins at the auto lender's desk. A whopping 87 percent of new cars and a significant 34.5 percent of used cars are bought with loaned money, bringing our national auto debt total up to $1.56 trillion in the first quarter of 2023."
@festal So are there four dead-end streets ending at the intersection?
Long Beach police blame the victim after a woman died when she was apparently knocked off a tandem bike by a hit-and-run driver.
"Police say they sideswiped a stopped car while riding in the bike lane on 2nd Street near Marina Drive.
A more likely explanation, however, is that an impatient driver tried to cut into the bike lane to go around stopped traffic, and hit the pair’s bicycle — something we’ve all seen drivers do before."
Little Rock with extensive plans for a bike network over the next five years. Hope it comes to fruition! #LittleRock #Arkansas #trails
https://metroplan.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/CARG-ExecSumm04_13_2023.pdf
Gen Z, Millennials 90 Days Past Due on $20 Billion in Auto Loans in 2022
"After an unprecedented borrowing spree, many Gen Z and Millennial drivers are struggling to make payments on their auto loans, pushing serious delinquencies among their age groups to multi-year highs. That’s as overall delinquency rates hit and surpassed pre-pandemic levels."
Gen Z, Millennials 90 Days Past Due on $20 Billion in Auto Loans in 2022 | GetJerry.com
@rbellinger Great they rode instead of driving!
@cra1g Hills are what the "e" part is for 🙂 I have a similar commute with maybe less or slower traffic, but highly recommend it!
Interesting point comparing multi-use paths to stroads: "MUPs often try to serve both people enjoying a place (like with streets) and people trying to get somewhere else (like with roads). If the path gets crowded, has poor visibility around corners, and people moving at significantly different speeds, then it fails as both a recreational amenity and a transportation route."
Still, I'd rather bike lanes be added to roads without MUP's first.
Are Multi-Use Paths the “Stroads” of Active Transportation Infrastructure?
"Recently in Mattapoisett, someone drove into the Lions Club’s roadside sign and destroyed it. The sign was apparently not wearing bright colors or blinking lights. We only know this crash happened because the guy who maintains the sign is a Monty Python fan:"
https://stronghaven.substack.com/p/a-troubling-sign
California making a little progress to their ebike incentive program. I bet every voucher is snapped up within minutes if they ever manage to get it open.
"We are in final development on the e-bike retailer application, retailer portal and project website. The retailer portal will be used for retailers to quickly look up vouchers and track their payouts."
(What's the deal with disabling clicks on a simple FAQ page?)
@Streetsweeper In the big/midsized/small sense.
@Streetsweeper I'm no expert. But Bloomington's around the same size, and I think it would make a lot of sense here.
We Need a Department of Sidewalks
"Local departments of sidewalks would shift power and financial costs away from adjacent property owners, restoring efficient, equitable, and accountable maintenance. And they would consolidate all the functions currently scattered across agencies, creating more coherent and navigable regulation."
The Dramatic, Necessary Change We Need to Make to America’s Sidewalks
@dsacer Thanks, that helps! If the speed limit is 35, I suppose traffic is mostly in the 40-45 mph range?
Bike lanes along El Camino? Caltrans proposal catches city off balance
Not sure exactly what's going on here, but certainly a bit of paint next to 50 MPH traffic isn't going to do anything to encourage biking. The article screams "CALTRANS REPLACING PARKING WITH BIKE LANES!" so we know where they stand. Anyone have more insight into this?
#PaloAlto #CalTrans #UrbanPlanning #BikeLanes
Bike lanes along El Camino? Caltrans proposal catches city off balance
Pedestrians gain space as Seattle closes part of Pike Street to traffic
"The decision to close off this segment of Pike Street is aimed at creating a “green and healthy” street, according to city officials. While the closure began last week, Seattle Department of Transportation officials still need to install street furniture and other planned upgrades to make the space even more pedestrian and cyclist friendly"
@motorisms It's an ill wind...
@jasonrobot Can't speak to which bike is best for your situation, but ebikes are awesome and you should get one 🙂
@ryan2one3 If the users they are for are the ones getting tickets for disobeying them, I'd have to say they aren't for anyone.
@creamatine As the BikingInLA blog observed, bike riders should observe the law, but they have a much better view of the road and pose significantly less danger to others around them, which should be reflected in any fine, but usually isn’t.
Bike riders in Barrie, Ontario were fined $180 each for running a stop sign in a community safety zone.
"Stop signs are for everyone, including cyclists," provincial police stated on social media. "Yes, you can get a ticket for not stopping at a stop sign on a bike."
(No word on who speed limit signs are for)
'Yes, you can get a ticket,' Cyclists slapped with hefty fine for blowing through stop sign
Manhattan Beach Police Department: "Giving a 13 year old an electric bike that exceeds 30 mph, that lacks required safety equipment, and a driver without any sort of understanding of the rules of the road is just a recipe for disaster."
Hey MBPD, want to know what's really a recipe for disaster? Giving a 19-year-old a two-ton pickup truck that exceeds 70 mph.
'We tried to warn you' say police during crackdown on illegally fast electric bikes
@miyelsh I walked through German Village maybe 10 years ago, and it was pretty nice. Haven't tried biking in Columbus yet though. Is there a bike share?
Minnesota teenager on his way home after a two year, 20 country bike tour
"After a “few years of unconventional education,” cycling across 20 different countries and four continents, Swanson is finally on his way home, and will begin studying at the University of Minnesota in September."
““I love exploring new places, always seeing new people and roughing it out here...not excited for (the trip) to end, but excited for what’s to come.”
Two teenagers set off on a cycle trip around the world. It didn’t go according to plan | CNN
@skry Hey Pete Buttigieg! Did you know trains aren't affected by bad weather?
@ccferrie @Niall Maybe you should turn some car lanes over to scooters
From jessecase on the birdsite: "The news is always like: "America has banned wheelchair ramps because they weren't in the Bible. Finland has made ice cream free."
@jonathan_maus were any buses affected?
In praise of walk-up windows: A coffee window in Minneapolis
"What makes Roundtable’s window so great is its deceptively simple space, both well-thought out and subtle. The brick wall shades the window until the afternoon, a key for summer days...the roof of the one-story building drains into a custom rain garden that Person had installed."
#minneapolis #coffee #UrbanPlanning
In praise of walk-up windows, an emerging trend in the Twin Cities - MinnPost
New Orleans: B-. Excellent ebike share program, and the Lafitte Greenway is a gem. But the French Quarter is just about unnavigable: street signs are a rarity, half the roads are tooth-rattling bumpy, and everything is one-way. Some of the roads are too small to accommodate a bike AND a car, so you have to wait in a line of ten cars trying to get through.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but here's what Meta is going to do:
- They will launch a Mastodon image with about a million servers. Lots of people will sign up for it, because it's fast, and because it's Facebook.
- They will add a bunch of cool new features, don't ask me what. Shopping, news feeds. A bunch more people will sign up to get access to them.
- Finally they will announce that they're rebranding as "Facebook Chat" and that they're no longer going to support federation.
South Carolina GOP: We are pro-life!
So—free pre-natal care?
GOP: No
Extend child tax credit?
GOP: No
Paid family leave?
GOP: No
Universal pre-K?
GOP: No
Universal healthcare?
GOP: No
Gun reform?
GOP: No
How exactly are you pro-life? 🤔
GOP: Death penalty for women who have abortions.
@Rhodium103 @esvrld I used to buy that argument. Then ValuJet happened. 110 people died because they chose to save a buck by using an airline that cut corners on safety. Lives are too important to be left to the free market.
@Loukas then he took the helmet off again—but it took hours and hours to get me out. I was as fast as—as lightning, you know.”
“But that’s a different kind of fastness,” Alice objected.
The Knight shook his head. “It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!”
How the city plans to address Indianapolis' dangerous trail crossings
"the City-County Council introduced a proposal on June 5 that would create greenway crossing zones. They would be similar to school zones.
Poor lines of sight, fast driving speeds, high traffic volume, and designs that don't adequately discourage reckless driving are some of the problems at trail crossings, cyclists and pedestrians said."
@indianaclimate Kind of wish I'd noticed that before I went out and mowed the lawn 😬
#ClimateDiary weather could not be more perfect, low 70's and sunny. Spent a lot of last week indoors due to Canada smoke swirling around. #BloomingtonIN
Baltimore Close to Approving $70 Billion Transportation Plan
The region’s proposed long-range plan includes over $11 billion for transit projects, but also billions in road widening projects. Seems positive overall though.
@jab01701mid Gilligan's Island reruns
This is a weird street design. A single car lane to handle both directions, with bike lanes on either side that the cars jump into in case of conflict, and a car storage area:
storage -> bike lane - car lane - bike lane
Seems a lot safer to have a two-way bike lane separated from the cars:
bike lane -> bike lane -> storage -> car lane
I suppose the car lane would need to be a bit wider to accommodate car conflict getting through.
#BikeLanes #cycling #UrbanPlanning
New Road Design Seems Like A More Efficient Way To Kill Cyclists
This will be a huge change to the downtown if anything significant comes of it. Interesting comments, both yea and nay, here:
College-Walnut corridor study: Thursday meeting set to continue with “starter ideas”
Bloomington, IN hears public input on College and Walnut corridor study
"The study aims to identify improvements needed to ensure safer passage for pedestrians and bikers and make mass transit more efficient while facilitating safe and efficient passage for drivers of cars.
The city has floated the idea of changing the parallel roads to two two-ways, an option suggested in 2018 by contractor Toole Design Group to reduce driving speeds."
City hears public input on College and Walnut corridor study
@IndyStar_Unofficial Not too sure about these two-lane roundabouts. Don't they cause crashes when drivers need to switch lanes?
@phxrailfood I'm not sure they identified a reason. The former seems more likely to me.
Correcting the myths and misinformation regarding Toronto’s bike lanes
"A number of mayoral candidates are not only threatening to rip up existing protected bike lanes that keep cyclists safe, but also adding oxygen to anti-bike arguments and sentiments that are not accurate and create “bike lash” situations...we decided to check in with Alison Stewart, the director of advocacy and public policy at Cycle Toronto"
#Toronto #cycling #UrbanPlanning
Correcting the myths and misinformation regarding Toronto's bike lanes
@hesgen So low-traffic neighborhoods have...low traffic? 🤔
One of the more underreported findings from "The High Cost of Free Parking" was that there is a psychological barrier against parking out of sight of the destination. It's why walking a zillion miles across a Wal-Mart parking lot is acceptable but parking in a garage around the corner is not. Not sure what can be done about that. #Parking
@bobwyman @jeffjarvis Every so often the media interviews some other Republican candidates to find out what they think of Trump.
@Gerg Pics or nah.
This is nice. A one-way, one lane road for cars with a two-way bike path next to it. It's only for a few blocks for a connector though. #BloomingtonIN #UrbanPlanning #BikeLanes
I don't normally link to Reddit but this is spectacular. This guy was going to get out of the parking garage and nothing was going to stop him.
@cargot_robbie It doesn't look or feel too bad, though we're under an air quality alert.
@bikepedantic I wonder if installing car lanes requires the same public debate?
Getting ready to bike out into the haze. Tusken Raiders unite!
@msquebanh What would you suggest?
What are the best bike advocacy organizations out there? Looking for groups that work for more bike lanes/multi-use paths, give bikes to the needy, things like that.
Police Cite Cincinnati Cyclist Hit by Car While Riding in Opposite Bike Lane to Avoid Construction
“There’s a stretch right in between Northside and Camp Washington where the bike lane’s closed on Spring Grove due to construction that’s been ongoing for like the last two years,” he said. “It’s not the entire part, but there’s a bit and it’s confusing and there’s a sign that tells you to cross the street.”
In bid to protect pedestrians, Indy defies state lawmaker to push no-turn-on-red proposal
Republican Senator Aaron Freeman calls local government "stupid" so I think the city council should pass a resolution saying, "I know you are but what am I?"
In bid to protect pedestrians, Indy defies state lawmaker to push no-turn-on-red proposal
@enobacon Ah, no, I thought you were saying they were taking away a car lane for some experimental bike/ped options. Oh well 🙁
@enobacon so it's like a pop-up experimental thing?
Improvements for the Marvin Braude Beach Trail have reached the finish line
"The Marvin Braude Bike Trail is a 22-mile path that stretches along the Los Angeles County coastline, from Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades to Torrance County Beach in Torrance. The $6.5 million project connects the City of Santa Monica’s dedicated bikeway and pedestrian path through the City of Los Angeles to Will Rogers State Beach."
Improvements for the Marvin Braude Beach Trail have reached the finish line • The Malibu Times
Southwest Greenway opens in Corktown, Connecting Michigan Central to the Riverfront
"A new connector for bikes and pedestrians has opened just west of downtown. The Southwest Greenway will connect Roosevelt Park and Michigan Central in Corktown to the under-construction Ralph C. Wilson Centennial Park along the West Riverfront on West Jefferson...The Southwest Greenway is also a part of the 27.5-mile Joe Louis Greenway, currently under construction"
#Detroit #cycling
https://detroit.urbanize.city/post/southwest-greenway-opens-corktown
Study looks at next stage of Indianapolis highway development
"The study will focus on I-65 and I-70 routes that crisscross the city. INDOT will engage the public by reaching out for ideas and solutions. Transportation upgrades will include considerations of quality of life, economic mobility and equity.
Conversations with a wide variety of key stakeholders and community representatives are planned to generate ideas."
Study looks at next stage of Indianapolis highway development
Floridans: We should have a law that says our governors can't run for another office while governor, so they can focus on running the state without distractions.
DeSantis: We should have a law that says screw you.
Okay, I have to say the Daily Kos snark game is on point.
"once you've been released from the hospital after jabbing two pairs of barbecue tongs in your ears rather than listening to another word of that"
"There's a perfectly good explanation for this, and the explanation is that Ron DeSantis has the charisma of a melted plastic spoon."
"DeSantis' announcement speech was so boring it would be illegal to subject lab rats to it"
If Ron DeSantis could read a room, he'd be very upset right now
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Florida:
"There can be little doubt as to why the NAACP had to take this extraordinary action. Under DeSantis, Florida is hiring thug cops, shredding education, and trying to erase Black history while suppressing Black voting, damaging economic opportunities, and encouraging hatred for marginalized groups that inevitably leads to violence."
https://kareem.substack.com/p/how-desantis-destroyed-florida-is
Sooo...Columbus. Whatcha thinking?
"A cyclist is advocating for biking infrastructure in Columbus after a driver threw a drink at him while riding on Wednesday.
The attack marked the second in a week, after the first incident occurred in southwest Columbus. A suspect has been arrested and charged with assault. The second incident happened Wednesday night in the Linden area."
Cyclist calls for protected bike lanes in Columbus after incident with driver
Taylor Swift Fans Give Public Transit a Well-Timed Boost
"As it turned out, MARTA did in fact move nearly 140,000 riders from the four stations surrounding the concert venue that weekend — triple the ridership of a typical weekend, according to an agency spokeswoman — with peak demand on Friday night when Janet Jackson was also performing."
Might help to offset the emissions from Taylor's private jet, I suppose.
With remote work, job-switching is going to become easier than ever before. I wonder if employers will have any interest in incentives to keep workers. Based on all the tech layoffs, I suppose not. #remotework #technology
Buttigieg, Whitmer pitch EV corridor with Canada
"The United States and Canada plan to launch what’s being described as a binational electric vehicle corridor stretching from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Quebec City."
Too bad they decided to this instead of throwing down a high-speed rail line.
A North Vancouver cyclist is recovering after T-boning a bear in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. Cyclist. T-bone. Bear.
"...had to make a split-second decision – either slam on the brakes and come to a stop right next to the equally startled bear, or attempt to scoot around him and keep going.
Unfortunately, Milner and the bear both chose the same exit strategy."
'Glad to be alive': Man T-bones bear while cycling in North Vancouver
@nomorefreeways I don't think they've 100% won this battle. I wish them luck though.
How Tennessee's lack of public transportation is failing immigrants
#UrbanPlanning #Memphis #PublicTransport
Why the U.S. builds more three-car garages than one-bedroom apartments
Why the U.S. builds more three-car garages than one-bedroom apartments
Teach them a real lesson, Pete! Put money into building high speed rail lines instead!
DOT Secretary Buttigieg wants to hold airlines accountable for delays, cancellations
IRS: We can't explain why we audit five times as many black people as anyone else
Also the IRS: But we won't tell you how we choose who to audit at all 🤔
Black CPAs: IRS must end higher audit rates for Black taxpayers
@samth @markstos I think this was before City Church moved in, but I remember the principal as being very insistent that it wasn't safe to get there any way other than on the bus or driving.
@samth @markstos there were a lot of people doing that when we were there, until the principal came out and yelled at us 😲
@jd I would jump on that and straight to the bottom we would go!
I don't see how they can crown a new king without a strange woman lying in a pond throwing a sword at him.
@LoneLocust @evoterra That's what I did. The rack on my Prius is supposed to hold two ebikes, but I haven't taken it on any long journeys like that.
@markstos Congrats to Hopi! Hope she votes for lots of new bike infra!
@forpeterssake Hopefully your city planners are working on better transit and biking operations to make cars even more unnecessary, before it's too late.
Little article on Why Cars Are Bad, but it's always nice when one of these slips out into a non-specialized site #UrbanPlanning #BanCars
The Road to Nowhere
Planners envision grand global boulevard along US 1
"The Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) has wrapped up a US 1 multimodal and roadway intersection analysis in Coral Gables and has presented recommendations with the grand vision of transforming US 1 into a boulevard."
Sounds really cool, but I have a hard time believing it will ever make it past the planning stage.
Level of Service: the destructive force behind deadly street design
"Level of Service (LOS) is used to grade intersections as acceptable or unacceptable. It’s the key to traffic analysis and it has nothing to do with safety. LOS is a metric about how long you sit at a light, a stop sign, or how long it takes you to zip through a corridor. The longer it takes you to drive, the “worse” the LOS."
https://speakeasy.substack.com/p/level-of-service-the-destructive
@pleaseclap Those didn't put money into the economy, only into offshore bank accounts.
@mral I should have put the text in quotes. It's all from the Biking in LA site that I linked.
Culver City to bike and bus riders: drop dead.
The highly successful Complete Streets project received overwhelming public support going late into the night at Tuesday’s council session.
Yet they still voted 3 to 2 to remove the protected bike lanes in favor of a shared bus and bike lane, in order to add another traffic lane so more drivers can go zoom, zoom to their hearts content.
Cincinnati: B+. Good riverfront paths, a bike share, and some good options heading north. Bike share with ebikes. Sounds like they have some good plans moving forward too.
Indianapolis: C. Getting some good paths and bike lanes together, but no good incentives to get people out of their cars. Bike share, no ebikes last I looked, that might have changed.
Grading some cities for visiting bikers:
Orlando: D-. No bike share, no bike lanes. Sidewalks with cut-throughs every fifty feet.
Memphis: B-. Most of the city is pretty awful, but the downtown is nice, lots of paths and some streets that are closed to cars. Bike share with ebikes
Lexington: C. They've made an effort to provide some wider paths for pedestrians and bikers, but the traffic is horrendous. Badly needs a few blocks closed to cars. No bike share
Amish switching to e-bikes
“It’s a lot quicker to jump on your bike and go into town than it is to bring your horse into the barn, harness it to the buggy, and go,” David Mullett, a member of the Old Order Amish Church and owner of an e-bike shop in Ohio, told the blog This E-Bike Life.
NIMBY's in Florida...who would have guessed?
"The Gainesville City Commission has voted to pass three new ordinances that undid the fall 2022 zoning laws that allowed for more multifamily housing in different places across the city."
#UrbanPlanning #Gainesville #Florida
Gainesville commissioners continue undoing single-family zoning laws
This Florida Town Rode a Rail Trail to an Economic Revival
"Winter Garden made the locally controversial decision to route the West Orange Trail directly through the middle of downtown. Plant Street was reconfigured with the trail running through a large center median (which would become the base for several civic projects to come)."
It's near Orlando, which is lousy for biking as far as I can tell. But I'll visit it if I have a chance!
@bettybarcode All those flyover states look the same to me 😂 Thanks for catching that!
@bettybarcode 
Bike path war continues as Greengarden residents sound off
Culver City, CA considering ripping out their complete streets project
Erie, PA fighting plans for a bike path
Brooklyn Academy of Music fighting a nearby protected bike lane
DC pauses plans to install a protected bike lane on a major six-lane boulevard
*sigh*
A coworker found this article: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/review_lane_width_and_speed_parsons.pdf
Seems to show that there's not much relationship between lane width and speed.
Bloomington had a new stop sign put in to slow drivers down. City narrowed the lanes on that road, expecting drivers to slow down that way, but they didn't. Anyone have any research that shows narrower lanes slows drivers down?
There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. Which is why you have to change clothes four times a day, in the spring.
@enobacon Obsidian is basically that. https://obsidian.md/
@KPED My bike has six levels of pedal assist. I think someone would have to be in pretty good shape to outpace me at the top level!
@benfulton@urbanists.video Got yelled at again today...by a bunch of kids in a Prius. What, were they mad my bike was more environmentally friendly than their car? 🤔 #BikeTooter
@pleaseclap Doing ok? Anywhere near the fire?
@crosswalksLA The secret is interaction. If you're just here to get clicks you probably won't see much success.
Award-Winning Complete Street Just Another Deadly Stroad
"As we examined this location, I reacted with shock to the conscious indifference the design demonstrates to the safety of anyone outside of an automobile. It was only later that I was informed that multiple industry organizations have recognized Ager Road with some of their highest awards."
The Ohio legislature doesn't understand induced demand
"The interchange proposal, added to the final version of the state’s $13.5 billion transportation budget bill passed by the legislature, will supposedly ease congestion in heavily developed areas of Strongsville around the South Park Mall at State Route 82 and I-71."
"Bob Kotchenreuther, who has run his dry cleaning business for so long that he ended up tattooing the shop name Cleveland Park Valet on his forearm, doesn’t think bikers are his clientele. “It’s hard for them to hold dry cleaning on one hand and steer with the other,” he says."
Yeah, I guess you can't carry all that much stuff on a bike, right people?
#cycling #cargobikes #bikelanes
https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2023/04/05/dc-connecticut-avenue-bike-lane-designs
@wesley That's a good question. I'll have to see what I can find...
@dpscifi @velobetty Do you drive around Manhattan rather than walk?
Car-Free Earth Day in New York
"Open Streets: Car-Free Earth Day – an annual event hosted by NYC DOT to promote activism and education surrounding climate change, sustainability, and more sustainable modes of transportation. This year's celebration, to be held on Saturday, April 22nd, will include seven signature event locations and 23 community produced locations"
https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pr2023/carfree-openstreets-earth-day.shtml
Mitt Romney doesn't understand induced demand.
"I'm not going to spend money on buying e-bikes for people like me who have bought them — they're expensive," he said. "Removing automobile lanes to put in bike lanes is, in my opinion, the height of stupidity, it means more cars backing up, creating more emissions."
@breadandcircuses @mbonsma Yelling in front of your kid is perfectly appropriate when someone's done something worth yelling about.
Call it "Car Storage" rather than parking.
"To start, I think it’s important for us to use the phrase “car storage” over “parking.” This may seem trivial, but when you hear the phrase “car storage” you start to understand that we have been subsidizing the storage of private property in our public spaces for decades. And that space is not free to build."
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2023/03/19
#ebike #PearlsBeforeSwine #JefTheCyclist
@markstos I was thinking Cascades was more like a 10-minute rappel from my house!
This Dallas Coffee Shop Wants to Build Community. The City Wanted It to Build Parking Spaces.
"Due to an outdated parking code regulation, Sierra was required by the city to have 18 parking spots to accommodate its more than 1,600 square feet of restaurant space (which includes 400 square feet of a detached garage). Current city code requires at least one parking space for every 100 square feet for restaurants."
@forpeterssake It's interesting, too, that Dad seems to assume there will always be roads for private vehicles to get straight to his store. I wonder how much business they lost due to super convenient six-lane expressways heading straight to the Home Depot in the suburbs?
@qag I'm thinking this is going to slow down traffic a whole bunch!
@markstos slappin people about
https://mark.stosberg.com/ron-smiths-record-on-sidewalk-equity/
"My dad always said, ‘No matter what, recession, depression, we’ll still be able to eat.’ Then came bike lanes.” 🤔
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/april-2023/bikes-vs-business/
@Steveb My bike showing its age, I think 😕
@Steveb 30 miles would be a full battery drain for me. Is it very flat, or do you just use very minimal assist?
@h_thoreson Like, more than 280 characters long?
@milubo @A_Passion_for_Jazz@jazztodon.com @jazz @jaztrophysicist
The hilarity of the audience didn't distract Parker, who, playing with his eyes wide open and fixed on the middle distance, never once looked at Stravinsky. The loud applause at the conclusion of "Koko" stopped in mid-clap, so to speak, as Parker, again without a word, segued into his gentle version of "All the Things You Are." Stravinsky was visibly moved. Did he know Parker's 1947 record of song was issued under title "Bird of Paradise?"
@milubo @A_Passion_for_Jazz@jazztodon.com @jazz @jaztrophysicist
At the beginning of his second chorus he interpolated the opening of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite as though it had always been there, a perfect fit, and then sailed on with the rest of the number. Stravinsky roared with delight, pounding his glass on the table, the upward arc of the glass sending its liquor and ice cubes onto the people behind him, who threw up their hands or ducked.
@milubo @A_Passion_for_Jazz@jazztodon.com @jazz @jaztrophysicist
At the sound of the opening notes, played in unison by trumpet and alto, a chill went up and down the back of my neck. They were playing "Koko," which, because of its epochal breakneck tempo - over three hundred beats per minute on the metronome — Parker never assayed before his second set, when he was sufficiently warmed up. Parker's phrases were flying as fluently as ever on this particular daunting "Koko."
@milubo @A_Passion_for_Jazz@jazztodon.com @jazz @jaztrophysicist
This is a cute story. I'll transcribe it for the visually impaired:
As Parker's quintet walked onto the bandstand, trumpeter Red Rodney recognized Stravinsky, front and almost center. Rodney leaned over and told Parker, who did not look at Stravinsky. Parker immediately called the first number for his band, and, forgoing the customary greeting to the crowd, was off like a shot.
Looking forward to @Streetsblog reporting on new bike/ped infrastructure this spring and summer. Seems like there's been nothing recently!
@robkerr@a2mi.social @bikepedantic That's neat. Might try to do some of that with our council if I can make some time.
@philshapiro That's great! But we really need it in three days.
@pleaseclap What's the Tr*mp voter population of Richmond these days? I'm guessing 65-70% when you get far away from Earlham.
@sten @BrentToderian It might be interesting to graph the average age of the articles Brent posts. I wonder if they're getting older over time.
@mral I went with C because my rear tire went 4k miles before I replaced it, and I'm no lightweight!
@BackFromTheDud @spacehobo @DrOinFLA And how do you know he hates it, anyway? Maybe he's a fan.
@markstos @chronicallydave So where do you stand on replacing the four-way stops?
They won't be taking Claiborne down in New Orleans, unfortunately. But $500k is a pittance for upgrading, so at least they shouldn't be widening it.
#NewOrleans #ReconnectingCommunities
#UrbanPlanning
A highway split a Black New Orleans neighborhood. How can it heal? - Marketplace
@afterconnery As we know, a good working-class bloke will be buying a $50K pickup truck instead.
@forpeterssake My GoPro has a GPS in it, and after lots of trial and error I found a piece of software that would extract the path from the video, and another one that would draw the map :)
Thought I'd try to make some videos with my Christmas GoPro. Here's my first attempt, a ride down Bloomington's 7-Line on the east side.
Video killed the bicycle lane: Advocates, officials intervene after TV crew blocks PBL
"A couple of folks on Twitter said they notified downtown alder person Brendan Reilly’s (42nd) office about the obstruction. “Props to Ald. Reilly’s office staff,” one tweeted. “I called them at 10:15 a.m. to let them know about this obstruction. They just told me that someone went out there, ticketed these people, and ensured that the bike lanes are now clear.”
@tomflood@mstdn.social Does it have back seats? You need a place for the kids to sit.
"The intersection of Rockville Road and Girls School Road is in the top one percent for crash rates in the state."
Maybe they should have the traffic, I don't know, GO SLOWER or something.
E-Trikes Are Coming to Rescue the Aging Suburbs
"Battery-boosted three-wheelers are increasingly popular with older riders. But safety fears and the lack of bike-friendly infrastructure could hold them back. "
"Since launching in January, the e-trikes have followed the same arc: More than half of customers coming into stores to ask about the RadTrike have been older adults, according to Radenbaugh."
Michael Hicks: "Remote work might be cheaper than commuting. Smaller wardrobe of suits, lower gas or toll costs, and less wear and tear on the automobile are all potential savings. However, homes must be modified to include a workspace, and broadband often must be more robust."
People could save a fortune by not having an automobile at all. But not every home has access to broadband yet.
@Michigander Mastodon FTW!
@qag Nice! Where is that?
"When controlling for every other variable possible, residents who drove more were exposed to less air pollution, and vice versa."
Can attest. I add a couple of extra miles to my bike commute to avoid sucking exhaust on the side path of the 45/46 bypass every day.
(And, of course, biking is fun. But don't tell anybody!)
#cycling #BikeTooter #BloomingtonIN #AirPollution
L.A. residents who drive less are exposed to more air pollution, study finds
Anyone have a favorite camp chair that's easy to carry in a bike pannier or basket? #cycling #BikeTooter
Lower income people tend to walk and bike more than wealthier Americans.
"After controlling for a number of observed and unobserved factors, we find that individuals in low-income, car-owning households are associated with up to 14% more walking trips and 33% more cycling trips in a week compared to higher-income households, on average. "
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136192092300024X?via%3Dihub
Sunny and 70 degrees in Bloomington, IN! Two weeks until winter is over!
@verbeeld @carnage4life Of course they say it's worth it. If it wasn't worth it, they'd really have to examine their life choices.
@foxyjewishmama My kitchen.
@Jon6705 @fuck_cars_bot You can also get financing @pleaseclap
I asked ChatGPT to write an article about this, and it came up with this gem of a paragraph:
"However, the move has also drawn criticism from some drivers, who say it will create additional traffic congestion in the downtown area. "I understand the need for safety, but this is going to make it much harder to get around downtown," said Tom Jones, a local business owner. "I worry it will hurt business if people can't easily turn onto our streets."
Straight out of the Herald-Times 😂
Thank you, Bloomington City!
In April of 2021, the Bloomington City Council voted unanimously to add nearly 80 “No Turn on Red” signs in the downtown and campus areas to increase safety. Both the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Commission and the Traffic Commission endorsed the measure, which was taken to protect pedestrians and cyclists, the most vulnerable users of roads, in the areas of heaviest pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
@ukuku Is that the battery over the back tire? What kind of range does it have?
@bikepedantic @Marrekoo What is it held back by?
@ATLpaul Atlanta seems to be doing a lot of good stuff!
@enobacon Ideally it would be so ubiquitous that it would be neither.
@bikevisionary Well. Maybe the legislature isn't uniformly horrible after all.
@DrTCombs For the life of me I thought someone was yelling at you all through the video 😂
@bikescape I mean, I'm at four years now so
Let's go Brandon! Brandon Johnson in the runoff for Chicago Mayor. Here's what he said about biking:
"We also need to install more well-designed, dedicated bike lanes, so that cyclists feel safe on our streets. By investing in viable alternatives to automobiles, we can reduce congestion and make getting around Chicago faster and more pleasant for everyone."
@jchyip Betteridge's law applies here, which is a bit unfortunate as it is a careful, thoughtful essay. The final paragraph reads:
"At the end of the day, EVs are a net positive for the climate. However, we need smart, targeted policies to maximize the benefits of EVs and reduce the need for automobiles in the first place."
@EgyptianAphorist Straight outta apartheid
@Free_Press Soon to be renamed the Chevy ProMax Electric and sold in a dealership near you! #EV #BanCars
Cleveland bike advocates rejoice after State Rep. Tom Patton pulls amendment that would have killed Midway project
"Cleveland bike advocates were feeling upbeat Thursday, a day after state Rep. Tom Patton said he’d withdraw a controversial amendment to the state transportation budget bill that would have killed a popular bike lane project planned for Superior Avenue in downtown Cleveland."
BikingInLA: "Talk about not getting it. Less than a month after People For Bikes named a fully separated Bloomington, Indiana bike lane the 5th best new bike project in the US, a local mayoral candidate wants to redesign it to make it safer for other road users. Because apparently, bikeways are there to protect buses and emergency vehicles, too."
@dirtyoldtown What makes you think RSN's are going to die anytime soon? I see the Big Ten Network signed a new $7B deal a few months ago.
@darrylxxx You biked it? Wasn't that... dangerous?
Plenty not to like about Brent Spence Bridge project
A big slab of federal dollars is going into replacing this bridge between Cincinnati and Kentucky, with all kinds of road widenings and car-friendly improvements. Can a small pro-transit organization stop the juggernaut?
Opinion: Plenty not to like about Brent Spence Bridge project
@Downshift Just enough to get to the train station 👍
@mekkaokereke @BrentToderian I wonder if there would be a way to get them bikes instead.
Mayor Hamilton: We're rich. Don't f#@K with us. #BloomingtonIN #upzone
@laventeot@home.social @motomatters Oxford is setting limits on private cars travelling on some of their streets. Protestors are conflating this plan with the 15-minute city concept.
@rebootkid How did his van's engine affect the AQI around him?
@DecaturNature No, but I would like to see more standardization in batteries. It would be nice to pop in somewhere and exchange my dead battery for a fresh one.
Here's a question I was asked if any #UrbanPlanning experts know the answer:
"I lived in Geneva for 4 months. Walking to the nearest grocery store was a walk across a one-lane street, and no more than 2 minutes.
How do these small stores and shops afford to function in an area with some of the highest real estate prices in the world? Is retail space availability required by regulation or are the economics different?"
@qag Enjoying the live tooting!
@NefariousAryq I just have multiple accounts.
Union Avenue in Memphis: A perfect example of how not to design a road.
(1) Design can be more influential on behavior than speed limits
(2) Other streets regularly intersect Union, but lack crosswalks or signals
(3) Numerous destinations means that more people will be present
(4) Marked, signalized crosswalks are located as much as 0.4 miles apart
(5) Sidewalks exist, but as an afterthought
Kalamazoo replacing vehicle lanes with bike lanes on Michigan Avenue
"The city of Kalamazoo is planning to add a bike lane, protected by a row of parking, on West Michigan Avenue from South Westnedge Avenue to Portage Street...a one-way street that is five travel lanes wide in some places -- will be reduced to three lanes"
#Kalamazoo #cycling #UrbanPlanning
Michigan Avenue losing vehicle lanes, adding bike lane in upcoming project
Time to stop worrying about #BanCars and focus on #DeinfluenceCars ?
@Popehat Invite the marriage group to play D&D.
@wesley_cook @AmericanFietser That's a very precise analogy. I bet I burn about as many calories per minute on my ebike as I do walking, I just travel five times as far.
@pleaseclap Let me know if you need a testimonial! I don't have a cargo bike but a lot of people ask if my bike was expensive. Well, I don't have to make a car payment soooo...
@wesley_cook I find that I get to the bus stop and then, instead of waiting for the bus, I just ride my bike all the way to the destination 😀 But in a bigger town I bet that works well.
Maine is considering rebates for ebikes. That's good!
But they're worried that they may be replacing bus rides instead. That's...what?
Michael Stoddard, executive director of the Efficiency Maine Trust: "It would save little or no energy or carbon if an e-bike simply displaces another bicycle, or a ride on a transit or school bus." 🤔
The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized
(Five years old now, but still interesting)
"To formally capture this phenomenon, they proposed a "toy mathematical model" that simulated the evolution of careers of a collective population over a worklife of 40 years (from age 20-60)."
The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized
If Congress was really concerned about #Southwestern cancelling all those flights, they would put a lot of money into better #train infrastructure.
@anitabyte Hopefully you can find some trails or protected lanes where you won't have to stress it so much.
@rob_telraam @davidzipper So like a bus?
Palm Beach, Florida residents are asking Gov. Ron DeSantis to cancel a plan to add bike lanes to A1A and widen a multiuse path.
By an odd coincidence, West Palm Beach was just announced as the 19th most deadly city in America for traffic, with more than 18 fatalities per 100,000 residents.
North Dakota Bill Would Eliminate DUIs On Bikes, Horses
#NorthDakota #cycling #horsing
https://fergusnow.com/2023/02/03/nd-bill-would-eliminate-duis-on-bikes-horses/
@Rickasaurus Depends. Which treatment will generate greater profits for the health providers?
@leopardboy @pleaseclap @DJGristle
Never done that, but I did know about it. Irvington does amazing Halloween celebrations every year.
@pleaseclap @DJGristle The weird thing is, Southern Indiana is mostly Southerners, so no surprise. But in the north, there were all these Seceders and Quakers who founded Earlham College and were very anti-slavery. But all of those people seem to have disappeared and left the whole state to the South.
@nerdbear Wow, this is a really fascinating study. The researchers simulated people owning autonomous vehicles by giving them their own chauffeurs for a while, and looked to see how they used them. Definitely some positives and negatives.
@uxmark Bloomington, Indiana. An hour south of Indianapolis and home to Indiana University. I like knowing where people are cycling in case I ever visit 😀
@mentallyalex I use the Like button when I read a post I particularly like, and I boost posts that I think people who are following me might be interested in.
Engaging Local Governments Effectively
"Local government is composed of elected and appointed officials that you probably know. They are your neighbors, friends, former classmates, or even co-workers. They rely on professional staff to advise them. The local government staff are accessible and their job description includes tasks that require them to be pathfinders in the process."
Bloomington's 7-line is on this list of the best new bike lanes.
#BloomingtonIN #cycling #BikeLanes #HoosierMast
Hellscape on Hesperian: Streetsblog shreds the new Hesperian Boulevard Project in San Lorenzo.
I'm not sure whether to laugh at the bad design or encourage them for at least attempting *something*.
#SanLorenzo #UrbanPlanning #cycling
Eyes on the Street: Hellscape on Hesperian - Streetsblog San Francisco
Coal, Fossil Fuels at Heart of Ohio Racketeering, Corruption
"In addition to locking Ohio ratepayers into subsidizing uncompetitive coal powered plants, (even one that’s in Indiana), the state has paved the way for counties to bend to pressure and intimidation tactics and ban clean energy in their boundaries, but not extended that authority to cover fossil fuel development."
Coal, Fossil Fuels at Heart of Ohio Racketeering, Corruption
From @Milana , in case you were thinking we can't build train tracks quickly 😉
A Nashville Vision Zero 15-member task force will convene for the first time on Jan. 30. I was interested in this quote from the article:
"Everyone wants to slow down cars, and the city knows how to do it."
I sure don't think everyone wants to slow down cars in my city!
@NefariousAryq Never be afraid to throw away code. Use version control, commit early and often , and write lots and lots of unit tests!
@rvaughnmd Stare at it through the window while it's out on the street charging, I guess
@sinabhfuil A (typical) bike helmet wouldn’t have prevented the concussion she suffered. They're good for falling off your bike but not much use against a motor vehicle.
A most bogus decision by Judge Colin Daly in Ireland.
"A 22-year-old cyclist who was injured when knocked off her bike by a truck had contributed to her own injuries by failing to wear a safety helmet, a judge said on Tuesday.
Judge Colin Daly cut Raissa Lopes De Andrade Aquino’s damages award by 20 per cent on the basis of contributory negligence."
:quality(70):focal(493x536:503x546)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/KG7FIMCCWVFSNPXLGUXQ3W7LFY.jpg)
Cyclist’s injury award cut by 20% due to not wearing safety helmet
@alanthwaits@noc.social I started this but it has now disappeared somewhere in the book stacks. I really liked what I read though!
@activetowns have a summary of anything? Orlando down by the convention centers is pretty horrendous for biking, though I've never been to the downtown.
@enobacon "We've tried everything! Signs! Different signs! Even more different signs!"
How New Orleans Revived — and Improved — Bike Share
"They proposed that Blue Bikes be run by a new nonprofit called Blue Krewe. The city would provide space for bike racks and waive permit fees...the City Council unanimously agreed. By September 2021, residents were kicking their legs over 500 shiny new rides in neighborhoods throughout New Orleans. Since then, they’ve made more than 289,000 trips."
#UrbanPlanning #cycling #NewOrleans
@ucaccessnow Why are they inaccessible?
@JonSparks @Cina@wandering.shop I've always found the road rising up to meet me to be pretty painful 🤨
@Transportist I wish they would have talked less about forcing workers back to the office and more about getting rid of cars.
@jcriecke anything to do with more people riding ebikes?
The former president says not to touch Medicare or Social Security in debt ceiling fight
"Republicans have vowed not to raise the federal government’s borrowing capacity unless Biden makes steep cuts to federal spending, potentially impacting social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare...he suggests targeting foreign aid, cracking down on migration, ending “left wing gender programs from our military,” and “billions being spent on climate extremism.”
Trump to GOP: Don’t touch Medicare or Social Security in debt ceiling fight
@eBikeChick Even a little 10MPH SwagCycle?
@kg6gfq Here's an NPR article. The guy was supposed to put out a research paper, don't know if he ever did.
Homeless camps are often blamed for crime but experts say it's not so simple
@urbandata "The peanutabout is here!"
Wow. I'll be curious to hear how people feel about driving/biking/walking on it.
@mobileharv There was discussion of a second loop around Indianapolis some years back. Died a quick death thankfully but with our crazy legislature you never know. #HoosierMast #Inlegis
Thinking about making some GoPro videos about local trails and multi-use paths. Is there a PeerTube instance for urbanists or cyclists? #cycling #BikeTooter #GoPro #video
@pleaseclap That will be handy, if you need to get into Hell in a hurry you can just slip in that little side door 😉
@pleaseclap Do they call it that to differentiate from Big Hell Gate Salt Marsh?
@BrentToderian Wow, almost seven years old now.
@bikepedantic @ggwash I'm happy that the rebates can go up to 75% of the ebike price, which is relatively a lot more than the ones for cars. And I'll start worrying about acoustic/electric bike conflicts just as soon as we have more bike lanes than car lanes 😀
@brian I don't know anything 😀 but you can just go to 
Find Apartments for Rent and Rentals - Get Your Walk Score and type in your address (or an address near you if you're worried about providing yours)
My neighborhood has a walk score of 4, but I've just realized there is somewhere I can walk to in 15 minutes.
The gas station.
"Mayor John Hamilton on Saturday condemned an apparently racist attack earlier this week near Bloomington’s B-Line trail."
You know, they probably could have said it occurred "near 4th Street, a place where drivers often have their cars".
#BloomingtonIN #transit #racism
@Hartley are you working with proteins or more generic folding things?
North Carolina’s Republican House speaker says he’ll only OK Charlotte’s $13 billion transportation plan if it focuses on widening roads instead of bike lanes.
"Moore stated that Charlotte officials should focus more on “road capacity” if they want the state legislature to endorse the city’s plan"
"It isn’t about the bikes, it’s about being able to get from Point A to Point B without dying. That shouldn’t be such a hard ask."
#Charlotte #UrbanPlanning #BikeLanes
Advocates, Lawmakers at Odds Following Cyclist's Death | Queen City Nerve
3 Martin Luther King Quotes That White People Are Afraid To Mention
"[America] has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about social justice and humanity”
@crowdotblack I must be buying cheap bags then 🤨 I've had two that have ripped out like that.
Naming my ebike "Mike" #cycling #ebike #BikeTooter
Really happy for John Fogerty. I've been reading a detailed history of Stax records, who also lost control of their catalog, so I wonder what was up with the labels in the late 60's / early 70's.
Five Decades Later, John Fogerty Finally Gains Ownership of CCR Catalog
Wyoming to ban electric vehicles
"The Wyoming Legislature is considering a resolution to phase out sales of new electric vehicles in the Cowboy State by 2035...The resolution’s sponsor, Sen. Jim Anderson, R-Casper, told Cowboy State Daily the intention of the proposal, titled “Phasing Out New Electric Vehicle Sales By 2035,” is to push back against bans on new sales of cars with internal combustion engines in states like California and New York. "
Take That, California! Wyoming Legislators Draft Resolution Banning Electric Vehicles By 2035
@SethRudy @overholt Unloading the top rack of the dishwasher first is a sin against nature and I will not hear any argument.
Holy mackerel, seems like ebikes are changing the nature of warfare.
"Ukraine is now using these 200-mile-range electric bikes with NLAW rockets to take out Russian tanks"
"Electric motorcycles and e-bikes are rapidly becoming a common tool employed by militaries around the world."
Ukraine is now using these 200-mile-range electric bikes with NLAW rockets to take out Russian tanks
Off the stroad again
I just can't wait to get off the stroad again
Dodging drivers who are texting with their thumbs
I can't wait to be off the stroad again
@clsytim I agree, but man, listening to NIMBY's going on about losing parking at council meetings just makes me want to break things.
OOwwww!
Colin Unsworth rode naked, 837 miles, from Lands End to John O’Groats with Sadie Tann.
"The couple, who rode a tandem bike, posed naked at various iconic locations during the 837-mile journey, including Edinburgh Castle and the Angel of the North."
Nude cyclist says 'there’s no better place' after Prince Harry sex confession
@KCNolanINDelCo How safe is your commute? Do you have bike paths or protected lanes, and can avoid speeding cars?
@bikegridnow "Fulton was piloted as a pedestrian-only street and it was INCREDIBLE."
I'm a Fulton and I endorse this message.
@NCC1941 Oh, I like that. What if I have to flip the bike over to fix the chain or something?
@MolnarSteven That would be easier on the beer I guess, less so on my back 😬
Good story on the Trump 2024 campaign.
"his SUV rolls...to another piece of Trump real estate, the Trump National in Doral, about eight miles from the airport in Miami-Dade County. There, he meets regularly with an impressive, ideologically diverse range of policy wonks, diplomats, and political theorists for conversations about the global economy and military conflicts and constitutional law and I’m kidding. He goes there to play golf." 😂
@darrylxxx Which is unfortunate because I bet a bike that could ride on a rail would be all kinds of fun!
@ObbieZ I could buy a lot of beer for the price of a trailer! 😉
@SRLevine The pannier is an M-Wave Reflex, ripped at the attachment point. (Still connected though, so I still put light stuff in it 😀 ) The dog food is canned, wet food, so it combines with the beer to be heavy and not at all bulky. A milk crate is probably the thing. Hopefully the beer won't be shaken up too badly by the bumpy roads!
What's the best way to carry a 12-pack of beer and a carton of dog food on a bike? My pannier tore out and all the pannier reviews only discuss volume, not weight.
@NefariousAryq I love Jetbrains. They jacked up their prices a bunch this year though, will have to reassess later.
Boost my toots and butter my biscuits, Grace Berger is back in the Hoosier lineup! #iuwbb #HoosierMast
@thechildofroth ah, clean drive trains. I remember them well.
A Richmond councilwoman asked the city to look into maybe dropping the city speed limit to 20MPH. They told her it would cost $2.5 million to do that 😂
"The administration’s legal team interprets the law to require a new 20 mph speed limit sign posted on every block that doesn’t currently have one, requiring hundreds of copycat signs which astronomically drive up the cost of the change."
@futurebird Interesting thread about getting around in New York.
Good op-ed from the Los Angeles Times on dumping parking minimums.
"Rather than minimum requirements for parking, cities should be enforcing maximum limits for parking spaces per building. The state took action to improve density of development around transit stops. It’s now up to Los Angeles to end parking minimums more broadly, as cities such as San Jose, San Francisco and San Diego have already done."
#UrbanPlanning #parking #LosAngeles
Op-Ed: L.A. should stop requiring developers to waste space on parking
@ATLpaul I parked at the #IndianaUniversity bike room today. 80% full instead of the usual 50%. I think everyone decided to leave their bikes indoors over break!
This really depresses me. I had the idea that once cycling infrastructure was in place, people would be happy with it. Seems like it's as much a battle to stop it from being taken back out though.
"An online petition calling for the bicycle lanes to be removed "without delay" has received more than 5,000 signatures since it was launched last week."
#cycling #UrbanPlanning #Maryland #BikeLanes
'Disastrous Mess': Drivers Complain About Bicycle Lanes In North Bethesda
GenX at 20: EAT THE RICH!
GenX at 40: EAT THE - wait, I'm rich. NO NEW TAXES!
Millenials at 20: EAT THE RICH!
Millenials at 40: EAT THE RICH!
@Mastopoet The house was going to be a wreck anyway. It's like trying to save a drowning man who insists on holding on to his anvil.
Eh. The building was probably looking at its phone. #BanCars
Fishburger restaurant in Driving Park damaged after car slams into building
@BourbonPlanner I think it's a case of "When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of his way."
@indianaclimate Does that basin include the east side of the Rockies?
@Grimulon I don't think that's true. A class 3 ebike can go 28MPH, presumably if it's powered by someone a lot more fit than I am 😀
Fairly incoherent article on ebikes from CNBC. The argument is something like, ebikes go faster than regular bikes, cars travelling 45MPH are deadly, so ebikes are dangerous. 🤔 But at least it's an article.
#cycling #ebike
Navigating the e-bike boom with America's outdated infrastructure
@markstos I don't suppose you were around in the 1970's when Richmond made the downtown pedestrian-only? I wonder what caused that to fail.
@jcriecke @davidzipper On the other hand, more people riding bikes will result in more people demanding bike lanes.
Very nice trail. I biked out 17th and Vernal to get to it, 17th is under construction but should have a nice bike lane before this time next year. Apparently you can pick up the Heritage trail at the Ellettsville end but I didn't see how to do that.
Decent article on ebikes on NPR. The reporter felt he absolutely had to find a "balancing viewpoint" near the end though 🙄
@chronicallydave A lovely bike route down 7th and Rollo wants to ruin it with stop signs every block. I sure hope he doesn't get reelected.
@enobacon Yeah, head on over to AA and suggest that. Let me know how it goes 😉
@bettybarcode The Great Tragedy of Science—The Slaying of a Beautiful Hypothesis by an Ugly Fact
Ann Arbor's Transportation Commission wants to bump the bike and pedestrian infrastructure budget to 20% of the overall transporation budget, up from 5 percent.
Ooh, I bet the NIMBY's will be up in arms about that! Love to hear the city council debating it.
#AnnArbor #Michigan #transport #UrbanPlanning
Does Ann Arbor need more protected bike lanes? Issue at center of budget talks
Exciting changes in store for #Louisville !
The multimillion-dollar 'Reimagine Ninth Street’ Plan will transform the six-lane thoroughfare into a street that's more pedestrian friendly with dedicated bus lanes and green space. The ‘Broadway All the Way’ project will work to improve one of the busiest streets in the Metro by adding bus rapid transit and enhancing pedestrian and bus shelters.
Louisville secures $24 million in federal funds for major transportation projects
@Fuzzbizz Hey, when it comes to drivers on the canal, Indianapolis is the place to be. #HoosierMast
4 skaters rescue driver who plunges into ice on Indianapolis canal
The Bus Rapid Transit Act would allocate $12 billion per year for five years to BRT projects, funneling dollars directly to transit operations and helping cities invest in the design and construction of new BRT systems, including overhauls of current bus routes.
@hendrik @rickmans I imagine the overall benefits of stretching outweigh any performance gain, except maybe for the most elite cyclists.
@jdoshna I suspect the bottleneck would not be the vans, but finding people to drive them.
@Streetsweeper Easy enough to designate a service area inside which trips must start and end.
10 cities where bike commuting is growing fastest in the US
"Of the more than 154 million Americans who commuted to work in 2021, just 616,153 did so by bike...Cars and public transit accounted for more than 120 million of all commutes."
https://stacker.com/society/10-cities-where-bike-commuting-growing-fastest-us
What do planners think about city governments providing free Uber rides for places and times where the buses don't go?
@PatrickRerat Are there spaces for cargo bikes?
The Undersupply of College Graduates Is Clobbering Indiana’s Economy
"...the state’s pipeline of college-educated workers is today about 27,000 per year. However, the net loss from brain drain is about 10 percent and growing. That means Indiana can expect only about 25,000 college graduates per year to finish college and live in Indiana. This is an economic development disaster."
Raising some awareness of walkability issues by framing it as a senior citizen's issue
"Many seniors may choose not to drive or be unable to drive due to various physical and mental challenges.
However, those seniors who are active and mobile – but do not have transportation – may experience more issues in these living communities."
#UrbanPlanning #Walkability #HoosierMast
What issues may senior living communities that lack transportation face?
@cyclist That's very good. Are you the author?
It's not that interesting to post a ChatGPT response to a prompt like "Explain why cars are terrible" as the AI will produce something just as confident and probably wrong as if you had prompted it with "Explain why cars are terrific".
@bikejourno So you're saying you already ate your hamster? 😂
@mobileharv Pretty interesting. I wonder how many current Congressmen are descendants of the slaveholders.
@TCinIndy "The Indianapolis area has averaged around 12-24 hours a year with wind chills below -20°."
I'd like to see this charted out. I wonder how it's changed over the last 20 years. #HoosierMast #INwx
Hey #Minnesota ? Your weather is down here in my back yard, drunk. I'm gonna need you to come get it.
@markstos @brb I went to Test! It was a junior high school then.
@NefariousAryq
Would you like it in a coat?
Would you like it with a goat?
@bikejourno @vesperto @tk I don't know if it's the same in the UK, but helmet laws are also a good excuse to harass minorities in this country.
I can't believe I found out about this just as the storm hits.
"The opening of a newly completed segment of the Karst Farm Greenway in Monroe County.
The 2.67-mile asphalt extension accommodates both pedestrians and cyclists...the project extends the existing 4.5-mile trail north to Highway 46 in Ellettsville. The entire trail now covers approximately 7.3 uninterrupted miles.
Teddy bears tossed for charity (Hoosiers up 17 on Butler) #iuwbb #HoosierMast
Utah drivers are killing pedestrians, bicyclists in record numbers
"Utah motorists had hit and killed 15 bicyclists and 52 pedestrians this year...the highest the agency has documented since at least 1994"
"The Department of Public Safety recorded 961 instances of vehicles hitting pedestrians as of Monday. That’s the highest since at least 2016. Vehicles had hit bicyclists 478 times – roughly within the state’s five-year average."
Utah drivers are killing pedestrians, bicyclists in record numbers
@pixiepancake Jessica Rabbit 😎
@JustAMomNamedMM@mstdn.social "I’m sorry, but if you ride a scooter to your office, I can’t take you seriously."
Same, but for people who drive cars all by themselves.
"Bicycles, which were purchased by Bloomington attorney Ken Nunn, are given to children for Christmas at the Boys and Girls Club on December 15, 2022 in Bloomington, Ind. Retired Bloomington firefighter Lee Chapman helped organize the giveaway."
(Photo gallery at the link) #cycling #charity #BloomingtonIN #HoosierMast
@cyklista Might get a different result if you used the hashtag #drivering
Power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics
"Six news outlets across Alabama and Florida with financial connections to the consulting firm Matrix LLC, a joint investigation by Floodlight and NPR finds. The firm, based in Montgomery, Alabama, has boasted clients including Alabama Power and another major U.S. utility, Florida Power & Light."
#Alabama #AlabamaPower #Corruption
In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics
@mobileharv Betteridge's law of headlines applies.
Auto loan debt currently makes up over 9% of all outstanding household debt. Its growth accompanied a rise in total household debt, which stood at $16.51 trillion as of November 2022, an increase of over $2 trillion since the end of 2019. Auto loan debt is the third-largest category of American household debt after mortgage debt ($11.67 trillion) and student loan debt ($1.57 trillion), both of which have also increased steadily since 2011.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-1388406328-8db55c94d1e6426c910bbaaf3b36b500.jpg)
American Debt: Auto Loan Balances Hit $1.6 Trillion in Q3 2023
@anxiousrage I thought Twitter's word economy was pretty cool until everyone started posting pictures of 1,000 words.
@drbeard79 @profchander But some of us are just good for nothing.
@enobacon "The search function will do full-text search across posts you’ve favourited"
The Reckless Driver Narrative Is Reckless. Stop Spreading It.
"What has changed dramatically is the number of times that the reckless driver is in a high-risk situation. Before the pandemic, most daily trips were made during periods of high congestion...Now, with pandemic conditions and then expanded work-from-home moderating congestion levels, most trips are made at unsafe speeds in environments filled with randomness."
The Reckless Driver Narrative Is Reckless. Stop Spreading It.
@Kyleric Is that in Goshen somewhere?
It occurs to me that a "hashtag synonym" feature might be usefully added somewhere. #BuiltEnvironment #UrbanPlanning #UrbanDesign #CityPlanning #CityDesign
Minneapolis Wants to Be the ‘Bus Rapid Transit Capital of North America’
"In Minneapolis, BRT buses like the D Line operate mostly in traffic, with some signal prioritization to trigger green lights when they’re falling behind schedule. Allowing riders to prepay fares reduces idling time as well. Metro officials say the BRT lines run about 25 percent faster than the regular bus."
#UrbanPlanning #BRT #minneapolis
Minneapolis Wants to Be the ‘Bus Rapid Transit Capital of North America’
@Popehat I wish I had an ilk.
Biking in LA slaps down an anti-bike lane op-ed in San Diego.
"Just wait until he sees how people drive, in their big, smelly, two-ton death-dealing machines as they text on their phones, roll stop signs and race to the next red light.
Of course, his proof that it’s a rip-off is that he and his husband don’t see bikes in the exact bike lane they’re watching, at the exact moment they’re watching it."
via @mobileharv Columbus, OH City Council Approves Funding for E-Bike Rebate Program
"Columbus residents eager to know how much of a discount the city’s new program will offer and what the eligibility requirements will be will have to wait for those details to be revealed.
“I know folks are probably very excited about their e-bike rebate, but we’ll officially launch the program in spring.” Barroso de Padilla said at the council meeting."
@markstos They could have moved the SUV to the little area between the bike lane and the road. Or just blocked 7th Street instead, I would have been good with that :) But I don't think they made a terrible decision.
@bikepedantic The NIMBY's would be up in arms about parking maximums around here. They don't pay so much attention to minimums one way or the other.
Still looking for the Mastodon #Hoosiers as the men are going to overtime in the national championship game!
@notjustbikes @Marrekoo ChatGPT's ability to produce snark-on-demand is one of its greatest features 😂
@markstos Nice. Are you going to present this to bike/ped ?
Not sure what I think about this. This police car is blocking the road so the car on the right can be gotten unstuck by a tow truck. But did they really have to block the bike lane too?
#BikeLanes #BikeLaneUprising #cycling #HoosierMast #BloomingtonIN
@profchander Screenshots of text without alt-text are what's driving me round the bend. 😂 You have 500 characters, use it!
"Indianapolis Public Schools officials are planning a May 2023 referendum to raise property taxes to fund the district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan. Charter schools – and there are dozens of them in the IPS district – want a significant share. IPS Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said that’s not going to happen."
#HoosierMast #Indianapolis #PublicSchools #CharterSchools
@vallery Could be straight out of a Hopper painting
@markstos Yep, that works. Thanks!
Never forget
Indiana state government is in the pocket of big oil. But of course we knew that.
"(Public law 180) takes away the power of local governments to prevent the use of fossil fuels and to enact other energy-saving and energy-producing regulations."
Reporting bias against scooters
"Why is it, that months later, the media fixates on the least important part of the incident - that is, that Stratton happened to be on an electric scooter at the time?"
#SustainableTransportation
#escooter
#MicroMobility
http://blog.benfulton.net/2022/12/reporting-bias-against-scooters.html
@elx might give that a try...
Attended a public input meeting for a new Greenway, but had to leave. I can't bear listening to the NIMBY's tell us why we can't have the cars drive any slower.
Got the wrong sock order from Bombas socks and they won't refund it unless I pay the shipping 🙁 I'm torn because I'm sure they donated some socks to somebody based on my order.
A $100 Billion Lesson In Why Building Public Transportation Is So Expensive in the US
"The U.S. continually breaks its own records for most expensive track miles on Earth, stretching the realm of credulity on costs for projects big and small. The problem has existed for decades, but it has been allowed to metastasize to such an extent that it is difficult to even fathom where the money is going."
A $100 Billion Lesson In Why Building Public Transportation Is So Expensive in the US
Hey Hoosiers, what's the best way to monitor #INDOT and advocate to them for better bicycle infrastructure?
@markstos Can't see that. There a permission I need?
@pollak What do you think of the Hammond discussion here?
How to Fix the Most Dangerous Streets in America
"There should be only two types of throughfares: streets and roads. Streets are for local wealth generation and welcome traffic only at slow speed, because high speeds destroy the value of place. Roads are for moving vehicles quickly, and should be kept free of businesses...Our mistake over the years is that we have allowed streets to become half roads and roads to become half streets."
@drosasielas Where is that, and will they get it plowed eventually?
@eifer Electric tricycles aren't annoying. Cars are annoying.
"I was attacked on my ride in Wellington (Oakdene Road) today. The guy gripped me around my neck & threw me on the ground. He threw me so hard I think I’m still trying to gather myself. He took my bike and rode off."
"The guy threw my bike down in the road at a later stage as the chain came off and he obviously couldn’t ride it anymore."
(My chain falls off all the time. I think we're on to a new security tactic.)
@straphanger The Cycling Ambulance Unit. Hey CBS I need a drama about this, stat.
@Eric_smith I wonder how the DOTE feels about it though. If they're antagonistic they could just throw, "Bike lanes are not feasible at this time" into every proposal.
@grecia @streetsblogmass I gots to try me some of them pogies
Cincinnati passes Complete Streets ordinance
"Under the new law, the Department of Transportation and Engineering (DOTE) will have a checklist to consider before moving forward with road improvement projects.
The list includes five categories: bike facilities, sidewalk and curb ramps, traffic calming, safety improvements and comfort enhancements. Within those categories are things like bike lanes, sidewalks and speed humps."
#Cincinnati #UrbanPlanning #Cycling
@dr2chase @bikepedantic I have to admit it would be cool to come up on a mile-long traffic backup and just fly over it 🤔
No word on whether the Prime Ministers' discussion passed the Bechdel Test.
Well. The things you learn.
"...the now-retired Wgasa Bush Line — which transported visitors around the outskirts of the park for more than three decades — was named after the African-sounding acronym for “Who Gives a S#@ Anyway?”
Could the five-mile monorail line really have been named for WGASA, whose company in the pantheon of foul-mouthed acronyms includes FUBAR and SNAFU?"
@uxmark 😂 Wonder if the trailer was strong enough to have a person in the canoe with a paddle
@nikcorg Then...is it actually the same bike? 🤔 #ShipofTheseus #BikeOfTheseus
@chronicallydave That's my content warning I threw up there. For all the delicate flowers who might be triggered by women's basketball, I guess 😀
@modacitylife is there no city council she has to work with? She just did everything by executive order?
I don't know who is interested in toots like this...but go Hoosiers! #iuwbb #HoosierMast
@foxyjewishmama I had a nice ride over to the Wild Detectives bookstore pre-pandemic. No idea what it's like now.
Anyone have an update on Central Avenue in Baltimore? It looks like they're finishing up new protected bike lanes, but I can't find an article about it that's not paywalled.
Bike lockers now available at five Los Angeles K line stations.
Memphis' pedestrian crisis continues
"Memphis has earned the distinction as the third deadliest city in the U.S. for pedestrians. That rating was granted by Smart City Growth after researchers compiled fatal and non-fatal data from 2016 until 2020."
A beloved zookeeper among people killed as Memphis' pedestrian crisis continues
@paulisci "It is possible to blame almost anything on the women, if you put your mind to it." 😂
Sales were almost definitely not helped by free parking downtown. Setting aside the attraction for drivers of cruising the streets to find that one perfect parking space, and whatever parking meter revenue was given up by the city, there's no telling how many people took advantage of the free parking to let their cars sit and take up space for several hours.
http://blog.benfulton.net/2022/11/the-high-cost-of-free-back-friday.html
@pleaseclap @pollak I can think of lots of good ways to do that; unfortunately since the only answer we're likely to get from the statehouse is to cut taxes on the rich, it's all academic anyway 🙃 #HoosierMast
@pollak No, it could be worse. The legislature could lower or eliminate gas taxes, which would most likely result in higher oil company profits rather than cheaper gas, as happened in Florida.
@pollak Disproportionately harm middle-income households. Households that make less than $30K spend around 3.5% of their income on gas, $30K to $60K are closer to 4%. There are better ways to use the surplus to help the poor than lowering gas taxes. #HoosierMast
"Indiana gas taxes are some of the highest in the nation right now. "
At least we're doing something right. #HoosierMast
@foxyjewishmama Indiana doesn't do trains. #HoosierMast
https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2022/11/24
@pleaseclap Carbon costs for airplane flights, that's interesting. I wonder if it's per seat or for the whole plane. And how would driving compare?
@mobileharv Certainly cars going slower is a good thing for pedestrians.
@bikeacrosscanada Isn't that like deciding where to put a bridge based on the number of people swimming across the river?
@verybritishproblems The British are always furious?
@taylorzwiftfc @davewalker I wonder how many prospective users don't have cell phones?
@carrideen that seems like a really dangerous google!
@carrideen Oh no, now I'm going to look for this everywhere 😬
@joshr @transitory @MartyCormack For heated gloves, how important is it to have heat for the fingers? Gloves that just heat the hands are way cheaper.
@sbg_arch Congratulations! What's the title?
"Check out our cool new bike infrastructure!"
😍 😍 😍
"Yes, here in Europe we really support bikes!"
😞
@MartyCormack @lactol I got an actual pizza bag like the drivers use, and strap it down with bungee cords. So far, so good 🤞
Really good article with discussions of safety improvements and statistics.
"Drivers (behind the windshield) are often given a pass for bad behaviour, while pedestrians are expected to assume equal responsibility for collisions. Obviously, though, drivers and pedestrians don’t share equal power. And drinking, texting or talking on the phone while walking isn’t illegal."
via @mobileharv
‘He was fast … he ran you right over’: what it’s like to get hit by an SUV
@nmcspadden @gbosslet Think it will have a wider effect on the definition of "meritless complaint" ?
Oh, well done, Minnesota 😂
(From the Guardian)
Can I put a trailer on my Magnum Cruiser? Coupled with my immense bulk I'm afraid of burning out the motor. #Cycling #ECycling #BikeTooter
@brb Is that a pannier or a backpack? My route to the store involves large speed bumps that I'm sure would break the eggs in a pannier!
The Kentucky Bourbon Trail Is A World-Class Bike Trip
"Kentucky is next level in terms of politeness...Everyone waves you through intersections and yields politely to let you in when turning, and in 5 days and over 200 miles, I did not experience a single rude driver, comment, or gesture or even once have a car come what I consider too close."
For Cyclists The Kentucky Bourbon Trail Is A World-Class Bike Trip
@holly@mstdn.io It's better now that you're here!
A boost plus reply-public seems to fulfill the need for a quote tweet perfectly well.
@tomflood@mstdn.social Could you paste text as text, or at least provide alt-text for the visually impaired?
@gbosslet I think I would have liked #HoosierToot 🤔
@brb Revolution is my favorite in Bloomington, but you might want to add Bike smiths and Bicycle Garage as well. #BikeTooter #cycling #indiana
"Portlanders can be placed into one of the four following groups based on
their relationship to bicycle transportation: “The Strong and the Fearless,” “The
Enthused and the Confident,” “The Interested but Concerned.” The fourth group are non-riders, called the “No Way No How” group."
I note this represents _adult_ cyclists, or at least teens. There probably needs to be a separate category for children.
Okay, I'm making a pledge to not read any more screenshots of text with no alt-text. There are better ways, my friends.
@ATLpaul What's the new part? The stairs?
@CSotD "I’ve been thinking of posting that, dammit, there are two O’s in “Mastodon,” but realized it would only result in people saying that they were opening accounts on Moostadon." 😂
@Simon Thought you were referring to Phoenix, Arizona and my head exploded.
What's a good story I can tell to overcome the NIMBYs ? #UrbanPlanning #NeighborhoodMeeting #PublicComment #Cycling
@davidzipper Now that is cool. A notification sent because the author modified one of my boosted toots.
@DBirchett Every so often I go back to the bird and remember how much I don't miss promoted tweets.
@brandonruehl most of the servers aren't excited about paying for video storage. You can drop a link to something.
@pleaseclap tell me more about the drunk roommate hauler ;)
@jzimbel That makes a lot of sense though! I figured everything would come from the GPS so I couldn't see why there would be a marker at all.
@jzimbel have you seen all the ghost bus problems they're having in Chicago? What would cause that?
@todd and take out the PARKING?!?
Pinellas County was named one of the most dangerous places for bicyclists in Florida last year, and the Tampa Bay area the fourth most dangerous for pedestrians. And already this year, nearly 70 motorcyclists have died in the region.
Florida shouldn’t tolerate the killing of so many pedestrians | Column
Shouting into the void on Mastodon doesn't really seem much different than shouting into the void on Twitter.
@red_tin_dave Careful with your hashtags! I think you meant #JustSayNoToThePsychoRightWingCapitalistFascistIndustrialDeathMachine
One of the best bike blogs out there. Support Biking in LA!
@mikamckinnon Make sure to provide alt-text in your pictures for blind readers.
@kairyssdal He'd just have to pretend to be from a different state, like Dick Cheney.
Dave Rollo wants to give himself veto power over all biking improvements
"City staff shall present the resolution and report to the Common Council for action. If the resolution is not adopted by the Common Council, the project does not proceed to installation."
#UrbanPlanning #BloomingtonIN #cycling
https://bloomington.in.gov/onboard/meetingFiles/download?meetingFile_id=11083
@ben I bike so I can make fun of all the chicken legged drivers in their cars.
@danmarstp Same. I'm hoping to battle through next week to get a few speed bumps put in, but I'm not hopeful 😕
The community feedback process is an inconvenient annoyance that brings out the worst in people. It is also at the heart of why U.S. cities can't build new housing or transportation.
Bike-lane plan for Ann Arbor neighborhood sparks controversy
Bike-lane plan for Ann Arbor neighborhood sparks controversy
@danmarstp Saves on the cost of a hearse I guess.
Interview with Pete Buttigieg on redesigning cities for bikes and pedestrians
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2022/11/12
@straphanger That's really gonna mess with some murder mystery plots.
@RantyHighwayman What is the correct design?
@Ted What country would that be?
@alper I found the show to be not much more than "Breaking Bad in England". Is the book better?
Rising crime statistics are not all that they seem
Someone shoplifting tampons or diapers from a pharmacy counts as a crime. But a corporation stealing millions of their workers' wages doesn't. Tax evasion doesn't. Big companies committing environmental crimes? Nope
Some people are learning a lesson about tying your brand to one particular company
Entered a ticket to fix a dangerous intersection near my house. No idea if anything will ever come of it.
Sometimes you chase the bear, and sometimes the bear chases you.
Young People, Climate Aware, Headed Off a Red Wave
An experimental program developed by a UCLA professor is paying people to #BikePool between the Eastside and Downtown; Civic #Bicycle Commuting, aka CiBiC, allows participants to earn credits worth up to $300 a month.
via the BikingInLA blog
How a ‘City Bus Manager’ Video Game Could Become an Advocacy Tool
@carnage4life As a successor to Facemash, his original website designed to rate hot chicks at his university.
Is there a calendar with good support for, "Ooh, I'd like to attend that event if I have some time and I'm not doing anything else" ?
@UnCoveredMyths @weirdwriter Or even better, something like "I wonder if there's a bear in this cave?" 🤔
@weirdwriter What do I get when I follow them? Reviews, comments, "currently reading" ?
What's the best way to interact with Bookwyrm? Do I need an account or can I just follow people on that site?
@marick I imagine veterinary medicine, like informatics, has room for both researchers and practitioners. My objection is to people who think someone who comes out of school with a doctorate and a thesis in blood-oxygen transfers in bovines, should have learned how to birth a calf 🙂
@marick Oh, but look at the lecture list for that compiler course. Parsing comes up in late March - before you get to that you have to learn about lists and list recursion, continuations, type systems and inference, and pattern matching. I'm sure a good teacher could wedge all of those things into a web apps course, but they would surely be wedged. They are _sine qua non_ for compiler writing.
@marick I don't think you can get more deeply into the theory of computer science than learning how to write compilers 😀
I've just found a hill to die on. University Computer Science programs are for teaching the theory of computer science. They aren't there to teach you how to write web apps.
@fclc Sounds like a succinct description of Conway's Law.
@marick @enobacon Shades of the Douglas Adams quote, maybe. Languages that are in the world when you’re born are normal and ordinary and are just a natural part of the way the world works. Languages that were invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five are new and exciting and revolutionary.
There are a lot of really cool Microsoft Word templates. Except as far as I can tell, they're not actually templates, just nice documents that some expert put together. Which means, it being Microsoft Word, they're completely uneditable. A set of text template documents, say in Markdown or Latex, would be really handy.
Via @renwillis
Word of the day is 'spuddle' (17th century): to work ineffectively; to be extremely busy whilst achieving absolutely nothing.
Is there a Society for the Suppression of Taking Screenshots of Text that I could join and give lots of money to?
Please read every single Asimov story about robots before offering an opinion on the future of AI.
@gvwilson We didn't want to tell you
TIL: The MySQL Compress algorithm sticks a four-byte length
of the uncompressed string (low byte first), followed by the compressed string. So, say you've loaded it into a Pandas dataframe. You could uncompress it with
df['compressed_field'].apply(lambda x: zlib.decompress(x[4:]).decode('utf-8'))
Ten simple rules for making research software more robust
(Six years old now, but evergreen)
@talios Trust me - ebikes are perfect for us overweight old farts 😉
@talios Bet that would save a fortune over car payments though 🙂
@talios Isn't that like a five hour trip? How often do you have to do that?
It's interesting how many software developers are saying AI won't replace software developers.
@seanfobbe I usually see exactly the opposite: "the code isn't in good enough shape to release yet, we're going to clean it up a little first."
@exterm Nothing to link to; but a framework calls your code, and your code calls a library.
@HPC_Guru Did they give a roadmap for the next generation after that?
@carnage4life Occasionally it pops a useful suggestion. I do use ChatGPT to do a lot of scripting though.
@pyrex @levi I don't see any of that. Windows does ask me to log in to my Microsoft account quite a bit.
@saltnburnem When we run out of GUIDs
@matthew_d_green Which implementation?
BuildXYZ: Automatic on-demand dependency dispenser that uses FUSE and Nix to intercept failed dependency resolutions. Very interesting!
GitHub - RaitoBezarius/buildxyz: Build your Nix package automatically
Wolfi and Guix and Nix, oh my!
@adrianmouat A birdsite link on your slide? 😮
Day 2 of #PackagingCon starts with a talk on namespaces across various languages, and what #Rust could or should be doing. Very interesting!
The day ends with lightning talks on WASM packaging (
GitHub - emscripten-forge/recipes: Recipes to build the packages for the emscripten-forge distribution), and "Securing Software Package Releases with SLSA" and a couple of others. Good first day!
Another good talk from Eric Myhre on replacing static library version numbers with hashes. Seems like a very sensible idea but also a big change for a lot of package managers. Not sure how you would incrementally get from here to there.
Good talk on the fundamentals of runtime reproducibility. The speaker is working on a thing called conda-store to automate some of it but it doesn't seem to be ready for prime time yet.
prefix.dev – solving software package management Is a Conda implementation written in Rust. I like how you can create an environment on their server and download it from the command line!
Identity tokens, such as OpenID Connect (OIDC), have emerged as a popular alternative for authentication and authorization in cloud environments. Even though major CI/CD platforms are now supporting these tokens - GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, etc. - it isn't widely adopted yet.
The Update Framework (TUF) has been a prime reference for secure package delivery and updates. Despite its popularity, integration with existing package managers remains a challenging task.
Repository Service For TUF (RSTUF) is the first project to implement a generic TUF application with the primary goal of making general TUF adoption easier. It is agnostic to content type, programming language, and release process.
Attending #PackagingCon virtually to learn about Conda, Spack, Apt, and other package managers. First session on security. A “software bill of materials” (SBOM) has emerged as a key building block in software security and software supply chain risk management.
@gvwilson Oh, that looks really useful!
@jasonkoebler Why did you think people would be mad at you if you told jokes?
@ben "philosophy does not mean writing down all the random thoughts you had when smoking that bundle of weed the night before the deadline."
How I got through college I'll never know 😂
@raiderrobert C++. I was blown away by the concept of OO. Probably would have been Smalltalk if I was a little older.
@neilernst @pawamoy @leahawasser @nedbat The talk was initially about using it in code reviews. It would be interesting if it would flag problematic areas.
@trendoid wasn't Vue like, three frameworks ago?
Really interesting talk from @neilernst on using ML to analyze their codebase for issues. I'd like to see more of the techniques used there!
Things that help with scientific publishing of notebooks: Quarto, MyBinder, Jupyter Widgets, JupyterBook, Myst Markdown
@leahawasser PyLint has some complexity metrics I think. I'm sure there's something. I was surprised that there was a C++ analyzer because parsing that is such a pain in the neck!
@mobiuscog Not really much. You tend to end up learning a lot about a particular domain of science - bioinformatics or chemistry or whatever - because you have to take a scientist's clever ideas and turn them into working code.
Using cyclomatic complexity in code reviews. That would be an interesting experiment - I had no idea that CC was measurable in C++ code! Metrix++ is the relevant tool.
Metamorphic testing: transform the input to the application and verify that the result and the transformed result jibe
(I thought at first it was Metaphorical testing, which would have been interesting as well. Shaka, when the walls fell.)
Talk on software engineering an app - speaker mentions (among many things) using gcov and asan as part of the checks. I need to use those more.
@pyOpenSci I think that's right. Iterative development and a red-green-refactor cycle.
FWIW, almost every vendor who's spoken this week has mentioned that they're hiring. If you happen to have been a victim of the LinkedIn or StackOverflow layoffs, maybe look into becoming an #RSEng
Prompt injection for your resume
Inject My PDF: Prompt Injection for your Resume
A talk on whether or not to put all your code in one repository or split it apart. Meh. Either way, I think it's all just subject to Conway's Law. #USRSE23
That was a really great question! RSE's often seem to be software engineers who learn the research - how do you bring in researchers who want to learn engineering?
@code4thought @pyOpenSci You didn't come back today?
Google Cloud speaker was confident enough to speak without a slide deck, kudos 😀 #USRSE23
First session topics:
Home | CyVerse
Tapis Project
CACAO-Cloud Automation | CyVerse
Single-Page apps for workflows
Likeness, A human population demographic simulator that I couldn't find anywhere
A survey showing why people joined the organization. Meet peers, career advancement, etc. I have to say the reason I joined was because I thought scientific software was pretty bad and I'd like to make it better.
#USRSE23 kicking off. Mary Ann Leung is the first keynote.
Using VS Code to debug a WSL application:
wslpath 'C:\Users\$USER\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\bin\code'
alias code=$(result of that last command)
spack load (any dependencies of the project that need to be loaded)
code .
@RadicalEdward Oh, that one's not usable. It's all dusty.
@brohrer @Randy_Au It is the branch of AI known as "Expert Systems".
@abhibeckert @potterman28wxcv You could use Ruby on Rails or Python's Dash.
@ploeh Why not just do git operations in WSL?
@jannuary I'll forbear not considering keeping that out of mind.
@marick @danluu I can understand doing a ten-line thing and adding a "Look at this cool idea!" comment. What I think I see more often is something like a double-dispatch implementation causing much harrumphing and "If-else statements would have been so much clearer!" comments.
@danluu I think that is a straw man. No one values cleverness for cleverness' sake. Future proofing maybe, but "over engineered" is just slang for "I don't know how it works".
I can't figure out why every Substack, Medium, or general web author is begging people to subscribe to a newsletter. As if I was going to go read emails like I was some kind of caveman or something.
@kiview @jitterted where my academic software engineering peeps on Mastodon at anyway?
@carnage4life Marketers and scammers abused every channel they could that allowed unsolicited interactions. Emails, phone calls, texts, snail mail. We can't do much about most of those, but we can at least refuse unsolicited calls.
Installed and uninstalled two VS Code extensions meant to provide MySQL connections. Neither one was able to connect to my database. Guess I'll stick to the WSL command line. 🤷
@georgetakei Why can't they use salt water?
@raiderrobert But technical debt?
I'd like to be a survivalist. Not to survive the coming environmental catastrophe or prepare for a postapocalypse, but in case I accidentally drop through a wormhole into the past. I think I should be prepared for 500, 1000, and 10000 year wormholes.
@jchyip Of course it's nonsense. But if you come in under budget, then next year your budget will be less. No one wants that.
@mikes @wallingf @marick @jmeowmeow @GeePawHill
Agreed. I thought it was a great idea, but I never successfully incorporated it into any of my dev workflows.
@marick I wonder how much "You'll get to meet chicks!" was used as a recruiting angle.
@LilahTovMoon As someone who learns a lot more words from reading than from listening to people, I fully support pronouncing vi as "six".
@jchyip People actually say this? 🤨
@bragefuglseth The problem is, though nobody uses any more than 20% of the features available, everyone uses a different set of features. Making a subset of features available for one use-case only isn't going to scale.
Who should I be following to find new formal papers on software engineering?
TIL:
"When not performing substring expansion, using the form described below (e.g., ‘:-’), Bash tests for a parameter that is unset or null. Omitting the colon results in a test only for a parameter that is unset. Put another way, if the colon is included, the operator tests for both parameter’s existence and that its value is not null"
And I also remembered why I generally try to avoid shell programming.
@vsoch Function bodies that are more than a page long still scare me.
AI for documenting your code? Seems simpler to get rid of the comments and let users use AI to summarize it themselves if it is so able. #ChatGPT
Windows Subsystem for Linux suddenly unable to run Windows apps? Somebody forgot to provide the interop directions file. Solution here:
WSL2 (Preview) cannot run .exe files: exec format error: wsl.exe · Issue #8952 · microsoft/WSL
Hey @shanselman just wanted to let you know I'm ecstatic that my latest Windows insider build pops the name of the current desktop when I switch to it! Been wanting a feature like that for years 😍
Ancient cities have lessons UX/UI designers can use right now
"Service blueprints and user journey maps also tell us about the common elements between the city and applications and what design choices do and do not serve users well. The lines connecting objects in a blueprint or journey map represent a “pathway taken” often from one “district” to another."
https://www.fastcompany.com/90927779/ancient-cities-have-lessons-ux-ui-designers-can-use-right-now
@BenjaminHCCarr Maybe we should stop burning so much fossil fuel 🤨
@sam No sam
@warrickball That's unfortunate.
@warrickball WSL is right there.
I hate when I spend half an hour trying to figure out an API, then I ask #ChatGPT and it gives me a complete program within ten seconds. 🤨
@jessitron I like that. Can you elaborate?
@cblgh Do you have any recommendations for transferring files, if I were to run it on multiple machines?
Any way to read emails through ActivityPub? I check Mastodon all day and my personal email once a week or so.
@cblgh The demo doesn't save anything. How does data storage work? Is it text, or an SQLite file? Is it a single file or multiple files?
@marick But the collaborative circles were self-selected, no? Sharing code with a trusted circle of friends is a lot different from sharing with coworkers of varying experience and skills.
@schmonz Probably something about testing the bejeebus out of the third-party api's too though.
Just tried doing a search for "automatically tag photos" and discovered that there's nothing left on the web but sites generated by #ChatGPT. Search is dead. Anybody know a good tool for automatically tagging photos?
@vsoch You have a drone following you around?!?
People, AI is not going to destroy the world. Global warming will get the job done long before that.
A small office area in the New Orleans convention center, for anyone to stop and use. Every center should have things like this!
Bit o' spack wisdom from the Spack Slack
"I have installed GDAL with Spack, and I'm trying to install pip install gdal in my python project. But the python bindings don't link with rpath, and end up not finding them."
"Yeah, for that you’ll probably want to add LD_LIBRARY_PATH to your prefix inspections. Something like:
spack config add "modules:prefix_inspections:./lib:[LD_LIBRARY_PATH]"
spack config add "modules:prefix_inspections:./lib64:[LD_LIBRARY_PATH]"
@scott_bot Just starting a book club on Semiology of Graphics by Jacques Bertin. Any opinions on the book?
What is Microsoft doing with Visual Studio? Seems like they might sunset it in favor of VS Code? But they still seem to update it pretty regularly.
via @hpcnotes :
The #1 supercomputer on the Top500 is Frontier at Oak Ridge National Lab, which packs 1.194 Exaflops on HPL and apparently cost $600M.
The aggregate HPL performance of the Top500 is 5.24 Exaflops.
So, extrapolating Frontier's cost/EF, that is a total of approximately $2.6B for all of the Top500 systems.
Research Software Camp: FAIR software (19-30 June 2023)
"Our RSCs allow researchers with limited or no experience in software engineering to learn new coding skills and receive personal guidance in a welcoming and supportive environment."
TIL that it's easy to install the Amazon CLI without having root privileges.
Install or update to the latest version of the AWS CLI - AWS Command Line Interface
Different ways to initialize a map in C++. (The double-bracketed pairs is particularly convenient for writing tests).
@jacob What would you have changed if you had kids? My plan is to be the rich old uncle who dies in an Agatha Christie story 😈
@RuthMalan Any tips on getting into the habit? I have loads of good intentions 🙂
@mikewas So it's a business expense for you.
20 bucks a month for ChatGPT Plus? How do you justify that kind of expense? Is your company paying for it?
@wallingf Such a pain when you hit that four billion dollar mark.
What could a website possibly be doing if they don't allow spaces in their passwords 🤔🤨
@deckerego I don't know about dramatically, but ChatGPT generally finds a nice modern solution where you have to wade through 20 answers that were correct in 2003.
@kissane I've been in so many. Work slack, Work IRC, Work ICQ, Usenet groups.
@us_rse Are recordings of community calls available anywhere?
@mos_8502 Code is hard to parse. Period. You either get to spend hours learning how to parse a bit of code, or give up and write your own implementation. The latter is what I see more often.
@joekatz45 Scott Walker: "Younger voters may be the behind the stinging loss for conservatives in WI this week. We have to undo years of liberal indoctrination."
Or, you know, you could stop being fascists.
@AlanSill @vsoch Did you put together a workflow to dynamically update the repository list? Or was that a one-time thing?
Sometimes I have ChatGPT write a script for me, and I can almost hear it saying, "You really need me to do something that simple?"
Interested in contributing to science by writing code? Take a look at the "Good First Issues" board here, or add your own repository if you maintain scientific software!
I asked a duck if it could cluck like a chicken. It failed miserably.
@AlanSill @vsoch Yes, it starting to look really useful! I'm looking forward to the next person asking how to get started in open source research software 😀
@vsoch @AlanSill But if we filter for projects that have existing GFI's that would probably eliminate 90% of them.
@rosemarymosco But they POOP like a
...well, something. I can't put my finger on it. 🤔
@vsoch @AlanSill I wonder if it's important to get the repository owner's permission. Otherwise, we could scrape the Encyclopedia and add projects that way.
@vsoch @AlanSill CBioPortal has a bunch of issues, Buffalo's ColdFront has one. Somebody mentioned
GitHub - MunGell/awesome-for-beginners: A list of awesome beginners-friendly projects. on US-RSE as well, although that's generic and I was interested in research software particularly. I would love to add mine but I don't have any good first issues 😞 Where do maintainers hang out?
@AlanSill @vsoch An updated repository list seems like the important thing. But I'm not sure if maintainers are really following through with the good-first-issue tag.
@vsoch Yeah, something worth looking at again I think. There seem to be a lot of students asking about interesting projects to work on and not getting any good guidance.
Good First Issue repository by @vsoch
The Research Software Encyclopedia. I've been meaning to think about this and then I lost the link, so here it is.
@sam write a toot with a funny rejoinder to Sam
@sxa I don't think it would be much use at all except to measure velocity, and velocity would be pretty much meaningless if we're talking projects -per-dev instead of devs-per-project 😃
@sxa I thought it was pretty good. When one person is way out of line it helps to find out what they see differently. But I've also done poker with around 15 people at once, that was too many points of view to be useful at all.
@feditips Why would I not want my post to be shared?
Kind of surprised by the number of Grumpy Guses dissing on ChatGPT's ability to write code. It's a tool. I like tools. I use tools. Yay tools!
@sam It's all fun and games until Godzilla rises out of the ocean
@airshipper @shanselman @Geekpulp I want to write integration tests, and have the AI generate the code that passes them.
@ploeh The second; or more precisely, that it's often easier to write your own code to perform a task than it is to try to understand someone else's code.
@wfaler I suppose you'll object to having it in the 14th month, too :eyeroll:
Pulling my hair out figuring out why SQLAlchemy was giving me access denied with a legitimate account. Turned out "mysql+pymysql" failed with access denied, but "mysql+sqlconnector" succeeded. I suspect it had something to do with that "caching_sha2_password" thing.
@jezhiggins @jasongorman You might consider getting involved with Software Carpentry, they do that sort of thing.
Software Carpentry
@jasongorman You might check with the Society of Research Software Engineering (https://society-rse.org/ ) although you certainly won't find that they test any more than any other group does.
@marick @AndreasEK The most common ones I get are to edit journals, submit papers, and join associations. They may be legit, but I bet I don't give them more than 250ms before they're gone. I would pay attention if a colleague wrote to suggest an opportunity, but a cold email from anyone at all gets very short shrift.
"This is not something we can leak to the first comer. - Aub!" There was something imperative about his manner of biting off that one syllable name, but then he was a great Programmer speaking to a mere Technician. "Aub! How much is nine times seven?"
Aub hesitated a moment. His pale eyes glimmered with a feeble anxiety. "Sixty-three," he said.
Congressman Brant lifted his eyebrows. "Is that right?"
"Check it for yourself, Congressman."
- Feeling of Power, Isaac Asimov, 1958
@AndreasEK @marick Exactly. "Funding, huh?" :eyeroll: ❌
@williampietri @quinn "if a<b dothis() else if b>a dothat()" has gotten me before.
Hey @paulisci Can you give us a history of "Computers won't really be intelligent until..." ?
Just goofing off while #ChatGPT writes a database script for me. I told it to combine the tables and it concatenated them instead of joining on a key field which is obviously what I meant, so hard to get good help nowadays. 🤨
@funnelfiasco what made you decide to get a Smart Stove?
@yy It's not thinking at all, so it's not thinking of an elephant?
@boofla Oh, boy. "Embrace and Extend" can't be far behind.
@glv @wallingf Not sure I agree. You can find lots of stuff about Git's graph model online but not so much on "What do you mean my merge failed?" and you end up going back to the XKCD solution.
Could not figure out why my Posit Connect application would not run with the error "Application is of type dash which is not callable". After a couple of hours, I realized that I was deploying with the "api" deployment rather than the "dash".
@Jeremiah I work nearby the Jetstream project team, which uses it. Let me know if there are any questions I can ask.
If you are involved with a High Performance Computing cluster that uses GPU's, could you quickly answer two questions on GPU monitoring on your machines?
I asked ChatGPT to
Pff. No I didn't. Sick to death of reading all the autocompletes people are asking it to do.
@das_g @mfowler @kentbeck I guess that explains why Slack is important to teams but Discord less so 😂
@glyph Asimov defined the zeroth law as "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." You get the -1st law or something.
@jchyip E-Bikes Are the Future of Transportation.
@kirbstr I suppose a student could ask the AI to correct its own errors and turn that in. I wonder how detectable that would be.
@wallingf From a raw, theoretical, Big-O notation CS perspective I don't have much to add. But for related topics like software engineering or HCI I would just add "Try to write something." Doing that forces you to think about the architecture and the program design, and many times I've thought, "Hey wait a minute, we talked about this exact thing in that one course!"
@codebrewer @wallingf If it would cite sources that would help a lot. I'm thinking about the people who searched for "How to unfromitz a jagobann". The AI could hoover up my article and a few similar ones and spit the information back out in a slightly randomized fashion without ever letting the user find out that my article exists.
Really though, #chatgpt search just isn't the same as a classic Google search. If I post a little article on how to unfromitz your jagobanns, I want a search engine to send you to my article, not just regurgitate a slightly reworded version like a high school student writing an essay.
@carnage4life That should help offset the costs of those $60 billion stock buybacks!
Anyone noticed these utm_medium and utm_source that everyone's sticking on URL's these days? Could I change it to "utm_source=ben" and charge them a fee?
@marick If you haven't yet, check out Epic Rap Battles of History. It's a cute combination of people who are good at rapping and people who have done things worth rapping about!
@jamespjh You know you don't have to admit that, right? Just mutter something about "That damned black diamond" under your breath and leave it at that.
@marick @drvolts East coast winters are staying cold, but no one knows exactly why yet. Land temperatures for eastern North America, and especially eastern Eurasia, in winter have exhibited almost no warming, and indeed cooled from 2000–2013, followed by more variable winters. The recent midlatitude winter cooling period has coincided with an increase in severe winter weather events. There’s a highly technical discussion here:
@jasongorman Still, people realize this, which is why the birth rate is falling off a cliff.
@proactiveservices Aha, thanks!
If I wanted to boost a toot that's not on this server, is there a way to drag it here for boosting?
@BoydstonLaw Boy, that's a big So What. The decision is the judge's responsibility whether he used ChatGPT or just copy-pasted the whole thing from Google.
@marick I like Train Station 2 from Pixel Federation. I play it on Android though, don't know what platforms it's available for.
@ax3l Ouch.
BREAKING: Reporters to start using #ChatGPT to generate their stories, instead of what they do now, which is to copy and paste a bunch of Twitter comments and call that a story.
@Jose_A_Alonso If #ChatGPT thinks it's good at fixing bugs, let's throw some of G++'s 1000 line compiler errors at it and see how it does 😂
@DrCuff @hexylena I use Advanced Shell History similarly.
GitHub - barabo/advanced-shell-history: Advanced command line shell history - save your bash history to sqlite3 automatically!
@clive I bet it was easy to confuse 20 and 2000 when they put in their passwords
@BenjaminHCCarr So is it like, "I can't possibly do another rep!" "Oh no? Well maybe THIS will change your mind!"
"METHODOLOGY: For this project, we watched all 40 episodes of “Wile E. Coyote And the Road Runner.” 😂
Ending with an acoustic guitar performance 😂
@jessitron @ericevans Is Eric giving a talk somewhere?
Listening to a data-oriented programming talk from ACM. Mostly the principles are immutability and plain-old data objects. #ACM #data Good talk though!
@marick I think 2011 would have been about my peak disillusionment with agile techniques. What was your keynote about?
@jessitron No to being distracted by everyone else in the office yakking
@drmaddkap Can't bear these newfangled measurement systems. Give it to me in nice simple giraffes any day.
@dalias @matthew_d_green But still, an attack program might start with the word dictionary before bothering with the transformations, so it might put those out on the far end of the attempt list.
@dalias @matthew_d_green Curses! 😂
@matthew_d_green Does that imply that adding a "!" to the end of your phrase will foil most of the attackers?
@Dridge3770 Don't put those words in my mouth. I ain't going there! 😂
Nick Cave: "ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience"
Interestingly, he echoes science fiction writer James Blish from 1956 in a story where a simulation of Richard Strauss writes a piece of music: "The 'Strauss' [they] had created was as empty of genius as a hollow gourd."
@tomtarantino Like the Star Trek time-travel scene. Moviemakers know how things should work - UX designers can look at them for inspiration!
@wallingf I think they're missing the boat on the note taking. Obsidian advertises itself as a "second brain" which is pretty much how I use it. I take notes on stuff I'm never going to try to memorize, except by accident. I just want to get the general structure in mind, and I may refer to the details later.
@Cat_LeFey This is a very useful list of tips on captioning pictures! Could you provide pics with positive examples so we can see what they might look like?
@DrCuff @hpcprogrammer @kamcmahon And me. Though my lack of focus always makes me wonder if anyone ever sticks around to read more than one 😀
@marick @wallingf "Fundamental" ? I can't see that at all. When the new coder comes on board and commits atrocities like putting open brackets on the same line as function declarations, it's good to have something up front to show them the error of their ways, rather than wait for a code review.
Not a problem for pairing or mobbing, of course. But baby steps.
@wallingf @marick On one project I was on, asynchronous reviews focusing on trivial things led to a little PR Style Guide that hopefully covered the things in advance.
@marick @shakespearenut @graydon I have some collaborators like that
@karinlag It wasn't too long after we all switched to git instead of Subversion for source control.
@jasongorman I wonder if it could write working code that passes a set of tests?
@nicholdav Very nice! My only complaint is the title, which sounds like clickbait. "Four tips for structuring your packages. #2 will shock you!" 😋
@danielskatz The cost of using Twitter is far higher than I am willing to pay, at any rate.
Just compiling up a version of NCBI Blast for use on a large node. Anyone know why it looks for Boost/LaPack/GSL but doesn't require them? Will it be faster if I make them available?
@simontoth Ah, I missed that. Wish they'd had an example there!
@simontoth Nice! You might point out that mismatch allows you to pass a comparator function, while equal does not. That was what eventually led me to it 😀
TIL: C++ has a _mismatch_ algorithm that returns the first non-equal pair of elements from two sequences. 🤯
@jeffc Regretting not having the username "King Toot" now
Keeping up my New Years Eve tradition of watching a Times Square show and wondering who all the singers are
@fclc @DrCuff @vsoch Ah, I didn't realize the text was clickable as well, I was only trying to click the buttons. Thanks!
@fclc @DrCuff @vsoch Nah. But I see a page with six links to feeds that don't work. What do you see?
@DrCuff Agreed! Do you know if this page is supposed to have content?
@Flash Maybe those were their last words
@kims Meh. Greta was punching up.
The #OpenStack command-line API
OpenStack Docs: Command List
@von Since I dropped Twitter for Mastodon, it's the almost anything interesting bar.
Except for you, of course. You were a top priority follow.
@marick /Governing/ is a bit of a slog since it's basically a series of academic papers that don't make much of a coherent whole. Haven't read the other though.
@wallingf I can't think of any teacher who affected me like that. I remember my share of comments that induce serious eyerolls now 🙄
A lot of people are coming from Twitter and saying, "Hey, I had a lot of followers on Twitter so follow me here so I can have a lot of followers on Mastodon!" and I'm having a hard time caring about how many followers they have.
The best Christmas movie scene ever is in _Miracle on 34th Street_, when the little Dutch girl's face lights up when she finds that Kris can speak Dutch too. But some of the context has probably gotten lost in the last fifty years. Why would a New York woman adopt a little Dutch girl? Robert Matzen explains.
#Christmas #christmastodon #ChristmasMovie
Really I think it would be more interesting if the goalies played a game of chess to decide the winner. #ChessSoccer #WorldCup #FRAvARG
@taylorlorenz At least you still have MySpace. #DeadSocialNetworks
Is there any social media reader app that lets me add custom tags to other people's posts? #rss #mastodon
@Santaclaus which is why we sing that great old carol, "Gloria in Excel Sheets"
@WallStreetSilv And did the loser concede the waterpark issue?
The problem with doing anything in Microsoft Office is that there's a dozen ways to do it, and most people only learn one way. So if you inherit some complicated Excel spreadsheet, or Word form, and the original implementor built it in some way you're not aware of, there is absolutely no way to figure out what the #$&@ they did.
This toot is under construction. Check back soon for content!
@HPCDiver It's not hard to trick a compiler out of const-correctness if you want to.
@noplasticshower I suspect that they really mean "Informatics" though, rather than strict computer science. That might include human-computer interaction, library science, bioinformatics, and software engineering.
Amtrak tracker API
GitHub - piemadd/Piero-Amtrak-API-Docs
@trendoid They should be replaced with trains.
@fclc @HPC_Guru It clearly knows and is just messing with you.
@davew Boy, that doesn't leave many options. Maybe I should go on a diet.
@marick @wallingf There was somebody in front of me in line when I went to vote. I had to wait for him to sign his form and everything.
Ok, let's try out this new chatbot.
"Please verify your email" Oh, fine. I guess so.
"This device isn't authenticated. Please return to the page you were on and try again." What? What does that mean? Oh well, I guess I can log in again.
"Please verify your phone number." What? I just verified my email! Oh well, if I must.
"That phone number isn't good enough. Please enter a different one." You know, I bet this chatbot isn't that good anyway.
@jasongorman L'enfer c'est les autres
@glennklockwood And yet we constantly tell them they need to engineer their software better!
This article presents a study on the quality and execution of research code from publicly-available replication datasets at the Harvard Dataverse repo.
"The infrequent usage and absence of libraries also tell us what researchers are not doing in their projects. In particular, libraries that are used for code testing, such as runit, testthat, tinytest and unitizer, were not present."
Yeah, I could have told you that *grumble*
A large-scale study on research code quality and execution - Scientific Data
@wfaler RSS feed.
Lawrence Livermore training materials
@wfaler Since it's not me doing the work, I definitely voted for self-hosting!
"How do we build a staging environment such that we can test federation, or domain segregation? Come to think of it. How does federation work anyway? How much of an impact does hachyderm have on other instances in the fediverse? How much impact do other instances have on my systems?"
From nova@hachyderm.io
https://medium.com/@kris-nova/experimenting-with-federation-and-migrating-accounts-eae61a688c3c
7 books to get to know me, in no particular order:
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
The C++ Programming Language, Bjarne Stroustrup
The Grey King, Susan Cooper
Crocodile on the Sandbank, Elizabeth Peters
A twist on the #Introduction: introduce yourself using five #videogames to get to know you.
- Pong
- Missile Command
- Centipede
- Quake 2
- Overwatch
I think it's cool that there's this Activerse and Fedipub and all this and what have you, but the Mastodon app isn't so great that I want to spend all my time in it.
@danielskatz @hpcnotes Yes, that's what I'm looking forward to! So far, I've spent it all reading stuff on Mastodon.
@ProfCDTaylor @hoosieraaron@mastodon.social This. Why vote when there's nothing to vote for?
@ganitzsh you have a public server? I've been debating putting my pi out there but worried about getting hacked.
@wallingf I wonder what Butterick would think about this 42-page lambda 😂
LambdaLisp - A Lisp Interpreter That Runs on Lambda Calculus
@davew can you elaborate on the new places you feel you're pushing RSS to?
@jonmasters @hpcprogrammer @james Perhaps it was never about reaching exascale. Perhaps it was really about the nodes we managed to crash along the way.
@davew are you speaking strictly of your home timeline or the local and federated ones as well?
@glennklockwood Seeing posts from your server implies you're looking at the Local view rather than the Home. Make sure you're following the hashtag as well - should be a button just to the right of the search window (though I don't use iOS so can't be sure)
@brianb Hmmm...
(makes note on Brian)
@ljwrites Write drunk, edit sober.
@mostalive Are you finding value, then, in DDD? I attempted it a few years ago based on the idea of communicating more easily with stakeholders, but it just seemed to wither away after a few months.
@eulersposter Science Columbo is a thing that badly needs to exist.
@OboeLauren Like the James Blish story Surface Tension
@fullyabstract Heh, that's a new one on me. Thanks!
@itsravenous Why you shouldn't put comments in code
@fullyabstract Wait now - are we talking (not(Brahms and Liszt)) or ((not Brahms) and Liszt) ?
@sudo_bash Depends on the committers - you get some who will just delete the failing tests. I worked on one where we also failed the commit if the percentage of test coverage went down, but that was a lot of work to set up.
I might have gone to #SC22 if I'd known THIS was going to happen
@jamiefeldman Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. A meditation on losing one's memory, combined with a murder mystery and a bit of a superhero arc!
@ninawillburger Who drew that?
Dave Moi on X:
"In a post #AlphaFold world, we can use protein structures in ways we never could before. Can we build phylogenies with them? Are they any good? Yes! Foldtree surpasses traditional sequence-based methods, even for closely related proteins."
After spending a few hours trying to update a package, I think #BioConda is drunk and it should go home.
Applications of machine learning in phylogenetics
"Supervised machine learning approaches that rely on simulated training data have been used to infer tree topologies and branch lengths, to select substitution models, and to perform downstream inferences of introgression and diversification...We review how researchers have used several promising machine learning approaches to make phylogenetic inferences."
#MachineLearning #Phylogenetics
@errantscience Something to explain how freaking BIG a human genome is. People hear that we share 90% of our genes with a crayfish or something, and don't realize that means we don't share 300 million base pairs.
@EinPhysiker Pandas is code. Excel is user interface.
@rbreich Nowhere, only Mastodon.
@frod_san Don't worry, they just need to clean it up a little, then they'll share it.
@pjacock Sure. I imagine some of the older ones won't be mergeable any more though.
@pjacock #BioPython has 114 open pull requests? That seems excessive.
@DenisMeuthen Install WSL and run R there instead.
I have a friend in Minsk
Who has a friend in Pinsk
Whose friend in Omsk
Has friend in Tomsk
With friend in Akmolinsk
His friend in Alexandrovsk
Has friend in Petropavlovsk
Whose friend somehow is solving now
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk
From Dnepropetrovsk to Petropavlovsk
By way of Iliysk and Novorossiysk
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk to Pinsk to Minsk
To me the news will run...
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed
When he finds out I publish first!
Best part of the story:
A team in Peru found a 9,000-year-old person buried with an unusually large number of hunting tools. "We all just assumed this individual was a male," he recalls. "Everybody is sitting around, saying things like, 'Wow! This is amazing. He must have been a great hunter, a great warrior. Maybe he was a chief!"
...then a colleague who specialized in analyzing bone structure arrived and delivered a bombshell assessment: The remains seemed to be female.
@benjaminv 32G input files, on a half-terabyte machine.
Anyone have advice on how to get the Spades genome assembler to use less memory?
Evaluation Of Software Impact Designed For Biomedical
Research: Are We Measuring What’s Meaningful?
(Really more general than biomedical software)
"We propose more broadly applicable guidelines (such as infrastructure that supports the usage of software and the collection of metrics about usage), as well as strategies for various types of software and resources."
#software #RSE #RSEng #Evaluation
Evaluation of software impact designed for biomedical research: Are we measuring what's meaningful?
Published version of CAGEE!
Here, we present a new software package (Computational Analysis of Gene Expression Evolution [CAGEE]) for inferring patterns of increases and decreases in gene expression across a phylogenetic tree, as well as the rate at which these changes occur. CAGEE can calculate genome-wide rates of gene expression, along with ancestral states for each gene.
#phylogenetics #bioinformatics
@drskyskull "I put it down and then could never find it again. One star"
Updated version of CAGEE, now with the ability to handle missing data.
Making Daylight Saving year round would cut down on deer collisions, but I bet it would send up the number of schoolchild collisions as kids go to school in the dark.
https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2822%2901615-3
@xtaldave We old toots resent this characterization. 😡
Microtiming Deviations (MTDs) and Swing Feel in Jazz
"We recorded twelve piano jazz standards played by a professional pianist and manipulated the natural MTDs of the recordings in systematic ways by quantizing, expanding and inverting them...The original and manipulated versions were presented in an online survey and evaluated by 160 listeners with various musical skill levels and backgrounds."
But it don't mean a thing.
Microtiming Deviations and Swing Feel in Jazz - Scientific Reports
@BenjaminHCCarr They really buried the lede in that story.
"The country has actually begun rolling back EV incentives in favor of reducing private vehicle ownership. Walking and cycling are being promoted in big cities like Oslo to help reduce the level of traffic and energy expenditure. It’s a concept that’s being embraced around the world as more urban residents realize how much cars ruin cities and rob public space from the people who live and work in those cities."
I think #chatgpt is less about finding new ways to cheat and more about finding new ways to educate.
@Milana "somewhere under the walls of the fortress there is an entrance to a secret cave" 😲 Chervonograd Castle sounds like an amazing place!
@theconfusedyeti@tech.lgbt Pong, the one you brought home and hooked up to your TV. I was about 11.
@biorxivpreprint Any possibility of adding hashtags to these toots? You could use keywords from the papers.
@Quinnae_Moon Read this thread for an in-depth discussion of quote-tweets.
Also, let me know if you did. I'm not sure how well this recommendation method works.
@torie@skull.website @climatenews However, rich people would prefer you focus on your shower length rather than, say, pumping Arizona groundwater to irrigate alfalfa crops.
@drskyskull I remember seeing this one last time I was in Chicago! I need a little check-off list 😀
@drskyskull "Two Doors Down" wasn't all that great.
@mcnees And now you know the real meaning of the song, "Let's Get Physical".
"Software practices and principles should become a core part of biostatistics curricula"
I suspect that ALL disciplines would end up learning software engineering if that was the case. And while I think that's great for people who want to learn it, I'm not sure that it should be a requirement for everyone. Leave it to the research software engineers if that's what you'd rather do.
@sagitaninta Mastodon lists also have the weird property that you can't add people to them without following. A safety feature, I suppose; but it does make lists a lot less useful.
@uppsalacyclist I've mostly focused on codes for high-performance computers, although this one should run fine on a laptop...do you think we should do a Mac version? We'll release v1.0 in a month or so, after we see if early users manage to blow it up somehow 😀
@beadsland sounds like an invitation-only Mastodon server?
Our new software is out!
"Here, we present a new software package (CAGEE) for inferring patterns of increases and decreases in gene expression across a phylogenetic tree, as well as the rate at which these changes occur. In contrast to previous methods that treat each gene independently, CAGEE can calculate genome-wide rates of gene expression, along with ancestral states for each gene."
#phylogenetics #software #OpenSource
@straphanger But I bet they didn't take into account the efficiency of a lemming falling off a cliff!
@RobLanfear I sincerely hope you discuss your software on this platform with the hashtag #MastMast 😉
@PhilGoodwin I 've been here for a whole week, and I'm not familiar with any kind of group feature. Do you have a link or anything?
@jby I did not see that coming.
@ChouvencL sounds like the basis for a fun resource-management game! #SimTermite
@gwct Ah, nice! I just assumed that would work the same way.
Bioconda has a linting checker that you run with "bioconda-utils lint --git-range master"...but it assumes that your local branch was cloned from their original repository and will not work if you fork it.
@dasrecht Sounds like what you really like in both cases is human-readable source code.
@danielskatz What was the key to getting sustainability funding? Was it more the value to the broad scientific community or the enthusiasm of some dedicated users?
@alexcc Clean code grows in importance as the project grows larger, has more maintainers and more people trying to figure out how the code is organized. A project where one or two people are the only ones who ever look at the code doesn't need to be that clean.
@carbon14 Do you study intermittent streams of fungi, or do you intermittently study fungi? Or do you study fungi that intermittently live in streams of water?
@roopikarisam I remember it from Welcome Back Kotter in the 70's.
@harris Begging to be gamed I think. Chrono order is almost as good and much simpler.
@Natanox Windows but I do almost everything in WSL.
Coming to think of accounts on various servers as "aspects". Like my #UrbanPlanning aspect is different from my #EcoEvo aspect. Then it feels weird when the wrong aspect is following an account 😬
@ibycter are those actually related to the similarly named bones in vertebrates?
@doctoroxford Ain't nobody here but us tardigrades
Here's Northwestern's reserved bike rack for Nobel laureate Sir Fraser Stoddart #cycling
I must not watch the returns. Elections are the mind-killer. Elections are the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my legislature. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the pundits have gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
@Rob Twitter got boring.
@littlebigis My books are sorted by wherever I can wedge them.
@joshtpm@journa.host Just think of it as a subject line for your toot.
@aliceschwarze For a while the birdsite hid your replies from everyone except your followers, so people started to quote-tweet if they had something they wanted to be seen more generally. I don't know if it still does that or not.
Polling place was at Bloomington High School North, a dangerous bike ride up Kinser Pike. Wish they could have found somewhere else until the new Dunn Street multi-use path is built. #voting #UrbanPlanning #cycling
@MarcoFB Maybe depends on where you moved from 😀
I really like the home/local/federated options for reading. Sort of an N, N^2, (N^2)^2 option, depending on my mood and the time I have.
Extensive discussion of the genesis of the new Bloomington greenway #cycling #urbanplanning
tbh that could all happen and I probably wouldn't notice
#introduction Hi! I am a research software engineer at Indiana University. I develop the CAFE application, an analyzer of gene family #evolution and support the software on IU's #HPC clusters. I like #bikes #cities and #opensource software.
@RebeccaShapiro Sweet and dandy!