Eva and I are back with another fun and illuminating weekly chat.
This week:
- Eva shared her experience leading a vigil and meeting the mother of Damon Cousins, who was killed while bicycling on October 21st in northeast Portland.
- We talk a little about the election and my intention to lean into local.
- I share my experience at Mayor-elect Keith Wilson’s acceptance speech
- Why it’s OK to critique memes about old white men winning Portland elections.
- “How’d She Get There?” segment – Peninsula Park to Roosevelt HS (3.7 miles) and how I got there in just 12 minutes!
- I rode to Hillsdale and lived to tell about it (even though Terwilliger was full of leaves — but it was swept today!).
- Update on BikeLoud’s Bike Lane Sweeper and why we both think bike lane sweeping should be privatized. Come on someone, make it a business!
- After finally checking out the Firelane 1 entrance project, I get mad about Forest Park and how terrible it is for biking and how it should be better.
Thanks for listening!
Thanks for reading.
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I’ve thought about the “contracted bike lane sweeping” as a biz model. Not sure how enjoyable it would be long-term, but it would be for a good cause. I think you need both the small sweeper and a follow truck to empty the sweeper into. So that’s a two person crew at a minimum. Then you need a place to dump the follow truck, store the sweeper, have a break room with a coffee pot, etc. You’d need a good relationship with PBOT/parking enforcement to get things cleared out of the lanes as needed. How much $$ would PBOT pay a contractor to sweep lanes?
If only there were some organization that owned sweepers, had some trucks and access to an industrial scale composting facility, could provide facilities and benefits for trained operators, and had the chops to overlay a map of bike routes with areas of tree cover to enable preemptive dispatching of the sweepers?