2022 Archives

With missed grant deadline and no political support, Frog Ferry takes on more water

“Portland used to be a mecca for transportation innovation.”
– Nina Byrd, Friends of Frog Ferry

It was just last summer when supporters of the non-profit initiative Friends of Frog Ferry (FOFF) announced their pilot program for a ferry to whisk passengers up and down the Willamette River was set for imminent launch. But a lot can change in a year. On Tuesday officials behind the project announced the dream of a Willamette River ferry system is no longer alive in Portland – at least for the time being.

FOFF members, who have been advocating for this new transportation mode since 2018, needed a public agency – either TriMet or the City of Portland – to partner with them in order to apply for a Federal Transit Administration grant to develop the ferry pilot. That deadline came and went on Tuesday and Frog Ferry struck out.

The non-profit has received financial support from the City of Portland and State of Oregon the past; but local political will for the ferry project has fallen flat, and Frog Ferry leaders say they now have no choice but to put the program on an indefinite pause.

“We are able to a put a boat on the water within 18 months. We will not be able to do so until our City Leaders also make it a priority,” reads an email sent to supporters yesterday.

Group of people inside standing behind someone at a lectern in front of an old city building. — FOFF founder Susan Bladholm speaks in front of City Hall at an April press conference. (Photo: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)

To FOFF supporters, this saga indicates the City of Portland is failing to innovate like it used to.

“Portland used to be a mecca for transportation innovation. If that’s a title that we were proud of, we’ll have to continue to evolve,” FOFF board member Nina Byrd told BikePortland on a phone call this morning. “[That evolution] requires robust transportation infrastructure, which includes a ferry system. It’s really not rocket science.”

But ferry-skeptical City of Portland leaders say they don’t have the bandwidth to take a project like this on right now. When Portland City Council discussed the ferry pilot back in April, Portland Bureau of Transportation Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty appeared particularly wary of allocating resources to FOFF.

“I realize you’re interested in seeing PBOT tackle transport transformative transportation projects. The challenge is that the Bureau is already tackling numerous transformative transportation projects,” Hardesty said at the time.

Byrd said PBOT can do multiple things at once, and given that FOFF doesn’t need city money right now, all they’d have to do is help sign off on the federal grant application.

“This project has been seen as just an additional burden on behalf of our Bureau. I really do think it’s just a lack of sophistication in terms of bandwidth capacity,” Byrd said. “I get that, but it’s not an excuse to not innovate and to continue to grow our transportation system.”

However, Hardesty was also put off by a financial dispute between FOFF and TriMet, who was in charge of doling out the $500,000 in state funds to the ferry program. In April, TriMet officials wrote to city staff to express concerns that FOFF’s founder Susan Bladholm was asking the transit agency for questionable reimbursements. Bladholm has denied these allegations. To FOFF, TriMet is making up baseless accusations in order to withhold a chunk of the money allocated to the project.

“The level of scrutiny this project is under seems to be mired in political realities and personal opinion on behalf of our government leaders,” Byrd said. “[Accusations of financial impropriety] are nothing but absurdity.”

It’s not just the public agencies who are skeptical of the ferry proposal. Joe Cortright took his disagreements with Frog Ferry to City Observatory in April, writing that the ferry’s claims of expediency and practicality are outlandish.

“It’s not possible for a regular ferry service to travel faster between Vancouver and Portland than a car, or even today’s bus service. In the real world, boats are slower than both cars and buses,” Cortright wrote. “Water transportation, especially given the circuitous water route between Vancouver and Portland, the slow speeds of even “fast” ferries, the need to minimize damaging wakes at higher speeds, and the relative remoteness of docks from actual destinations, means that ferries in Portland are an unwise, uneconomic folly.”

But the FOFF concept will likely persist. Byrd told BikePortland the ferry is popular and inevitable in Portland, and even though the project is currently a sinking ship, they’re still asking for support.

“We believe that by and large, the majority of Portlanders are for the project. We believe there’s a pathway forward, but the public agencies have to step up and sponsor it,” she said. “We will have a ferry system one day. To say otherwise is like saying we’re not going to build another bridge or bike loop.”

Class action lawsuit says City of Portland violates ADA law by not keeping sidewalks clear

Davis Wright Tremaine lawyer John DiLorenzo speaks to the media in front of plaintiffs at the press conference in downtown Portland this morning. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

“The City has failed and continues to fail to maintain its sidewalks clear of debris and tent encampments, which is necessary to make its sidewalks readily accessible to people with mobility disabilities.”
– Tozer (et al) v City of Portland

The City of Portland must clear its sidewalks of tents and campers so that people with disabilities can safely navigate around them. That’s one of several claims for relief made by Portland law firm Davis Wright Tremaine in a class action lawsuit filed Tuesday (read it below).

Today, lead lawyer John DiLorenzo said the 10 plaintiffs named in the suit — all of whom have some form of disability — are “being deprived of city services” because so many of the city’s sidewalks are impassable. Quoting C.E.S. Wood’s, “Good citizens are the riches of the city,” DiLorenzo said he was proud to represent the “good citizens” who are brave enough to come forward and push for their rights.

The lawsuit accuses the City of Portland of being in violation of federal law that requires cities to keep its programs and services, “readily accessible and usable by individuals with disabilities.” The suit doesn’t seek any monetary damages. Instead it asks for several actions: for the City to admit they are in violation of the ADA law; to “clear and maintain all City’s sidewalks from debris and tent encampments”; keep them clear; and provide emergency shelter for anyone impacted by the judgment.

Here’s an excerpt from the intro to the 55-page complaint:

The City has failed and continues to fail to maintain its sidewalks clear of debris and tent encampments, which is necessary to make its sidewalks readily accessible to people with mobility disabilities. Indeed, a substantial number of the City’s sidewalks—particularly those in the City’s busiest business corridors—do not comply with applicable federal statutes and regulations because they are blocked by tent encampments and attendant debris, rendering the sidewalks inaccessible, dangerous, and unsanitary for people with mobility disabilities.

The first person DiLorenzo called to speak at today’s press conference was Vadim Mozyrsky, an administrative law judge with a speciality in disability cases and a former city council candidate (who lost to Rene Gonzalez in a bid to defeat Jo Ann Hardesty)

“I believe this is a momentous day because I think we will have resolution to the heart-wrenching stories of the many disabled people in Portland,” Mozyrsky said.

Both Mozyrsky and DiLorenzo repeatedly said they believe the City has the resources to clear sidewalks, they are just choosing to not take care of them.

According to the complaint (which includes many photos of encampments) the impact of Portland’s many blocked sidewalks are that people with mobility issues and disabilities are put in unsafe situations. Several of them spoke out at the press conference and relayed stories of altercations with homeless people, having to go into the street to avoid a blocked sidewalk, and so on.

The lead plaintiff is 54-year-old Irvington neighborhood resident Tiana Tozer, who was hit by a drunk driver when she was 20. Since then she has had 36 reconstructive surgeries for injuries to her legs that made her unable to walk. Tozer has spent years in physical therapy. “My mobility has been hard-won over and over and over again,” she said today. “The camping that blocks the sidewalks just adds insult to injury.” (Tozer is the same person who was removed from the City of Portland Vision Zero Task Force in 2019 following posts to Twitter where she referred to people as “stoopid” and “idiot”).

Images taken from Tozer v City of Portland complaint.

Steve Jackson, 47, is legally blind. He takes the bus from his home in northeast to his job downtown. Jackson uses a cane and said he will often hit a tent with it as he tries to navigate the sidewalks. “Then people get mad at me because they think I’m attacking them,” Jackson shared. “But I’m just trying to get to work.”

Several other plaintiffs shared their fears and concerns.

62-year old Barbara Jacobsen lives in Old Town and said, “When I leave my house I feel very scared. I think, ‘Is today the day I get attacked? Or hit by a stray bullet?'”

21-year-old Lorien Welchoff is a student at Pacific Northwest College of Art and lives in the nearby Pearl District. She described how it takes her three hours to clean her mobility scooter when she runs over human feces left on the street by people who live on sidewalks next to campus.

At the end of the press conference, DiLorenzo criticized the City of Portland for being too focused on providing permanent housing for homeless people, as opposed to constructing emergency shelter. “They’re building homes that will cost $450,000 and will take five years to build — at which time many of these people will have perished. That is inhumane.”

This lawsuit comes less than a month since Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced an expansion of his homeless emergency declaration that gave him authority to address camps on sidewalks on designated Safe Routes to School routes.

Read the full complaint below (or click here if it’s taking too long to load):

Tozer v City of Portland Complaint

The Street Trust and Biketown kick off program to reel in new riders

Friday’s group on the Tilikum Crossing Bridge. (Photo: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)

“There’s definitely an interest in BIKETOWN, but accessing it is still a barrier for a lot of people.”
-André Lightsey-Walker

Last Friday, transportation advocacy non-profit The Street Trust (TST) held their first event in a series of group rides to help new people get comfortable riding around the city using Biketown, Portland’s electric bike share program. These rides are part of the recent partnership between the two organizations to leverage TST’s outreach with the bike share program’s financial resources (it’s managed and sponsored by Lyft and Nike respectively, in partnership with the Portland Bureau of Transportation) and paint the town Biketown orange – or at least get a few new people signed up for the program.

TST and Biketown want to bring more people into the Biketown for All program, which makes it almost free to use the bike share service for people who make below a certain income and meet the criteria for assistance programs like SNAP or FAFSA. But many people who are eligible to join the program may not know they qualify for it or even how to use the bikes at all. André Lightsey-Walker, TST’s Policy Transformation Manager who’s heading the Biketown partnership, said he was able to sign one new person up for the service at Friday’s ride.

About 10 people showed up for the ride, which was a relaxed loop around Portland’s central city meant to ease people into the experience of using Biketown. I tagged along and talked to a few people who used the bike share service for the first time that day.

Lightsey-Walker planned the ride route to be (mostly) car-free so people could ease into the experience as much as possible. The group met near the Moda Center and biked south via the Eastbank Esplanade before heading across the Willamette River on the Tilikum Crossing. From there, we made our way back up north using the Naito bikeway, crossing the river again using the Steel Bridge lower deck.

One of the people at the ride was a man named John Bernstein. Not only was this Bernstein’s first time on a Biketown e-bike, but he said it was also his first time riding any bike in 20 years.

“The more people TST can support in shifting from driving alone to e-bikes and bike sharing, the more voices we’ll have in our movement for increasing e-bike and bike share funding and expansion.”
– Sarah Iannarone, The Street Trust

“I feel like a kid again! I’ve rediscovered my youth,” Bernstein told me. When we made it to the end of the loop, Bernstein was so thrilled by the experience he didn’t want to stop, so he headed off to that evening’s Friday Night Ride to keep trying out his newly-rediscovered bike legs.

Seeing this kind of reaction is awesome. But there’s one potential problem: as we’ve covered in the past, some Portland bike advocates are concerned there aren’t enough shared bikes to accommodate all the people who want to use them.

The Biketown rental rack at the Moda Center was well-stocked, but I passed several empty stations on my way to and from the ride, and I have a hard time squaring that with the desire for an ever-expanding user base. But TST and Biketown staff have expressed optimism about the program despite what many think may be a supply shortage.

In July, TST director Sarah Iannarone told me she thinks with more public interest in bike share, increased program funding (and thus more bikes) may follow.

“The more people TST can support in shifting from driving alone to e-bikes and bike sharing, the more voices we’ll have in our movement for increasing e-bike and bike share funding and expansion,” Iannarone wrote in an email. “Engaging and empowering riders from historically underserved communities to lead these conversations will be critical to ensuring that e-biking and bike sharing really works for the Portlanders who need it most.”

TST has now had the chance to gauge community response at last week’s ride. When I asked Lightsey-Walker how he thought it went, he was enthusiastic.

“Personally, I’m feeling great about the ride. I think it highlighted that there’s definitely an interest in BIKETOWN, but accessing it is still a barrier for a lot of people,” he said. “I think as the program continues we’ll get more clarity about what the most significant barriers to access are (and how they vary from community to community) and hopefully, we can work with Lyft, PBOT, and BIKETOWN to secure investments and resources to alleviate those barriers.”

The next TST/Biketown ride will be this Friday’s El Grito ride. That event will be co-led by Peter Do, who is one of the newly-appointed Biketown Ambassadors working with TST to act as a community liaison and further their outreach efforts.

Woman hit by a driver on SE Hawthorne reflects on infrastructure changes

Southeast Portlander Nicole Funke has walked across SE Hawthorne Blvd countless times. As a pedestrian and transit advocate who travels around Portland without a car, Funke knows about the dangers cars and their drivers pose, and she does everything she can to keep herself safe while getting around.

But after a recent run-of-the-mill grocery trip to Fred Meyer last month, Funke was struck by a car driver while crossing Hawthorne at 38th Ave. The collision illustrates how even people with her level of neighborhood familiarity and awareness of traffic risks are vulnerable when put up against car-centric street design and careless drivers.

The incident happened on August 15th around 7:30 pm. Funke recounted to BikePortland that as she waited to cross Hawthorne at 38th to head south, she looked around to make sure the coast was clear before continuing. Someone was driving slowly up to the crosswalk in the westbound lane (where the black minivan is above), giving her the impression they were going to stop. But the driver continued through the crosswalk, and right as Funke had almost crossed the westbound car lane, he hit her while going about 15 mph.

“I think a lot of drivers just take those crossings as a suggestion.”
-Nicole Funke

“I ended up folding around the front of his car, and when he stopped it threw me back a few feet,” Funke told me on a Zoom call earlier today.

She landed a few feet outside the crosswalk on her right hip, sustaining injuries on her elbow and face along the way. She said the driver got out of the car – he claimed he didn’t see her because the sun was in his eyes – and multiple passersby stopped to help her.

Funke thankfully left the scene of the crash alive that night. But that doesn’t minimize her experience: she sustained painful injuries from the incident that she’s still recovering from, and has had to spend the past few weeks dealing with the logistics of medical bills and insurance claims, which is not the ideal way to spend late summer days. And Funke is understandably shaken up from what she went through.

“I’ve always been a cautious, defensive walker, and this has made me even more so,” Funke told me. “It’s tough because I’m someone who really relies on myself to get around.”

The crosswalk Funke used that evening was installed last year by the Portland Bureau of Transportation as part of their Hawthorne ‘Pave and Paint’ project. The crosswalks installed as part of the project included median islands to reduce the exposure to Hawthorne traffic and included enhanced signage to increase visibility of the crossings. That wasn’t enough to prevent Funke from getting hit.

As we recently learned, many people who frequent Hawthorne on foot notice car drivers won’t always stop for people waiting to cross the street. Funke thinks more serious infrastructure measures need to be taken so people driving will actually stop at crosswalks.

“My big takeaway from this is that I believe if there was a pedestrian crossing light there, he would have stopped, he would have seen the light and he wouldn’t have continued through,” Funke told me. “I think a lot of drivers just take those crossings as a suggestion.”

Something else Funke gleaned from the incident is how important it is for victims to know how to advocate for themselves in situations like this. She said she was grateful for all the help she received from people passing, including someone who was a former trauma nurse and made sure Funke got the medical attention she needed and had all the relevant information from the person driving.

“I was so shaken that I couldn’t really advocate for myself. If there was nobody around, I probably just would have walked home in a daze,” Funke said. “I feel that I better understand how I could be helpful if I witnessed a crash.”

Ultimately, Funke decided not to press charges against the driver who hit her.

“I think that he made a really poor decision, but I don’t think it was malicious,” she said.

Instead, she said she will continue to champion safer street design on Hawthorne and around the city.

“Any time I have the ability, I will advocate for safer streets, especially further out east where the infrastructure is so terrible and people are incredibly unsafe walking around.” Funke said. “I think we just need to keep being voices in the community for that.”

How Ranked Choice Voting works (and how it could give bicycling a bigger voice in City Hall)

A creative explanation of how Single Transfer Voting works, from Minneapolis Public Radio

Its aim is to make sure every voter has some influence, in proportion to the popularity of their choices.

You know an issue is hot when you go to a Labor Day weekend party and people are talking about it. The issue is Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), and it will be on the ballot this November as part of the Charter Reform referendum to reorganize city government.

More precisely, voters will be voting on a specific type of RCV called Single Transferable Vote (STV).

As BikePortland previously reported, the Portland Charter Commission has proposed a package of changes to voting and city governance after grappling for a year and a half with how to improve the way we run our city.

I wanted to better understand how the STV method was implemented, and I have a hunch that some BikePortland readers would also like to take a deeper dive. So if you are someone who isn’t satisfied until you understand the details, I’ve pulled together a wonkish explanation of STV, and how the method could give bicycling concerns more voice in city government.

The Big Picture

It helps to think of the opinions and candidate preferences of voters as a big conglomeration of information. A good voting method extracts as much of that information as possible so that the candidates we put in office best reflect what voters want.

Ranked choice, single transferable vote is a nuanced way of extracting information about voter preference. Its aim is to make sure every voter has some influence, in proportion to the popularity of their choices. In this way, the fullness of your opinions is captured, even when your first choice is for a candidate who has no chance of winning, or alternatively, who is sure to win.

I don’t understand that 25% bit

The arithmetic of voting for different numbers of candidates. (source FairVote.org)

On the ballot this fall is RCV with STV in multi-member districts. That means you will rank candidates who are running in your geographical district. The city will be divided into four districts, with three candidates elected to council from each one.

The arithmetic of having three winners is that each candidate will need to capture over 25% of the total vote in their district. Let’s walk through that.

If you have a voting system with only one winner (N = 1)—like we do now—that candidate will have to capture one more than 100 divided by (N+1) votes to win. That comes to 100 divided by 2, or 50% of the vote. That’s what we are used to.

With two winners, N = 2, it becomes 100 divided by 3, or 33% of the vote. Three winners is 100 divided by 4, to arrive at the 25% from the method proposed on our ballot (see table above).

Another way to think about it is that the threshold is set so that it is mathematically possible for only N candidates to get enough votes to win. That’s just the arithmetic of voting.

Here is how tabulating the vote works

This is the fun part. And honestly, there is a short YouTube video from Minneapolis Public Radio which does a fantastic job of explaining tabulation in only 2 minutes and 42 seconds using colored sticky notes, dry erase markers and hands. Their explanation is delightful and will satisfy most people.

Here goes my explanation, it’s a little less delightful, but is tailored to being a cyclist in Portland.

The first pass of vote counting is similar to what we are used to—count how many first choice votes each candidate got.

It’s the next steps that differ. Any candidate who passes the 25% threshold is a winner. But how far did they make it beyond the threshold? We are accustomed to declaring elections “landslides” and talking about “mandates” according to how how strong a win is, so the next step—the actual transfer of votes—might take some thought to get used to.

Any win above 25% has “surplus” or extra votes beyond what is needed to win. It is the number of surplus votes a winning candidate receives that will be transferred to other candidates, in proportion to the votes each candidate received as the second-ranked choice of those winning voters.

In other words, the second-ranked choice of all the voters of a first-pass winning candidate are counted and the fraction of the total vote each candidate got is calculated. Those fractional proportions are then multiplied into the number of surplus votes and distributed to other candidates proportionally.

Why it matters for bicycling

I might have lost you in the previous paragraph, so let’s talk bicycles. Let’s say there is an election, and the big issues are police reform, law and order, and renter protection. Under our current system of winner-take-all voting, improving active transportation infrastructure—better bike facilities—can’t break through those hot-button issues.

But under RCV STV you might get a candidate, call her Catherine, who advocates for better bike infrastructure. It’s her main issue. She gets 10% of the vote on the first round. Candidate Joan, who is an incumbent and whose main issue has always been police reform gets 50% of the vote, so she has a surplus of 25% of the district vote. She’s a winner.

Let’s distribute Joan’s 25% surplus votes to other candidates. Looking at the 2nd-ranked choice of Joan’s voters, we see that a whopping 50% of them chose Catherine. Half of a 25% surplus is 12.5% so Catherine’s total vote count becomes 22.5%—the bike advocate has got a shot at winning!

There is a third candidate, Pascal, who is the law and order candidate. He wins with 30% of the vote, or a 5% surplus. Let’s redistribute that surplus. It turns out that 60% of Pascal’s voters chose Catherine as their 2nd choice candidate. That’s 3% of the total district vote which gets added to Catherine’s column, and she too is now a winner with 25.5% of the vote!

And that is how issues which have trouble breaking through to become a “hot-button” number one issue, but which nevertheless have strong community support, can gain representation on the City Council. These are called “minority” positions. I point this out because this is distinct from positions held by racial or ethnic minority voters, and there is a tendency to conflate the two.

The takeaway

Importantly, the process does not lose ranking information. Both Joan and Pascal will know that a large percentage of their voters want better bike facilities, and you might end up with the two of them—opposites on the police issue—supporting Catherine as she pushes bike issues on council.

Moreover, because a candidate might be angling to be the 2nd or 3rd choice of a competitor’s voters, they would be wise to avoid running a campaign that angers those voters who are not ranking them as 1st choice.

Finally, RCV STV does away with primaries. Historically, the turnout for primaries is low, which means that a small percentage of highly motivated voters determines the selection of candidates that the larger voting public will see in the general election.

Not quite done

Of course, there is more to STV than my explanation covers. The process may make several passes through the data, reaching 3rd- and 4th-choice candidates, and beyond. Also, there are methods for eliminating the bottom scoring candidates when it becomes mathematically impossible for them to win. Their lower-ranked voter choices then percolate up to candidates who can still feasibly win.

This video, also out of Minneapolis, goes into greater technical detail about STV starting at minute 20:51. I don’t know what software Portland will be using to tabulate votes if charter reform passes this fall, so there might be differences in details, but the Minneapolis video gives a good general explanation of the methods and addresses some of the “what ifs” that come up.

Got other questions or observations about charter reform? Let us know in the comments.

Organizers call inaugural Native and Indigenous Bike Ride a success (Photo Gallery)

This story and photos by Jarrette Werk originally appeared on Underscore News

Pedalpalooza’s first ride geared exclusively toward Native and Indigenous riders drew attendees from as far away as Arizona.

Forty Native and Indigenous community members, ranging from young children to elders, plus a dog named Ocho, attended Pedalpalooza’s inaugural Native and Indigenous Bike Ride on Saturday, August 27, 2022.

“Imagine what we could do if we made it an every year thing. It could just get bigger and bigger.”
– Nanette Beyale, organizer

Organizers Alexis Vazquez and Nanette Beyale say they’re pleased.

“So many people came together for this,” said Beyale. “Imagine what we could do if we made it an every year thing. It could just get bigger and bigger.”

The 7-mile, party-paced ride rolled out at 3 p.m. from the Hampton Opera Center on the east side of the Willamette River. Riders headed to Colonel Summers Park, then crossed the river to breeze along the scenic South Waterfront. The finale was a celebration at Portland State University’s Native American Student and Community Center with fry bread, music and vendors.

Scroll down to view the photo gallery:

Nanette Beyale, Navajo Nation, explains the expectations and rules to the 40 attendees of Pedalpalooza’s inaugural Native and Indigenous Bike Ride. Beyale, a Portland State University architecture student, says she organized the ride with Alexis Vazquez to build community and create a safe, fun space on bikes for Native American and Indigenous community members in the Portland metro area. “So many people came together for this, even in the first little bit — just imagine what we could do if we made it an every year thing,” Beyale said. “It could just get bigger and bigger.”

Elisha Bishop, right, delivered three bags of Blue Bird Flour to event organizers, Alexis Vazquez and Nanette Beyale, and community member Lisa Graham. Bishop, a member of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, is an avid cyclist and a 2022 rider for Ride For Racial Justice, a nonprofit on a mission to dismantle systemic racism in cycling and ensure access to resources, education and community for BIPOC cyclists. “I work for the Gila River Indian Community in the Community Manager’s Office as a data analyst, but outside of work I organize community bike rides,” he said. In February of this year, Bishop organized the Gila River Bike Tour, a three-day, 60-mile bike ride across the reservation, and he also organizes family-focused community rides, ranging between 4 and 8 miles. Bishop planned a stop in Portland to attend the Native and Indigenous Bike Ride while on his trip from Arizona to Seattle to visit family. He said he wanted to attend to show his support, but also to learn how he could hold a similar event in Phoenix or Tucson, Arizona.

Reigning University of Oregon Miss Indigenous, Angela Noah, and another student traveled up from Eugene to attend the event. “My favorite thing about the event is I felt excited to see Portland and walked away with new networks and friends who share the same passion of biking and centering healing in the community,” Noah said. Noah, who is White Mountain Apache and Choctaw, and uses she/they pronouns, is a planning, public policy and nonprofit management major and co-director of the Native American Student Union at UO. Noah is inspired to bring the Native community in Eugene together through similar events and looks forward to the Native and Indigenous bike ride becoming an annual event. “I’ll for sure be riding again next year,” Noah said.

Ocho, a three-year-old Maltese Shih Tzu crossbreed, poses for a photo while sitting quietly in the basket of her owner’s bicycle.

River City Bicycles, a Portland-based bike shop, provided free pre-ride checks for any services riders needed. One rider needed help adjusting the seat of their new bike, and others needed tire pressure adjustments.

A young girl with a unicorn helmet sits in a makeshift basket on the back of her father’s bike and looks at the unique windows of the OHSU Robertson Life Sciences Building on South Porter Street in Portland.

Alexis Vazquez, who identifies as Taino, a group of people Indigenous to what is now Puerto Rico, and uses they/them pronouns, keeps an eye out for broken glass and other hazards as they lead the riders eastbound on Salmon Street toward the first stop at Colonel Summers Park.

Ocho (in bicycle basket) and her owner follow the group to Colonel Summers Park for the first scheduled break of the 7-mile Native and Indigenous Bike Ride on Aug. 27, 2022.

A cyclist tends to the wounds of a fellow rider who fell from their bike and scraped their elbow at the beginning of the event.

While looking for a place to take a group photo that could fit all 40 attendees, the Colonel Summers Park’s water fountain sprayed unsuspecting riders.

Gregory Topete, 34, is a first-generation Mexican American. His mother emigrated from Jalisco, Mexico to California in 1979, nearly a decade before he was born. Topete moved to Portland in 2016 and is actively involved with BikePOC, a Portland-based BIPOC cycling community. “The whole genesis of me participating in this ride was because of an ask from Alexis,” Topete said. “They asked if I could help scope the route out and be a corker as well.” A corker places one’s bicycle and body in an intersection in front of crossing road users so that a large group of people can go through without stopping at signals and stop signs. “The corker is there to ensure a driver doesn’t try to sneak by a gap in the group,” he said. “It allows all the riders to stay and ride together, rather than splintering off into smaller groups.”

UO Miss Indigenous Angela Noah, left, traveled from Eugene to attend the event. Noah used the $50 BIKETOWN credit offered to all riders in order to participate.

Corkers wait for the light to turn green so they can ride ahead and stop traffic at a busy intersection in downtown Portland.

With a stalled train blocking the bicycle route, riders improvised, carrying or walking their bicycles up the stairs of a nearby overcrossing bridge. There was also an elevator big enough to squeeze in four riders and their bikes.

Nanette Beyale helps Alexis Vazquez push their heavy electric bike up the stairs of an overpass bridge.

After all riders safely crossed the overpass bridge, they headed to Portland State University’s Native American Student and Community Center.

Forty riders ranging from young children to elders, plus a dog named Ocho.

Underscore is a nonprofit collaborative reporting team in Portland focused on investigative reporting and Indian Country coverage. They are supported by foundations, corporate sponsors and donor contributions. Follow Underscore on Facebook and Twitter.

Portland International Raceway officials directed traffic onto a bike path

Note: Video has no sound. Filmed by Jonathan Maus.

On Sunday afternoon I was biking home from Vancouver. As I headed west on the Columbia Slough path toward North Denver Avenue and began to roll down the path under the overpass, a large box-van came rumbling toward me. Given that this is a bike path, I was shocked to see a driver there. However, since I knew there was a big event (Indycar race) at Portland International Raceway, I figured the van was part of the event and needed some type of special access to the path.

Before I share what happened next, please realize I’m actually a very reasonable person. Despite the caricature some haters on the Internet like to draw of me, I’m not one of those people who get irate whenever any driver blocks a bike lane for any amount of time. Yes it bothers me when bike lanes are ignored and disrespected, but we live in a city and I realize that people need to do things, not everyone in a car is evil, sometimes things just suck, and sometimes we just have to move on.

So while I was a scared and surprised at this one utility van coming at me, I was prepared to simply gesture my dissatisfaction at the driver and move on. But as I rounded the corner there were more drivers coming at me. A line of them! On a bike path!

Now I was mad.

When I see a sign like this, I think there might be a bump in the road, not a 4,000 vehicle coming at me. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

I quickly realized someone at PIR made the decision to direct traffic leaving the venue directly onto the path. I watched dozens of drivers motor down the path, totally unaware they were sharing it with bicycle riders. And I watched bicycle riders use the path totally unaware that there would be multiple drivers coming in the opposite direction. Since it was an underpass, there was also a downhill-uphill involved. Combine that with the clueless path users (some of whom just watched a car race!) and a sharp corner with reduced visibility and you had the recipe for a collision.

Once I realized what was going on I rolled into PIR and started yelling my concerns at a traffic worker. He said he was just following orders and didn’t care about what I had to say (I don’t blame him). I didn’t have time to hang around, but as I started to leave, I noticed three Portland Police Bureau SUVs drive toward me as they left the event. I gestured to the first officer to roll his window down. Still on my bike, I described to him what was going on. The officer’s reaction was very disappointing. He looked at me like I was crazy and then said, “It’s pretty obvious [what’s going on], just ride around them,” or something like that. He clearly thought it was no big deal (despite not really taking time to understand my concern).

That first officer pulled away before I was done talking, so I flagged down another one. The next officer just looked at me and said, “Yeah, it’s a big mess,” as he continued to drive away.

(Graphic: ODOT with BikePortland additions)

Background

PIR is owned by the City of Portland Parks & Recreation. I’ve reached out to their office and will share details from them when I hear back.

This bike path used to be a section of North Schmeer Road. However, in 2014 the Oregon Department of Transportation (who owns North Denver Ave because it is Highway 99W), closed it to cars as part of a road realignment project (see graphic above). As I reported at the time time, “Currently the northbound transition from Denver Avenue to Schmeer is a rarely used section of the road with pavement that’s in terrible shape. ODOT plans to repurpose that road and make it open only for walking and biking.”

Please note that I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable for PIR to temporarily use this path for exiting car traffic after large events. However, when you put drivers in the same space as bike riders, there must be significant traffic controls in place. On Sunday there was only one orange “Caution” flag up. I saw it and like all the other bike riders out there, continued to ride. Nothing about “Caution” says, “There are cars and drivers driving directly at you ahead.” PIR should have placed either: Directed traffic somewhere else; installed hard barricades with “Bike Path Closed” signage; or they should have placed a human flagger on both ends to make sure no conflicts happened.

If we want people to ride bikes, we must respect the spaces we tell them to use.

We have enough problems with people using this path illegally, the last thing we need is our own government adding to the mess.

I hope this never happens again.

Job: Shipping Specialist – Velotech, Inc.

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Job Title

Shipping Specialist

Company / Organization

Velotech, Inc.

Job Description

Velotech, Inc. is a locally owned business that has operated in Portland since 2002. Velotech is the parent company of BikeTiresDirect, Western Bikeworks, and Trisports.

We are always hiring! We have flexible schedules that accommodate multiple needs. Whether you are seeking full time, part-time, or something in between, reach out and let us know what you are looking for. We love to promote from within, so if you are looking to get your foot in the door, this could be a great entry point.

This position is responsible for picking, packing and shipping customer orders. Qualified Shipping Specialists also execute product put-away, clean their work area, execute physical counts, and available for general physical and/or minor administrative labor.

Starting rate is $17.25 per hour.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:
Pick incoming web orders and warehouse pick up orders
Pack and ship orders according to supervisor’s guidelines
Maintain accurate inventory through regular cycle counting
Assist receiving department with put away of new items
Maintain a clean and organized workspace
Assist with any projects, or assist in other departments as instructed by supervisor
Perform all duties in a safe manner and report all safety concerns immediately to supervisor

MINIMUM JOB REQUIREMENTS:
Wear closed toe shoes at all times in warehouse
Be able to lift 25 lbs above your head without assistance
Stand for long periods of time
Be able to lift 50 lbs without assistance

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, & ABILITIES:
Excellent communication and organizational skills
Solid knowledge of cycling products
Ability to work in a high volume, fast-paced environment
Ability to work independently or with others to manage multiple task with minimal supervision.

BENEFITS
Generous Employee Discounts
Flexible Schedules
Medical/Dental/Vision for all full & regular part-time employees
Paid Time Off – up to 15 days your first year
Quarterly ‘Get Outside’ days

PHYSICAL/MENTAL DEMANDS:
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this position, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to use hands or finger, handle, or feel objects, tools or controls.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand; walk, reach with hands and arms, stoop, kneel, crouch and sit for extended periods of time.

The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this position include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, and the ability to adjust focus.
The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

This description is intended to provide only the basic guidelines for meeting job requirements. Responsibilities, knowledge, skills, ability and working conditions may change as needs evolve.

Velotech is an Equal Opportunity employer.

How to Apply

If interested, please click on the link to apply:
https://www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.php/jobs/ViewJobDetails?job=4367&clientkey=F102FCECFB43ED66CAD0C8276CB962A9

Book Review: Confessions of a Recovering Engineer

Confessions of a Recovering Engineer (Wiley, 2021) is an unusual book by a man who I imagine is charismatic in person, Charles Marohn. BikePortland readers who are not already familiar with Marohn will have probably come across the word he coined over a decade ago, “stroad.”

Marohn is the founder of Strong Towns, a movement that advocates “for cities of all sizes to be safe, livable and inviting,” and the concept of a “stroad” is central to his philosophy, kind of like how some branches of Christianity require a devil.

If I keep reaching for religious terms it’s because the book has a moral undercurrent—almost a quest for compassion—that both gives his criticism of the engineering profession its outrage, but also an overall tone of poignancy to his writing.

“You could write this entire book without leaving this city.”

“Stroad” is the nemesis, but roads and streets—and understanding the difference between the two—are the pillars of Marohn’s vision. A road is a “high-speed connection between two places,” and a street is “a platform for building community wealth.” (The second chapter of the book is titled The Difference Between a Road and a Street, that’s how fundamental the concept is to him.)

Urban planners have somewhat embraced this view, but Marohn is bolder than most. He argues that most traffic signals in cities should be replaced with roundabouts, and that traffic speeds should be slashed:

The result of traffic signals is an environment of aggression, where a green light licenses a driver to take ownership of public space to the exclusion of others … Reducing street speeds can increase traffic flow and reduce travel time for most trips, especially when traffic signals are replaced with continuous flow intersections. There is little to no need to create gaps in traffic flow when speeds are low.

His recommended speed for a street is 15 mph. (“For streets, where we need complexity in order to build a productive place, traffic needs to flow at a neighborhood speed (15 mph is optimum)…”)

In a book chock full of ideas, a couple more jumped out at me:

Relying on congestion as traffic calming. The pandemic has created a natural experiment:

With the virus-induced drop in traffic volume, what is being revealed is the overengineering and unsafe design of that occurs throughout our transportation system. Remove the traffic congestion that routinely thwarts high speeds and drivers naturally feel empowered to utilize the full capabilities that have been engineered for them. Speeds go up, and so does the rate of fatalities.

About shovel-ready projects, he writes:

Having gone through the lengthy process of planning and design, when the moment of decision came, local leaders opted to accept their sunk costs and table the project because they could not justify spending local money on it. That is a bad project. Then overnight, with federal stimulus providing the option of using someone else’s money, these projects suddenly became an excellent use of resources.

Marohn illustrates his ideas with engaging stories from cities throughout the US. About a third of the way through the book, however, I noticed that I was substituting streets in Portland for all of his examples. You could write this entire book without leaving this city.

He is a great storyteller, but he also gets into the weeds with the old saws of traffic engineering, like Level of Service and 85th percentile speed measurements, and at one point annihilates a report used to justify a freeway expansion.

The book even ends with a confession (spoiler alert). Marohn shares a final crash story: A driver of a new SUV, music blaring (I’m already disliking this person) gets in a doozy of a classic crash. A left-turning driver who failed to keep her wheels straight while waiting for on-coming traffic to clear, is rear-ended and pushed into the intersection—directly in front of the approaching SUV. The SUV veers, but nevertheless sends the car spinning, and then goes on to level a stop sign, take to the air for a moment, and finally meet a big tree which exacts revenge for the stop sign. A smell of sulfur and smoke ensues.

It wasn’t until several paragraphs into this crash description that I realized that the driver of the SUV was our author, in the palm of whose hand I had been sitting for the previous 223 pages. The entire chapter is a tour de force, and a powerful end to a thought-provoking book.

Find this book on Powells.com.

Comment of the Week: Bystander death and the ‘cost of doing business’

“… we will continue to see solutions that play around the edges of addressing a sick culture addicted to going nowhere fast.“

Welcome to the Comment of the Week, where we highlight good comments in order to inspire more of them. You can help us choose our next one by replying with “comment of the week” to any comment you think deserves recognition. Please note: These selections are not endorsements.

We ended the week with a post about a car-racing driver who killed a bystander on SE Stark as she waited for a bus.

This is a heartbreaking story, and BikePortland writes too many of them. Faced with yet another death, it is hard for commenters to find words that express their frustration, anger and feeling of impotence.

But ITOTS wrote a few profound paragraphs which describe the breadth our problem.

Here is a portion of their comment:

Put another way, Oslo reached vision zero in 2019. But take an average busy Oslo street or intersection and plop it down in the US, and I don’t think anyone here would call it a Vision Zero Design (TM). Everyone here can imagine a couple hoonigans jamming down that street at 50-70 mph. I’m not saying the Oslo street isn’t significantly better than a Stark. I am saying that in America, that’s not gonna get us where we’re supposed to be going.
For all the carnage our streets produce, the way they function today clearly has beneficiaries and supporters. Clearly these deaths, the so-called “cost of doing business”, are worth it—that the balance between benefits and burdens is roughly correct (access/mobility/thrills vs deaths/injuries/fears/environmental and public health impacts). Until this balance is actually seen to be publicly and institutionally incorrect, we will continue to see solutions that play around the edges of addressing a sick culture addicted to going nowhere fast, not able or willing to see beyond the bottom of a bottle, the glowing rectangle in their hand, a sense of responsibility to anything that’s not securing the next dopamine hit, let alone what’s in front of the hood of their speeding automobile.
Yes this problem is systemic (i.e. doesn’t only rest on individuals making bad choices), but there are multiple systems involved and I too often hear people setting culpability squarely on the quality or condition of infrastructure (as if we are automatons that can only do what the world around us tells us to) when that same infrastructure (or similar) can host street fairs and pedalpaloozas that transform it, curb to curb, not because we changed concrete and asphalt but because enough of us decided temporarily it should be a different kind of place. Of course there are cracks in this edifice (see: pissed-off and entitled drivers barging their way through Sunday Parkways, but again that disposition is a cultural product that not just a few people in this comment section spent time justifying in its most recently recorded instance).
But the presence of cracks in one of the pillars is fine. Because the point is this is a multivariate problem which needs a multi-pillared solution and that if places like Stark all must be transformed before people can stop dying on our streets, Portland, let alone America, won’t have the time, resources, or will to get there.

Thank you ITOTS for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. You can read ITOTS’s full comment, and the other comments as well, under the original post.

The Monday Roundup: Driving is the new smoking, bike bus tech, and more

Welcome to the week.

Here are the most notable stories our writers and readers came across in the past seven days…

Better than corkers: A bike bus in the UK has been given permission to use signal-altering technology to allow all the students to safely get through the intersection. (The Guardian)

Bad habit: I have always loved the framing of “driving is the new smoking” and now someone has written an excellent breakdown of why this is such an apt metaphor. (Greater Greater Washington)

This article is a monstrosity: A writer forgot to leave his personal biases at the door when he sat down to write an article about e-bikes that should have been labeled an op-ed. (The Atlantic)

Carfree subsidy: Tucked inside California’s wide-ranging suite of new policies to address climate change is a $1,000 tax credit for people who live without a car. Yes, the state is paying people to not drive. (Washington Post)

Regulating cars and trucks: In the effort to level the power dynamic on our streets, what’s happening in New York state with speed limiters and truck/SUV design regulation legislation is one of the most interesting issues to watch. (Streetsblog NYC)

Car danger doc: “Part of the film’s message to non-wonks is that car culture has been so firmly embedded in the US — in its collective consciousness, its physical infrastructure, and in the language itself — that we rarely consider how it got there,” writes a review of a new PBS documentary on traffic safety. (Bloomberg)

Car-speak: We cannot unseat the dominance of cars until we understand how pervasive their influence is on our lives. This article is a great introduction to a new book that demonstrates how the windshield perspective has “colonised our thinking.” (The Guardian)

Parking and biking: We cannot created truly bike-friendly cities until we get the parking monster under control, says Portland’s own Tony Jordan and Catie Gould! (People for Bikes)

Idaho Stop, but for walking: California’s Freedom to Walk bill would do for walkers what the Idaho Stop did for bikers: Decriminalize behaviors that are natural and safe and only exist as traffic violations because of our misguided prioritization of drivers over everyone else. (California Bicycle Coalition)

Be careful what you campaign for: A mayoral candidate in Winnipeg pledged to reduce bike theft, then got his bike stolen shortly thereafter. (CBC)

Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week!

Photo Gallery: Het Meer Cyclocross Race

These tough junior races must have felt like they were summiting Mt. Hood as they trudged up the sand on the beach at Vancouver Lake Park. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Just popping in real quick on this Labor Day holiday to show you some of the hard work of local bike racers…

The cyclocross season blasted off Sunday with a full menu of races at Het Meer, part of the Harvest CX series put on by Zone 5 Promotions. Riders from all over the region descended on Vancouver Lake Regional Park just across the Columbia River in Washington. From kiddies to juniors, beginners to pros, there was a diverse display of racing talent on display.

While the course didn’t have much in the way of elevation gain, the high temps and brutally-hard beach section sapped strength of even the strongest racers. The sand was too soft and deep to ride through, so racers had to run down it, then trudge along the shoreline, then dismount again and carry their bikes back up the beach. It was brutal!

Here’s the full gallery: