Month: August 2014

City Bicycle Advisory Committee leaders offer new vision, seek new members

stude

Incoming Portland Bicycle Advisory Committee
chair Ian Stude.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Update 9/17: The application deadline has been extended to Oct. 24.

The incoming chair and vice-chair of Portland’s Bicycle Advisory Committee are full of energy and they’re recruiting new voices, faces and brains.

“I want to see the committee be more present in the process, both on the community level and the political level,” said Ian Stude, a member of the committee for six years and its incoming chair, in an interview last week. “People who want to cozy up to the beast a little more.”

Vice-chair Heather McCarey is leading the recruiting process for the committee, aiming for a total of 13 members and seven alternates.

Read more

Regional ODOT Director Jason Tell leaves job for private sector

Safer Routes to School event-1-2.jpg

Jason Tell at a Safe Routes to School
event in February 2008.
(Photos by J. Maus/BikePortland)

The Portland region’s top Oregon Department of Transportation official has left his post and taken a job with a private company. Jason Tell, who has spent 18 years with ODOT — eight of them as Region 1 Director — is now the Senior Planning Manager at the downtown Portland office of Parsons Brinckerhoff.

ODOT has named Planning and Development Manager Rian Windsheimer as the interim Region 1 Director.

Read more

Novick, Treat will trumpet transportation needs on van tour tomorrow

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
Street fee press conference-1

Novick to hit the streets.
(Photo by J. Maus/BikePortland)

Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick and PBOT Director Leah Treat want to hear from you about neighborhood transportation needs. They also wants to draw attention to existing problems they’d like to fix with your money.

Novick and Treat are in the middle of a major effort to pass a “street fee” that would raise new money for street repairs and updates. At tomorrow’s “Transportation Needs Tour” they’re inviting the news media to join them in a for a stop at three locations that’ll highlight where new revenue would be spent.

Keeping to the City’s strategy of not mentioning the “b” word (bikes); a statement released this morning about the tour specifically addresses “streets that lack sidewalks” and “commercial corridors in need of preventative maintenance.” In addition to the three stops, the City will also unveil the Portland Transportation Needs Guidebook, “an online compilation of the maintenance and safety needs identified by the Portland Bureau of Transportation and prioritized by community input over the years.”

Read more

Portland’s Circa Cycles wants to bring $1500 custom bicycles to the mainstream

rich with bike

Former Nike innovation director Rich Fox has created a new process for making custom bike frames that can be done entirely in Portland.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

A Portland startup is marrying the 1980s concept of “screwed and glued” modular frames with modern computer machining to dramatically cut the price of a custom handmade bike.

Its founder’s goal: a chain of minimalist, 600-square foot Apple Store-esque retail shops across the country, each one able to fit and service a line of Portland-built bikes as colorful and distinctly branded as iPods.

Read more

The Monday Roundup: Robin Williams, Detroit’s biking rise & more

Robin Williams at NAHBS

Robin Williams in Portland for a
bike show in February 2008.
(Photo by J. Maus/BikePortland)

Here are the great bike links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:

Robin Williams and bikes: Cycling superfan Robin Williams’ impression repertoire included Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich. Tragically, they went uncaptured on video. The Oregonian’s aggregation of Williams’ ties to bikes includes the time he had one delivered to Conan O’Brien.

Robin Williams in Portland: The story of that time in 2008 when the late comedian flew his plane to Portland for the North American Handmade Bicycle Show.

Bike share safety: 23 million rides later, zero people have died on bike share bicycles. In fact, they seem to reduce bike injuries.

Bikeways improve walking: According to every available dataset in the country, protected bike lanes consistently cut sidewalk biking approximately in half.

Read more

Cars will be detoured onto SE Clinton during Division Street repaving

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
clinton traffic

Traffic on Clinton.
(Photo by Michael Andersen/BikePortland)

If you think the SE Clinton bike boulevard is already turning into more of a car boulevard, you won’t like this news: The Bureau of Environmental Services announced today that during a two-week re-paving project on SE Division set to begin later this month, all eastbound auto traffic will be detoured to SE Clinton.

Not surprisingly, news of the decision is spreading fast throughout the community and many people are very concerned. Why would the city purposefully add more auto traffic to a street that already has too much of it?

Read more

Comment of the Week: How self-driving cars are actually going to work

early-vehicle-lores

(Photo: Google)

Two big issues, gender in the bike world and the nature of Portland bike activism, generated lots of excellent perspectives from readers on the site this week. This one about the “thousand cuts” of being a woman was one of our most upvoted ever; this one early this morning about the recent history of Portland-centric bicycle advocacy groups is very persuasive.

But let’s finish the week on a lighter note, thanks to reader Jake.

Read more

Weekend Event Guide: BMX, century, Milwaukie, and more

Tour of Tomorrow

Discover the hidden bike path gems of southern Clark County Washington at the Portland Century on Saturday).
(Photo J. Maus/BikePortland)

Welcome to your menu of weekend rides and events, lovingly brought to you by our friends at Hopworks Urban Brewery.

How’s your summer riding been going so far? Are you ready for a century ride — or as our friends at OR Bike like to say, a “Hundo“?

Hopefully you’ve done a bit of training because the Portland Century is our marquee event of the weekend. While most of the route isn’t actually in Portland this year, the support and food and drinks you’ll encounter at the rest stops and the finish line party will be decidedly local.

There’s nothing but warm and sunny blue skies in the forecast. Enjoy!

Saturday, August 16th

Dew Tour – All Weekend downtown on SW Broadway between Jefferson and Salmon
This event will feature some cool BMX action. The best riders in the world will show off their skills in “streetstyle” and dirt jump competitions. And the best part is the whole thing is free to watch! If you’re not a BMX fan, consider this a great chance to hang out on a carfree SW Broadway! More info here.

Read more

BTA launches five new campaigns at annual members’ meeting

wide angle

Attendees of the BTA’s annual member meeting Thursday evening had plenty to talk about.
(Photos by Michael Andersen)

With “The Revolution will Not Be Televised” playing from portable speakers above them, almost 100 Bicycle Transportation Alliance members and staff gathered in the Portland Art Museum courtyard Thursday to drink Hopworks beer, eat food-cart tacos, recognize key volunteers and (most intriguingly) learn about the five major advocacy campaigns the organization had just launched.

Read more

Tech will make central-city parking spaces pointless, Gabe Klein tells Portland crowd

klein at table

Gabe Klein, right, speaks to a panel of local transportation experts at the Multnomah Athletic Club Thursday.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

The author of the transportation reinventions in Washington DC and Chicago offered some advice to Portland-area developers Thursday: start building for parking-free cities.

Self-driving cars will be available in a few years, predicted Gabe Klein, the former transportation director of both those cities, and they’ll mean “the end of parking as we know it.”

Klein, now a fellow at the Urban Land Institute, an organization for real-estate and land-use professionals, spoke to a room of local ULI members and other guests Thursday morning at the Multnomah Athletic Club in southwest Portland.

Read more

Latest Headlines

Police to PBOT: Remove traffic diverters in the name of public safety

Recap and Photo Gallery: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly ride

What are your three big wishes for Portland’s transportation system?

Transportation Commission says state can move forward with I-5 Rose Quarter project

From the Archives

What five people say about living outside along the Springwater path