One of the stated goals of last night’s protest action on Southeast Powell Boulevard was to slow traffic down. And according to data live traffic data from Portland State University’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) lab, it worked.
As Portlanders continue to look for ways to change the culture of speed-oriented streets like Powell Boulevard, state legislators are nearing a vote on a bill designed to do exactly that.
A few updates to our top story:
— The man who was driving the truck that collided with Alistair Corkett on Sunday has two prior convictions for Careless Driving. According to our legal sources, 42-year-old Barry Allen was charged with Careless Driving in November 2013 and Careless Driving and Unsafe Operation of a Vehicle in May 2009. Allen was convicted on both charges after failing to appear. He has two other prior run-ins with the law, including convictions in 1998 for driving without insurance and failure to renew his automobile registration.
Allen has not been cited for a traffic violation. As per standard procedure, the Portland Police Bureau will complete their investigation than hand the case over to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office. After the DA makes a decision about criminal charges, the police would then decide whether or not to issue a citation.
You know the drill. A provocative photo and/or incident illustrates the long-running “bikes vs cars!” narrative and then all heck breaks loose. Comment sections light up, the BikeSnob takes his cut, then the story gets piled onto our collective mental legacy about how we get along — or don’t — out on the streets.
Over the years I’ve gotten tired of these types of stories. The fact is, people yelling at each other and doing emotionally-charged things to each other is not news. It might be worth publishing if you’re in the content business, but if you ride a bike everyday you’ll know that jerk behavior — on both sides of the windshield — happens all the time.
Given how much attention the recent U-lock throwing incident got (over 1,600 comments on OregonLive!), I didn’t even plan to post anything about it.
For the second time since the League of American Bicyclists began ranking U.S. states’ bike-friendliness in 2008, Oregon didn’t make the top five.
As it has in every year, Washington led the 2015 ranking that the League announced on Monday. Washington was followed this year by Minnesota, Delaware, Massachusetts and Utah, then Oregon at sixth.
Though Oregon’s slip from third in 2013 (its all-time peak) to fifth last year to sixth this year certainly has echoes of the recent #DowngradePortland campaign launched by local bike advocates in an effort to persuade the League to rescind Portland’s “platinum” rating as a bike city, this statewide ranking is different. It’s also a ranking rather than a rating system, based on a 100-point scale that the League bases on a national questionnaire.
Bryant Howard, the cycling coach of the victim in Sunday’s collision has started a fundraising campaign to help offset medical expenses. Alistair Corkett lost his leg when he was involved in a collision with a man driving a truck on SE 26th Avenue at Powell.
In the last hour the “Put Alistair back on his bike” campaign has already raised nearly $2,000 and the goal is set at $50,000.
Howard’s message posted at GoFundMe.com says Corkett is currently in the intensive care unit at OHSU where he’s recovering from his first round of surgeries. “As you can imagine,” it says, “he’s in a great deal of pain and is facing a lot of uncertainty about the road ahead.”
Here’s more from the message:
Here are the bike links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Protected intersection: One year after a Portland designer gave it a name, a protected intersection is about to be constructed in Salt Lake City.
Hii-ya: A jiu-jitsu class in Florida got some extra practice when they intercepted a burglary in progress at the bike shop next door.
Saying that traffic injuries like the ones that are common on Powell Boulevard “inexcusable and unnecessary” outside the doors of Cleveland High School, the father of two Cleveland students is organizing a protest of the speed-oriented urban highway during Monday’s rush hour.
A collision Sunday involving a pickup truck and a bicycle severed a young man’s leg. Police said the truck had been northbound on 26th and turned left onto Powell in front of two people heading southbound on bicycles.
Dan Kaufman described Monday’s event as a “super-legal slow-down,” in which people deliberately move slowly on a street in order to call attention to the fact that high speeds, and roads designed to encourage them, are inappropriate in an urban context.
Residents of Portland’s most kid-heavy quadrant turned out by the thousands on Sunday for what’s become an East Portland Mother’s Day tradition: the first Sunday Parkways open-streets festival of the year.
A collision involving a pickup truck and a bicycle critically injured a man biking southbound on 26th Avenue just before 10 a.m. Sunday morning.
Police said the injured man’s leg was severed after the northbound truck turned left onto Powell in front of him. Alistair Corkett, 22, was “transported to a Portland hospital with life-threatening injuries” but is expected to survive.
Kenji Sugahara, executive director of the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association, said in an email Sunday afternoon that Corkett was “a development rider for one of our teams in PDX.”
