Now includes a bike race, naturally.

The Festa Italiana, a week-long event that has brought together the local Italian community for 20 years, now includes a bike race.

The Giro di Portland will feature the area’s best racing talent on a high-speed, multi-lap criterium through the Pearl District — and the Festa Italiana is the presenting sponsor.

Festa President Joe Castellano says having a bike race as part of their event has always been a goal. “Italians love their bike races,” he shared via telephone this morning.[Read more…]

New box at Lovejoy and 9th to facilitate
“Copenhagen Left” (instead of crossing new
streetcar tracks at a dangerous angle).
(Photos © J. Maus)

The Portland Streetcar Loop Project has brought major changes to bikeways in the Pearl District. With new tracks, new medians and a new recommended route for bikes, PBOT has released a detailed list about what changes people on bikes can expect.

“These changes will alter the cycling conditions in the vicinity of the west end of the Broadway Bridge and require that all travelers in the area be aware of new signs, lane markings, street and signal configurations and streetcar tracks.”

[Read more…]

Cobbled bikeway in Maastrich,
The Netherlands.
(Photo: Alex Hamlin)

Since our story last week, people are still weighing in about the Bureau of Transportation’s decision to remove old cobblestones on NW Marshall in order to lay down new bike lanes.

The story struck a chord with reader Alex Hamlin, who rode his bike around Holland for two weeks last summer. Alex saw the photo from Holland I ran with the story that showed a cobblestone street with smoothly paved bike lanes on it. He wanted us to know that was just one example. See his photo and right and I think you’ll agree with his assessment: “Bumpy? Yes. Civilized? Very.”
[Read more…]

New bike lanes on NW Marshall. See what
it will look like when completed below.
(Photo: Paul Peterson)

New bike lanes are being constructed on NW Marshall between 12th and 14th Avenues in the Pearl District — but these aren’t just any bike lanes. What’s notable about this project is that the new lanes are being cut right through historic cobblestones (a move that has irked some local residents who say the cobbles are key to the area’s charm) and they’re part of a larger streetcar project that will make NW Marshall into a bicycle boulevard.[Read more…]

The crew at 21st Ave. Bikes needs
a new logo. Make it awesome!
(Photo © J. Maus)

21st Avenue Bicycles in Northwest Portland needs some help designing a new logo so they’ve launched a contest to see which local designer can create the best one.

The designer of the winning logo will see their work all over town on the shop’s ads, on their website, and on a sticker placed on every bike sold in the shop. In addition, the winning designer will get $100.00 cash, a Chrome bags laptop sleeve, and 10% off everything in the store for as long as the logo is in use.

Here’s what the they’re looking for:[Read more…]

Detail of Sunday Parkways route through Northwest Portland.
Download full size PDF here

[Read more…]

SmartTrips decal outside
a cafe in St. Johns.
(Photo © J. Maus)

The Transportation Options Division within PBOT has released a report on their 2009 SmartTrips Business program that focused on North and Northwest Portland. In a survey about the program’s effectiveness filled out by 72 (out of the 192) businesses involved in the program, 68% of them said that promoting biking and walking helped them market their business.

SmartTrips is an individualized marketing program that encourages options to single-occupancy vehicle trips by distributing free maps and “commuter kits” and empowering participants to promote biking, walking, and transit.[Read more…]

A customer on a test ride in
front of Kalkhoff retail
store in the Pearl.
(Photos by Adams Carroll)

Back in August we reported that a new e-bike store was prepping to open its doors in the Pearl District. Now, although the dust has not yet settled in their combined corporate office and retail space, Kalkhoff Bikes Portland is open for business. Kalkhoff Bikes Portland is a retail venture of Greenlight Bikes, LLC., the Portland-based importer of German manufacturer Kalkhoff’s line of traditional and e-assist bicycles. The company’s Pearl District storefront is the only one of its kind in the United States and joins The eBike Store in North Portland as the second retail outlet for e-bikes in Portland.

In an interview on Monday, Greenlight Bikes’ Managing Director Eric von der Heyden said that Kalkhoff Bikes Portland will celebrate its official grand opening “sometime in mid to late January” once all renovations to their building have been completed. In the meantime, the Kalkhoff Bikes Portland showroom is open Monday through Friday and is stocked with a shiny new line of e-bikes and commuters ready for a test ride.
[Read more…]

From the Kalkhoff USA website.

In the latest sign that e-bikes are becoming more mainstream, a new retail bike shop is set to open soon in the Pearl District.

According to sources, a company named Greenlight LLC will open the shop. They are the U.S. distributors of Kalkhoff Bikes, a German brand that has been in existence since 1919 and has a full line of electric bikes.

After we learned about Greenlight a few days ago, an unemployed reader tipped us off to a job listing for their new retail store (they’re looking for a manager). [Read more…]

Could this freshly paved section of NW Nicolai St, where railroad tracks used to be, become a new cycle track? (Note: This paved section is on a curb, above the roadway.)
(Photo: Anonymous reader)

[Read more…]