Today’s newsletter brings you two perspectives on the e-bike boom.
One, from Felix Mariano, looks at the riders pushing their bikes to the limits, and where safety comes into play. “What we once saw as freedom is now criminalized,” Mariano writes. “And it didn’t have to be this way.”
The other, from Streetsblog NYC contributor Julie Lichtblau, processes the aftermath from being t-boned by an e-bikeshare rider on a protected greenway — and how that informs her role in the safe streets movement.
“I admit to being dismissive of e-bike complaints before. After being decked by a 60-pound e-Citi Bike rider, I can say unequivocally, yes, it’s different when it happens to you. So to my fellow Safe Streets activists, I want to say that if we let the most aggressive riders set behavior norms and dominate perceptions, we’re giving anti-bike reactionaries ammunition to blast us back to the bad old days with all the bad faith they can muster.”
Read all of that and more below.
Centennial events downplay the violent history of one of America’s most “iconic” highways, and obscure how that violence persists to this day.
The U.S. is becoming a dying petrostate, while China leads the world in renewable energy.
“Affordable travel is not a fallback. It is what makes broad mobility possible.”
