Local election season is heating up. One welcome trend of the campaigns, that will be fun to keep an eye on, is how/if the candidates try to out bike-friendly one another.
The latest candidate to fluff their bikey feathers is Amanda Fritz. Yesterday she announced that 25 volunteers will use bicycles to help her deliver 100 yard signs this Sunday in Northeast Portland. Here’s a snip from her press release:
“Amanda believes that bicycling is a vital part of making Portland livable [and] sustainable. She is committed to providing basic services equitably to all the citizens of Portland, including safe streets for all.”
Safe, bike-friendly streets as “basic services”. I like the sound of that.
Fritz is vying for City Council seat #1 (being vacated by Sam Adams) and her main competition includes John Branam, Jeff Bissonnette, Charles Lewis, and the leading bike-friendly candidate Chris Smith.
Thus far, Chris Smith is winning the bike-friendly race by a long shot. He has been a prominent figure for bike advocacy long before announcing his candidacy. Back in January, he and Jeff Bissonnette shared an endorsement from Bike, Walk, Vote.
Lewis has made noise about potholes, but I am yet to hear anything bike-specific from his campaign.
I’ve got an interview pending with Amanda Fritz and I hope to bring you more coverage of this race in the weeks to come.
Is she singing Karaoke in that pic?
It\’s agonizing having lots of candidates in the upcoming elections who are all so bike friendly! It\’s a problem deciding who to vote for. Not a lack of people who support sustainable forms of transportation, but lots of them!
However, it\’s a happy problem, and a problem most other cities would kill to have.
I just wanted to let all of you know a few things about me and my campaign.
I do own a bike, and I\’ve used it some. I live on Hayden Island, and getting anywhere on and off the island means negotiating two freeway entrance ramps, and crossing the Delta Park interchange. The last time I did it, I missed getting hit by a semi by about two feet., in broad daylight.
A friend of mine in West Hollywood was killed by a Metro Bus that went right over him at a busy intersection.
I know your difficulties, and they are OUR difficulties. My campaign treasurer is a member of Portland Peak Oil. We are running out of petroleum, and the use of it is choking the planet. We are also running out of time, and \”Politics as Usual\” will not deliver.
One very viable solution is the use of bikes for personal transportation, and as a Councilmember, I see biking as part of a a comprehensive plan to reduce green house gasses, and therefore essential to saving our planet.
I also know that biking safety is essential, and we still have a LOT of work to do in that department.
I hope you will take a look at my web site. I am NOT printing up lots of paper to distribute. It seems really wasteful to cut down lots of trees to share campaign information, so what we have are green recycled paper business cards directing people to our web site. We\’ve had about 16,000 hits so far. Think of all the paper we\’re saving.
http://www.edforportland.com
Thanks, Ed Garren, candidate for Portland City Council, seat #2