Day: June 30, 2009

Ray LaHood will learn about
streetcar manufacturing progress.
(Photo © J. Maus)

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will be in Portland today. The Daily Journal of Commerce and reliable sources say that LaHood will join regional transportation officials near the Aerial Tram tomorrow morning.

LaHood is expected to show his support for Portland’s burgeoning streetcar network (not that it needs it, streetcar is getting money from everywhere right now) and to get a first-hand look at a prototype of a locally manufactured streetcar (by Clackamas-based Oregon Ironworks).

Back in April, LaHood said on C-SPAN that Portland is a “model” for streetcar development.

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Detail of PBOT map showing where
counters will be stationed.
(Download PDF, 950K)

The City of Portland Bureau of Transportation is gearing up for their annual effort to count how many people are pedaling around our city.

Last year, 75 volunteers helped PBOT expand the scope of their counts to include 140 locations throughout the city. They found that Portland’s bike use showed a double-digit increase for the fourth straight year and that overall bike use in Portland shot up 28% between 2007 and 2008.

According to City Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller, the counts are vital to PBOT’s work. “They are an essential means of measuring the effectiveness of all our efforts to increase bicycle use and ‘to make the bicycle a part of daily life in Portland,’ as our policy states,” he wrote via email today.

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