‘Tis the season to be jolly… But it can also be the season of eating, drinking and lounging around inside the comfy confines of your home with family and friends. Now it’s time to break that cabin fever, bundle up, grab your bike, and hit the streets.
There are two holiday rides in Portland worth doing. And one of them is tonight (Monday the 28th). Here are the details…
Welcome to the last week of the year, which is always one of my favorites as a reporter.
Unless we see a lot of breaking news, expect posting to be a bit slower than usual this week, and more focused on the big picture: where Portland biking has come in 2015 and where it’s headed next.
But as always, we’ll start with the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Best street transformations: Streetsblog’s annual online contest includes inspiring work from Chicago, Columbus, Los Angeles, New York City, Salt Lake City and Seattle.
Smarter enforcement: If you want to change driving behavior, don’t throw the book at a few offenders — instead aim for punishments that are “swift, certain, and fair.”
This post was submitted by BikePortland subscriber Kiel Johnson of Go By Bike.
Today, as children around the world were discovering what was inside of the wrapped boxes under their Christmas tree (or however else they celebrate the holidays). I did the same thing I do most days. I rode my bike around. Except this time Santa gave me the greatest gift of all. A city devoid of cars.
In 2016, Portlanders will vote on a local gas tax, a new mayor, a transportation commissioner, a regional council and a governor.
If you make between approximately $7,000 and $100,000 a year, you’ve probably got $50 in free money from the State of Oregon to spend in 2015 on a candidate or political committee of your choice.
That’s the fact of Oregon’s unusual but underused political tax credit system.
But for people who believe that Oregon should be reducing its dependence on cars, the odd complication is that no political committee active on those issues seems to be asking for that money — even as Portland heads into an election year that will shape transportation issues for years to come.
For years now, whenever I drive on Lombard where it goes under 42nd Avenue, I’ll shake my head and mumble angrily to myself. “So disrespectful… Makes me sick they can just drop a bike lane like that… Look how dangerous that is!… Grrrr…” My poor family just rolls their eyes in a “There goes dad again” type of a way.
Portland’s regional transit agency has installed swing-out gates that biking advocates say will force people on bikes and trikes to stop or dismount in order to cross its new MAX tracks at SE 11th Avenue.
However, it installed only two out of eight swing gates it had earlier proposed for the area.
As part of a collaboration with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, TriMet crews installed the new gates on Tuesday. The idea is that if people biking are forced to stop and open a gate, they won’t roll onto the tracks without first checking to see if a train is coming.
Maps matter. On December 12th Martin Greenough was killed while biking on a road that looks like a safe bikeway on popular bike maps. While infrastructure can take years to change, maps can be edited quickly. And that’s exactly what is starting to happen.
Metro, our elected regional government and publisher of the Bike There! map, has responded to our reporting on Martin’s death by adding a caution symbol to the bikeway gap where he was killed.
One of Portland’s longest-standing volunteer bike nonprofits is struggling to survive the departure of its founder and full-time volunteer staffer.
As a gesture to show “our commitment to the community,” Bikes for Humanity is holding a free “tune-up-athon” today at the corner of Ladd and Division, moving to the People’s Co-op farmer’s market (Southeast 21st and Tibbets) at 2 p.m.
Our first video is an obligatory Christmas-themed video: someone riding a tree-equipped tallbike around Paris.
Bike lanes separated by a low curb and/or Copenhagen-style raised bike lanes continue to look likely for parts of Powell Boulevard between Interstate 205 and 172nd Avenue.
At least, that’s the word from Paul Grosjean, the co-chair of the Outer Powell Community Advisory Group and a member of the Outer Powell Decision Committee, both part of the state-run Outer Powell Safety Project.
“Separation between the bike and the travel lane has been a priority of all the committees,” Grosjean, who also serves as vice chair of the Pleasant Valley Neighborhood Association, said in an interview Monday.
The BikePortland Podcast has returned with a vengeance.
A section of the Springwater Corridor path about 20 miles east of downtown Portland has been closed due to a sinkhole.