(Photo: Will Vanlue)
They’re the smallest and the biggest vehicles many people use during their lives, and they keep becoming a better travel pair.
A free event Wednesday evening will bring a rail-riding college student to Portland to talk about various aspects of bicycle-and-train travel.
The latest major improvement on this front in the United States is Amtrak’s expanded roll-on bike service, a 2013 shift by the national passenger rail company that came after years of advocacy from people who saw the potential.
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Eleven Amtrak lines (including the Eugene-to-Vancouver Cascades line through Portland) now offer roll-on bike service, and seven more offer checked bike service.
By removing some of its trains’ old requirements that you disassemble your bike with every boarding and pack it into a special box, Amtrak has greatly improved its potential for people looking to combine the two modes.
To promote its new service, Amtrak has hired Elena Studier as a summer intern to travel the country by train and with her bicycle, whose name is Stevie. Studier will visit the Green Dragon brewpub in southeast Portland tonight to briefly discuss and answer questions about her trip, which started in Manhattan last week and will last for four more weeks.
The happy hour is being organized by the Portland chapters of Young Professionals in Transportation and WTS International. It begins 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at 928 SE 9th Ave.
Studier is blogging about her trip at SummerByRail.com — hopefully not exclusively with Amtrak’s on-board Wi-Fi.
— Michael Andersen, (503) 333-7824 – michael@bikeportland.org
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