A new, quarter-mile segment of the Willamette Greenway path through the South Waterfront is almost complete. The section of path is part of Portland Parks & Recreation’s South Waterfront Greenway project which was first envisioned in city planning documents in 2004.
Vision Zero (also known as Towards Zero Deaths) is a bold goal that’s also the name of a growing national movement to end the acceptance of fatalities and injuries on our roads as mere “accidents.” Advocates instead want to completely change our approach to street design and policy so that no one is hurt or killed while using them.
We’ve been talking about Vision Zero for years here in Portland, but there seems to finally be some tangible movement forward.
Tomorrow in New York City is the opening day of the Vision Zero for Cities Symposium and there will be several Portlanders making the trip. Rob Sadowsky, the leader of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and Aaron Brown, a board member with Oregon Walks will be there. The City will send Gabriel Graff, the operations manager of the Active Transportation Division at the Portland Bureau of Transportation. (We’ve also heard that PPB Traffic Division Capt. Kelli Sheffer will also be at the symposium, but we’ve been unable to confirm her attendance.)
National industry-funded bicycle advocacy group People for Bikes (formerly Bikes Belong) has launched a new PSA campaign dubbed “Travel With Care.” The campaign aims at “humanizing people on bikes and encouraging better behavior among drivers and bike riders.”
A series of posters has been launched and they’ll soon be appearing on billboards and other locations nationwide.
The campaign was modeled on the “Drive With Care” campaign launched (via a successful crowd-funding effort) by the non-profit Bike Pittsburgh this past spring.
The visuals include portraits of everyday people and their bikes, along with some clever taglines. For instance a chef’s posters reads: “Chef. Neighbor. Rides a bike. Don’t cut it close.”
Last week, we reported that floating-fleet carsharing service Car2go was preparing to start testing a new feature in Portland: external bike racks.
Yesterday, Bicycle Transportation Alliance staffer Carl Larson helped the company test whether their product was up to the job of hauling the full diversity of our local bike fleet.