🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
Portland is home to bike companies known for pushing the envelope of product design.
Cases in point are BlaqPaks and Ruckus Composites. Their new offerings — available April 1st — are sure to get people talking…
The updated Washington Park Master Plan that passed unanimously by Portland City Council on March 15th is the plan we need for our central city.
Its transportation elements include a vision to: keep cars on the periphery, reduce access for drivers, aggressively encourage transit use, create plaza and green spaces, and build protected paths for cycling and walking.
Washington Park is the “jewel in the crown” of our parks system (to quote Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz) and it had been operating under a master plan that was passed in 1981. Because of smart management by Explore Washington Park (a city-funded Transportation Management Association, or TMA), auto use has declined considerably in the park in the past five years. In 2014, 80 percent of park visitors arrived by car. Last year that number was down to just 63 percent.
The updated master plan will hasten that curve.
Time to find something new?
Learn more about our latest job listings via the links below…
–> Bike Tour Guide/ Shop Staff – Cycle Portland
Shipping Specialist
Velotech
Cart Logic, Inc. is looking for a detail oriented shipping specialist to join our fast paced and fast growing operation. This person will be expected to pick, pack, and ship customer orders and receive incoming shipments in a timely manner.
Additionally there will be many random tasks that will assist in warehouse operation.
* Must be able to lift 50lbs
* Must be comfortable with ladders
* Enthusiasm for cycling
* Full-time
* Great benefits and vacation package
Cart Logic, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to sex, race, color, age, national origin, religion, disability, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, citizenship, pregnancy or veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.
Please apply by clicking on link below:
https://www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/index.php?/job/apply&clientkey=4C6D7027145254251F7D24DAA9BDF3F7&job=12603&jpt=
Earlier this month we shared a rare update in the status of the North Portland Greenway Trail — a project that’s been in the works for over a decade.
The University of Portland’s Franz Campus expansion was heralded as a huge step forward that will develop 35 acres of shoreline property on the Willamette riverfront. The new campus includes several new buildings, sports fields, a dock, and surface parking lots. But what it didn’t appear to include was space set-aside for the NP Greenway path.
Asstistant Vice President for Community Relations & Special Projects at University of Portland Jim Kuffner provided us with a statement that said he only planned to offer 8-feet for the path and that, “The land to complete the trail must come from Union Pacific.”
Spring is definitely upon us and now is the time you need to plan ahead to make the most of your weekends. We’ve got you covered with another great slate of rides and events.
Whether you seek training rides close to home, have an itch to explore further afield, or you something fun for little ones, peruse this week’s guide for all the details.
Big winners include Outer Stark, Lombard, and NE 42nd Avenue.
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Portland City Council has moved forward with the first batch of projects in the Build Portland program. The program comes from an idea hatched by Mayor Ted Wheeler to return property taxes from expiring Urban Renewal Areas to the City’s General Fund.
At their meeting yesterday, the Council gave a green light to seven projects worth $49 million. The City of Portland will issue bonds to finance the projects, which were chosen out of 25 projects submitted for consideration. The Build Portland program has been authorized to spend a total of $600 million between now and 2040; but the City has decided to phase it in slowly to minimize debt risk if the economy sours.
The Bureau of Transportation submitted nine projects for potential funding and six of them made the final cut. Here they are (with Build Portland funding in parentheses):
Mi Ae Lipe is a safe driving advocate who speaks important truths to a crucial audience.
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One of the many things I do that annoys my two (teen and pre-teen) daughters is that I drive exceedingly slowly and cautiously. I have this thing where I tell them — not to be braggadocious, but to make a point — that, “Just imagine: If everyone drove like I did, there would be no crashes and no one would ever get hurt or killed on the road.” They of course roll their eyes and say, “Oh boy, here goes dad again.”
But it’s true: If every person behind the wheel was as scared-straight as I’ve become after being a daily bike rider for 30 years and having a job for 13 of them where I consume a daily stream of information about horrific crashes and have met hundreds of people directly impacted by them — our streets would be pretty chill.
In our push for safer streets, we usually talk about infrastructure, enforcement, and educating people about drunk driving, rules of the road, and so on. What gets left out is a more holistic look at how we drive.
That’s why I was so happy to come across the work of Mi Ae Lipe, an advocate who lives near Seattle. Mi Ae is a driving expert who writes a column for a BMW owner’s club magazine and consults with agencies and nonprofits about safety. In 2017 she was a co-recipient of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Award for Public Service. Mi Ae wants to re-educate American drivers.
The redesign of North Rosa Parks Way now includes a bike-only signal, wider bikeways (and narrower lanes for driving), a safer crossing, and a floating transit island. These changes (and a few other tweaks) have been made in the month since the Portland Bureau of Transportation first launched the project back in February.
This key neighborhood collector street will see major striping changes from North Willamette to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The biggest change is a “parking-protected bikeway” (almost) the entire length of the project — and a buffer stripe with intermittent plastic delineator wands for added protection separation. Instead of on-street parking, PBOT will use the curb lane for a bike-only lane. In the process, PBOT will significantly decrease the amount of parking overall.
Going from west (Willamette Blvd) to east (Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd), here’s how the project has changed in the past month…
The ODOT Files is an occasional series that shares strange-but-true stories about how our state transportation agency is falling down on the job.
How bad have things gotten at the Oregon Department of Transportation? How about a letter admonishing the agency signed by every major elected office holder in the Portland region?
I’m going to try something different this week. I’d love to hear from you:
If you don’t bike with your young children, why not?
I’ve often wondered what (or if) my family biking experience would have been like had I lived in Seattle before having kids. I moved to Seattle with an 18-month-old I’d already been biking with for six months on quiet Las Vegas trails and streets. Our Seattle house was one block from Green Lake and its lakeside multi-use path so it was easy to stick to routes that felt sufficiently safe as I explored our new neighborhood. I ever so gradually increased my range, not even discovering the Burke-Gilman Trail, a terrific multi-use path, for months.
