Year: 2018

Builders and fans converge at Chris King factory for ‘Open House’ show

Chris King welcomed visitors to his factory on Saturday.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

As Portland’s largest bicycle company, Chris King Precision Components is in a unique position to be an industry leader. With the success of their mini-summit of bike builders and industry movers and shakers that wrapped up with a big open house event Saturday, the 42-year-old company seems to be embracing that role.

The halls of the Chris King factory were jam-packed for the “Open House” show on Saturday. Among massive industrial machines and assembly rooms that put together some of the most respected and sought after bicycle components in the world, hundreds of bicycle lovers got an close-up look at a very special selection of bicycles and the builders who create them.

For the man behind the brand, Chris King, the gathering must have felt bittersweet. A framebuilder himself, King decided to cease production of his Cielo brand just over one year ago so his company could focus more closely on its core business: designing, making, and selling bottom brackets, headsets, and hubs. King, who still spends about three days a week in the shop, is obsessive about quality and his company makes nearly every piece of their products themselves (yes, even the bearings). Manufacturing products in the United States is hard enough without having to constantly react to the whims of product managers and marketers who seem to push a new wheel size, head-tube size or axle configuration every season.

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The Monday Roundup: Scooter laws, ‘War on Cars’ pod, transit subsidy and more

Here are the most notable stories we came across last week:

Silver bullet: You’ve probably heard that electeds and policymakers from Oregon and Washington are eager to replace the I-5 bridge; but did you know there are early-stage talks to build a bullet train between Portland and Vancouver, BC?

Transit subsidy: Seattle is the latest west coast city to pass a local mandate requiring certain companies to allow employees to use pre-tax wages to pay for transit. Why they heck doesn’t Portland do this?!

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Beaverton traffic cameras caught 94,000 people speeding in one year

PBOT’s speed camera on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway was installed in 2016.
(Photo: PBOT)

One line in a recent Beaverton Police Department press release caught my eye: “Between 07/01/2015 and 07/01/2016 over 94,000 drivers were traveling 11 mph or more, above the speed limit.”

I’m well aware that most people drive faster than they should. But 94,000? That’s a lot of speeders! (And don’t even get me started about the standard practice of only citing for 11 mph or over the posted speed.)

Thankfully there’s a silver lining. The release also announced that BPD would start issuing citations to some of those people this coming Tuesday, October 16th (warnings have been mailed since September 15th). The way they’ll manage this sudden influx of enforcement activity is by using photo radar cameras thanks to a law passed in 2017 that allows them to cite speeders using cameras that have until now only nabbed red light runners.

Portland will take advantage of the same law, but it will likely be at least several months before our cameras are ready. Here’s why:

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We can’t fix what we don’t know: Why access to information is key to Vision Zero


*Watch how many people drive in front of this man while he waits for a chance to cross.

This post was written by our Adventures in Activism column co-editor Catie Gould.

On the evening of April 7th, Alex Hubert was crossing to the MAX platform to catch a northbound Yellow Line train back home when he was struck by a car. There was no police alert on Twitter. There were no news reports. But I was there.

This post is about my attempt to learn more about the safety issues at the intersection and find out why they haven’t been fixed.

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Subscriber opinion: Governor Brown should lose ODOT leadership to win reelection

What is Kate Brown’s transportation vision?
(Photo: ODOT)

This post comes from BikePortland subscriber and contributor Kiel Johnson. He previously wrote about his grassroots effort to garner neighborhood support for the Lloyd to Woodlawn Neighborhood Greenway project.

In the latest Oregon Governor’s race poll Kate Brown is ahead by 4% with a margin of error of 5%. There have been alarms going off that Governor Brown is in trouble and many commentators are pointing to a lack of a compelling vision. Last year she helped push through HB 2017, one of the largest transportation budgets in Oregon’s history. Yet this additional money is not doing her many favors for saving her job. She has hardly mentioned her victory on the campaign trail. As people who spend time reading about the importance of transportation, it is crucial for us to figure out why transportation is not a topic of interest in this race.

I encourage you to leave your ideas in the comments below. Here are a few of my thoughts:

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From the Archives

How a young urbanist turned a slip lane into Portland’s newest plaza