Welcome to today’s pre-Thanksgiving video roundup! I’ve been riding around town but the fancy carbon bike is relegated to the trainer right now. Still, there are plenty of great videos to inspire us. We start with the European Bike Stealing Championships 2015 video above. The audio is a little busy, but it’s worth watching (action begins past the two minute mark).
Year: 2015
Job: Bike Shop All Rounder – Metropolis Cycle Repair
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New signals on Couch at Broadway and first-ever ‘pedestrian scramble’ are up and running
One of the first people to wait at the new signal at Broadway and Couch.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
The Portland Bureau of Transportation just flipped the switch on new traffic signals at Northwest Couch and Broadway, 10th and 11th Avenues. The signals on Broadway are on a major bike route where they were first flagged as necessary four years ago. At the intersection of Couch and 11th, PBOT has installed Portland’s first ever “pedestrian scramble signal.”
Very few poor people drive to work downtown
The Portland area has invested $4.8 billion in a regional public rail network, and currently spends $313 million a year to hold down ticket prices on the system.
Another several million dollars each year go toward expansions of the region’s biking network.
Despite that investment, at least one Portland city council member has been arguing in the lead-up to a hearing next month that the public should also be subsidizing downtown car trips.
His reasoning: some of the people who drive downtown are poor.
A congressman, ice-cream, fruitcake, and 1,000 bikes for kids
Rep. Blumenauer at the Community Cycling Center this morning.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
Looking to make his famous holiday fruitcake last even longer, Portland’s representative in the United States Congress, Earl Blumenauer, has issued a citywide challenge: He wants Portlanders to help provide 1,000 bikes for kids in the month of December.
Job: Painter – Cielo Cycles/Chris King Precision Components – FILLED
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This blog will put you inside a TriMet bus operator’s head
Perspective is everything.
If I’ve learned anything in 10 years of blogging about bikes it’s that empathy for other people’s views is the key to quality discourse, policymaking, and reporting. Heck, I’d even say that walking, riding, and driving in someone else’s shoes might be the most powerful way for us to improve road culture in general.
That’s one reason I’m happy to have come across a new (to me) blog written by a TriMet bus operator.
For two and-a-half years now the From the driver’s side blog has offered what its author, The Deacon in Blue, calls, “Musings from a contemplative bus operator’s point of view.”
From what I’ve read so far, the blog offers important insights into what it’s like to operate a TriMet bus on Portland’s busy streets.
I first heard about it thanks to a reader who emailed us an excerpt from a post published yesterday titled, Blame sharing for tragic incidents. In that post The Deacon (I don’t know his/her real name) offers thoughts after a woman lost her leg following a collision with a MAX train on November 16th.
Here’s what those orange bikes around Northeast Portland are all about
A new gym that opened recently in Portland’s Lloyd District is following its national marketing playbook and distributing a handful of orange-painted bikes on nearby streets.
It’s the same phenomenon we covered in January when the same chain, Orangetheory Fitness, had recently opened locations in Beaverton and Tigard.
In an interview Monday, Orangethoery Oregon Regional Director Amanda Goolsby said her team plans to keep shifting them around nearby streets indefinitely.
“They don’t just stay out,” she said. “We take them down daily. We move them around.”
Bicycle ‘boneyard’ under I-5 freeway is a haven for thieves
Bike parts litter the ground at “the boneyard” under I-5 along the Eastbank Esplanade.
(Photo: Portland Police Bureau)
(Photo: Portland Police Bureau)
Portland police officers call it “the boneyard” and frustration is growing about how to clean it up once and for all.
The Monday Roundup: Stop-sign messages, a cryptocurrency for walking and more
Stop sign instruction database.
(Image: Portlandness: a Cultural Atlas of Portland)
(Image: Portlandness: a Cultural Atlas of Portland)
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
“Stop” signs: A new book of creative Portland maps includes a comprehensive directory of everything Southeast Portland’s traffic-sign graffiti artists don’t want you to do.
City liable: A California city will pay $5.8 million because a judge said “narrow bike lanes and lack of streetlights” contributed to an alleged drunk driver’s fatal rear-ending of a man on a bike.
Comment of the Week: South Dakota’s official road fatality markers
An idea from another state.
(Photo: GasFoodNoLodging.com)
(Photo: GasFoodNoLodging.com)
I’ve rarely seen BikePortland readers as frustrated as many seemed to be beneath Wednesday’s post about the state of Oregon’s decision to remove temporary memorials to people killed on state roads because they (the memorials, not the people who were killed) might cause people to slow down or stop while driving.
A huge wave of upvotes backed many of the black-humor responses that followed.
But amid the well-written venting was an interestingly constructive suggestion: if Oregon feels that handmade memorials are distracting, maybe it should create its own official memorials instead — just like South Dakota does.
That was the comment from BikePortland reader GlowBoy, who (if I’ve been following his comments correctly) recently relocated from Portland to Minneapolis:
I think we should have a monument to remember every single person who’s been killed by (or on) a road facility.
Oregon ought to enact the same law requiring signs like those in South Dakota, marking EVERY SINGLE SPOT where a person has died on their roads. SD may not be considered a very progressive state, but I think it’s a brilliant idea and should be copied everywhere.
How Sunday Parkways helps bridge Portland’s racial divides (video)
When I started getting seriously interested in bicycles a few years ago, I already knew they were pollution-free, cheap, healthy, quiet, nonlethal and space-efficient.
What threw me for a loop, when I was talking to other Portlanders who were already interested in bicycles, was that they kept talking about community. Biking (and walking, and public transit) connected them with their neighbors and surroundings in a way that driving can’t.