[Commissioner Adams (L) and PDOT’s Mark Lear (R) at a Share the Road event last January] Traffic safety specialists at PDOT are working with Transportation Commissioner Sam Adams, the Portland City Council, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, and the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition to beef up their legal toolkit with new laws that will make it easier … Read more
[Officer Brett Barnum taking the oath at the Ayla Holland trial.] Officer Brett Barnum of the Portland Police Bureau Traffic Division has been at the center of the fixed gear enforcement issue. He was the officer who convinced a traffic court judge to uphold his citation of Ayla Holland back on July 28th (the case … Read more
This morning Portland cyclist John Boyd successfully defended himself in a Multnomah County traffic court trial for a ticket he received for riding a fixed-gear bicycle without a hand brake. Boyd, a 40 year-old architect and resident of Northeast Portland, was given the ticket by Officer Barnum of the Portland Police Bureau’s Traffic Division. Barnum … Read more
[via the Portland Mercury Blog] [Notice of appeal] Portland lawyer Mark Ginsberg has filed an appeal in the Ayla Holland fixed-gear case. Ginsberg waited to make his decision until after he and his staff could closely scrutinize the transcript from the initial trial. Ayla Holland told me in a recent phone conversation that she feels … Read more
The Portland Mercury Blog is reporting that Multnomah County Judge Dale Koch has denied lawyer Mark Ginsberg’s request to have his stack of fixed-gear tickets heard in a real courtroom, instead of in lowly traffic court. Since the Ayla Holland case, Ginsberg has collected seven more cases of bicyclists being ticketed for not having a … Read more
[Looking south at currentend of Esplanade path.] Yesterday was the public hearing on the SK Northwest development case. Unfortunately I wasn’t there but here’s a report from what I’ve heard and read so far. According to Evan Manvel of the BTA there were about 45 people there which is “significantly more than these hearings usually … Read more
[Click for full PDF, 2.1MB] Mark Ginsberg, lawyer in the Ayla Holland case, has just sent me the official transcript (PDF, 2.1MB) from her traffic court trial. It’s an interesting read. If you don’t get around to downloading the file, here’s the excerpt from the judge’s final decision: Judge Lowe: “The testimony here is that … Read more
[Jason Atkinson, Oregon State Senator.] Republican Oregon State Senator Jason Atkinson read about Ayla Holland’s court case on CyclingNews.com and was furious. Atkinson—who was elected to the Oregon State Senate at the ripe age of 30—is an avid cyclist and traveled through Oregon on a fixed-gear bike during his campaign for Governor in ’05. Atkinson … Read more
Last week—in the middle of the fixed-gear fiasco—I got an email from an employee of The Bicycle Business, a bike shop in Sacramento, California. They had stumbled across the story and thought the judge and the police were being, “completely ridiculous” so they decided to flex their capitalist muscles and do something about it:
[Photo: Dabby] In response to the following comments made by the traffic court judge in the Ayla Holland/fixed-gear trial, “If your client had a stick she could rub against her tire, you’d have a case.” many local messengers are now equipped with stick-brakes. They are also holding a stick-braking competition.
Several cyclists out on the streets in the last few days have relayed their concerns to me about what they perceive as increased police enforcement of fixed-gear riders. Given the recent court decision and heightened awareness of this issue, I asked Traffic Division Lieutenant Mark Kruger for an official stance on how the Portland Police … Read more
My recent story on a traffic court decision that upheld a ticket to a local messenger for not having a “separate braking device” on her fixed-gear bicycle has quickly spread around the web and seems to have struck a nerve in cyclists everywhere. This morning the article was linked to from BoingBoing.net, one of the … Read more
Comment of the Week: Legs of steel and the e-bike