Alison Graves at the 2010 Oregon Bike Summit.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortand)

Alison Graves announced to staff this morning that she is leaving the non-profit Community Cycling Center. Graves has been with the organization for seven years, serving the last three as executive director. Her last day will be March 14th. Current Deputy Director Anne Lee will be the CCC’s interim director and the organization will begin the search for a new leader in March.

Alison is married to Jay Graves, the former owner of Bike Gallery who sold his stake in the company back in November. “The time has come to move on,” Alison shared with us yesterday. She said she intends to take advantage of the “opportunity of a lifetime” to join Jay on a long (“a couple months”) trip to explore other cities, to visit family, and to, “Find out what our next chapter is.”
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PDX Pedal Promotions is a new company that will unleash bike-riding “brand peddlers” throughout the streets of Portland. These riders will pedal around billboards towed in trailers behind bicycles and will do other other bike-based promotions. They call it “Portland style advertising.”

Here’s more from their website:[Read more…]

The wait is almost over.
(Photo: Michael Andersen/Portland Afoot)

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is gearing up to install 300 new speed limit signs throughout the city. The new signs are the result of a law PBOT passed in 2011 that gives the city legal authority to lower speed limits by 5 mph on residential streets that have been specifically designed as bikeways (a.k.a. neighborhood greenways). Since these neighborhood greenway streets are already at 25 mph, the new law allows PBOT to set the new limit at 20.

The big unveiling of these new signs was in August of last year; but PBOT has yet to install any new signs. We asked PBOT spokesman Dan Anderson for an update on the project last week. Anderson says they plan to begin installing the signs early next month and installation should be complete by April or May. The 300 signs will cover about 70 miles of streets at a cost of $30,00 to $45,000.[Read more…]

PNCA President Tom Manley holds a plaque that will be mounted near the Pedal Garden.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

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SE Powell, a wide and intimidating arterial known for its safety problems, is one of the three corridors PBOT will look to tame in 2013.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

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CRC? Never heard of it.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Controversy and opposition has dogged the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) project for many years. That controversy — along with a daunting price tag estimated at $4 billion — has made it extremely difficult for politicians to vote in support of funding the five-mile freeway widening and interchange building mega-project.

Now, with increasing pressure to move forward after several years and over $100 million spent on planning, Oregon Governor Kitzhaber has teed up a bill (H.B. 2260) in in the legislature that would make the project an official state priority and would give the state authority to raise revenue through tolling (something they’ll desperately need to come up with Oregon’s $450 million (without interest on bonds or cost overruns) share of the project). But, as the Willamette Week pointed out yesterday, there’s one thing missing from the bill: the Columbia River Crossing.[Read more…]

Seattle wants more of them.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

An ongoing “bike backlash” and “war on cars” pushed by the local media, biking as a wedge-issue in political campaigns, fear from politicians about doing “too much” for bikes — sounds like Portland right? Well, Seattle (not to mention New York City and many others) suffers from the same illusion. Now, a new survey commissioned by Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Club could help tamp down this pervasive — yet false — narrative.

According to a memo (PDF) about the survey from public opinion research firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates, the results provide, “absolutely no evidence of widespread anti-cycling sentiment in Seattle.” The memo goes on to explain that (among other things) 78% of those surveyed ride a bike at least once a year, 45% ride monthly, and 60% say they’d like to ride more*.

While the perception of people who ride bikes has become the butt of jokes, the Seattle survey found that people, “overwhelmingly report positive feelings towards the City’s bicyclists.” 78% say they have a “favorable opinion” of people who ride bikes, including 38% who said “very favorable” (just 19% said their opinions of people who ride are “unfavorable”).[Read more…]

Advocates say putting the Greenway Trail
on surface streets (like N. Interstate shown here)
is unacceptable.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

The City of Portland Parks & Recreation bureau continues to come under fire for their work on the North Portland Greenway Trail project. PP&R is in the process of designing the route of the paved path that will connect Kelley Point Park north of St. Johns to the Eastbank Esplanade in the central city. However, as we reported last month, many people are disappointed by the chosen alignment in the trail’s southern portion. Instead of staying along the Willamette River and creating a path away from auto traffic, PP&R has focused their efforts on what they consider a “near-term buildable” route on sections of busy, and sometimes narrow surface streets. The route, critics say, fails to live up to the vision and promise of the trail.
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New gloves from Showers Pass
(Photo: Showers Pass)

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There’s always cool new stuff at the show;
now there will be cool used stuff too!
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

The PDX Bicycle Show is coming up on March 23-24 and the Bicycle Transportation Alliance has something big in store. They’re set to debut a new event dubbed BTA BikeSwap. The event, which they’ll publicly announce next week, is being billed as, “an opportunity for families, new cyclists and experienced riders to buy and sell their cycling gear.”

The BTA is partnering with the Community Cycling Center and the Bicycle Show’s organizers, Pedal Nation Events. The BikeSwap will be a benefit for both the BTA and the CCC. Is it just a bike swap meet? Not exactly. Check out what makes it unique:

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