Morning Comute – 1/31

The scooters are here to save you all

The Morning Commute is an occasional look at meetings or other #BikeSpecific discussions and stories happening in the District. It also looks at interesting bike, scooter, or urban related ideas or concepts from other places across the globe that could possibly work here. Again, this isn’t journalism, just fun.

Today’s commute includes:

  • LeBron travels up the lane
  • Another city goes boldly down the protected, complete street
  • Scooters are a security risk

LeBron James and Lyft to expand bikesharing and bike equity. Lyft and NBA Los Angeles Lakers All-Star LeBron James are working to expand micromobility access to low income and undeserved communities.

It’s well-documented that Lebron is a proponent of bicycling and has been riding or investing in programs that help others ride for much of his career.

The plan that he and Lyft are promoting include providing thousands of free one-year bikeshare memberships to youth people affiliated with the YMCA who meet certain income requirements and are between the ages of 16 to 20. Beginning in New York this spring, the program will expand to Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area later this year.

The CNBC article, LeBron notes that as a young person growing up in Akron, Ohio, access to bikes provided him with freedom and a sense of independence.

“What bikes did for me was [allow me] to travel across the city with my friends, get me from home to school, or, you know, get to basketball practices or football practices,” he said Tuesday at the YMCA in Harlem where he and Lyft announced the new program.

This program is part of Lyft’s effort to expand bicycling in poor communities. Previously, the company stated that it has pledge one percent or $50 million of its profits yearly profits into expanding access to biking. CNBC

The only cars on San Francisco’s Market Street are trolleys. Over a century after bicyclists first demanded that Market street have dedicated bike infrastructure, San Francisco introduces a $600 million plan to help make it a reality. Called the Better Market Street project, the multifaceted plan outlines how the city will exclude single occupancy vehicles from this street and rebulid it as a bike, pedestrian, and transit corridor.

According to the Better Market Street plan documents, the revitalized 2.2 mile section of Market Street will create a human-scale environment for residents and visitors so that they can safely enjoy the cultural amenities within the Market Street corridor. Additionally, the plan dedicates lanes to transit and provide a faster trip to commercial and tourist areas.

Specifically, the plan calls for the following:

  • A safer street that meets the mobility and accessibility needs of all
  • A protected sidewalk-level bikeway
  • Improved transit services for buses and the historic streetcar that runs along the center of this street
  • A vibrant streetscape with new furnishings, plantings and public art
  • Renewal and replacement of aging infrastructure

Starting in January, the city will apply “quick build” elements to limit or restrict single-occupancy vehicles. This includes the addition of 100 commercial loading zones and enforce peak hour restrictions to limit freight delivery bottlenecks; adding new bike and pedestrian intersection safety improvements; and extending transit-only lanes. The permanent structures such as street and sidewalk reconfiguration and art installations will be completed by 2022. Forbes, Better Market Street

Proteus Bikes in College Park formalizes its informal coffee bar. Hyattsville Wire

The National League of Cities examines how cities should tackle micromobility. The article looks at how cities, including the Distinct, used the interest in providing alternative transportation modes to further larger mobility and equity goals. National League of Cities

Scooter may be a security risk. Computer science experts at the University of Texas at San Antonio published a study that looks at the security and privacy risks of e-scooters and their related software services and applications. Besides the risks of physical injury that certain studies have discussed, this analysis claims that hackers can cause a series of attacks, including eavesdropping on users and even spoof GPS systems to direct riders to unintended locations. Vendors of e-scooters can suffer denial-of-service attacks and data leaks. Science Daily

Austin, Texas to aggressively target vehicles parked in bike lanes. The Austin Department of Transportation plans to increase staffing to eventually dedicate two officers per shift to actively enforce bike lane violations. KUT

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