November 2008 Archives

The Monday Roundup

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Greenspace in inner Portland is
good for our health and our air.
(Photo: Esther Harlow in the
BikePortland.org Flickr Photo Pool.)

Hold on to your seats folks, here’s your Monday Roundup…

A new study in California has found that more people are killed by the effects of polluted air than by car crashes. The study tallies the cost to society of dirty air at $28 billion a year.

A Netherlands-based cycling research organization is concerned that bicycles are disappearing from Asia as cities and roads are increasingly planned around cars and motorcycles.

The Mercury’s Sarah Mirk was doored while biking up Glisan and tells a good story about it on their blog.

(Photos © J. Maus)

A new bike shop has opened its doors on the corner of N. Page and N. Williams Ave (map). Metropolis Cycle Repair is owned by Nathan Roll and he shares the space with his brother Todd, who operates Pedal Bike Tours.

I stopped by Metropolis on Friday and chatted with Nathan and Todd. Nathan said he lives in the neighborhood and has been looking for an opportunity to open his own shop for years. In the past two years, he’s moved Metropolis from his garage, to working out of BicyclingHub.com’s retail location in the Central Eastside, and finally to his own space.

The story below from the Oregonian was sent to me by a reader. It’s sad on so many levels (emphasis mine):

A 97-year-old woman was killed Saturday in the parking lot of an apartment building in Milwaukie when she was hit by a car that was backing out of a parking space, the Milwaukie Police Department said Sunday morning.

Read more

Tickets follow close call on Ainsworth

PSU Cycling Club president
Reuben Vyn and Officer Pryce.
(Photos: Peter Welte)

Two members of the PSU Cycling Club got a lot more than they bargained for while riding along NE Ainsworth yesterday.

According to witnesses, Club president Reuben Vyn was riding along with six other members of the club on NE Ainsworth near NE 23rd when a Portland police officer in a patrol car came by “within a foot” of his handlebars. (Ainsworth is a narrow, one-lane, residential street with car parking. The street is a designated bike route, but it’s also notoriously uncomfortable to ride on. See photo below)

Spotted today near the Rose Quarter; boots, a
dress, a denim jacket, and a purple Schwinn.
(Photos © J. Maus)

The good news is that it’s going to be a chilly, beautiful weekend.

There is no bad news.

Saturday from 11 to 3 is the annual PUMP Swap Meet. PUMP may be a mountain bike organization, but the swap meet caters to every kind of rider, whether you want an obscure kind of knobby tire, a sassy new bike t-shirt, or just a decent secondhand derailleur that won’t make your life a misery. It’s also a fun scene. Check it out.

In Copenhagen, this sign is placed directly in the bike lane.
See another photo below for another view.
(Photos by Tom Miller)

Copenhagen should become a sister city to Portland. I can barely keep track of all the local planners, politicians, advocates and bureaucrats who have made a pilgrimmage to the “City of Cyclists” this past summer alone.

“As a 30-year cyclist, I feel this message is crucial.”
–Howard Russell, ODOT

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has launched a bike safety campaign.

Word of the campaign comes from ODOT’s Howard Russell. Russell is the safety enforcement manager of the agency’s Motor Carrier Division, which he says is a specialized unit devoted to preventing truck-related accidents. In addition to public education, his division investigates trucking companies and does roadside truck inspections.

The winning design in action.
(Photo: NYC DOT)

The New York City Department of Transportation has picked a winner in their City Bike Racks Competition. It’s an elegant and simple hoop design created by a team from Copenhagen (which is quite fitting).

The NY Times City Room blog has the story:

A simple circle, resting on the ground with a bar bisecting it. That concept, called “Hoop” — the brainchild of Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve, designers based in Copenhagen — is the winner of the CityRacks Design Competition and will be used as the new standard bicycle rack installed on New York City’s sidewalks, officials announced on Friday. Nearly 5,000 such racks are to be installed over the next three years.

New gadget helps bikers get the green

New gadget fools the light
into thinking your bike is a car.
(Photo © J. Maus)

Have you ever biked up to an intersection and had the sinking feeling that the traffic signal sensors don’t know you’re there?

A new gadget (that’s still a prototype at this point) just might solve that problem. Here’s the news from Wired Magazine:

Richley spent a decade lugging an oscilloscope to intersections, measuring the signal voltages to determine what kind of signal the loop sensors used. He discovered that they vary, “so I came up with a technique that scans for frequency and accommodates the pulsed mode of modern sensors,”…Push a button and Richley’s gadget creates a brief, but strong, magnetic field that simulates the presence of a much larger conductor — say, the body of a car — and triggers the inductive sensor that lets the light know a vehicle is waiting.

An ad from UPS for bike delivery personnel.

Shipping giant United Parcel Service (UPS) will add a new weapon to its arsenal in the holiday shipping battle this year — bicycles.

Jeff Grant, the company’s workforce planning manager for the Oregon district (that includes Vancouver, WA), says UPS plans to hire 28 bike delivery employees this season. In the Portland metro area, Grant says eight riders will be hired.

I spoke with Grant via phone yesterday. He said the main impetus for the bike delivery program was to save money.

Portland has been at the cutting edge of traffic design for many years. In America, with our stringent, car-centric traffic design guidelines, that means having engineers who are not afraid to push the boundaries of the status quo.

The most recent example of this are Portland’s colored bike boxes. We weren’t the first city to do them, but we were the first to launch several of them at once on busy intersections in the urban core.

Before laying them down, PDOT sent an official “Request to Experiment” to the Federal Highway Administration. It’s not a required step, but an official nod from the FHWA would help PDOT breathe a little easier, and more importantly, would open the door to make colored bike boxes a standard treatment that could then be adopted more easily in other cities.

This weekend, the Cross Crusade makes its final stop at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Hillsboro.

Last year (check out my report here), Hillsboro was the sight of an epic battle between man and mud that still brings back fond memories for me both as a racer and as a photographer.

Story continues below

The puddles were over knee-deep, the energy-draining mud was sticky and thick, and the rain continued relentlessly through the day.

But even still, the Crusaders pressed on with smiles on their faces (after their race of course).

If the weather continues with rain in the next few days, a similar battle might have to be fought. If so, it will be something special to behold, and even more special to participate in.

Check out all the details for Sunday’s event at CrossCrusade.com.

The Monday Roundup

New bike shop, tour company opens on N. Williams

“Accident” in parking lot kills 97-year-old pedestrian

Tickets follow close call on Ainsworth

Weekend open thread: Bundle up and get out there!

Right-hook warning, Copenhagen-style

ODOT truck division launches bike safety campaign

‘Hoop’ rack wins NYC design competition

New gadget helps bikers get the green

UPS gears up for holidays with bike delivery

With bike boxes, the color is key

Memories from The Battle at Hillsboro

Latest Headlines

Guest Opinion: Portland needs more protected bike lanes — and we need them now

District 2 finally gets representation on key city council committee

Lawmakers want $3 million from state coffers for 82nd Avenue bus lanes

Neighborhood group, backed by bike advocate, opposes bike lane upgrades

From the Archives

With six kids and no car, this mom does it all by bike