(Photo: Bike Fixtation)
The county to Portland’s west is upgrading the bike-friendliness of five of its public buildings with an amenity that’s becoming almost common in the area: self-service bike repair stations.
It’s a benefit to employees and, presumably, anyone else who might get to these Washington County locations on a bike.
County sustainability coordinator Robin Straughan wrote in an email to workers this week that the stations “will be installed this winter/spring.”
“The Bike Fixtation work stands include securely attached tools for repairs, a pump and stand for working on your bike,” she wrote.
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The locations:
· Service Center East near the existing bike racks
· Walnut Street Center east of the front door (under the awning)
· Public Services Building north of the auditorium near the existing bike racks
· Justice Services Building loading dock
· Hagg Lake
It’s a project of the county’s facilities and parks services. The stations’ local distributor is Huntco.
Please add them at the Garden Home Rec center and in the Raleigh Hills “town center.”
This being a Washington County news story, and since bikeportlands’ forums have more or less become defunct, I’m going to take the opportunity to hijack this discussion a bit to offer a reminder:
To people that bike on roads Farmington, Murray, and Hocken out in Beaverton, the word is that tomorrow evening from 5-7pm over at the Beaverton Community Center(single story building just south of the Beaverton Library.), the county will be making a presentation for community input, on its latest improvement to made to the aforementioned streets.
Improvements to made will include infrastructure changes for walking and biking.
I believe this is the same project that’s been in the works for some while, and that bikeportland covered two or three years ago.
Final note: do a search to make sure I’ve got the date and time of the presentation correct. This was just a word of mouth mention someone passed on to me a couple days ago.
Hi wsbob,
Yes. I decided to move past the old Forums.
The great news is that we are close to launching a new paid membership program. One of the benefits of being a member will be the ability to post your own articles right here on the site. Stay tuned!
Previous guest articles with lax editorial control have gone so well.
Pay to play. That certainly makes access to information easier.
Hi meh,
You might want to wait until you know more about the new program before you start making assumptions. I’m looking forward to sharing the details and hope you’ll consider being a part of it!
Not sure I’m a fan of a second tier of BP users, who have paid for special privileges. I’d be happy to pay for a membership for free bike swag and discounts as local businesses though…
I will be happy to be a member of the BP Proletariat…
Maus…not sure of all the reasons why, but this site’s forums lacked for broad participation. About the only other bike site I’ve spent a fair bit of time to reading, was bikeforums. Much greater participation there, and quite a bit of the time, some very well grounded, discussions of substance in the ‘advocacy and safety’ forum.
Though after reading there awhile, I came to realize that particular forum had some tricky to deal with, ongoing problems. Good moderation may be keeping most of those problems fairly well under control. bikeforums also has a paid membership option, but I’ve not looked into it.
Some notes from last nights’ meeting:
In general, changes planned so far, look to be a big improvement for biking on the subject roads. They include:
A full, street grade painted line bike lane for ninety percent of Murray between TV highway and Farmington Rd, as opposed to no bike lanes, and and an off road funky asphalt MUP presently on half this section of the road.
Farmington Rd Between Murray and Hocken, will have 6′ wide street grade painted line bike lanes, as opposed to its currently having only main lanes, and the adjoining curb separated asphalt paved MUP. At the conception of its long lifetime, the curb separated MUP was a kind of innovative idea, but it’s never been very good for biking or walking.
Painted line bike lanes aren’t as good for a wider range of people biking as grade separated cycle tracks can be, but considering the present conditions for biking on these roads, the changes, I think, are a great improvement. A far improved road surface to ride on, less hazard from driveways and people walking, and less conflict from motor vehicle traffic.
The Hocken between TV Highway and Farmington Rd section of the project, is an important part of the project, whose final details remain yet to be fully worked out. It’s a two year construction project, giving hope that something satisfactory will able to be devised come time to build.
Basic situation for bike travel needing to be dealt with, is that for example, southbound, from the north of TV Highway, given that Hocken T’s at Farmington, either a left or right turn is obliged there. Current but not final plan is to have both a left and a right bike lane in the south bound lane of Hocken, straddling a main lane. A person traveling on a bike, entering this section of Hocken, must be able to negotiate a safe, efficiently timed lane change across the main lane to the left bike lane, to prepare for a left turn on Farmington. People with the county and the engineering company, said they’re still thinking about the situation to see how to get this section of the road to work its best.
I stayed an hour. Small, but good turnout, everybody there very interested and asking many questions about how it’s all going to work.
out of curiosity I’d love to see how many people use a fix it stand over the course of a week. my preference would be have a sign next to rack telling people they can borrow free tools from local biz, then they go in and get tools. Promote’s biz, biz connects with more bike riders, and don’t have expensive fix it stands enduring the elements.
Fix it stands are available 7/24. The tools are connected and somewhat difficult to remove.
Borrowing tools leads to disappearing tools.
How about businesses sponsor the fix it stands and get their name on it to drive some business to them
You could do both. There are only 5 of these, in locations that I don’t know by name.
If every convenience store and gas station had tubes and a patch kit for sale, it would be a major gain to bike transportation of WA co’s relatively large distances.
You want to be bike-friendly? Spend the money on protected bike lanes and traffic calming, then maybe you’ll actually have a need for these stations.
Hear hear.
I like the idea, but the fix it stations I see are usually vandalized and inoperable after a year.
I’ve wondered whether the fixit stations would be ripped off. Figured they’d be targets.
Fixit station eh? Sounds like a good place to part out a stolen bike…. Let’s put a few on the east bank. whaddya say?