🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
Small, but fast.(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland) Portland’s only sanctioned downhill skateboarding race, the Mt. Tabor Downhill Challenge, will feature a mini-bike category. The event takes place this Sunday on the slopes of the popular southeast Portland park. This is the first time the MTDHC has had a mini-bike category and to my knowledge, this is … Read more
Sign at the entrance to Fort Vancouver.(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland) To keep the bicycling momentum going strong in Vancouver, the Bicycle Alliance of Washington and Bike Clark County are hosting a half-day workshop tomorrow (6/21, sorry for the late notice!) called, Hub and Spoke: Growing Bicycling in Vancouver. Here’s more about what’s in store for … Read more
“Americans spend more on bicycling gear and trips ($81 billion) than they do on airplane tickets ($51 billion).”—The Outdoor Recreation Economy, 2012 The Outdoor Industry Association just released their annual report on The Outdoor Recreation Economy. The report looks at spending on gear and travel for all the major outdoor activities and also calculates the … Read more
Mat Barton. The community has responded in big way to the serious injury suffered by Portland resident Mat Barton. During a local mountain bike race on June 11th, Barton fell off balance while riding over a series of large bumps and flew off his bike head first. After surgery to repair broken vertebrae, doctors say … Read more
Arterials kill. Using ODOT traffic crash data and their own data on transportation infrastructure Metro’s State of Safety report has found that roadway collisions cost our region $958 million a year — that’s significantly more than congestion. The report also lays bare one of the nagging issues for local transportation planners and a central theme … Read more
One smart light.(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland) One unsung area where Portland is doing some very cool stuff for bicycling is with traffic signals and “ITS” — which stands for Intelligent Transportation Systems. The field of ITS encompasses all sorts of high-tech ways to make our streets smarter. From sensing vehicle patterns with RFID, to software … Read more
City Traffic Engineer Rob Burchfield had some explaining to do.(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland) It’s finally over. Seriously. I mean it this time. After 17 months of meetings and open houses, the stakeholder advisory committee (SAC) for the N Williams Traffic Operations Safety Project finished their work yesterday with the adoption of plans that will transform … Read more
“I literally was just speechless with my jaw dropped as he rode away.”— Elisabeth Bowers Last week I got an email from Portland resident Elisabeth Bowers. She was involved in a hit-and-run on and wanted me to know about it. That part isn’t strange. I get a fair amount of emails like that every month. … Read more
It’s been an issue ever since the protected bike lane (a.k.a. cycle track) on SW Broadway went in: How to improve access for TriMet LIFT Paratransit Program vehicles that need direct access to the curb in order to drop off and pick up people with disabilities, while not blocking the flow of bike traffic. In … Read more
Seeing green on SW Barbur.(Photo: Alan Love) I’ve got a couple of news tidbits from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) that have piled up in my inbox so I thought I’d share them all at once. From a new job opening in their Active Transportation section to the installation of their first-ever green colored … Read more
Stormtrooper spotted downtown.(Photo: Greg Raisman/Flickr) 12 days into Pedalpalooza (about half way through!) and the rides and good times show no sign of slowing down. In the interest of keeping you in the loop about what’s going on out there, I thought I’d share a brief update on just some of the rides going on… … Read more
Michael Jones loads boxes of first-aid supplies at a checkpoint located at the Red Cross on N Vancouver Ave.(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland) Sunday’s inaugural Disaster Relief Trials (DRT) was a big success on many levels. The mock disaster scenario (a major earthquake) that the event was based on gave emergency responders and cargo bike enthusiasts … Read more