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“Going Dutch” event will show what’s possible in Portland

Delft bike scenes-10

A trip to Delft, a city in the Netherlands
that makes ample use of automated bollards to
prohibit driving during certain hours, sparked
inspiration for “Going Dutch” event.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

By now, we’ve all seen and heard numerous examples of Dutch bike infrastructure; but specific examples of how Dutch-style treatments would look applied to Portland roads is something we need more of. That’s why I’m excited to share news of an event happening tomorrow night at VeloCult (NE 1969 42nd Ave) that will do just that.

“Going Dutch” has been put together by one of Portland’s young rising stars of road design and urban planning: Jesse Boudart. Boudart, a recent graduate of Portland State University who’s currently an transportation analyst with Kittelson & Associates, traveled to the cycling paradise of Delft in the Netherlands back in July. While there, he viewed the city with a specific eye toward how its bike-friendly road designs could be applied in an American city.

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Portland Police team up with PBOT for ‘Back to school’ enforcement

Trillium Charter School bike train-5-5

School is back in session tomorrow!
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Tomorrow is the first day of school for thousands of Portland students and the Police Bureau plans to beef up enforcement to make sure they get to school safely. And, taking safety one step further, they’re also urging parents to leave the car at home and walk and bike to school instead.

According to a statement from the PPB, they will perform “high visibility patrols” around all Portland schools as part of what they’re calling a “Back to School safety campaign.” The plan includes dozens of officers and the use of photo radar units to help enforce traffic laws in school zones. The effort is being done in partnership with the Bureau of Transportation’s Safe Routes to School program.

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The Monday Roundup: Putty bike hacks, ‘The new Jane Jacobs’ & more

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

“Silence a noisy mudguard,” one of Sugru’s
interesting ideas for using its moldable product.
(Image: Sugru.)

Posting will be light as usual this Labor Day, but the world’s bike news doesn’t rest:

Putty my ride: The folks who make self-setting rubber Sugru have a list of 12 ways their product can improve your bike, starting with a bell on your brake lever and including a “removable smartphone bike mount.” (They sell eight packs of the stuff for $18.)

The new Jane Jacobs: Copenhagenize‘s Mikael Colville-Andersen (for the record: no relation) gets a glowing and pretty persuasive profile comparing him to the iconoclastic mother of New Urbanism. “It became obvious to me that Mikael could envision cities of the future because he already lived in one.”

Bike seat scent: A man arrested for stealing more than 200 bicycle seats, most of them leather, supposedly told police it was to capture “the lingering scent of a woman.”

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With shouts and smiles, Breakfast on the Bridges expands to the Burnside

Lance and Becky Poehler attempt to find takers for a very large Voodoo Doughnut.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

The Burnside Bridge often goes unsung and unappreciated by bikers: Blame the slightly hairy merge with turning traffic on its west landing, or the awkward approach from the east. But as of today, the Burnside won’t be going unfed.

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‘Grand Prix Erik Tonkin’ kicks off cyclocross season this weekend

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Detail of flyer for this weekend’s opening
race in the Grand Prix Erik Tonkin series.

This weekend the Portland area’s legendary cyclocross racing tradition will commence. The first big event of the year is the opening race of the Grand Prix Erik Tonkin series, and it takes place this Saturday at David Douglas High School David Douglas Park just over the Columbia River in Vancouver. The race kicks off a busy cyclocross schedule that includes racing all over the region every weekend from now through the first week in December.

Kenji Sugahara, the executive director of the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association, says he expects to see a membership spike in the coming weeks that could break a record (one that was set last year). “Cross has really been amazing for OBRA,” Sugahara shared with us yesterday, “I’m hearing a lot of excitement for it this year.”

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Complaints about TriMet operators using phones behind the wheel plunge 85%

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
Riding Portland's urban highways-38

TriMet requires its drivers to keep electronic
devices off and out of sight while working.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

TriMet’s total ban on the use of electronic devices while driving seems to be working, though some of the transit agency’s operators still seem to flout the rule.

The Oregonian’s Joseph Rose opened his notebook Thursday to share a wealth of reporting about TriMet operators’ use of electronic devices, including the results of a public record request showing that the number of complaints received by TriMet about drivers and cell phones fell from 530, in the two years to 2009, to 80, in the two years to 2013.

In 2010, as one of his first orders on the job, General Manager Neil McFarlane began requiring operators to keep their cell phones off and out of sight while on duty. Matters came to a head when one passenger captured a video that seemed to show a driver with a history of past incidents reading a Kindle while behind the wheel of a bus on Interstate 5.

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Bike shop news roundup

ebike store sign

The eBike Store has moved.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

I’ve got several bits of local bike shop news in my brain and my inbox, so I figured it’s a perfect time for another roundup…

Congressman Earl Blumenauer turns attention to bike shops today

Portland’s representative on Capitol Hill is in Portland today focusing on bike shops’ impact on the local economy. After a tour sampling a few shops, he plans to convene a ‘Bike Shop Roundtable’ at VeloCult. According to a Blumenauer aide, about 12-15 local bike shop owners will be there. “It’s meant to be a check-in with different bike shops and businesses around the city, a discussion of Portland’s budding cycling economy, and an opportunity for the businesses themselves to discuss issues, federal or otherwise, they might be facing,” said the aide. I plan to be there and will bring back a full story, so stay tuned!

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ODOT considers repairs to pavement on shoulders of Highway 101

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

ODOT managers inspected Highway 101 pavement
conditions on Monday.
(Photo: ODOT)

A regional manager with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has responded to a paving issue that was brought to the agency’s attention last week because of its impact to bicycle safety. ODOT Region 2 Manager Sonny Chickering says he is already looking into taking corrective measures to repair the dangerous seam left behind from a paving overlay project on several miles of the Oregon Coast Bike Route. Chickering also forwarded a new page on the ODOT website that addresses this issue directly.

As we reported last Monday, Jeff Smith, a 30-year veteran of the Portland Bureau of Transportation, was riding the Oregon Coast Bike Route on Highway 101 south of Florence when he was “gobsmacked” at what he called an “inept” repaving job. He emailed ODOT (and cc’d dozens of his contacts) a photo and description of several miles of the highway where a new layer of pavement extended only half-way into the shoulder. The new layer of pavement left behind a rough ledge running right in the middle of the bicycling area.

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