🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
“Signing any sidewalk as a bicycle path increases the likelihood of tort settlements even years later.”
–FHWA Course on Bicycle and Transportation Planning
The recent tragedy in Beaverton leaves many unanswered questions.
Among them is whether or not Washington County contributed to a dangerous situation by designating a sidewalk as the bike route — a practice that state and federal transportation agencies strongly discourage.
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The national bike movement might have just found its most important (and famous) ally: Lance Armstrong.
After just bumping into Lance at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show held in Portland last weekend, I noticed a story published in his hometown newspaper today about the new “commuting bike shop” he plans to open.
And get this; the shop will focus on commuter bikes, not on high-end, carbon-fiber race machines he so heroically pedaled to seven Tour de France victories.
Portland Police Bureau detectives say they’ve identified a suspect in the case of a road rage incident that took place in Northwest Portland just over two weeks ago.
The victim — who claims he was nearly run down, threatened with a baseball bat and then punched in the face by a man in a Hummer SUV — picked the suspect out of a photo line-up last week.
In an executive order issued on Monday (2/11), Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer made official what I reported on one month ago — new language has been added to the list of crash investigation criteria that will have a major impact on bike-involved collisions.
At last night’s Portland Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting, new Traffic Division Captain Larry O’Dea handed me the order, and in addition to the new crash investigation threshold, he pointed out another new policy that will improve bike-related enforcement practices.
First, here’s the new language that changes when a crash investigation is triggered: