Welcome to the week.
Here are the most notable stories and other items our community flagged from the past seven days.
This week’s sponsor is Bike Tires Direct, who just announced a big Warehouse Sale January 18th. Check their website to RSVP and get an invite to this huge savings opportunity.
NEPA nope? There’s an effort to weaken the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) so big projects are responsible for a much more limited set of impacts and the Supreme Court is about to weigh in. (LA Times)
Merckx takes a tumble: 79-year old cycling legend Eddy “The Cannibal” Merckx crashed his bike and broke his hip. Get well soon Eddy! (Associated Press)
Local non-profits in trouble: Several major local nonprofit orgs have hit major financial headwinds that have resulted in layoffs and soul searching. (OPB)
Inflation and affordability: One reason some small community bike shops are going belly-up is that their costs are rising, but their customers can’t pay higher prices. (Cycling Weekly)
Dash cam for cyclists: Is the hope of a small, affordable and reliable dash cam for cyclists finally about to come true? Learn about the Cycle Safe project if you want to find out. (Streetsblog USA)
Bike culture: What happens when a famous cyclist gets seriously injured in a dooring incident involving a post office van? Well, when it happens in Belgium, the postal service launches a national campaign to increase awareness of the dangers of opening car doors. (ABC News)
Cost of light rail: Notable that some elected officials in Vancouver, Washington are balking at the price tag to maintain and operate a new light rail line that would be build as part of the Interstate Bridge Replacement project. (The Columbian)
Rural realities: At least in the U.K. they’re actually talking about the dangers faced by people who ride bicycle on rural roads. This is a vastly under-appreciated issue here in the states and something that deserves a lot more advocacy and conversation. (BBC)
Just share the damn roads: A good way to refresh your arguments when someone complains about bike lanes, with a good reminder at the end about what cities are all about. (🔐💰Boston Globe)
NYC is doing something right: I realize New York City is an outlier for American cities, but it’s still nice to know what cycling is booming there. A recent count of four major East River bridges shows a 15% increase over last year. (BK Reader)
Daylighting law: California will put a new law into effect in 2025 that will prohibit people from parking cars within 20-feet of an intersection. Known as “daylighting” this is a move that should be watched closely by Oregon safe streets advocates. (ABC)
Less care parking, more homes: It really is that simple, and folks who’ve been yelling this from rooftops for many years have an excellent new bit of research to back them up: Data from Colorado shows that giving developers more flexible can result in 40 to 70% more homes being built. (Sightline)
Video of the Week: Bogota, Colombia’s “Ciclovia” is what inspired Portland’s Sunday Parkways. Now the city is celebrating 50 years of open streets (Al Jazeera English)
Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week. The Monday Roundup is a community effort, so please feel free to send us any great stories you come across.
Thanks for reading.
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Regarding the new CA daylighting law – Oregon already has something very similar. ORS 811.560 makes it illegal to park “Within 20 feet of a crosswalk at an intersection.” Additionally, Portland has city code 16.20.130 that prohibits parking of tall vehicles (over 6 feet) within 50 feet of an intersection. But I have not seen either of these enforced.
Yes. Unfortunately OR law has a huge exception that allows Portland to only follow it when they feel like it. It’s something that’s being worked on by local advocates which is why I wanted to share the link to make sure folks are aware of how it’s going in CA.
Oops smally typo I meant to put ORS 811.550.
Can you point me to what exempts Portland from following this law?
Hi Tom, Oregon law gives local roadway authorities ability to set their own intersection parking regulations and PBOT has made it clear in the past that they don’t strictly adhere to the state law. In 2018 PBOT updated their pedestrian design guidelines and said they would begin adhering to state law with all new capital projects. So they aren’t doing it to all intersections retroactively. They will also enforce it at specific intersections based on complaints.
Jonathan mentions it in this previous article.
tl;dr The city says ORS 810.160 gives them the authority to enforce parking violations at their discretion.
I just realized that city code makes it illegal to stop on a bike lane without exception. Which would override the ORS exception for loading/unloading passengers and delivery vehicles.Not that the city cares to enforce its own code or the state statute. I see so many vehicles over 6 feet parked within 50 feet of intersections around town in addition to all the ones parked in bike lanes both of which are wonderfully dangerous while cycling.
In Portland’s complaint driven regulatory environment, it may be easier to get no parking signs and crosswalk bars put in place near your residence than at some place along your daily route. The exception is, if somebody happens to be killed in a spot it’s often good for some paint and signs.
I’d like to see some additional signs to mark a greenway added to cross street stop signs.
Concerning light rail costs in Washington, I’m not surprised to see CTRAN balking at a $20M price tag (though they are only on the hook for half of that). Their entire budget is ~$100M, so paying 10% of their budget for a fairly short rail line does feel a bit much. Especially considering that TriMet’s entire rail division budget is $38M for operations, $25M for maintenance of the right of way, and $40M for vehicle maintenance – so a shade over $100M (page 57).
I have to imagine the estimated maintenance of way costs are far far higher than typical for the MAX system (it’s far more complex to do maintenance on massive elevated structures), but 1/5 of the entire system for a 3 mile extension?! I suppose there are political reasons why TriMet cannot publicly critique the IBR project, but the design of the bridge is clearly going to be an anchor around the neck of the transit operators. A low bridge would have a much simpler right of way to maintain and would surely reduce the burden on TriMet and CTRAN.
But of course, having a moveable span is a non-starter for ODOT and WSDOT. They would have to pay ~$1M/year in operations! Traffic might be delayed to allow < 1 opening per day! Can you imagine the horrible consequences of something like that? This extreme price tag is a direct result of a bad bridge design, and it would be nice to see the Columbian analyze that in more depth rather than mild pandering to anti-light rail sentiment in Clark County (which I think is justified to some extent based on how horribly state officials have bungled plans in the past).
Another question is what will ridership be like? Currently, at this moment, Google tells me that Max from the Expo Center to downtown takes almost exactly the same time that bike riding would take (45 mins), which is about triple the time it would take to drive.
Considering that Max from many destinations in Vancouver would take a fair bit longer, I wonder how much increased ridership we could expect over the existing CTRAN service.
I’m happy to use Max as a political bludgeon to try to scupper the IBR project, but I have to wonder if the cost of building and operating Max would really be worth the benefits we could reasonably expect.
EDIT: Google tells me the travel time on CTRAN from just north of the Columbia (800 Washington) to downtown Portland is 27 minutes; that’s further and significantly faster than what Max can deliver.
I think we need express buses AND MAX to really make transit look like a realistic option. MAX provides accessibility in a reasonable amount of time to not just downtown Portland, but also many locations in North Portland. If you want to travel from Downtown Vancouver to Alberta, you need to hop on a bus across the river, transfer to MAX, and the catch the 72. Extending the MAX makes those trips much easier.
But commuting directly to Downtown Portland? Absolutely we should have all day, everyday express bus service. It should be “this and that”, not “this or that”.
If you want to read the news on Bogota’s stunning accomplishment of 50 years of open streets and don’t want to watch a video made by the propaganda arm of various terrorist groups than the information can be found here as well……..
https://thebogotapost.com/celebrating-the-ciclovia-bogotas-weekly-miracle-turns-50/53183/
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241213-part-of-bogota-s-soul-how-colombia-fired-up-the-car-free-movement
They’re a propaganda arm of terrorists because… the name is Arabic I guess?
Do some research on it and get back to me. Find the articles where they’ve been banned by the Saudi’s and why. Who owns them and what does that autocratic place use them for?
Light rail isn’t cheap. However the Columbian newspaper printed an article with an operating cost of $21.2 million in the headline and had local officials reacting to that number in the second paragraph. You have to read most of the article to find out the Washington share is estimated to be $7.2 million a year, a third of what the paper led off with.
There are lots of issues with MAX without exaggerating the cost.
Light rail costs about $10 to operate for each passenger boarding, according to TriMet data.
A fair point in that it takes awhile to reach the estimated actual cost of 7.2 million. However, given the constant underestimating of what the bridge and concurrent road swelling (is that the right word for the opposite of a diet?) will cost, I have a sneaking suspicion the numbers are less than they will turn out to be and Washington’s share might actually approach the 21.2 million total cost estimated the first year.
I too am a bit put off by that $21.2 million figure (though CTran would only be on the hook for 7.2 mil as others have pointed out). I’m curious what that would go into. blumdrew pointed out the design of the bridge itself, but I’m not sure if that accounts for all of it though. Aren’t they talking about building a new MAX maintenance facility by the expo center as part of the project? I assume staffing up and outfitting that would be part of it.
It would be nice if that $21 mil included some benefit to the wider system – like more reliable service, better frequencies, and better hours. As it is now the last Yellow/Orange train that goes all the way to Milwaukie is at like 10:15 PM. If you’re catching a show at Mississippi studios you gotta leave during the headliner’s first song to catch the last train home 🙁
No it did not SHOW this. The estimates were based on a MODEL, not on real world data.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dJtE7IXoDvIUzLmqXFlVDtwKg-UhuWg7/view
And you gotta love the milquetoast options modeled by the free-market-urbanists: granny flats or transit oriented development. How about legalizing 8+ story rental housing everywhere not just in crappy polluted zones around transit facilities (e.
Parking reform is a necessary step to making higher density housing a viable and affordable solution. You’re not getting your desired high density public housing if you’re requiring onsite parking for two cars per household. That’s the point of the article.
Your oft repeated broad sides attacking TOD and ADUs are non sequiturs.
No Portland public or subsidized housing project that I’m aware of has this requirement, and I’m not sure it ever did.
There’s some irony seeing the article about struggling nonprofits written by OPB, followed by a big “support OPB” ad. OPB recently finished up a several-million dollar remodeling, with a chunk funded by the Sate, and the salary of just one of OPB’s several vice presidents would be life-saving for many bootstrap nonprofits.
Not a fan of OPB anymore, but let’s not romanticize those “bootstrap” nonprofits—they often feed off public dollars while promoting absurd policies. It’s time to cut their government funding and let private donors decide if their “services” are worth anything. Just look at all the nonprofits that signed onto this nonsense:
https://bikeportland.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Response-to-Emergency-Declaration-on-sweeping-camps-FINAL.pdf
Public financing for public radio is in the single digit percentages compared to funding from individuals and corporate sponsors.
“Local non-profits in trouble”
I see this as a positive development. Many Portland-area nonprofits contribute to the city’s decline—whether by enabling destructive street camping, backing extremist political agendas and candidates, or misusing taxpayer money. Fewer of these organizations would likely mean a better future for Portland.