Sen. Carol Liu on Wednesday announced a bill, SB 192, that will require bicycle riders to wear helmets or face a $25 fine.

“Any responsible bicycle rider should wear a helmet,” Liu said ... “This law will help protect more people and make sure all riders benefit from the head protection that a helmet provides.” — sacbee.com

Boris Johnson today confirmed he would build Europe’s longest segregated urban cycle lane through central London after delays likely to be suffered by motorists were reduced.

The Mayor approved the “Crossrail for bikes” protected route through Parliament Square and along the Victoria Embankment and Upper Thames Street after it won overwhelming public support. — standard.co.uk

Mt. Prospect Avenue in Newark has New Jersey’s first protected bike lane, as far as we know. But unfortunately it looks like the Garden State will soon be back to zero.

Andrew Besold at WalkBikeJersey is reporting Mayor Ras Baraka has ordered the removal of the bike lane, and in the meantime is allowing people to park in it. — streetsblog.net

Louisville is currently implementing such a system, what the city’s bike department, Bike Louisville, is calling “Neighborways.” The city hopes these new bike boulevards will encourage and enable bicyclists and pedestrians to take advantage of alternate-route options for moving safely around the city—and eventually lead to an uptick in biking overall. — brokensidewalk.com

According to Jane McGonigal, a well-known game designer and researcher, “games build the kind of trust, relationships and social networks so critical to [collective action].” Playing games, people naturally weave a tight social fabric.” — Northern Lights Minnesota

I see nothing wrong with replacing the hegemony of cars with the hegemony I am proposing, of bikes. Those who need buses would be no worse off than they are now. But a problem would come if a city like Amsterdam had a bike modal share of 90 percent, as could achieved if end-of-trip strategies were built into all buildings to eliminate the problem of bike theft, and if shelter removed the inequity of cycling being the one mode remaining where people get wet. — cycle-space.com

As the search for more affordable real estate in New York City pushes deeper into neighborhoods that were once considered out of the way, bicycle lanes are taking on new importance. Since 2007, the city has carved out more than 350 miles of bike lanes in the five boroughs, according to the Department of Transportation. As a result, the distance from the nearest subway or bus stop has become less of a drawback for the two-wheeled set, particularly in transit-challenged areas of Brooklyn. — nytimes.com

Many U.S. cities are seeing an increase in bicycle commuters, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. Nationwide, the number of people who traveled to work by bike increased roughly 60 percent over the last decade, from about 488,000 in 2000 to about 786,000 during the 2008-2012 period. This is the largest percentage increase of all commuting modes tracked by the 2000 Census and the 2008-2012 American Community Survey. — census.gov

New bike lanes certainly make life better for cyclists, but how do they affect drivers? This question is hotly debated, especially when a new bike lane replaces a lane used by vehicular traffic. It seems that unless a ton of people start commuting by bicycle, giving away a lane would cause increased car traffic. But is this really the case? — fivethirtyeight.com

Before the path arrived, Indianapolis didn’t have a mainstream bike scene — just streets designed to improve traffic flow. Now, children and the elderly have joined the spandex swarms of longtime cycling enthusiasts...

The public art along the trail accentuates the path’s role as a sculptor of the city’s evolving identity. For example, Donna Sink’s “Moving Forward” is a series of seven stained-glass-hued eco-friendly bus shelters covered in lines from poems by local writers. — mobile.nytimes.com

"BikeHive" by Zijie Cao & Xin Wu of Workshop XZ gives a fun twist to the beehive concept. The proposal was one of over 1,000 entries that submitted to the Timber in the City: Urban Habitats competition where participants had to design a midrise, mixed-use complex that uses innovative wood construction and addresses the housing needs of the Red Hook waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn. — bustler.net

The solution, or so the city’s traffic planners hope, is to encourage people to cycle for longer distances by creating the cycling equivalent of freeways, which will provide fast, direct routes of up to 22 kilometers into the center. A total of 28 highways are planned, providing 495 kilometers of dedicated bike tracks... Nine routes are under construction and should be completed by 2015 at a cost of 208 million krone, or $36 million, divided equally between central and local government. — nytimes.com

Crews that built the railing committed what experts called a basic mistake - they welded the bolts in place firmly in their slots rather than leaving a small amount of room to accommodate a natural expansion of the bicycle path that happens in hot weather.

As a result, scores of the 1-inch-diameter bolts have been sheared off along the 1.2-mile bike path on the southern side of the span's skyway section. — sfgate.com

As it turns out, infrastructure really matters. Your chance of injury drops by about 50 percent, relative to that major city street, when riding on a similar road with a bike lane and no parked cars. The same improvement occurs on bike paths and local streets with designated bike routes. And protected bike lanes – with actual barriers separating cyclists from traffic – really make a difference. The risk of injury drops for riders there by 90 percent. — m.theatlanticcities.com