Danny Dunn hard at work. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Have you ever looked around as you roll through the streets and thought, “Geez, there’s so much trash everywhere!” I certainly have. And while I’ve often thought of doing something about it, Portlander Danny Dunn has taken action.
Since the end of August, Danny has been picking up trash while he bikes around town. With a simple system of plastic buckets strapped to his front rack and a $25 grabber tool, Danny glides along, making Portland cleaner one piece of trash at a time.
I met up with him in Arbor Lodge yesterday. [Read more…]
Looking southbound on N Flint at Russell. The school is on the right.
Many of us had bad feelings about the chaotic traffic on North Flint Avenue during school drop-off. Now those concerns appear to have been very warranted.
Less than two months into the school season, a young student walking to class was injured by an auto user as she crossed the street in front of Harriet Tubman Middle School yesterday morning.
Several readers contacted us about the collision and we were eventually forwarded this email from the school’s principal, Natasha Butler: [Read more…]
A bicycle rider was killed last year in the central Oregon city of Bend when he was involved in a collision with a FedEx truck operator. The collision was a right-hook that took place in an intersection.
The reason I’m sharing this story here and now is because of a Deschutes County Circuit Court ruling that was made in the case yesterday. Here’s the story from the Bend Bulletin (emphasis mine):
A Deschutes County Circuit Court judge on Tuesday ruled a cyclist hit and killed in an intersection by a FedEx truck did not have the protection of a bike lane.
FedEx driver Trenton Derek Sage was found not guilty of the violation of failing to yield to a rider in a bicycle lane. Last November, Sage hit and killed Bend man Jonathan Chase Adams, 31… The case had implications beyond the lives of Sage and Adams. Prosecutor Andrew Steiner said many people today do not treat bike lanes like vehicle lanes, though they are.
“This is cultural,” he said. “Many people just don’t think of them as lanes.”
Steiner attempted to make the case that bike lanes continue through intersections, citing Oregon Department of Transportation guidelines for road construction and recent court cases and legislation in Oregon.
But Tuesday afternoon, Adler announced he did not agree. He said he saw “no authority” to support the contention that bike lanes continue through intersections in Oregon.
Engineering drawing (by Ty-Lin International) of St. Louis Avenue between Pier Park Place and Smith Street. (From: St. Johns Transportation Concept Development Project Summary Report – October 2013)
The timing is curious: On the eve of a planned rally from concerned St. Johns residents who’ve been clamoring for years for street safety upgrades, the Portland Bureau of Transportation announced yesterday that a long-awaited project is set to move forward. [Read more…]
PBOT’s recommended detour routes around the repaving on Clinton. (Graphic: BikePortland)
Be advised that the Portland Bureau of Transportation is repaving SE Clinton Street from 21st to 26th and the road will be closed to bicycling from today through the 24th.
L-R: Darth Vader in rain jacket, minion in rain jacket, Wonder Woman in rain jacket, Rainier beer can adjacent to her costume in basket. (Photos: Madi Carlson)
Do you take your bike trick-or-treating? We do. [Read more…]
Chris King welcomed visitors to his factory on Saturday. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
As Portland’s largest bicycle company, Chris King Precision Components is in a unique position to be an industry leader. With the success of their mini-summit of bike builders and industry movers and shakers that wrapped up with a big open house event Saturday, the 42-year-old company seems to be embracing that role.
The halls of the Chris King factory were jam-packed for the “Open House” show on Saturday. Among massive industrial machines and assembly rooms that put together some of the most respected and sought after bicycle components in the world, hundreds of bicycle lovers got an close-up look at a very special selection of bicycles and the builders who create them.
For the man behind the brand, Chris King, the gathering must have felt bittersweet. A framebuilder himself, King decided to cease production of his Cielo brand just over one year ago so his company could focus more closely on its core business: designing, making, and selling bottom brackets, headsets, and hubs. King, who still spends about three days a week in the shop, is obsessive about quality and his company makes nearly every piece of their products themselves (yes, even the bearings). Manufacturing products in the United States is hard enough without having to constantly react to the whims of product managers and marketers who seem to push a new wheel size, head-tube size or axle configuration every season. [Read more…]
Transit subsidy: Seattle is the latest west coast city to pass a local mandate requiring certain companies to allow employees to use pre-tax wages to pay for transit. Why they heck doesn’t Portland do this?! [Read more…]
PBOT’s speed camera on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway was installed in 2016. (Photo: PBOT)
One line in a recent Beaverton Police Department press release caught my eye: “Between 07/01/2015 and 07/01/2016 over 94,000 drivers were traveling 11 mph or more, above the speed limit.”
I’m well aware that most people drive faster than they should. But 94,000? That’s a lot of speeders! (And don’t even get me started about the standard practice of only citing for 11 mph or over the posted speed.)
Thankfully there’s a silver lining. The release also announced that BPD would start issuing citations to some of those people this coming Tuesday, October 16th (warnings have been mailed since September 15th). The way they’ll manage this sudden influx of enforcement activity is by using photo radar cameras thanks to a law passed in 2017 that allows them to cite speeders using cameras that have until now only nabbed red light runners.
Portland will take advantage of the same law, but it will likely be at least several months before our cameras are ready. Here’s why: [Read more…]
A packed room for the OMBC Summit held last weekend in Bend. (Photos: Gabriel Amadeus.
Oregon is home to some of the best off-road cycling anywhere. From mountains to deserts, the coast, and rivers — the diversity of terrain is matched only by the amount of the hard-working groups that tend the trails and make sure the best places to ride stay open and accessible.[Read more…]
On the evening of April 7th, Alex Hubert was crossing to the MAX platform to catch a northbound Yellow Line train back home when he was struck by a car. There was no police alert on Twitter. There were no news reports. But I was there.
This post is about my attempt to learn more about the safety issues at the intersection and find out why they haven’t been fixed.[Read more…]
View looking west on SE Division at crossings of 138th and 139th.
Portland Police have arrested two drivers and are looking for a third in relation to a collision that left another person trying to cross SE Division Street dead last night.
So far the investigation has revealed that an adult female was killed while crossing at SE 138th just after 10:00 pm. [Read more…]
Nothing like the sight of a PBOT maintenance worker installing protection on a bike lane in the morning! (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Something great is happening as I type this: A day after the City of Portland took some heat from Bicycling Magazine about not providing enough protected cycling space, I noticed Bureau of Transportation crews installing some in my neighborhood this morning. [Read more…]
What is Kate Brown’s transportation vision? (Photo: ODOT)
This post comes from BikePortland subscriber and contributor Kiel Johnson. He previously wrote about his grassroots effort to garner neighborhood support for the Lloyd to Woodlawn Neighborhood Greenway project.
In the latest Oregon Governor’s race poll Kate Brown is ahead by 4% with a margin of error of 5%. There have been alarms going off that Governor Brown is in trouble and many commentators are pointing to a lack of a compelling vision. Last year she helped push through HB 2017, one of the largest transportation budgets in Oregon’s history. Yet this additional money is not doing her many favors for saving her job. She has hardly mentioned her victory on the campaign trail. As people who spend time reading about the importance of transportation, it is crucial for us to figure out why transportation is not a topic of interest in this race.
I encourage you to leave your ideas in the comments below. Here are a few of my thoughts:
Get out there and enjoy our fall splendor. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
The weekend is near and we hope you have a chance to escape and enjoy the pleasures of a bicycle ride. If so, here are some suggestions of things to do… [Read more…]
PBOT visualization of new markings coming to NW Nicolai.
You’ve heard of rails-to-trails, how about rails-to-cycle-track?
That’s what in store for a defunct railroad bed on a 0.6 mile section of NW Nicolai Street that’s been paved over in the northwest industrial area. The Portland Bureau of Transportation plans to add some markings and a few other finishing touches to make this a two-way bikeway between Highway 30 and NW Wardway. It’s one of 18 projects that will be built will receive funding in the coming year thanks to $2,085,000 set aside for small-scale projects identified through programs in the city’s Transportation System Plan (TSP). [Read more…]
Did you know the Hub Building on N Williams used to be a bicycle-making factory? (Photos: Tom Howe)
This post was submitted by BikePortland subscriber Tom Howe.
Everyone who regularly visits BikePortland knows its value as a source for bicycle-related news in the Portland area. I can’t count the number of things I never would have heard about if not for visiting this site a few times a week. But something that’s easy to overlook is the value of BikePortland as a research tool for bike news that has taken place in the past.
Jonathan has been at this for over 13 years now, so learning about or reviewing anything that has happened since 2005 is as easy as typing a search into the box under the magnifying glass at the top of any page on the site*.
This value was really driven home to me recently when I came to the site looking for some historical information. Not only did I find what I was looking for, but I learned a lot more about a past bike controversy a dozen years ago that I only remembered a little about. I started my search with the word “Kinesis” as I had recently acquired a new bike frame from the Taiwanese company and I remembered these frames were once built right here in Portland. So all I really wanted to know was where that assembly facility was located, but once down the rabbit hole, I learned a lot more. [Read more…]
It’s a frequent topic of conversation in local advocacy circles that Portland has lost some of its swagger when it comes to being a leader for cycling in America.
