Southwest Portland resident Michael Reiss was so tired of leaves piling up in the bike lane, he took things into his own hands. I’m not talking about grabbing a broom and clearing a small section. He bought a high-powered gas sweeper, attached it to his electric recumbent trike, and then made several passes of a major bike route.
The result: A two-mile stretch of SW Multnomah Blvd is now clean and clear of leaves from the outside bike lane stripe to the fog line and hundreds of pounds of leaves are now in a ditch. Reiss’s DIY hack worked well he’s since bought an even larger sweeper.
Reiss is part of a long line of resourceful, fed-up Portlanders who take matters into their own hands when it comes to keeping our bike lanes free of debris like leaves, glass, and gravel. Reiss has been sharing his sweeping exploits on the Bike Loud PDX Slack channel. Bike Loud has been testing a bike lane sweeper for over a year now. The group maintains a schedule where volunteers can sign up for shifts to use the trailer. They also created a dedicated Slack channel to talk all things bike lane sweeping. When Reiss uploaded a video of his sweeper in action the other day, I had to talk with him and learn more.
He said his motivation comes from being a nice husband. “My wife bikes to OHSU from where we live just south of the Fred Meyer in Burlingame,” Reiss shared in a video interview today. “In the last couple of weeks, Terwilliger has been basically impassable.”
Reiss said the City of Portland swept the bike lane once, but within days it was full of leaves again. “That’s my wife’s bike route, so this is sort of a honey-do list,” he shared with a laugh.
Anyone who rides in southwest knows that leaf season on a bicycle is especially treacherous. Not only does the hilly area have a lot of massive trees, but there are fewer bike routes overall. So when a major bike thoroughfare like Terwilliger — or Capitol Highway or Multnomah — become essentially closed by leaves, it’s a bigger deal than in some other parts of town that have alternate ways around.
Reiss loves solving problems and this type of project is just the type of thing he said his brain likes to focus on. He and someone else he met through Bike Loud found the used sweeper on Craiglist for $300 and then Reiss fashioned a hitch and tow bar and screwed it on. After a few test runs showed potential, he picked up an even larger unit and continues to tinker with its power settings and configurations.
Beyond the power and electrical considerations, the tricky thing is setting the angle on the brush in a way that pushes the leaves aside while also making sure it pushes down on the pavement hard enough to make progress, but not so hard that it slows down the cycling. Reiss is an expert at modifying electric-bikes, so he’s used his assistive motor to great success. “The sweeper angle is only 15-16 degrees, so you start pulling all that weight and you’ve got to go slow and wait for the sweeper to push it off to the side,” he shared with me today.
Another consideration is that, so far at least, Reiss’ sweeper doesn’t play nice with pedestrians. He’s trying to tweak the angle of the brush and the speed of the brush motor so that the leaves get piled up nicely and don’t get blown on the sidewalk.
All these issues have likely been hammered out by the creators of the Bike Lane Sweeper, so I was glad to hear that Reiss has been in contact with them to share ideas and feedback. He hopes to help Bike Loud purchase one of the new sweeper models in the near future.
In the end, Reiss’ DIY effort illustrates frustration with the city for not keeping up with bike lane maintenance. The Portland Bureau of Transportation has made strides in recent years, but there are still more lane miles then they can tackle in a timely fashion.
Good thing we’ve got gung-ho folks like Reiss and others who take matters like this into their own hands. And I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Reiss and his sweeping experiments. His ultimate plan is to use a cargo trike (like the one ice cream sellers use) and mount the sweeper to the front so it’s easier to control. And future versions will be converted to electric power.
“I’ll pound away at this project until it works,” he shared. “Or until it becomes stupid or somebody else does something that eliminates the need for it — or until I get bored and move onto another project.”
If you see a recumbent pulling a loud sweeper in southwest Portland, steer clear and give Reiss a big thumbs-up!
