PBOT's Greg Raisman (L) and Transport for London bike planner Steve Cardno.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

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Rolling on NE Tillamook.
(Photos © J. Maus)

The City of Portland recently unveiled "neighborhood greenways" as a term to replace bike boulevards. At the monthly meeting of the City's Bicycle Advisory Committee last night PBOT traffic safety staffer Greg Raisman showed up to explain more about their thinking behind the new name. (more...)

New traffic calming device
on SE Spokane St.
(Photo © J. Maus)

With their extensive plans for bike boulevards in the coming years (they've got 60 miles of them coming by 2013), it's clear that the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation has made residential street safety a high priority.

Residential streets don't garner the media attention that projects in commercials areas do, but according to PBOT they deserve priority because most trips start at home and 70% of Portland's streets are residential. (more...)

That's a cool logo. I hope someone
brings me back a T-shirt.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams, his Chief of Staff Tom Miller, and Bureau of Transportation traffic safety specialist Greg Raisman will visit Brussels, Belgium next week for the 29th annual Velo-city Conference.

Widely regarded as the premier bicycle transportation conference in the world (the 2007 edition in Munich had 950 participants from 50 countries), this year's Velo-city will take on added significance. The four-day conference will be held in the European Parliament building and on the final day, several cities -- including Portland -- will sign the Charter of Brussels. (more...)

Mayor Adams credits bike boxes
as one reason for record numbers
(Photo © J. Maus)

Back in January, we reported that Portland had potentially had a record low number of traffic fatalities in 2008.

PBOT has now made it official -- we have never had fewer traffic fatalities in any year since they began keeping track in 1925.

In 2008, 20 people died in traffic crashes. Fifteen were in cars and five were on foot. For the fifth time in the past ten years, there were no bicycle-related fatalities. (more...)

15 miles of Portland streets will
get calmer, safer, and more
enjoyable for bikes in the
coming months.
(Photo © J. Maus)

At a subcommittee meeting before the monthly Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting in City Hall last night, the Portland Bureau of Transportation's Traffic Safety Program Manager Mark Lear and Traffic Safety Specialist Greg Raisman outlined details on the bike boulevard portion of Mayor Adams' "First 100 Day Action Plan".

In that list, Mayor Adams promised to, (more...)

PBOT traffic safety expert
Greg Raisman.
(Photos © J. Maus)

In 2008, there were no fatal bike crashes in the City of Portland. After a tumultuous 2007, when we had six fatal bike crashes (two of them very high-profile), this was welcome news by many in the community.

To gain more perspective on this statistic, I asked Greg Raisman, the chief traffic safety guru in the City of Portland's Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) a few questions. Raisman thinks that it's not just people on bikes that are safer, but that as bike traffic grows, all road users have a lower risk of being involved in a fatal crash.

Here's the Q & A we did via email:
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