Milwaukie City Council will take up the proposed
new path on 17th Ave tonight.

After we posted a story yesterday about a Milwaukie real estate owner who plans to demolish his retail building on Main Street and build a parking lot, we heard from a few readers who worried their hometown was getting a bad rap.

Truth is, there is a lot of positive momentum for bicycling and livable streets in Milwaukie. Reader Matt Menely has been advocating for bikes in Milwaukie for many years. He got in touch to tell us about tonight’s city council meeting — which has an agenda that’s chock-full of bike-related projects.
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A Google Street View image of the building that
could be destroyed.

Here’s an odd story forwarded to us this afternoon by reader Tim D.

According to Pamplin Media, a downtown Milwaukie business that already has a parking lot has gotten permission to demolish a row of sidewalk-facing shops on its small commercial Main Street in order to build a parking lot.

The property owner, regional credit firm Reliable Credit, doesn’t seem to have immediate plans to destroy the row of buildings at 10605 SE Main Street, which county records value at $180,000. Instead, the firm’s owner is apparently acting to ensure the company has the right to do so in the future.

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SE 17th is getting a makeover between Sellwood and Milwaukie.

A new, $3.4 million path and street design update will vastly improve the bicycling connection between Portland and Milwaukie and the City of Milwaukie wants your feedback on its preliminary design.
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“This picture is just way too awesome!” according to
a Milwaukie city council candidate.

1:14 pm: Barbur has released a statement. Read it at the end of this post.

Scott Barbur, a lawyer running for Milwaukie (Oregon) city council, is facing serious questions from voters about a Facebook post and comments that surfaced last week. The post makes light of a horrific collision in Mexico in 2008 that killed one person and injured 10 others.

On July 20th, 2010, Barbur posted a photograph of the collision on his personal Facebook page. That post was discovered a few months ago by Mandy Zelinka, the editor and founder of the Milwaukie Rules! website. Zelinka then posted a screenshot of Barbur’s 2010 post on the Milwaukie Rules! Facebook page last week.
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Google Street View image of the approximate incident location. The bus stop is visible beneath the tree at right.

TriMet is investigating an incident in which a man claims that a TriMet operator blew him off after a bus pulled in front of him while he was riding his bike, prompting a collision.

The encounter took place June 6 at 4:30 pm, leaving the man, Erik Holm, with what he described as “minor pain in my left shoulder, injury sustained when I used my left arm to brace against impact with the bus at oblique angle.”

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It’s always jarring, and sometimes educational, to see a bike-related collision from a third party’s vantage point.

In a video captured last week by a Halloween-themed “graveyard” security camera and published last night on Bike Milwaukie’s Facebook page, it’s easy to see how fast a nasty crash can happen.

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Concept of Monroe/Linwood intersection.
(Graphic: BTA)

Yesterday, the Oregon Department of Transportation announced the winners of their 2013 Transportation and Growth Management grants. Among them is a $103,000 award that will fund the planning and design of the Monroe Street Bike Boulevard/Neighborhood Greenway project.

While the dollar amount is relatively small, this grant represents a major milestone for Milwaukie, a city on the Willamette River just six miles south of downtown Portland. (more…)

Photo by Bike Milwaukie.

Bike Milwaukie, a community group in Portland’s inner southern suburb, has been holding 12 to 13 rides a year since it formed in 2011 and is ready for a minor milestone: Milwaukie Mayor Jeremy Ferguson plans to join the ride this Sunday.

Ferguson, whose day job is supervising operations at Portland Streetcar, has served since 2009 and was reelected to a full four-year term in 2010. He’s been a successful proponent of extending TriMet’s Orange Line to central Milwaukie, which he aims to enrich with more human traffic.

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A Milwaukie Police Department photo
from the first giveaway, in 2011.

A three-year-old experiment that distributes unclaimed bikes to low-income kids in Milwaukie has taken root, with the help of Milwaukie’s police and Sellwood shop The Bike Commuter.

Last week, the program gave 50 bikes to students at four Milwaukie elementary schools and one middle school. Most were unclaimed bikes collected by TriMet police and the Milwaukie police department, but unclaimed by owners (many of whom haven’t recorded their bikes’ serial numbers, as recommended).

The Bike Commuter, a shop in nearby Sellwood that opened in 2010 with the help of a loan from Mercy Corps Northwest, donated their mechanics’ time to make the necessary repairs, as they have for the last two years.

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Lewelling Elementry student Nikolas McKinney (green shirt) stands with Milwaukie PD Cadet John Pyle and Captain Steve Bartol. His friend Kayden Miller is in the background.
(Photos: North Clackamas School District)

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