Wednesday Evening Commute - Superhighway

Good evening

• DC Cyclist attacked by bike thief. "A male youth was tampering with another male’s bicycle. When the owner of the bicycle told him to leave it alone, the youth picked up a metal pipe and hit the bike owner’s arm and helmet, causing the helmet to break. After the bike owner shouted for police, the youth fled with another youth."
• 2nd Annual W&OD Trail Mix is scheduled for October. 
• Local high schooler "won two of three races in her age group at the USA Cycling Junior Road National Championships in Augusta, Ga. Last week, she was in Quebec for her first race outside of the United States. Despite bike troubles on the first day, she rebounded to win two stages in her age group at the Tour of Rimouski, which featured an international field of top junior riders."
• Lance Armstrong and allies are trying to use Congressional allies to fight USADA doping case. Meanwhile Frank Shleck, brother of former Tour winner Andy, was kicked off this year's tour for doping. 
• Denmark's first bicycle "superhighway" opened earlier this year. “It doesn’t work if you have a good route, then a section in the middle is covered in snow,” said Lise Borgstrom Henriksen, spokeswoman for the cycle superhighway secretariat. “People won’t ride to work then.”....Several biking innovations are being tested in Copenhagen. Some, like footrests and “green wave” technology, which times traffic lights at rush hour to suit bikers, have already been put into place on the superhighway. Others, like garbage cans tilted at an angle for easy access and “conversation” lanes, where two people can ride side by side and talk, might show up on long-distance routes in the future.
• From the same article "The plan has received widespread support in a country whose left- and right-leaning lawmakers both regularly bike to work (albeit on slightly different models of bicycle)." I can't even begin to guess what type of bike each type of lawmaker would ride.

Comments

[Bossi]

Ahh Copenhagen... as I'd debated on Twitter earlier this week: personally I find the city to be spectacularly bike-friendly, but was surprised to find it quite lacking on the pedestrian end. 1m sidewalks alongside 3-4m bikeways, sidewalks blocked by blocked by bikes, and multitudes of vehicles driving and bicyclists riding in the ped-only zones.

[T]

Aside from the bike stealing incident, that crime report reads like a compendium of phone thefts. The solution seems easy. Send 20 plain clothed cops out tomorrow with iphones in their hands walking a few blocks from each of the crime locations. Gurantee you get 5 arrests.

[Christopher Fotos]

Clicking through the links on the Danish bike "superhighway," I love it, but it's not a physically distinct zone all the way through. In the video near the top of this story, starting around the 4:00 mark, you'll see what I mean. Naturally when it gets into a city things will get more complex, but parts of it are a pretty narrow lane more or less marked off on the side of the street.

[Ed]

To be pedantic, Frank Schlek voluntarily withdrew, he wasn't "kicked off."