Photo: Illegal (but harmless) sidewalk biking

How about speeding cars in this city? or cell phone users? wait forgot Peds that jump out at you / jay walk as you ride by.

I see far too many fully-able-bodied cycle users who are riding on the sidewalks downtown. It would be chaos if all the cycle users were allowed to ride on the sidewalk. So I support the rule, and this gentleman needs to walk on the sidewalk. What are you suggesting ?

I was also told you can ride on sidewalks downtown, before this ” new law ” came into play right during the holidays.

If riding on sidewalks downtown is “harmless”, why is it illegal? Maybe because it is not harmless to pedestrians? This is not a new law, check out the specific municipal codes:

http://www.portlandonline.com/auditor/index.cfm?c=28596&a=16278

What is your reaction to a motor vehicle operating in, or even temporarily parked in, a bike lane?

The picture raises an important question of what nature of riding might typically characterize that of people riding their bikes on the sidewalk in Downtown Portland. Is it slow like the guy in the picture is said to have ridden? Or is it typically something else that generally does not work on Portland’s downtown sidewalks?

The results of Portland’s holiday shopping ‘no biking on the sidewalks’ enforcement detail surprised me, because I didn’t think police would have occasion to cite nearly so many people in the short period of time they did.

So, if by chance the officers writing the citation noted details about the speed and nature of the sidwalk biking that prompted the citations, it could be very interesting to know those details.

Until I see something solid to the contrary, I’m very skeptical to conclude that the idea of people biking on Downtown Portland’s sidewalks being “scofflaw!” “aggressive bicyclist!”, is just some jacked up figment of Amanda Fritz’s imagination. For a start, how about some pictures of people that aren’t so old, riding on the sidewalk as you described the guy in the picture doing?

Link to the Oregonian story, which lists numbers of citations issued:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/index_2.html

Maus…page 2 could be worthwhile, if you could produce enough solid stories to keep some consistent traffic going to it. Currently, almost nobody is going to find page two because the link is nearly lost in the long list of ‘sections’.

Jonathan, I like your idea to take more photos and add commentary. I’d also prefer to see them on the front page, as Page Two stories are difficult to find.

For instance, your post is barely 24 hours old and it already is gone from your homepage (bikeportland.org), while stories on the homepage currently go back a full week. To be useful, Page Two needs to be a prominent link somewhere on your homepage.