Hi everyone. I’ve been out of town for the past two days, so I apologize for the tardiness of this post about tonight’s Bike Happy Hour (BHH).
I don’t think we’ll have any local political candidates in the room tonight, but you never know who might show up. What I do know is that we’ll save some time on the mic to highlight the great work of our friends at BikeLoud PDX. This scrappy-yet-mighty nonprofit has come a long way since their first meeting in August 2014 and I’ve never felt more confident in their trajectory.
Let’s come together and let BikeLoud know how much we appreciate their work!
If you’ve been to Bike Happy Hour there’s a good chance you’ve met a BikeLoud member or one of their leaders. They’ve supported the event since the start and I’ve really appreciated the ways we’ve leaned on each other to make our community stronger.
We figured it’d be fun to make this BikeLoud Night because right after BHH, they’re hosting their first quarterly meet-up of 2024. So around 6:00 pm, I plan to hop on my bike and follow BikeLoud’s Aaron Kuehn over to the Blumenauer Bridge where there will be a party at the new Bear Blocks! I hope you’ll join us. (And don’t fear the weather. There will be covered places to sit and hang out. Also, jackets exist.)
What are the Bear Blocks? It’s a new gathering space on the south end of the Blumenauer Bridge that will eventually have food carts, a beer garden, and so on. You might recall a story about this project back in August. There’s been exciting progress at the site, so let’s help break it in before spring is in full swing. The BikeLoud event will run from 6-8:00 pm. Show up for free delicious snacks, no-host drinks (beer and non-alcoholic), and to help break-in the bike parking and get a sneak peek at the Bear Blocks.
See you tonight!
Bike Happy Hour is every Wednesday, all year round at Ankeny Tap/Gorges Beer/Crema PDX. Find us on the Ankeny Rainbow Road Plaza from 3:00 to 6:00 pm.
A bike rider enters NE 72nd Drive at Tillamook, where they’ll be able to ride without worrying about drivers buzzing by. (Michael Mann)
Location of Jersey barriers. See close-up of section circled in white below. (BikePortland)
After incidents of extreme vandalism last month, Portland Bureau of Transportation crews returned to Rose City Golf Course over the weekend. They wanted to send a clear message that drivers are no longer allowed to drive northbound on Northeast 72nd Drive between Tillamook and Sacramento. And this time, they were not messing around.
PBOT spent weeks planning the new approach that was installed over the weekend, and the new infrastructure has significantly hardened the changes. There are now four concrete Jersey barriers at the site — one in northbound lane of 72nd at Tillamook, another about 300 feet north adjacent to the cafe and golf shop, and two more at the northeast corner of the golf course parking lot (to prevent drivers from exiting the lot onto 72nd, a movement that would endanger southbound bicycle riders). The signs are adorned with “Do Not Enter”, and “Road Closed: Except Bicycles” signs.
Golf course parking lot northeast entrance/exit. (Michael Mann)Barrier north of Tillamook. Note location of old poles that were cut in foreground. (Michael Mann)View of barriers on 72nd from Tillamook. (Joseph E)
The barriers are likely about 3,000 lbs each and should deter all haters. But just in case someone does try to push them away, PBOT has also installed security cameras on a nearby light pole (photo at right). BikePortland readers shared an email from a PBOT project manager that confirmed not only the presence of the cameras but also that Portland Police officers will be present to make sure the new infrastructure is unharmed.
Security camera on a nearby pole. (Anonymous source)
PBOT also plans to install traffic separators to finish out the new design. The concrete barricades are much more robust than anything that was planned prior to the vandalism incidents. Initial PBOT plan drawings showed only the use of plastic traffic separators and paint. I also don’t think the parking lot exit closure was part of the original design.
Heightened security via a camera and a call to the PPB certainly wasn’t in the plans — and their presence speaks to an unprecedented level of anti-PBOT sentiment among some residents, many of whom are emboldened by Nextdoor posts and a delusional sense of entitlement.
BikePortlander Joseph E. said it seems to be working well so far. “I saw four groups of people walking on the northbound side of the street, enjoying the low traffic environment during my two minute ride up the hill,” he shared in an email Sunday. “It is very nice not to worry about drivers trying to pass me on the curve.”
This project is the result of city policy that requires PBOT to create safe neighborhood greenways that prioritize bicycle riders and walkers. PBOT’s traffic data shows showed that 831 people per day drive cars northbound on 72nd — and 65% of them were exceeding the speed limit.
I plan to take a closer look at the changes in the coming days. Stay tuned and let me know what you think if you’ve ridden or driven by this already.
With my usual co-host Eva Frazier on vacation (hope Italy is amazing Eva!), I welcomed a special guest into the shed this week: Stephen Green! Stephen is a multi-talented business advocate and community builder you should probably know about if you care about the future of Portland. Why?
For starters, Stephen is executive director of Business for a Better Portland, the nonprofit organization founded in 2017 as an antidote to the Portland Metro Chamber. In his role at BBPDX, Stephen helps 400 member businesses navigate everything from city politics to building social capital. Pitch Black, now in its eighth year, is an annual event that connects BIPOC entrepreneurs with funders. “It’s Shark Tank meets America’s Funniest Home Videos,” is how Stephen describes it. He also sits on all types of important advisory committees and boards, including the Governor’s Central City Task Force.
Stephen’s superpower is connecting people to information and resources and using his knowledge and experience to help others. That’s my kind of guy! We haven’t spent a lot of time together over the years, but I feel like we’ve both known about each other for a long time. I’ve watched him from afar with respect and knew that eventually our circles would cross. Now they have!
In this episode, Stephen and I chat about all sorts of stuff; but mostly local business and politics (especially our new form of government). He tells stories about Portland’s Black history (did you know “the Pearl” district was named after a Black woman?), we dish on what we think makes Portland tick, why bike riders tend to love Portland so much, how to talk to business owners about bicycling and transportation reform, and much more.
Thanks to Brock Dittus of Sprocket Podcast fame for our fantastic theme music.
Listen in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts. You can hear a short highlight reel in the video below:
Hi everyone, I’m starting the week being with family in Grants Pass (southern Oregon) today and tomorrow so this roundup will be a bit quick and short. I won’t be back in the Shed until Tuesday night, so please adjust your expectations as we settle into the week.
Here are the most notable items our community came across in the past seven days:
Pedestrian-less in Seattle: ” If I paid attention to drivers as well as they paid attention to me, I’d be dead by now.” (Seattle Times Opinion)
Feeling validated: I’ve long pointed to how the decline in cycling in Portland has tracked with the increase in road fatalities. Now there’s research that might back that up. It shows that in cities with high cycling rates, traffic safety for all users is generally better. (Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research)
Heavy Lyft: Los Angeles officials have run into opposition for efforts to expand e-bike share because of the labor practices of its preferred vendor: Lyft. (Politico)
Fountain of youth: We’re used to articles that extol the health virtues of cycling, but this one is different. It’s about how our society discourages women from getting into pursuits like cycling, and how revelatory pedaling can be for them — even well after retirement age. (NY Times Opinion)
Speed cameras all the rage: It says a lot about the intractable behavior of most drivers that a country where “Freedom!” is such a cherished value has given into automated speed cameras. (NPR)
Bikers, beware: Florida is a beautiful place, unfortunately it’s way too deadly for bicycle riders says this new report that ranks American counties. (Guardian)
How to talk about it: Get personal, stop blaming individuals, include a call-to-action — those are the three big takeaways from a report on how to message Vision Zero/Safe Systems effectively. (Streetsblog USA)
Use bike racks to protect sidewalks: We don’t have a huge problem with people parking on sidewalks, but this campaign from the UK could still be used here to keep people from driving up on them. (Road.cc)
Land use for the (climate change) win: Statewide laws that encourage compact development could be an even more powerful lever in climate change policymaking. (Rocky Mountain Institute)
Sec Pete visits the bridge: A big push from Democrats to create momentum for funding the Interstate Bridge Replacement project brought US DOT Sec. Pete Buttigieg to town. (OR Capital Chronicle)
As two bills addressing e-bike regulation wind their way through the Oregon legislature, BikePortland readers responded with a slew of strong comments to last week’s article which focussed on one of them, House Bill 4103
Comments came in with a wide variety of opinion, commenter Eric even remarked, “I find it fascinating that I kind of agree with every perspective voiced so far in this comment thread.”
In her statement to BikePortland, Sarah Iannarone, director of The Street Trust, introduced the issue of transportation independence, “we have seen time and again how the transportation needs of teens in particular are regarded as a nuisance…”
Expanding on that thought, commenter Al Dimond got to the heart of what is really at stake — how auto-mobility has restricted the freedom and independence of teenagers. What you think is normal, or how things should be, is “both about when we grew up and where.”
That caught my attention, because one thing that I always found fascinating when we had a child at home, was the lack of consensus among Portland parents concerning how much independence they considered to be safe. It ranged from one neighbor who became panicked when she learned her child was walking door-to-door (really close to home) with another child, to another who had her 10-year-old taking the MAX alone to Hillsboro for an after-school activity. (Hint: one family was from Europe, the other from California.)
It’s something Al Diamond has thought about too, and here are his musings on the topic:
There’s this thing in here about what technology allows and what technology requires. Some of us remember a childhood where we could easily bike or walk to get around independently… some of us don’t… it’s both about when we grew up and where.
For my part I’m somewhere in the middle. As I got up through high school I was able to get around more of my suburb by biking, but I also developed more needs to travel beyond easy biking range, and also to destinations where non-car access wasn’t even an afterthought. That’s the suburbs for ya. The two cars in everyone’s driveway (at least as we perceived it) made that kind of lifestyle possible, and that, in turn, made it feel obligatory.
In the world of the car, everything has been going up for over a century. The cars get faster, the cars get bigger, the cars add more safety features to compensate for the greater speed and bulk. The roads get bigger to add safety margins between the bigger, faster cars. Rinse and repeat. Normal people not only feel like they need to have the cars to manage their obligatory travel needs but that they need four-wheel-drive because nobody’s going to excuse their absence on the one or two snow days every year. Of course, they’re encouraged to feel that way by marketing that exploits their fears of not keeping up or not keeping their kids up.
The obligation to drive to achieve full participation in the car-dominated world took freedom from kids. In families that could afford it, they clawed it back at age 16 with driver’s licenses. Safety concerns saw kids’ driving privileges scaled back. Now we have, with e-bikes, the freedom to travel greater distances becoming possible again, but mostly surrounded by ever-bigger and ever-faster cars in ever-more-hostile environments.
It’s true that kids can hurt themselves without e-bikes, without wheels even. Also true that additional speed can multiply danger. Also true that in many scenarios around cars the critical speed isn’t carried by the bike. Teens, pre-teens, kids, need some ability to get around independently — I think it’s an important part of learning to live in a free society. That’s never going to be safe if they’re obligated to navigate the extremes of today’s car-world by any method.
I can’t stand on any firm principle for or against e-bike regulations for kids, or for anyone else, that comes out of the US west coast. The only thing that’s really clear is that we need a better public realm in all our cities, towns, and suburbs, where we don’t have to go out on the highway for everything, where we can rely on public transit for trips where our legs won’t carry us.
If we do that we’ll be able to see where e-bike speed causes real problems. If we don’t do that, every time we try to work at e-bike regulation we’ll flail around blindly because everything else is drowned out by car considerations.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Al. You can read Al’s comment and many others under the original post.
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Headlines this week from Willamette Week and KATU.
A truism I come back to often as I navigate frequent debates online and off is that multiple things — often conflicting things — can be true at the same time. In today’s world where public discussions are too often binary, having simultaneous multiple truths can be difficult for folks to accept.
Case in point: the Portland Bureau of Transportation is amazing. It has a proud legacy of national leadership, excellent programs, and is full of dedicated staff who want to do the rights things — even when it requires pushing back against bureaucratic inertia. At the same time, PBOT is failing miserably on its main job: to provide the basic service of safe streets for all Portlanders.
We all know the traffic death toll has scaled new heights in recent years. But from a street-level perspective, two stories in the local media this week stand as examples of PBOT’s failure, and they both involve unsafe conditions on the same street, less than two miles apart. In both cases, PBOT is well-aware of dangers drivers pose, yet they’ve failed to adequately address it. The result has been stress, repeated trauma, property damage, and even loss of life.
Remember the s-curves on Southeast Woodstock and 60th I reported on a year ago? Folks who live there reached out to me after drivers repeatedly failed to negotiate the curve. They shared several examples of drivers and their cars flying through front yards, slamming into porches, and careening into fences. The problem had been going on for years, and neighbors felt like PBOT wasn’t doing enough.
Less than six months after a video and a story was posted on BikePortland, PBOT finally took action. They installed plastic wands, curbs, and new signage — all to straighten out the curves in hopes it would calm drivers down and prevent crashes.
It isn’t working. As local advocates have been saying for years: plastic is no match for steel.
Less than four months after one of the families I spoke to installed a new fence, someone slammed into it. A reader sent me the photo above on February 12th. “I heard the crash,” Josh C. shared. “Then I realized my wife and kid had just left and would have been sitting in that very spot.” According to Josh, he learned from a neighbor that the driver was so drunk he just got out of the car and laid down in the grass.
“I don’t know why there are not at least a few bumps leading up to the curve. There is zero incentive for drivers to slow down,” Josh, who is not a traffic engineer, said. “Make it so they fail sooner and faster before they can build speed. That’s all I can think of.”
In a story about the most recent crash, KATU reported that the homeowner has evidence of three drivers crashing into their property in the last 14 months — with one of them going right into their living room. They say they have “panic responses” whenever they hear a loud noise. Another nearby resident says he spent $10,000 to stop cars from plunging into his yard.
All folks want is speed bumps or some sort of stronger barrier to keep themselves safe. All PBOT has said is there’s an unfunded plan where changes might be considered sometime in the future.
Two miles east, a 71-year-old man was hit and killed while walking across SE Woodstock and 97th. In a story published by Willamette Week on Wednesday, they detailed how a lack of action by PBOT might have contributed to the man’s death:
“The intersection is so treacherous that city officials six years ago deemed it worthy of major changes. In 2018, the Portland Bureau of Transportation announced it would spend $4 million to make a stretch of Foster Road and Woodstock Boulevard safer. The funding soon grew to $6.6 million and plans included a crosswalk, a traffic median, and a stoplight at the intersection of 97th and Woodstock.
City officials said they would complete the safety improvements at the intersection by 2020. In 2020, they promised to finish the work by 2022. To date, none of the improvements have been made—not even the stripes of white paint needed to create a crosswalk.”
PBOT didn’t explain in much detail to Willamette Week why the changes haven’t happened. They did mention “budget pressures,” a need to “value engineer” the project, and gave “sometime next year” as a timeframe for completion.
It’s unacceptable so many Portlanders are held hostage to unsafe drivers and deadly, trauma-inducing streets with years of documented hazards. I understand PBOT cannot address all the city’s needs and that the scope of the problem (drunk, dangerous, careless, selfish, distracted, irresponsible drivers) has ballooned faster than government can handle.
What I don’t understand is why PBOT hasn’t met the moment with changes to their approach that are commensurate with the problem. Drivers have thrown out the book when it comes to norms of civil conduct and our infrastructure and traffic management policies are woefully outdated and inadequate. Referring Portlanders to unfunded plans and plastic half-measures are not the right response. We need triage. We need leadership at PBOT and City Hall to get in front of the public; make statements, take actions, be bold, be different, be accountable.
Safe streets are a basic service and it’s PBOT’s job to provide them. No matter how much we love the bureau’s people, legacy and programs; we must demand they do more, better, faster.
Bike Polo is a time-honored tradition at Alberta Park. Get over there and check it out. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
It’s Friday! Time to plan your weekend.
Here are some fun things to do for bike lovers this weekend…
Saturday, February 17th
Sorella Forte Intermediate Road Ride – 9:00 am at River City Bicycles (SE) The Sorellas are a respected local bike club that offers an encouraging environment for women who love to pedal fast. Their intermediate rides average about 15-16 mph and Saturday’s route will be a flat one out to Gresham. More info here.
Participatory Budgeting Summit – 9:30 to 5:30 pm at PSU (SW) Learn and get involved with a Participatory Budgeting Oregon, a group that’s working to, “shift the who and how of public budgeting and the allocation of public resources.” The folks behind this are legit, thoughtful, smart, dedicated advocates on the crest of a transformation in Oregon democracy. They just need you to make it happen. More info here.
Fat Tire Farm Group Ride – 9:45 am at FTF on Thurman (NW) Portland’s legendary MTB shop wants to show you a good time on knobby tires in Forest Park. Check ahead because I just heard that parts of Leif Erikson are closed due to active rockfalls. More info here.
PSU Farmer’s Market Ride – 10:00 am at SE Clinton & 41st (SE) This weekly ride is sure to bring a smile to your face and a satisfied feeling to your tummy. Meet others who care about the local food ecosystem by supporting the largest farmer’s market in Portland. More info here.
Sunday, February 18th
West End Bikes Shop Ride – 9:00 am at Stumptown Coffee/Ace Hotel (SW) Classic shop ride vibes with this high-end downtown roadie shop that meets at iconic Stumptown for pre-roll caffeine and treats. More info here.
Bike Polo – 12:00 to 5:00 pm at Alberta Park (NE) Come watch and/or play bike polo! This is a really cool sport where all are welcome to grab a mallet or loaner bike and take a few swings. Think of it as a bike-oriented meld of lacrosse and basketball. Same time/place every Sunday. More info here.
40! Birthday Ride – 1:00 pm at Baerlic Brewing on Alberta (NE) Help Portlander Kirk Paulsen celebrate his 4-0 with a bike ride. You might not know Kirk, but you gotta’ figure that anyone who makes their birthday ride public is probably an OK person. (I can also vouch for him, so there’s that.) Happy Birthday Kirk! More info here.
— Don’t see an event? Please tell us about what’s going on in your neighborhood by filling out our contact form, or just email me at maus.jonathan@gmail.com if it’s easier.
Keith Wilson, a candidate for Portland mayor, speaking at Bike Happy Hour on February 14th. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
As I listened to Keith Wilson give a speech at Bike Happy Hour last night it occurred to me his life has been sort of like Forrest Gump. He’s got an interesting and diverse background and set of life experiences you’d never expect from a trucking company CEO. If you knew that his company, Titan Freight Systems, runs and all-electric fleet and that just before coming to the event last night he gave invited testimony on decarbonization in the freight industry to the State of Washington Transportation Commission, or that he was once so poor he spent nights in LaGuardia Airport, or that he takes 12 at-risk Black youth camping once a year, you might begin to understand what I mean.
Wilson spoke to a rapt crowd last night about growing up poor in north Portland and being the first person in his family to go to college (Portland Community College), then moving from home to take a job as a sales intern at NBC in Manhattan. When he didn’t land a job, he ran out of money and spent nights in LaGuardia Airport. “I thought to myself, if you’re homeless, where do you go? You go to the place with carpet, because Newark Airport had tile.”
These days Wilson divides his time between his company and his nonprofit, Shelter Now PDX. He said he found himself pulled toward the homelessness problem because — despite building Titan Freight into a success and being named national “Innovator of the Year” two years in a row — “Six, seven years ago, I started looking around and I didn’t recognize my city anymore,” he shared last night. “If I’m operating in the backdrop of a community where my neighbors can’t live, where livability is compromised, we’ve got a problem.”
Wilson dove head-first into getting people off the street. He shared the story of how he called TriMet GM Doug Kelsey to ask if he could make a shelter at Gateway Transit Center. “They let me borrow the parking garage, ’cause I said to them: ‘If we can shelter cars better than people, what sort of humanity are we?'” (That line got a big applause.) The idea didn’t work though (it was way too cold and volunteers nearly froze), so Wilson started to use churches and community centers. He says his organization is currently sheltering about 45 people in a church near I-205 and Powell Blvd at a cost of $16.36 per person per night. “A [city of Portland-run] Safe Rest Village tonight is going to cost us as a community $189 dollars per person,” Wilson boasted. “I can shelter Portlanders for a 10th of the cost our city is currently doing it.”
Throughout the night, Wilson referred to his objections to handing out tents to homeless Portlanders like Multnomah County and others do. “What sort of community are we when we allow our neighbors to live and die on the street and we’re handing out tents instead of providing the basic need of a shelter?” he asked rhetorically. When I asked if he supported Commissioner Rene Gonzalez’s move to end tent dispersal by Portland Street Response, he said, “That was all politics.”
“What was ‘all politics?’, Gonzalez’s move or the policy of handing out tents?” I responded. He answered:
“You have a city elected leader saying, ‘I’m going to take away tents’; but what else? I mean they, we, still need to provide care… We shouldn’t have people camping on the street. Why would you give out tents? Which means that you’re supporting the behavior, you’re enabling the behavior — when we should just be supplying basic shelter for that person. It was a half-measure. It was all politics. But the reality, if you peel that away, Jonathan, it showed we’re failing our community.”
Why were we [giving out tents] in the first place? We shouldn’t be. And if I were Rene Gonzalez, I’d be saying, ‘I want shelter available for every single person because nobody should be on the streets.’ … I would come out and say, I’m not gonna hand out tents, but I am going to set up enough shelters to care for my neighbors.”
Another person in the audience pushed back on that answer and he explained it further. Then someone asked how he’d deliver services to people in shelters (and not just put a roof over their head). It was a good conversation and I recommend listening to it for yourself. The audio of that exchange is below:
Here are a few other excerpts…
Wilson is a nationally-recognized high speed rail advocate and is working to bring a line to Oregon. Here’s a clip where he describes what he experienced riding HSR in Europe:
Wilson garnered recognition in the trucking industry for installing AI-assisted anti-distracted driving tech in his vehicles. Listen to him share the story of how he fought pushback from drivers, weighed their concerns with his commitment to safety, and ultimately won them over:
Listen to the full episode above, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What streets can look like. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
What do Better Naito, the Southwest 3rd and Ankeny plaza, Steel Bridge Skatepark, bus priority lanes, and several other important bits of non-car infrastructure around Portland have in common? They all started as tactical urbanism and pop-up demonstration projects through Portland State University’s partnership with Better Block.
Since 2016, the nonprofit Better Block has cemented their collaboration with Portland State to bring amazing ideas for better streets and public spaces from dream into reality. For everyday activists, or anyone with an idea, Better Block gives you a pathway to the brilliant planners and engineers-in-training at PSU. And now that PSU and the Portland Bureau of Transportation have worked successfully together on several projects, the route from your idea to your infrastructure has never been more direct.
Each year, the Better Block PSU program launches a citywide search for the best ideas. The ones they select, get vetted, designed, planned — and maybe even funded and implemented!
Consider the Steel Bridge Skatepark and the big announcement that it has received $15 million to be constructed. A team of PSU students played a huge role in making that happen. They provided the planning data and analysis that helped make the case at City Hall and ultimately convince local elected officials and policymakers that the project was worth investing in.
Lise Ferguson, a second-year Master of Urban & Regional Planning (MURP) candidate who also works as an engineering intern at PBOT, was the project lead. She spent time at the site observing how people traveled around it to help inform the final design. “I am interested in ways to add more ‘third places’ to urban areas that are not necessarily commercial-based,” she shared in a statement from PSU. “It is important to activate the space by making it appealing to a wide variety of people, not just those who travel downtown to spend money.”
That’s a perspective many career planners and politicians often don’t have top-of-mind and it speaks to the value of keeping fresh voices and ideas around the table.
These kids’ legal guardians would be in violation of Oregon law if a bill in the legislature passed. (Photos: Megan Ramey)
“I am frustrated by the short-sightedness. HB 4103 is a one-sided, incomplete bill that will focus solely on rider enforcement as a deterrent”
– Frank Stevens, Mobility Programs and Policy Fellow for The Street Trust
A bill that would change the legal status of electric bicycles in Oregon is up for its first public hearing in Salem later today, and cycling and road safety advocates disagree on whether or not it’s the right path forward.
There are two e-bike bills up for consideration in the Oregon Legislature this session: House Bill 4067 and House Bill 4103. HB 4067 would create a task force on “electric micromobility,” a catch-all term that includes e-bikes and other small, battery-powered vehicles. That bill has broad support and is likely to pass.
But the more substantive of the two, HB 4103, has created a bit of a stir in advocacy circles. Some say it could hinder e-bike adoption, adds too much regulation too soon, and is overly punitive; while others say it’s a step forward for safety. Most notably, the bill is being opposed by Portland-based nonprofit, The Street Trust.
Change current definition of “electric assisted bicycle” and add Oregon to the list of 39 states that have a three-class system of e-bike classifications: Class 1, 20 mph max with no throttle; Class 2, 20 mph max with throttle; and Class 3, 28 mph max without throttle.
Allow anyone 15 and under to ride Class 1 e-bikes. (Current Oregon law makes e-bikes illegal to that age group.)
Prohibit anyone 15 and under from riding an e-bike with a throttle (Class 2 and Class 3). (Already technically illegal, but not enforced.)
Create a new Class D misdemeanor traffic violation of “unsafe electric assisted bicycle riding” punishable by $115 maximum fine. (Note: Bill was introduced as a Class E misdemeanor but amendment filed Wednesday would raise it to Class D.)
The bill comes in response to concerns that arose long before Burger’s death around the rise of “throttle kids” in several Oregon cities. Burger’s bike was equipped with a throttle, but it’s unclear if that led to the crash. The collision happened when a driver turned into Burger as she attempted to pull her minivan onto a busy arterial highway from a slip lane. Burger was on the sidewalk prior to the collision.
In an email to Rep. Levy Thursday, The Street Trust Executive Director Sarah Iannarone said she appreciated the intent behind HB 4103 and was glad to see the provision opening up Class 1 bikes to young riders, but was, “apprehensive about the imposition of Class D Traffic Violations for parents, as this could create unwarranted obstacles for low-income and BIPOC individuals.” (The Street Trust launched an e-bike program last fall that expands access for low-income and BIPOC individuals.) Iannarone also expressed that many of the most affordable e-bike models are Class 2 and she feels Oregon should align its laws with the 42 other states that currently allow these bikes to be ridden by people under 16.
“We want parents, children and community to know that this law can’t change what has already happened, but could serve in adjusting the culture and awareness around e-bike risks.”
– David Burger, father of Trenton Burger
The Street Trust recently took over leadership (from electric vehicle advocacy group Forth) of an ad hoc group known as the E-Bikes for All Working Group (EB4A). EB4A has been meeting monthly since 2019 and includes about 80 people from a wide variety of people on its invite list with several dozen regulars who attend the meetings. The Street Trust recently installed a contracted staffer (through a partnership with Portland State University) to lead the meetings.
In a statement to BikePortland this morning, Iannarone said,
“The E-Bikes for All Working Group has not been able to get traction from Rep. Levy on our proposed amendments, despite the breadth and expertise of people assembled, which is a shame given the high caliber of business, public policy, and academic achievements among that group. Further, we have seen time and again how the transportation needs of teens in particular are regarded as a nuisance or PR problem in the public discourse, especially in more affluent communities – whether it’s scooting, or skateboarding, or now e-bikes. Our hope is that the true threat on our streets – motor vehicle operators behaving dangerously – can be the focus of transportation conversations and that we are educating and empowering our youth to move independently and safely through the world without needing access to a private automobile, which we know is hugely regressive for our lowest-income Oregonians. We also hope that these policy discussions can be undertaken more systematically in the future via the Electric MIcromobility Task Force (HB 4067).”
The EB4A group released a statement and petition this week opposing the bill that has already garnered support from 275 individuals and organizations.
The Street Trust Mobility Programs and Policy Fellow Frank Stevens (the aforementioned staffer who leads EB4A meetings) submitted testimony of his own to the Joint Committee on Transportation where the bill currently resides. “I am frustrated by the short sightedness exhibited by HB 4103,” Stevens wrote. “[The bill is] a one-sided incomplete bill that will focus solely on rider enforcement as a deterrent” and it, “does not in any way address the need for youth education.” “Teens getting around town by e-bike instead of a car builds on the potential for a generation of kids to envision a life getting around in something other than single occupancy cars,” Stevens added.
Cameron Bennett, a Portland State University graduate who wrote his Civil Engineering masters thesis on e-bike use in North America is neutral on the bill. In written testimony, he shared the same concerns as The Street Trust and said the bill as written leaves out a key provision: that Class 2 e-bikes should be required by to have pedals. Bennett also thinks if e-bikes are going to be classified, there needs to be a cargo bike class for freight delivery vehicles.
Iannarone, Stevens, and Bennett want to further discuss these and other issues in the new task force that HB 4067 would create, and then make any necessary changes to e-bike laws at subsequent legislative sessions.
But others want change now and feel HB 4103 should pass.
Brian Potwin, executive director of Commute Options, a nonprofit that promotes alternatives to driving, said in written testimony, “HB 4103 increases student access to e-bikes for their travel needs. We believe these bills will support our community’s efforts to encourage bike riding by adding enforcement to our engineering, education, and encouragement programs.”
And testimony submitted to the legislature ahead of tonight’s hearing from Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler, states that she supports HB 4103 because it, “limits acceleration rates,” of young riders and “simplifies operations.”
Trenton Burger’s father David Burger has also shared his support of the bill. In a letter to transportation committee chairs, he wrote, “Regulating e-bikes in a way that makes sense age-wise is an appropriate next step… We want parents, children and community to know that this law can’t change what has already happened, but could serve in adjusting the culture and awareness around e-bike risks and contribute to safer use of e-bikes.”
