2022 Archives

Guest Article: Why PBOT’s top maintenance staffer joined us for a bike ride

Story and photos by Cathy Tuttle

People who bike every day are the folks who ground-truth poor maintenance. We intimately experience gutters filled with leaves and plastic bike lane wands broken in the same locations day after day. We see street trees dying, and giant potholes reappearing over and over on what look like war-torn streets. Then there are the piles of slippery leaves, illegible street signs, shattered glass, chunks of concrete, thorny brambles and so on. These hazards could injure or even kill someone. And they always make us uncomfortable.

Yet as important as it is, a well-maintained stretch of asphalt isn’t much of a photo op or ribbon-cutting opportunity. Maintenance just doesn’t have the same political oomph that “new” has. That means repairing, upgrading, and fixing streets is often overlooked, underfunded and understaffed.

The City of Portland wants to change that.

Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) Maintenance and Operations Manager Jody Yates shared her time, knowledge, and experience with us on Friday August 26. Yates headlined the eleventh monthly BikeLoud PDX Policy Ride I’ve hosted, and her topic is what I’m personally most interested in as we retrofit our cities for the future. As a city planner and project manager, I have always been dedicated to building infrastructure we can maintain easily, rather than spending money on streets that need to be constantly rebuilt. Yates is too.

Jody Yates spent Friday afternoon riding in a three-wheeled electric pedicab piloted by Go By Bike founder and BikeLoud PDX Board President Kiel Johnson. Yates and the group who came to this Pedalpalooza ride talked for three hours about the materials under our feet (and wheels) and we barely scratched the surface.

PBOT is responsible for the maintenance of hundreds of millions of square feet of pavement – streets, sidewalks, bridges, staircases, plazas, and more. Though she started just in February 2022, Yates is up to speed on leading a maintenance and operations division of several hundred people. She brings a wealth of practical experience. A civil engineer for the past 25 years, Yates worked mainly for governments in Clackamas, Portland, and most recently in Beaverton. A thoughtful engineer, Yates was instrumental in getting programs started in creative street activation and rigorous asset management. Yates is putting significant energy into assessing where and how streets are failing, and smart ways to improve them.

There are three main culprits of pavement destruction. In order of severity, streets are damaged by: poorly repaired utility trenches, extra heavy vehicles, and tree roots.

Though PBOT’s Maintenance and Operations Division does repairs and implements designs generated by other PBOT divisions, Yates talked about street maintenance as a design issue in and of itself, of how maintenance should be a first consideration and built into designs of new and upgraded streets. Streets need to be easy and affordable to take care of.

Yates said there are three main culprits of pavement destruction. In order of severity, streets are damaged by: poorly repaired utility trenches, extra heavy vehicles, and, far back in third place, by tree roots.

Utility trenches are made by gas, sewer, water, telecom, and other utilities. Yates called out telecom companies for doing a slapdash job repairing the roads they rip up when installing cables. Yates made the analogy of the process of utility cut and covers to a shirt that has been torn again and again; sometimes repaired carefully, but often too quickly. And all the tears and repairs eventually destroy the “fabric” of the street.

On our tour we looked at old streets cobbled with ballast blocks, pocked and pitted asphalt, concrete panels, and even some 100-year-old mixtures of paving material that still are intact because they hadn’t been cut into very much.

Road repaving can cost upwards of $6 million a mile, and with Portland on the hook for taking care of over 2,000 miles of roads, keeping what we have in good condition is very sensible.

Heavy vehicles can and do quickly destroy roads too. Transit stops are reinforced with heavy duty concrete panels instead of a few inches of asphalt that tends to quickly deform under heavy wheels. People walking and rolling do virtually no damage to streets, but cars also quickly wear off paint and thermoplastic, damage curbs and street furnishings, and wear down pavement too. A few divisions of PBOT staff under Yates are responsible for repairing damage to paint, furnishings, and other public street elements.

Street trees are vital to a healthy resilient city, but their roots can also lift pavement as they search for water and nutrients. Streets that have minimal or no car traffic — like the Park Blocks on the PSU campus — have plenty of room for mature street trees. Low-car streets also need much less maintenance to repair paving, paint, and street furnishings. Another reason it’s smart for us to invest in streets that prioritize people walking and wheeling? They never do as much damage to the right of way as cars do.

People who bike care about safety and comfort. That’s why road maintenance is so important to us. Smooth roads, clear sightlines, few conflict zones along routes including door zones and safe intersections. We need clear directional signs to guide us while biking. We need enough room to avoid obstacles and wide enough lanes to ride side by side together or to pass other people biking.

For all these reasons and more we look forward to learning more and working with Jody Yates and PBOT on these issues in the future!

Interview-by-bike with Breakfast on the Bridge volunteer Lily Karabaic

For the past 15 years, Hollywood neighborhood resident Lily Karabaic has woken up around 4:00 am on the last Friday of every month. Like you, the first thing she does is make coffee. Unlike you, she makes 42 cups. And then she straps a percolator, a few dozen donuts (a vegan sampler from Doe Donuts), a bunch of mugs, and sometimes even pancake mix (gluten free if you choose) or freshly baked muffins onto her bike trailer and heads out to stand on a bridge and gives it away to anyone who passes by.

Lily Karabaic in “full donut regalia” (she even has matching donut earrings!).

Why? Because Lily is a dedicated volunteer of Breakfast on the Bridges, the cherished Portland tradition that celebrates its 20th anniversary this month.

The event means so much to Lily that every time she gets a new job she makes sure to negotiate for Fridays off.

I met Lily at her apartment last Friday morning around 6:30 am so we could ride together to the Tilikum Crossing for the birthday B on B. When I showed up, there was spilled coffee on the counter and she and her spouse Aaron Parecki were fussing with straps in her small living room, trying to get several boxes secured onto a Burley Travoy trailer.

Once we were all ready to roll, we took the lane on Northeast Sandy Blvd while drivers sped past and my camera rolled.

“It’s more about community-building, where we happen to have coffee,” Lily explained. “We use it as a tool for community building and connecting. People that ride bikes, scooters, people that walk, the morning runners on the waterfront and Esplanade — I think we spend a lot of time going past each other in those spaces. B on B is a meeting place.”

And for as many people who see this unexpected display of public hospitality and altruism for the first time and are taken aback, there are just as many regulars.

“I think it’s one of the foundational pieces of bike culture in Portland,” Lily said. Is that what keeps her getting out of bed so early every Friday morning? To keep the tradition alive? “Now [that it’s been 20 years] we feel like we can’t [stop]. You don’t want to be the one who ended B on B.”

Watch the full interview above or on YouTube (thanks to Aaron Parecki for shots of us riding together and the drone footage).

See our TikTok for another look at this story.
Breakfast on the Bridges on Instagram

Southwest update and dispatch from PBOT Bicycle Advisory Committee tour

New bike lane along SW Bertha Blvd at Vermont.

From right to left: Roger Geller, Keith Liden, Marianne Fitzgerald.

The Portland Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) and community members gathered on Sunday for a tour of some of Southwest Portland’s most recently built bike infrastructure. Leading the group was Portland Bureau of Transportation’s (PBOT) Bicycle Coordinator, Roger Geller.

The event had a bit of a “passing the baton” feel to it—or at least a sharing of the baton. The BAC has a new chair, Ally Holmqvist (who was along for the ride), and an infusion of fresh faces on its roster.

On hand were two longtime SW neighborhood activists, Marianne Fitzgerald and Keith Liden, to bring folks up to speed on area issues.

The group gathered near “the crossroads” intersection of SW Barbur Blvd and Capitol Highway. As BikePortland has extensively covered, the crossroads is one of the worst intersections in Portland, and is the location of a large gap in what is soon to be an important north-south bikeway running from Lake Oswego to Hillsdale.

Geller said that PBOT was aware of the problem gap, and explained that even though Capitol Highway is under city control, the nearby I-5 freeway ramps give ODOT authority over any PBOT design. He hinted at a possible approach for cyclist safely between Barbur and Huber, and said that the two agencies were working together.

Fitzgerald then spoke about lack of stormwater management as the key to understanding southwest active transportation issues. The land on which the group was standing, she pointed out, was the site of the future West Portland Town Center, a zoning and urban development plan which she criticized for only paying “lip service” to transportation.

Stormwater facilities are expensive to build, private developers fight building them, and the city ends up letting them off the hook for required active transportation improvements. That’s one of the main reasons SW Portland has the least sidewalk coverage of any area in town.

Fitzgerald concluded by saying that the city needed to build more stormwater collection and treatment basins, like the four that BES has built to accommodate runoff from the Capitol Highway project.

And with that, the group set off on its tour. (I wasn’t able to join them as I’m not riding my bicycle these days.)

Stormwater basins

Stormwater basin at 42nd Ave and Woods Creek. (Photo: Lisa Caballero/BikePortland)

It’s been almost a year since we last looked at the stormwater collection and treatment basins that make the multi-use path along the Capitol Highway project possible. Last November, BES contractors had finished the basin at 42nd/Woods Creek, and it was waiting to be filled with soil and for native, water-filtering vegetation to be planted.

As you can see in the photos above, now they’re just waiting for rain!

SW Capitol Highway Project

The multi-use path on the west side of Capitol Highway, looking north. (Photo: Lisa Caballero/ BikePortland)

The Capitol Highway project is in full swing, the entire street is in a state of almost … well, kind of like when the contractor has done the framing, and the drywall is up, and you can see where it’s going — but there is still a lot of work to do.

That gnarly ADA ramp

Finally, BikePortland ran a couple of stories last month about the struggle BES contractors were having in Portland Heights building ADA ramps to meet the city’s standards. More concrete pours followed and it looks like these ramps are acceptable.

Newly built ADA ramp at SW 16th Ave and Elizabeth Street. (Photo credit: Lisa Caballero/BikePortland)

And that’s a wrap!

Taking a ride on TriMet’s new FX line

Hey good lookin’! (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

TriMet has spent six years and about $175 million to establish a new kind of bus service on Southeast Division between downtown and Gresham. Now it’s finally time to see what this thing can do.

The Division corridor has been the poster child for our region’s struggles with climate killing car dependency, traffic deaths and poor transit service. When it opens on September 18th, TriMet hopes its new Frequent Express (FX) line starts a different narrative; one where Division is more humane and welcoming, and where buses finally move out of the shadows of light rail and take a starring role in non-car travel.

This morning TriMet hosted a sneak peek of the FX Line 2. I hopped on board one of the 31, 60-foot articulated buses that will soon serve 84 new bus platforms on the 12-mile corridor.

As we motored eastbound on Division from Portland Community College at SE 82nd, TriMet Division Transit Project Director Michael Kiser held court with several reporters. He detailed how the agency was able to speed up bus service, serve more people and improve safety in one fell swoop (and with a big assist from the City of Portland).

It’s really just a regular bus, but longer.

“Prior to this project we were passing up people just because we simply didn’t have the room on the bus.”
– Michael Kiser, TriMet project director

The FX lines boasts 12-minute headways and will shave significant seconds off trip times. TriMet Public Information Officer Tia York said the agency estimates the average rider will experience 20% faster trip times through the corridor (and it would have been even faster if the route didn’t divert south to the Tilikum Crossing instead of using the Hawthorne Bridge, but I digress.)

TriMet used a variety of methods to boost bus speeds.

One “very big lift” according to Kiser was collaborating with traffic engineers at the cities of Gresham and Portland to use machine-learning software to estimate arrival times and adjust signal timing at intersections accordingly. This transit signal priority will give bus operators a leg-up on the busy corridor.

The FX line will also have all-door boarding and fare validator machines at all three doors. The buses also don’t have to pull out of a traffic lane to pick up passengers. This means they can stop and get rolling much faster without having to wait for a break in traffic. There are also fewer stops along the route. Some sections of red bus-only lanes we see on the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Rose Lane projects are coming too. They aren’t on the ground yet, by Kiser said they should be by opening day (red lanes as a design standard wasn’t in use when TriMet design this project, hence the late implementation).

These time savings are combined with buses that can fit 60% more people. “Prior to this project,” Kiser shared, “we were passing up people just because we simply didn’t have the room on the bus.”

“This is a huge improvement for biking in east Portland,”
– Dylan Rivera, PBOT

Every time someone takes the bus instead of their car we reap major safety benefits. But there are other changes to Division meant to make it safer. Many of them, about $13 million worth, were concurrently installed by the Portland Bureau of Transportation as part of their Outer Division Safety Project.

PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera was on the bus with us. He rattled off an impressive list of project elements: three protected intersections, 4.5 miles of protected bike lanes with physical separation, bike only signals with bike detection, 81,000 square feet of new sidewalks in the whole project, almost 60,000 of which are in Portland, and 11 new marked crosswalks with stoplights, median islands and flashing beacons.

“This is a huge improvement for biking in east Portland,” Rivera said.

But a bike lane is only a bike lane if PBOT can keep people from parking cars in it. And on Division, PBOT and TriMet have a lot of work to do on that front. Kiser with TriMet said, “Parking in the bike lane will be an ongoing challenge,” and added they are partnering with PBOT to come up with a solution. But it didn’t sound promising. “Obviously, we have a lot of enforcement issues across the city right now,” he added.

Access managed, thanks to a center median.

Drivers have lost curbside parking spaces and they’ve lost the ability to turn into any driveway anytime they want. That’s because of new “access management” medians added for safety. This is another name for curbs in the middle of the street installed to prevent people from turning left out of — or into — driveways along the route.

“Transitioning to this changed environment is going to take some time. And access management is a big part of that,” Kiser said. “At times it has made it less convenient for motorists, but it’s safer for pedestrians. The pedestrian fatalities we’ve seen along this corridor is a big piece of how we approached the design.”

The Division streetscape feels very hectic. There’s just a lot going on. The medians help chill things out a bit. They also reduce available space on the road — something TriMet and PBOT had more flexibility on in the design of this corridor because it’s a bus route instead of light rail. If MAX was the chosen solution, there would have been very little room left for anything else after the tracks went in (see East Burnside or North Interstate).

I asked Kiser why this corridor gets a bus while TriMet has favored light rail almost exclusively in the past.

“We’re really asking a lot of this particular corridor, Division is a real workhorse,” Kiser said, rattling off all the different users like freight truckers, errand-runners, walkers, and bike riders. “And we don’t have a parallel route for bicycles out here because the adjacent street network is discontinuous,” he pointed out. “If we would have put in light rail, something would have had to go, there’s not room for every mode. So maybe bicycles would not have been a component.”

Unlike every existing corridor with a light rail, there’s no parallel route for drivers on SE Division either (which makes me think if we would have built the Mt. Hood Freeway, this would probably have been a MAX project.)

I asked Kiser if he thinks Division Transit Project elements will trickle-down to other lines. He said it will and specifically mentioned upcoming “BRT” (bus rapid transit) projects on 82nd Avenue and Tualatin-Valley Highway. “Barbur too perhaps?” I asked, and he nodded in agreement.

The advancements in transit signal priority are especially exciting, Kiser said, because the software they’re using is backwards-compatible to every other bus in their fleet. “All the other buses have what they need to plug into that system from a technological standpoint,” he said. The new bus stations with raised bike lanes through them are another thing TriMet is excited to debut in this project that we could see elsewhere as time goes on.

What about the bike racks?

Gone are the front-loading racks. Those waste precious time and weren’t the right fit for an FX line, Kiser said. The new racks are a model known as Spinlock made by Sportworks. They can fit wheel sizes from 26 to 29-inches (yes that includes standard road bikes) and tire widths up to 2.75-inches. Click the spec sheet on the right for a full rundown of the features.

There is space for just two bikes, the same amount TriMet buses have had for about three decades. C-TRAN’s similar buses on the Vine BRT route up in Vancouver, Washington have three racks. So why just two on FX? TriMet considered three racks, but didn’t go that direction. Kiser and another TriMet planner said it came down to competition for space between humans and bikes.

“It’s a balancing act,” Kiser said. “You want to be able to move as many people as you can and make sure they can get to their destination and then balance that with the need of bicycles.” If TriMet sees more demand for bike capacity, Kiser said they could revisit the issue in the future.

(See how easy it is to roll a bike into the racks in our TikTok.)

Car users and their large, inefficient vehicles, are the thing that slows FX down the most.

That’s not the only aspect of the FX TriMet might reconsider down the line.

12-minute headways are nice, but even more frequent service would be better. Is it possible TriMet could speed things up in the future? “I think so,” said Kiser. “With ridership levels being a bit lower now, with our shortage of operators, these things put strains on the service that we can put out. As things kind of get back to a more sustainable state, I think we we could see an improvement in the service.”

The new FX line is a big deal for TriMet. It’s their first major corridor project that isn’t a light rail line, and it feels like there’s a lot of internal buzz about what the means for the future of the agency. Bus projects are easier to implement, quicker to build, more flexible, and cost less than light rail. Does Kiser think FX marks a renaissance in bus service for the region? Not wanting to paint a picture of competition between the two transit modes, Kiser said, “It gives us another tool in the region to reduce our reliance on vehicles. So certainly we are going to see more of it. Because of what doors this project opens up.”

Comment of the Week: GHG and the power of government regulation

“The only way meaningful change will happen is through governmental regulation (like california banning gas cars) or major business/ structural economic change.“

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.

Our Activists want ‘Deeds not words’ as Portland adopts climate work plan post garnered a curious thread of comments. Several of the first comments to arrive criticized the age of the activists—as if global warming is a crisis about which only those under a certain age have the right to an opinion. (I eventually removed some comments for being ageist.)

Another chunk of comments seemed almost to celebrate the demise of downtown. Or framed another way, to celebrate the age of decentralization that working from home is maybe ushering in.

It was toward that second batch of comments that commenter “was carless” took aim with a strongly-worded rebuttal.

BikePortland doesn’t fact-check comments, but we also don’t want to amplify false information. So I did some cursory fact-checking of the “was carless” comment using the 2022 International Panel for Climate Change report, the EPA GHG emissions by sector information, and Carbon Brief’s summary of the IPCC report. The comment was consistent with what I read from those sources.

(“was carless” might be incorrect about personal transportation being 25% of US emissions, my reading of the EPA reports is that it is less than that, possibly as low as 13%. That only strengthens “was carless’s” argument.)

Here’s what “was carless” wrote:

Greenhouse gas emissions in the US are overwhelmingly NOT from the personal transport sector, which only comprises about 25% of emissions.
The rest of emissions [are] from from these sectors:
– electricity generation (so anyone posting on the internet or using web services is part of the problem)
– industrial emissions including resource extraction and steel/concrete production. Nothing you do will ever impact this
– heating and cooling buildings. Office buildings are 3-4 times more efficient than people working from home
– Air travel & international shipping
– Methane and co2 releases from agriculture
Almost every poster in this thread is tilting at windmills. Your personal co2 emissions from driving 15,000 miles a year in a 10 mpg pickup truck would be 15 tons annually.
Global emissions are at 36.3 billion tons. Your personal impact from driving is 2.75 x 10^-10.
Or 0.00000000275% of global emissions
if every Portlander stopped driving that would still only be 0.000062% of global emissions.
So we absolutely need to reduce our greenhouse emissions, but shaming people to avoid driving to ride bicycles in an unsafe environment is not the way. Claiming that all office work needs to be done at your personal home, which costs more energy to heat and cool than an office building also isnt the solution. And in fact, is a non solution to anyone living in a small or studio apartment or has children.
The only way meaningful change will happen is through governmental regulation (like california banning gas cars) or major business/ structural economic change. Ie, shutting down the coal power plants and installing wind, solar and city sized battery systems. Switching from fossil fuel to hydrogen or ammonia fuel for shipping and aviation. Etc.
Everything else is just a distraction and is the worst form of performative virtue signaling.

Thank you “was carless!”

“Was carless” left off an important point that “Soren” made in his GHG and Drunken Sailors “comment of the week” from four months ago. An out-sized share of our carbon footprint in Multnomah County (as in other wealthy cities) is “demand-side.” We consume a lot, so a significant portion on our GHG impact is not our direct GHG emission, but rather he GHG released in all the places around the world that produce what we consume.

You can read “was carless“and the whole thread, under the original article.

Freeyapalooza was a neighborhood treasure hunt for a good cause

I rolled down to Colonel Summers Park in southeast Portland on Saturday morning to help Freeya launch their new app. You might have seen Freeya’s ads on here and around town and the app is now available for download (iOS and Android). It’s a cool app, you should totally download and use it!

Why am I shilling for a corporate cause? Because it’s a great app, Freeya supported us with an ad campaign to promote it, and the folks behind it are good people.

As I said when I first introduced Freeya, there’s just something about free piles and cycling that go hand-in-hand. On a bike we can peep piles easier and there’s something deeply satisfying about seeing something you need or want on the side of the road, then strapping it to your bike and heading off. On Saturday that experience was gamified a bit as organizers of the Freeyapalooza ride asked folks in neighborhoods around the park to set out good free stuff specifically for the ride.

Our mission was to find the items, pick them up, and drop them back off at the base camp.

All the items set out for the ride were tagged “Freeyapalooza” in the app, so all we had to do was flip open our phones, look for the items, then head out to pick them up. It was like a treasure hunt! At the base camp Freeya set up in the park there were tons of donuts, lots of coffee, and swag like t-shirts and stickers. There was also a Nissan Leaf EV and a very custom and cool Surly that someone who uses the app will win as a prize.

What will Freeya do with the dozens of bags of useful free stuff collected Saturday? It’s all being donated to Rose Haven women’s shelter and Blanchet House, a nonprofit that services homeless Portlanders.

I had a great time riding around and hanging out at the park. And the app works really great. When I got home I was so into it that I listed something myself (and someone picked it up an hour later!). I even picked up something I saw in the app that happened to be in my neighborhood.

Last time I checked there were a few bike parts listed. Grab the app from their website at Freeya.com and thanks for supporting businesses that support BikePortland!

Photo gallery:

The Monday Roundup: Cops and crash reports, cyclist hit-and-run, camping ban, and more

Welcome to the week.

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

Path camping ban: The city council of Sacramento voted unanimously on several ordinances that will ban temporary encampments on paths and other public spaces. Supporters said it was about environmental and wildfire concerns. (Sacramento Bee)

Better crash statements: A new study worked with police officers and even proposed a crash statement template (something I’ve long pushed for!) with a goal to make police use more accurate and fair language. (Streetsblog USA)

Lego Long John: Tell Lego they should offer this cool cargo bike for sale! (Lego)

More Native news: Sunday’s Native and Indigenous Pedalpalooza ride gets its due in this profile from a publication that focuses on stories from Indian Country. (Underscore News)

Petrol ad ban: French President Macron has taken a step to prohibit advertising of fossil fuels, becoming the first European country to do so. (Times UK)

Gas car ban: 2035 is the target year for California’s new law that outlaws gas-powered cars. (NPR)

Don’t say it never happens: Police in New York City are searching for a bike rider who hit and killed someone walking in the street. They say it happened during a large group ride. (ABC)

Speed limiters in cars: Just a week after the New York City said they’d require speed limiting tech on their fleet vehicles, there’s a bill to do something similar for all cars in the state. (Streetsblog USA)

Social isolation because cars: It’s nice to see more people making the connection that car-dominant places make it harder to connect and form relationships with other humans. (Vox)

How not to prevent street takeovers: LOL someone at the City of Compton thought little reflectors in an intersection would prevent illegal burnouts and street takeovers. (ABC)

Kenyan cyclist dead: Sule Kangangi, a bike racer and advocate for cycling in Kenya, died while competing in a gravel race in Vermont. (The Guardian)

Video of the Week:

Great song from Edinburgh-based musician Dan Abrahams! Whose streets? Our streets!

Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week!

How to take your bike on the new TriMet FX buses

A 60-footer! Coming to Division soon. (Photo: TriMet)

Believe it or not we are now less than one month away from the debut of TriMet’s long-awaited new “Frequent Express” (FX) bus service along Southeast Division Avenue. TriMet says the new $175 million line — which they promise will go from downtown Portland to Gresham 20% faster than today — is set to open September 18th.

While it’s not quite the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system we hoped for, it’ll still be much faster and cooler than TriMet’s other lines. The new service promises 12 minute headways all day long, all-door boarding, signal priority and bits of bus-only lanes. In addition to faster trips, TriMet will unveil a new type of bus. The articulated (aka bendy) “FX” buses are 20 feet longer than a standard TriMet bus and can fit 60% more people.

It’s all very exciting and we’ll have much more to report in the days and weeks ahead. We’ve already shared several stories on how the bikeway interacts with the new bus station platforms. We’ve also done a bit of exploring and have heard loads of stories about how the new bike lanes and other infrastructure changes on Division installed in tandem with the bus service are working (or not). We’ll get to those in a separate post.

For now, I want to share how you’ll bring bikes on board.

There will be no more lifting your bike and putting it on the front racks with the FX. Taking a bike on-board will feel more like taking MAX light rail because you’ll board from the rear and roll your bike onto the bus. As you can see in the graphics from a handy TriMet video I just discovered yesterday, each bus will have two bike racks.

From the video, it looks like you’ll just roll your front wheel into the rack and that’s it. There’s a small designated bike space where you can stand with your bike. You can tap your fare at a reader near the bike racks. But if you want to pay cash or need anything from the bus operator, you’ll need to leave your bike and walk up to the front.

This is the part that concerns me. Bike theft from buses and MAX cars has always been a problem. I don’t think many folks will feel safe leaving their bike unattended for too long. Especially in a rack that looks like someone can just pull on the handlebars and walk away with your bike out the rear doors.

If the bike rack is full, you’ll need to wait for the next bus. Fortunately there are 12-minute headways on the FX line. That’s not nearly as good as we’d get with a true BRT system (2-5 minutes), but it’s pretty fast relatively-speaking.

I’m eager to see how the new racks work in real life. And it just so happens I’ll be riding the new line this coming Monday as part of a TriMet media preview event. If you have specific questions or issues you’d like me to address while I’m out there, please let me know and I’ll make a note to learn more about it on Monday.

For now, get a basic primer from the handy TriMet video below:

Job: Retail Manager – Community Cycling Center

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Job Title

Retail Manager

Company / Organization

Community Cycling Center

Job Description

Retail Manager position open at Community Cycling Center
REGARDING COVID
For the safety of our staff and community, we require our employees and Volunteers to be fully vaccinated. KN95s or N95s are provided, and they are required when working onsite. HVAC units and air purifiers in every room are equipped with MERV-13 filters. Doors and windows are kept open for ventilation whenever possible.

ABOUT THE COMMUNITY CYCLING CENTER
We love Portland and bikes. So, we put our two loves together over 25 years ago, creating a nonprofit organization on a mission to broaden access to bicycling and its benefits. Our vision is to help build a vibrant community where people of all backgrounds use bicycles to stay healthy and connected. We believe that all Portlanders—regardless of income or background—should have the opportunity to experience the joy, freedom and health benefits of bicycling. This is the motivation behind everything we do.

In addition to delivering dynamic programs that benefit underserved communities, we operate a full-service bike shop in NE Portland that is staffed by highly experienced mechanics from diverse cycling backgrounds. Our programs and shop services combined help riders build their skills and confidence; empower young people to ride to school and adults to ride to work; offer educational opportunities for teens to earn school credit; and support everyone in riding for health and recreation. We also collaborate with numerous community partners to generate pathways to employment and engagement within the growing bicycle movement by training new educators, leaders, advocates and mechanics. Our goal is to help create a healthy, sustainable Portland for all community members.

The Community Cycling Center is an equal opportunity employer and strongly values diversity, equity and inclusion. Individuals with diverse backgrounds, abilities and experiences are encouraged to apply.

GENERAL POSITION SUMMARY
The Retail Manager is responsible planning, organizing, and supporting the retail operations of the Community Cycling Center’s Bike Shop. With the support of the Shop Leadership Team, the Retail Manager will lead shop staff in the delivery of excellent customer service and will guide the Shop’s promotions and marketing. This position will require a team-focused approach, the capacity to anticipate demands, and the ability to provide coaching and feedback to ensure staff is supported in the delivery of objectives. Experience in a high-volume bike shop environment and the ability to innovate and develop systems will be expected of this position.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS MANAGEMENT OF STAFF & SHOP OPERATIONS (30%)
• Supervise, and provide training to staff working in your department
• Collaborate with Shop Leadership Team to hire, train, and evaluate staff
• Maintain and develop the shop floor and storefront to ensure a welcoming shopping environment
• Provide program representation on the shop floor through the use of displays and other written materials
• Work with Shop Leadership Team to develop and ensure adherence to policies and procedures

RETAIL MANAGEMENT (70%)
• Lead by example by delivering excellent customer service on the sales floor 16-24 hr/wk
• Work with the Inventory Coordinators to maintain appropriate inventory levels of new and used products
• Anticipate demand and seasonal changes to keep up with changes to the market
• Analyze sales trends to determine adequate stocking levels and product selection
• Partner with the Communication & Marketing Coordinator to develop creative promotions

REQUIRED SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS
• Managerial experience, including supervising and supporting staff
• Strong interpersonal communication skills
• Strong organizational skills including the ability to manage multiple assignments simultaneously • Ability to meet project deadlines and account for detailed objectives
• Success in creating inclusive work environments where people from diverse backgrounds feel safe

PREFERRED SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS
• Minimum of 2 years of experience in bike shop management
• Fluency in Spanish
• Fluency in spreadsheet software and comfort navigating inventory management systems
• Basic knowledge of Adobe, InDesign, QuickBooks, and/or the Lightspeed POS system

REPORTS TO: General Manager
PAY: $24.00 per hour
SCHEDULE: Permanent position, 40 hours per week, workdays may vary, includes some evenings and weekends
BENEFITS: Health, dental, vision, life and more w/ approx. value of $4,800/yr; access to 401k; 19 days/yr PTO for FT, annual Used Parts Allowance, cost +10% on new parts

How to Apply

Please send your resume, cover letter, and (3) references to Jobs@CommunityCyclingCenter.org with the subject “Retail Manager Position”. No phone calls, please

Weekend Event Guide: Freeyapalooza, breakfast, blackberries and more

Just one more day until the weekend is here. Temps look to be cooling a bit and we even get into the 50s at night! It’s also the last weekend of Pedalpalooza, so get while the gettin’s good.

As you make plans, consider grabbing a Gorge Pass. It’s just $40 for unlimited rides for you and your bike on any of the Columbia River Gorge transit shuttles. Find bike routes and custom itineraries at GorgePass.com/bikes.

Friday, August 19th

Breakfast on the Bridges – 7:00 to 9:00 am on Flanders, Tilikum, Steel, and Hawthorne bridges
Raise a mug and toast 20 years of this most excellent Portland tradition! And just FYI this will likely be the final Hawthorne B on B unless organizers can find more volunteers or a sponsor. More info here.

Smooth Roads with PBOT – 1:00 pm at Director Park (SW)
Join activists with Bike Loud PDX for a ride with PBOT Maintenance Operations chief Jody Yates to learn about how they keep roads smooth and what it will take to keep them cleaner. More info here.

Noise Bike Ride – 8:30 pm at Corner of NE Davis & 3rd (NE)
I chose this one because it looks pretty darn interesting. The leaders creates noise — not music! — with his bike and wants to share his passion with you. More info here.

Saturday, August 20th

Freeyapalooza – 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
Our wonderful advertiser-friends at Freeya are hosting this ride to extol the many virtues of their cool app (you’ve downloaded it already right?) that helps you score and give away free stuff. It’s like Craigslist, but waay better. More info here.

Bike the Levees – 10:00 am at Delta Park MAX Station
This popular ride is back and it’s your chance to learn the history and mystery behind the interesting system of Columbia River levees you’ve been biking on all these years. More info here.

Native & Indigenous Ride – 2:00 to 5:00 pm at PSU Native American Student and Community Center (SW)
Portland’s first-ever ride that specifically welcomes Native and Indigenous folks to ride together. There’s been a lot of build-up for this so it’s an excellent opportunity to come out and see the best Portland’s bike scene has to offer. Ride only open to Native and Indigenous folks but there’s an after-party open to all! More info here.

Cyclocross Curious – 2:00 to 4:00 pm at Rose City Park (NE)
A drop-in, introductory ‘cross clinic hosted by the Fast Fun Nice cycling team. What more could you want? More info here.

Sunday, August 21st

Slow Poke Ride – 9:30 am at Parkrose Transit Center (NE)
Join the venerable Portland Bicycling Club ride for a casually-paced ride to the food carts in Troutdale. More info here.

Blackberry Bramble Jam – 12:15 pm at Sellwood Riverfront Park (SE)
If you bike in Portland you absolutely must pick your share of blackberries before they’re all gone. Find some juicy patches along the Springwater path on this ride. Bring buckets! More info here.

Gateway Green Group Session – 5:00 pm at Gateway Green (NE)
Register for this NW Trail Alliance skills clinic and training session to up your flow, jump, and trail-riding game at the Gateway Green bike park. More info here.

Have fun out there this weekend! And remember to check out the Gorge Pass and thank them for supporting our work.

PBOT: There will be only three Sunday Parkways events in 2023

The Portland Bureau of Transportation has new plans for Sunday Parkways – and they may be disappointing to fans of the annual open streets event. This summer marked Sunday Parkways’ return for the first time since the pandemic began, but instead of the usual five in-person events held throughout the summer, there were only two this year.

At this month’s Portland Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting, PBOT Programs Manager Renata Tirta announced there will only be three events in 2023.

Slide from PBOT shown at August 9th BAC meeting.

Other than hesitancy about Covid transmission, one of the concerns Tirta shared whether or not they would have enough staff and volunteers to keep things running smoothly. And after the road rage incident at the final Sunday Parkways event last weekend, PBOT may face further challenges recruiting volunteers for big open streets events in the future.

In a follow-up conversation after the meeting, PBOT Public Information Officer Dylan Rivera told us the bureau wants to move toward different programming and allocate limited funds differently, which will mean fewer Sunday Parkways events and more smaller open streets festivities happening across the city.

Despite its huge success and total lack of opposition or controversy, budget issues have long plagued Sunday Parkways. Just one year after its debut, PBOT had to crowdfund to help cover costs. Then in 2010 the City Budget Office declined PBOT’s request for help paying almost half of the program’s $500,000 (five event) budget. They felt other “basic services” were more important. In 2012 former Commissioner Dan Salzman also didn’t see the value in funding Sunday Parkways over “other transportation priorities.”

And most recently, in PBOT’s FY 2021-2022 budget, the Parkways program funding (which is one of five programs in the Active Transportation & Safety Division along with Vision Zero, Safe Routes to School, Transportation Demand Management and the E-Scooter Pilot that has a total budget of just over $7 million) was cut again. PBOT had three events planned for 2022, but the budget allowed only for two.

Going forward, PBOT seems to be planning for an even more budget-constrained reality and will double-down on what they see as a more local approach to this event.

Instead of rotating routes annually, they plan to hold three events with different routes around the city and repeat them for three years in a row so people can get comfortable with the layout. This may mean people who live in parts of Portland far from the Sunday Parkways routes will decide to opt out three years in a row, but Rivera said the benefits are meant for the people who live in the communities they’ll target.

“Repetition is helpful for familiarity,” Rivera told BikePortland. “It helps neighborhoods become familiar with experiencing Sunday Parkways.”

Specifics about next year’s events — or the events PBOT is planning to fill the Sunday Parkways void — aren’t yet available. But Rivera said they’ll focus the locations on parts of Portland that have been traditionally underserved by active transportation planning, especially as the city’s bike network expands into these areas and PBOT wants to show off new projects.

“We will continue to inspire the public in those areas to embrace that infrastructure as a way to incorporate biking and walking into their everyday lives,” Rivera said.

These changes beg the question: what should Sunday Parkways do for Portland? PBOT wants the events to serve a larger purpose in our city’s transportation system and culture by encouraging people to get out into their neighborhoods and try different modes of transportation in a comfortable, carfree setting. But if they’re starved for funding, it will be hard to move the needle in that regard (a similar situation to our bike share system that has lofty goals but a lack of funding and bikes severely limits its potential).

Five Sundays a year is already a far cry from the weekly carfree “ciclovia” events in Bogotá, Colombia that inspired Portland’s first Parkways in 2008. Reducing it to three days a year widens that gap and is a step in the opposite direction from what many Portlanders dream of. “Bummer to see this program get smaller in scope instead of more ambitious over the years,” said one former Bike Advisory Committee member when we shared this news on Twitter a few weeks ago.

If PBOT doesn’t find more sponsors or city funding, maybe Portlanders will find a more DIY approach. Perhaps these changes will inspire even more community-organized events in the style of big Pedalpalooza rides or the ‘Sundays on Going’ events Bike Loud PDX has organized all summer.

Whatever happens, the future of Sunday Parkways after 14 years isn’t quite what we hoped for. On the bright side, it’s still alive and kicking (at least for now).

Portions of this story written by Jonathan Maus.

Breakfast on the Bridges turns 20 this month!

I’ve recently started using a new tagline for BikePortland: “Covering the world’s greatest cycling community since 2005.” I’m ready to debate anyone who thinks there’s a better bike scene than ours (no one has countered the statement yet), and one of the examples I’d make my case with would be Breakfast on the Bridges.

The beloved tradition of serving free breakfast on Portland’s Willamette River bridges on the last Friday of every month epitomizes what makes our local community of bicycle lovers so special: It’s just people who want to make bikers’ days brighter and a small token of thanks for choosing to ride. There’s no profit motive, no agenda, no cost to participate. Just community building at its finest — and at street level. It’s wonderful!

In the past, local politicians stopped by to nosh with constituents. One time, TriMet stole the idea to spread the word about one of their projects. At their 10th anniversary party in 2012, B on B veterans traded stories of romance and intrigue from 120 mornings of free breakfasts.

Lillian Karabaic and tools of her trade in 2013.

This month is the 20th anniversary and organizers are inviting everyone for coffee and conversation tomorrow (Friday) morning. They’ll be out at four bridges — Hawthorne, Steel, Tilikum and Flanders from 7:00 to 9:00 am sharing hot drinks and yummy baked goods and other snacks. All you have to do is come on by (and there’s bonus karma points if you stop and chat for a spell).

I heard from one of B on B’s veteran organizers, Lily Karabaic recently, and she said the event has survived not just because of dedicated volunteers like her and other selfless early-risers; but because of donations and support. B on B receives donations from coffee shops and bakeries as well as sponsorship funds from kind people and organizations. Recent donors include Trailhead Coffee Roasters, Spielman Bagels, Zupans Market, Berkshire Ginsberg, and Coco Donuts.

Lily also reminded us that the first B on B happened during Bike Summer, the 2002 event that eventually morphed into Pedalpalooza. The first-ever event was hosted by Ayleen Crotty (who’s still in the scene as the founder and organizer of Filmed by Bike) and Amy Stork who thought it would be a perfect way to spread the word about group rides like Critical Mass. Remember kids, this was long before social media or even blogs (BikePortland wouldn’t pop up until three years later)!

Like most cool things in Portland’s bike scene, B on B is here because people step up and make it happen either as a volunteer or a supporter. Lily said they were recently able to add a new bridge to their line-up (Flanders!) thanks to a financial sponsor who helped them buy coffee pots and other supplies. Right now they plan to stop serving Hawthorne after tomorrow unless another sponsor steps up.

You can help B on B survive and thrive by visiting their website and hitting their donation link (it’s tax deductible) or sending an email to byobonb@gmail.com to ask about volunteer and sponsor opportunities. They are also on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter if that’s your jam.

Hope to see you out there tomorrow morning to raise a mug for this big anniversary celebration!