This Week in the Mercury
Friday, November 20, 2009
Bikes Mercury News Team: We Would Never Block the Bike Lane With Our Giant Ass News Van
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 6:06 PM
That's right, the Mercury would never illegally park our giant ass news van in the westbound bike lane of the Burnside bridge, forcing all cyclists dangerously into speeding car traffic so we can film the first holiday lighting of the Made in Oregon reindeer from a competitive angle. UNLIKE THE FOX 12 NEWS TEAM.
- Fuck that.
2
That is a nice promise, you don't have a microwave* truck. In fact, Matt Davis has talked about renting a car to drive to Salem, and the Mercury didn't pay for it. If I know Hump, you probably have to depend upon free Wifi to file your stories, but maybe he is more generous than I thought and gave you cellular/wimax cards for your laptops.
*The TV stations likes to call them satellite trucks cause it makes them sound cool. The truth is, they are just aiming the dish at the general direction of the radio towers in the west hills, where it gets picked up by a dish there and put on a fiber optic line and run back to the studio. The signal is on the microwave frequencies, so they are considered microwave trucks, (not to be confused with the food carts which tend to have real stoves in them.) The two dishes and the electronics to run them costs less than $10k, although the mounting, (on the radio towers, and the truck itself,) is far more than that. Satellites aren't very good for local news anyways. They cause delays between the people "on the street" and the people in the studio, and they are a lot more expensive to buy time on.
*The TV stations likes to call them satellite trucks cause it makes them sound cool. The truth is, they are just aiming the dish at the general direction of the radio towers in the west hills, where it gets picked up by a dish there and put on a fiber optic line and run back to the studio. The signal is on the microwave frequencies, so they are considered microwave trucks, (not to be confused with the food carts which tend to have real stoves in them.) The two dishes and the electronics to run them costs less than $10k, although the mounting, (on the radio towers, and the truck itself,) is far more than that. Satellites aren't very good for local news anyways. They cause delays between the people "on the street" and the people in the studio, and they are a lot more expensive to buy time on.
3
It looks to me that there is plenty of room to ride a bicycle between the van and the wall, although they could have just as easily parked the van there and left the bikle lane at least partially open.
6
Matthew D: they actually have both sat trucks and microwave trucks. The sats are only for very long-range reporting, and this one is a microwave, I believe.
7
Other guy: I don't think there are any power lines on the Burnside bridge, and the truck operators are trained and re-trained every year to make sure they know to stay clear of power lines. It helps them not die on the job.
9
You do know they have special parking permits that say they can park anywhere except for blocking a MOTOR VEHICLE lane! Take your bike and shove it!
Oh, by the way Patrick- You look fatter than ever...you commie lovin pig!
Oh, by the way Patrick- You look fatter than ever...you commie lovin pig!
12
@FIRE MATT DAVIS: They are blocking a motor vehicle lane, they aren't over the white line. And it isn't just blocking the bicycle lane that they did wrong, they are also stopped on a bridge. But they don't have a special permit in the first place; read ORS 811.560 for the list of people that have special permits: school buses, the police, people performing maintenance on the road, or people releasing fish. How they deal with this that they just pay a ton of parking tickets. It is considered a cost of doing business.
13
or maintenance vehicles. or delivery vans. or people who are too unaware of the dangerous circumstances they are causing. we're just bikes, so we don't actually matter.
16
yeah, one of the main reasons we will never block the bike lane with our giant ass news van is because we don't own one. We're a bike only news team, thank you.
17
OK cool, so now that it's been blogged, what are the next action steps? Who's the decisionmaker we need to contact for accountability?
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