It's been a very long and winding road for the federal transportation bill. And while it looks like the end is finally in sight, there is still some nail-biting ahead.
The law that dictates how the federal government funds transportation expired over 900 days ago and has survived on extensions ever since. With the Highway Trust Fund facing bankruptcy by fall of 2013, and with idle construction workers waiting to build projects, the House and the Senate finally got their acts together and in over the past few months, both chambers have passed their own versions of a new bill.
The bill that Republicans passed out of the House was extremely bad. It scrapped decades of programs and funding for bicycling and walking and it included provisions to pay for new highways with domestic oil drilling. It was even too extreme for some Republicans. Fortunately, the Senate's bill turned out to be much more palatable. While it wasn't a slam dunk for biking, most prominent advocates considered it worth fighting for.
Portland resident Chris Chapman has launched a new cycling apparel brand called, "It's in my Heart". The business is just getting off the ground; but Chapman, a former brand manager at Castelli/Sportful, says he's already got orders flowing in from all of Portland's major bike shops as well as the Made in Oregon store and REI.
Chapman has licensed the well-known heart artwork from Portlander Chris Bucci. Bucci is the man who became something of a local celebrity for his ubiquitous stickers and hats with a simple green heart inside an outline of the state of Oregon.
Chapman plans to take that design and use it to create jerseys, hats, socks and other cycling apparel items for all 50 states. He's starting locally; but he'll make a national launch at the Interbike trade show this fall.
Portland's paltry network of bike-specific infrastructure, circa 1980. See how it has evolved below.
Portland's bike network was not built overnight. Most of our bike-specific infrastructure was built in the mid to late 1990s, but it really started in the early '80s. About seven years ago (before many of you even knew about BikePortland), I stitched together an animation showing how Portland's bike network has evolved.
Yesterday, something on Twitter sparked my memory of the animation, so I shared it again. Given how it has spread overnight, I figured many folks might be interested in seeing it again (or for the first time). The animation shows the spread of bike-specific infrastructure in Portland from 1980 through 2005 (and then into the future) in five year increments. Check it out:
To all of our readers in Portland and Oregon (which is just over half of our audience by the way), your ballots are due by 8:00 pm tonight. There really is no good reason to sit this one out, so if you haven't mailed in your ballot yet, check out BallotDrop.org for a location near you.
In Portland, we've got a tight race for Mayor that could very likely be decided by who shows up. The most recent OPB poll shows that Charlie Hales has surged into the lead with 32% of the vote, Jefferson Smith getting 24%, and Eileen Brady dropping seven percentage points in just one month to come in third with 16%. Remember, a candidate must get over 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff in November.
Sunday Parkways got off to a great start yesterday as throngs of Portlanders enjoyed the warm sun and rolled through eight miles of carfree northeast neighborhoods.
CycloFemme — a global ride to honor, celebrate, and empower women — rolled through Northeast Portland during Sunday Parkways yesterday. Women of all shapes, sizes, ages and ethnicities met at Woodlawn Park, attached blue balloons to their bikes, attached "Women on Wheels" sashes over their skirts and dresses, got a souvenir CycloFemme tattoo and listened to an inspiring welcome by City of Portland staffer Janis McDonald:
"We are here to honor the women of yesterday who fought for our equality; to celebrate the women of today who make bicycling more mainstream in Portland; and to empower the women of tomorrow to take our momentum and make bicycling accessible to every woman and girls."
On Saturday night, the Oregon Department of Transportation installed sharrows and new signs on the St. Johns Bridge. Their "St. Johns Bridge Safety Awareness Project" was done in order to, "encourage motorists to be aware that the bridge and roadway is a shared facility and that bicyclists may opt to travel on the roadway."
They have placed eight sharrows in each direction, as well as adding two new "Bicycles on Roadway" signs mid-span. They also moved an existing sign at the westbound entry to a more visible location because it was partially blocked by a speed sign.
I rolled out to see everything myself this morning. My impression is that, while it's nice to see ODOT acknowledge the bike access problems on this bridge, these sharrows and signs do not make this a more pleasant place to ride. Then again, that was not ODOT's mission. As the name of the project implies, the new markings and signs will only increase awareness that people have the legal right to ride bicycles on the bridge. That's helpful, but it's a far cry from what should be the ultimate goal — to make the bridge a more viable (and less stressful) option for people on bicycles.
Walk Score, a group that has earned widespread respect for its walkability rankings of cities and individual addresses across America, have launched Bike Score. The folks at Bike Score have released a ranking of 10 major U.S. cities and Portland came in second behind Minneapolis.
Bike Score calculates the bikeability of a location on a 0-100 point ranking based on a mix of factors including availability of bike lanes, trails, and other types of bike-friendly infrastructure, as well as "hilliness of the area," connectivity, and the number of people who bike. To get the city ranking, they plug in the Bike Score algorithm block-by-block and weigh the scores with population density. Learn more about the methodology here.
One week from today, Einstein Bros. Bagels will hold a grand opening for 13 stores in the Portland area (the stores were previously Noah's Bagels and Kettleman Bagel Co. locations that they've rebranded).
And, while some local bagel lovers grumbled at the takeover of Kettleman by a national company, perhaps Einstein will fall back into favor by embracing Portland's love of bicycling. The company announced today that, in conjunction with National Bike to Work Day on May 18th, they'll give a free bagel (with spread) to every customer who shows up by bike.
To be eligible, you can show them your helmet or the key to your bike lock. Also on the 18th, the Einstein Bros. folks will be handing out free bagels on the Eastbank Esplanade under the Hawthorne Bridge, "for bike commuters to grab a bite on the way to the office."
Trying to get caught up on emails after my 10-day break and I've come across two exciting project updates — both of which are located east of 82nd Ave.
Cover of Portland Public School's Bike Shelter Project Development Guide.
In an effort to make bicycling even more appealing to students, staff, and parents, Portland Public Schools (PPS) now offers a Bike Shelter Project Development Guide (PDF).
The new guide was developed in conjuction with the City of Portland's Safe Routes to School program. PBOT's Safe Routes team has been building momentum for more bike shelters since (at least) March 2010, when they installed shelters at four local schools. According to Safe Routes staffer Clay Veka, the PPS guide emerged from talks between local school leaders and PBOT back in February.
Hi folks. If you've been wondering why I haven't chimed in on local bike news or why the volume of posts has been lighter than usual, it's because I've been on vacation since May 1st. The family and I are just now headed back to Portland after 10 days in Siesta Key, Florida.
[This story was submitted by Kristi Finney, who became a traffic safety activist after her son Dustin was killed by a hit-and-run driver while bicycling in Portland last August.]
Less than a year ago I'd never heard of the Ride of Silence. I don't remember how I found out about the website but I came across it one day and it claimed that the organization was created for this purpose:
To HONOR those who have been injured or killed
To RAISE AWARENESS that we are here
To ask that we all SHARE THE ROAD
To be frank, I still wish I didn't know what the Ride of Silence is. But now I do know, and I can't ignore it. I can't pretend it doesn't exist. I can't pretend that it's not happening. Most of all, I can't pretend there isn't a reason for it... and that is what my biggest wish in all the world would be, if I could have any wish.
Back in February, we reported that the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) was considering a slate of changes to the St. Johns Bridge with an eye toward making bicycle travel safer and more pleasant. Now those plans have been confirmed.
In what they're calling their "St. Johns Bridge Safety Awareness Project," ODOT will lay down 16 sharrows (8 in each direction) along the two outer lanes of the bridge and they will "improve signage on the bridge span indicating to all users that the bridge span is a shared road facility."
Residents around the bridge were sent a postcard earlier this month that described the reasons for the project and some specifics. The mailer explained the new pavement markings:
[This story was submitted by northeast Portland resident and president of Portland Bike Polo, Sasha Friedman.]
Portland Bike Polo has progressed over the past ten years from an offshoot of an indie messenger sport to a large group of athletes practicing year-round for national and international tournaments and putting on community outreach programs. Every week in Portland, rain or shine, twenty to fifty people come out to play a fun and challenging team sport on the pavement that combines individual bike riding ability with the ability to work and compete as a team.
[This story was submitted by Portland resident and active transportation activist Alexis Grant.]
With Jonathan's recent mention that Effective Cycling (the vehicular cycling bible) will be republished, it seems like a good time to share some thoughts on cycling facilities that I developed after attending Towards Carfree Cities IX in York, UK.
At the conference, I noticed a theme emerging in discussing street configuration: mode separation vs. shared space. Separating modes (like walking, cycling, and driving) means putting them in different places on a street, or allowing them to proceed at different times through an intersection. In the US, we think of separation as normal for people walking. They go more slowly than vehicles, so we give them their own place on the street: the sidewalk. But it wasn't always so.
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