Just before 6:30 pm tonight, Portland Police officers responded to a collision on the St. Johns Bridge.
According to their report, a 23-year-old man was riding his bike and a 58-year-old man driving a small pick were involved in a collision. Both vehicles were headed westbound when the collision occurred.
The man on the bike sustained "traumatic injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening." The man driving the pick-up remained at the scene. So far, the PPB have not released any other details. (*See updates below)
Yesterday morning I got two reports from readers about a bike/car collision at the intersection of SE 16th and Ankeny. I usually don't post about every bike-involved collision I hear about; but since two people emailed and it's on a busy bike street, I figured this one was worth sharing.
Reader Marsha H. wrote in, looking for more information about what happened:
"I went by on my morning commute and saw a young woman on a bike on the ground not moving much, a small but growing crowd of concerned cyclists, and the driver in the collision calling 911."
48-year-old southeast Portland resident Paul Jeffery (he goes by PJ) used to enjoy a daily ride from his house near 40th and Salmon to the Goose Hollow MAX stop. From there, he'd zip through the hills and down into Beaverton where he'd pedal the final leg of his journey to his job at Electro Scientific Industries (a producer of high-tech laser systems and industrial production equipment).
PJ's routine changed back in November when he was part of a 10% workforce reduction. In other words, he was laid off.
Without work, PJ missed the routine of getting up and getting out on his bike. So, at the end of January, he started riding to the top of Mt. Tabor each morning. I met him this morning at Common Grounds coffee shop on SE Hawthorne Blvd (a very nice place I must say)...
At all levels of government, transportation officials are running scared due to a severe lack of funding available to maintain and improve our roads. The major reason for all this anxiety is the failure of the gas tax to evolve with the times. Truly a "dinosaur" of a funding mechanism, the gas tax hasn't kept up with inflation, and it is dwindling as Americans drive fewer miles and cars become more fuel-efficient (and electrified in some cases).
While it's widely accepted we must move beyond the gas tax; no one has figured out a way to do it. Until now.
It turns out the State of Oregon has been working on this for over a decade and they're on the verge of some major breakthroughs that could lead to implementation of a mileage-based tax system by 2014.
New signs in Paris that tell people on bikes that they can roll through certain intersections under certain conditions.
If you only read the media accounts, you'd think that officials in the French capitol of Paris have just given people on bicycles a free pass to wantonly roll through red lights with reckless abandon.
"Hey, Portland bicyclists, want to run red lights? Move to France. Seriously. It's legal there now."
Saying that the new law comes only after, "a fierce three-year campaign by cyclists' associations," the UK-based Telegraph writes:
"Paris cyclists given right to break traffic laws: Breaking traffic rules, almost a national sport in France, has just been legalised – but only for Parisian cyclists."
But beyond the sensational headlines, the new law in Paris makes a lot of sense.
Realizing that the bill is so far off base that no amount of amendments would help, national transportation advocacy groups have launched a coordinated attack to kill the bill.
The City of Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) has announced three open houses where you can learn more and offer input on their High Crash Corridor Safety program.
High Crash Corridors are roadways that, according to PBOT, "have exceptional concentrations of crash activity." By identifying these corridors and putting them into a coordinated program, PBOT is able to target limited funding to make them safer. Current roads on the list include Portland's most notorious arterials like SW Barbur, SE 122nd, SE Foster, SE 82nd, SE Powell, Marine Drive, SW Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy, SE Division and others.
We all know these roads kill and seriously injure Portlanders far too often. These open houses give you the chance to do something about them.
It's been four years since UK-based cycling apparel company Raphachose Portland as its North American headquarters. Since then, the company has grown by leaps and bounds, and now they're making an even bigger commitment to Portland.
Last week a reader email spurred me to check up on a project I first wrote about in December 2007.
Reader Kevin B wrote:
"I live in the Kerns neighborhood and my kids go to Buckman Elementary. During our bike/scooter ride each morning to school I see numerous kids/families trying to cross the intersection of E Burnside and 16th. They have to play chicken to get across the road. I am confused as to why there is no pedestrian/cycling light at this intersection similar to what exists further out on E Burnside and 41st. It is listed as a Bike route street on all the cycling maps."
This morning, TriMet unveiled a proposal of service cuts and fare increases they plan to move forward with in order to make up for a $17 million budget shortfall. If you're a fan of transit, and of making our city one that is less reliant on private automobiles, this is not good news.
Riders gather in the Tiger Woods Center before the route announcement. (Photo: Will Vanlue/BikePortland)
This evening a group of roughly 700 people joined Cycle Oregon staff and volunteers at the Tiger Woods Center on the Nike campus in Beaverton to hear where the two Cycle Oregon rides are headed in 2012.
Everyone was excited to hear this year's routes (for both the weekend and week rides) but the real surprise was an announcement by Cycle Oregon co-founder Jonathan Nicholas about a really big idea the organization has been working on.
Hi folks. I want to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to address an important issue.
As the publisher of this site (and president of Pedaltown Media Inc., the company that owns it), everything that is written on these pages — and everyone who writes them — is a reflection on my business, and in some ways, me. Over the past several months it has come to my attention that one of our writers conducted himself in a way that made me and others feel uncomfortable. Specifically, this was a freelance reporter named Marcus Griffith that I had hired to write an in-depth story about the N. Williams Avenue project.
During the monthly stakeholder advisory committee meeting for the North Williams Traffic Operations Safety Project today, PBOT announced that it's "unlikely" they would be willing to redesign the street in the section between N Cook and Skidmore (known as Segment 4) into a one-lane configuration for auto traffic.
The Oregon Department of Transportation flipped the switch on a new crossing treatment on SW Barbur this morning. The location, south of SW Hamilton Street near Rasmussen Village, is just up the road from where Angela Burke was struck and then killed on December 15th, 2010 by Caleb Pruitt as he sped south on Barbur.
When a book says it's "all about the bike" and proudly displays images of disassembled bike components on its cover I assume it will eventually be sitting on a shelf in my garage, close to a pedal wrench and a bottle of chain lube.
William Fotheringham's Cyclopedia from Chicago Review Press is far from the repair manual its cover makes it look like. The book also is not a dry compendium as the word "cyclopedia" might imply.
Instead, it's a deep dive into the rich knowledge of Fotheringham, built on his over 30 years of experience reporting on professional cycling. While the book includes plenty of technical information, the entries are grounded in historical context.
- Independent, daily bike news since 2005 -
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