Metro mulls $3 million e-bike incentive program

Buying an e-bike is almost guaranteed to be easier in the near future. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

At a meeting of its Transportation Policy Advisory Committee (TPAC) on Friday (4/7), Metro made it clear they’d like to get into the e-bike purchase incentive game. They join the cities of Tigard and Portland, as well as Oregon lawmakers and the federal government in their enthusiasm to fill demand for e-bikes as weapons against climate change and as effective tools for personal and family mobility.

TPAC, which is made up of over a dozen technical staff from agencies and governments throughout the region, learned about the potential investment in e-bike access via a presentation about the federal Carbon Reduction Program. This $5.2 billion program was approved as part of President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November 2021 and is administered through the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with a goal to, “fund projects designed to reduce transportation emissions.”

Oregon will receive about $82.5 million total from the Carbon Reduction Program. The Oregon Department of Transportation will hand out about $54 million of that, and Metro estimates they’ll have about $18.8 million total to spend over five years. At the TPAC meeting Friday, Metro said they plan to award five years in one allocation process. As part of that effort, they’ve developed several draft packages of projects that will be refined by TPAC, the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT, which is sort of a TPAC for elected officials), and Metro Council members.

Those draft packages were revealed publicly for the first time Friday.

Carbon Reduction Program – Package Options & Elements Descriptions (Source: Metro)

Metro has come up with four different packages that would guide this $18.8 million allocation. Three of the four include a strong tilt toward transit projects because Metro used their Climate Smart Strategy plan as the backbone for Carbon Reduction Program decision-making and transit came very highly recommended through that process.

As you can see in the graphic from the TPAC presentation, Packages A, B, and C include four projects each, with three of those being transit-related: bus rapid transit on 82nd and Tualatin-Valley Highway, and a transit signal priority project on TriMet Line 33 (McLoughlin Blvd). The only difference in those three packages is a $3 million investment into a fourth project. Package A would fund an e-bike program, Package B would invest in Safe Routes to School projects, and Package C would put that $3 million into a general Active Transportation pot. Package D would fund five projects that just missed out on funding in a recent Metro federal active transportation funding process (known as the Regional Flexible Funding Allocation, or RFFA). All four packages would set-aside $1.8 million for Metro’s Climate Smart implementation program.

It was the $3 million e-bike program that caught my eye as something new.

Here’s what the Metro presentation said about what it could fund:

Potential elements include a subsidy/rebate program, promotional campaign, and transit access elements such as secured parking with charging stations. Potential partnerships with local agencies and non-profit organizations and coordination with potential state rebate program under consideration by the Oregon legislature.

According to Metro Resource Development Section Manager Ted Leybold, the specific type of program has yet to be determined. “At this point, it is only a conceptual investment to support deployment and use of electric powered bicycles,” shared Leybold in an email to BikePortland. The program would be further defined only if Package A is recommended by JPACT, TPAC and Metro Council.

No TPAC members objected to the e-bike program at Friday’s meeting. One of them, Indigo Namkoong who represents environmental justice nonprofit Verde, said she’s an e-bike user and “fan” but warned that the barrier to more e-bike riders in the northeast Cully neighborhood her organization works in isn’t just about cost. “It’s about infrastructure and feeling and experiencing safety on the roads,” Namkoong said. “We don’t have bike lanes in a lot of areas in our neighborhoods in Cully and surrounding areas… so safety infrastructure is one of the most important hurdles that we hear about.”

Metro staff will return to TPAC and other advisory bodies in the coming months to seek an official recommendation on which package should move forward. It’s a relatively tight timeline because Metro needs to have their decision to FHWA by November of this year.

If Package A and the e-bike investment program is prioritized, Leybold says there will be several issues to work through including: restrictions with federal funds (that prohibit direct subsidy for private vehicles, “so we would need to get creative on how to use the funds to support deployment and use while still being compliant,” Leybold said) and how best to coordinate with other e-bike funding programs already being considered by the Oregon Legislature and the City of Portland.

Lawmakers in Salem are currently considering a bill (House Bill 2571) that would offer rebates to e-bike buyers in the amount of $400 or $1,200. That bill passed out of its first committee on March 29th and is currently in a budget committee. And the City of Portland is likely to use revenue from the Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) to establish an e-bike rebate program of its own. As we reported last month, a PCEF committee has recommended $20 million to increase e-bike access over the next five years.

If HB 2571 becomes law, Metro’s $3 million e-bike investment could be added to the “Electric Bicycle Incentive Fund” that bill would create. Or it could be a standalone program.

In addition to these three e-bike incentive efforts, there’s also the federal E-BIKE Act that was just reintroduced to Congress late last month. If signed into law, the E-BIKE Act would offer individual consumers a refundable 30% tax credit for purchasing an electric bicycle — up to a $1,500 credit for new bicycles less than $8,000. The credit would be allowed once per individual every three years, or twice for a joint-return couple buying two electric bicycles. Income caps of of $150,000 annually for single filers, and $225,000 for heads of households, and $300,000 for those filing jointly would apply.

Watch this space in May for final decisions about these draft packages at Metro. Any allocations would have to be amended into the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program before they could be spent; but no matter how you slice it, buying an e-bike is very likely to become much easier in the coming months.

Former PBOT manager Ciarlo is new Metro planning director

Ciarlo at the 2022 Alice Awards hosted by The Street Trust. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Catherine Ciarlo is the new director of planning, development and research at Metro. Metro is our regional elected government that oversees long-range planning and serves more than 1.7 million people in the Portland area with a jurisdictional boundary that spans 24 cities and three counties.

Prior to accepting this position at Metro, Ciarlo had worked at the Portland Bureau of Transportation for over five years. She began as Active Transportation and Safety Division manager and most recently served as acting group director of Development, Permitting & Transit. She’s also worked at CH2M Hill (now Jacobs), a planning consulting firm, and she was transportation policy advisor for former Portland Mayor Sam Adams from 2009 to 2012.

Ciarlo has deep roots in Portland’s bicycle advocacy scene. She was the executive director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (now The Street Trust) from 1998 to 2005.

Here’s more about Ciarlo from a Metro press release:

As a consultant, Ciarlo managed transit projects and multi-modal street improvements for multiple clients including TriMet, ODOT, Clackamas County and the cities of Spokane, Astoria and Milwaukie. At PBOT, Ciarlo was responsible for managing teams to design and deliver programs that advance the City of Portland’s climate and equity goals. Her portfolio included the city’s bikeshare program, e-scooters, Safe Routes to School, Sunday Parkways and the Vision Zero traffic safety initiative.

In addition, Ciarlo has overseen programs to encourage community use of the right-of-way, and has provided strategic leadership for the Portland Streetcar system.

In each of these areas, Ciarlo says she has worked with her teams to re-orient priorities and programs to serve Portlanders who have not historically had a voice in transportation and planning.

“The Metro region is faced with big challenges and major opportunities in the coming years,” Ciarlo said in a statement. “I am honored and excited to work with community members, elected leaders, and diverse stakeholders to help our region be the equitable, vital place we know it can be. Metro’s leadership is critical to making that happen.”

Ciarlo takes over this role as Metro Deputy Director of Planning Margi Bradway was just last week named as director of community services for Multnomah County.

With the absence of Ciarlo, PBOT now has two holes in its executive team as they continue their national search for a new director.

Riders sport wool blazers and skirts despite rain at annual Tweed Ride (Photos)

Melissa Bryden, fully decked out (including her bike!)
Shawn Granton led the dapper group on the Tweed Ride this year.
(Photos: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)

Are we in 21st century Portland or 19th century Oxford? You might not know if you witnessed the participants of yesterday’s Tweed Ride rolling around the city. The Portland Tweed Ride has been a staple of group bike events in the city every year since 2010, and though yesterday’s soggy weather kept the group relatively small, the truest tweed-heads showed up for the occasion in their finest wool blazers and caps.

“Woah, tweed,” said a mesmerized onlooker sitting in Kelly Plaza when the group passed through the Hollywood District. We tipped our hats to him in response.

A group shot at Normandale Park (Photo: Shawn Granton)
Emee Pumarega

Something I like about the Tweed Ride (which aptly started in London but has chapters all over the world) is that it demonstrates how you can ride a bike wearing practically anything. As long as you roll up the cuffs of your pants so the hem doesn’t get caught in your bike chain, the world of fashion is your oyster. If you must wear spandex, so be it, but tweed skirts are perfectly bike-friendly as well.

The group was joined by Melissa Bryden, who came to Portland from Sacramento just for the occasion. Bryden hosts tweed rides in her neck of the woods, and wanted to see how it’s done in a city where the weather bears more resemblance to that of the British Isles (a.k.a., the land of tweed.)

“Dressing up in costumes, biking and drinking tea? It’s all the fun of being a kid, even though I’m in my 60s,” Bryden said when I asked her why she loves to bike in tweed.

With group ride season kicking off, the Tweed Ride shows the range of themed bike activities available to Portlanders. Only in Portland can you enjoy a posh and classy ride like this in April and then, come July, exchange the wool blazer for a cat costume, yachtwear…or your birthday suit. (It’s getting to the point where I need a second closet just for themed bike ride attire.)

So sit back with a cup of tea and check out our photos from the Tweed Ride. And be sure to follow the Portland Tweed Ride Instagram so you can stay informed on next year’s tweed activities.

Comment of the Week: From Utrecht, with love for ‘living streets’

Welcome to the Comment of the Week, where we highlight good comments in order to inspire more of them. You can help us choose our next one by replying with “comment of the week” to any comment you think deserves recognition. Please note: These selections are not endorsements.

Sometimes getting a clear view of Portland requires stepping back 6,000 miles. That’s what Cathy Tuttle did when she commented from Utrecht about Taylor Griggs’s post, A ‘Living Streets’ plan for downtown Portland.

Tuttle was an advisor to the four Portland State University students who created the “Living Streets” plan, and she picked up where Taylor left off with some insight about how controlling — not abolishing — cars is key to successful European “car-free” zones.

Here’s what Cathy wrote:

I love living in Utrecht for a few months!

What I’m focused on is looking at how cars are controlled here. Yes, Utrecht may have the best bicycle and transit infrastructure in the Netherlands. It also has some of the most thoughtful car control. The two are completely interlinked.

You cannot have great bike, transit, and walk zones without putting control on how people use cars in a city: Freight zones and times, where you can ride scooters and mopeds, what cars are licensed to drive where, and most importantly, where and when private cars can be parked.

What many people might not see in European “car-free” zones is that there are still plenty of cars — for business deliveries, emergency access, disabled people, and local residents. In the US, we’ve turned our most valuable, dense, business-rich areas into car free-for-alls. It’s not healthy for cities, for local businesses, and certainly not for people.

Utrecht is a thriving city. People are housed, happy, and productive. Thousands of businesses are flourishing, and abundant, healthy businesses mean that, among other things, roads and public spaces are in good repair and transit is clean, safe, and frequent.

This is all preamble to say that the TREC/PSU report on Living Streets is on the right path, and is a very good blueprint for local Portland business and political leaders to use, as soon as they have the courage to do so.

The four student authors, Cameron Bennett, Owen Christofferson, Emily D’Antonio, and Aidan Simpson have provided solid, data-based guidance. I hope they all end up in positions in Portland or other cities where these transformations are needed soon.

Reading their 79-page report may be daunting for some. I want to point out just a few pages to focus on. The authors did a deep dive into what “Living Streets” are in a dense downtown context. Here’s their plan.

Living Streets are the “Living Rooms” of cities. More detailed descriptions of what a Living Street is (these descriptions could be used by City planners working respectfully on public outreach) are on page 44. The student report has valuable lists of possible design elements (p. 29) and cost estimates (p.67). These are all good public engagement tools.

Because Portland leaders are not ready to draw a ring around the whole downtown as a living streets area (they should!), this report highlights Opportunity Areas (p.21) that are basically smaller places that can be adapted to a car-lite approach because they have zero or few driveways. The Opportunity Areas also lead to dense residential and business destinations that people want to go to.

I am convinced, if areas downtown adopt a Living Streets approach, they will draw in more people, who will support more businesses, who will help more of Portland’s downtown thrive. Uncontrolled car driving and more cheap car parking does not make Downtown Portland more inviting.

The Downtown Portland Living Streets Plan narrows its focus to just four destination areas and goes into detail about how they could be designed and what it would cost to do demonstrations and permanent designs for each of them. These four areas: Old Town, Burnside Wedge, Extended Halprin, Transit Mall, were chosen with a robust data-focused process that’s worth a look (See page 64: Weighted Decision Matrix Criteria).

I believe any of these demonstration areas — all of them and more in fact! — will improve the quality of life for people who live in Portland, increase the city business tax base, and draw new visitors to a city where the dream is once again alive.

Thank you Cathy! You can find Cathy’s comment under the original post.

And I want to say a few words about the other comments in this thread. Once you get to the far side of the apocalyptic stuff at the beginning, this is a fascinating thread. Watch the video John links to; appreciate BlumDrew’s and J1mb0’s discussion of density and the Portland region; don’t miss qqq on the role of parks.

The thread sent me into a couple hours of thinking over my 20-plus-years relationship with downtown Portland. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with it, except to say that the present state of the city was a long time in the making. I’ve turned identifying the first sign that things were amiss into a personal parlor game.

Monday Roundup: The trouble with trucks, scooters, and traffic studies

Welcome to the week. Here are the most notable stories our writers and readers have come across in the past seven days…

A DOT ray of hope: Washington’s state DOT has a new requirement to close bike network gaps whenever they do a major project on an arterial highway — and it looks like it’s going to lead to much better bike infrastructure. (The Urbanist)

Get on the bus (to National Parks): Cars are strangling “America’s Best Idea” so here’s an idea: resurrect Greyhound buses as the de facto tourist transit service at National Parks and get the cars out of nature. (City Hikes)

A safety tax for trucks: Great to see the another big-city editorial board get comfortable with the idea of more regulation on large and heavy SUVs and trucks as a route toward safer streets (L.A. Times)

Profit over people: The reason there are so many trucks in America — despite their terrible safety and climate change impacts — is largely due to the simple fact that quirks in the law make them more profitable than smaller vehicles. Yay capitalism!! (Washington Post)

The Netherlands bike story: A well-reputed podcast has published a detailed history of bicycle activism in Amsterdam that relays the inspiring story of the fight against car-centric planning and its remarkable aftermath. (99% Invisible)

Unprotected: San Francisco is mourning the loss of a cycling champion who was killed by a drunk driver while bicycling last week. It happened in a location where activists had called attention to the need for protected bike lanes. (SF Gate)

Doubting studies: Traffic impact studies and the Trip Generation Manual are the bedrock of street planning decisions, but they’re far from scientifically sound. (Streetsblog USA)

Enforcement debate: This article about the correlation between fewer police doing traffic enforcement is about Seattle but it could have easily been written about Portland. (NPR)

Scooters in Paris: All eyes in the micromobility world are on Paris where a non-binding referendum result showed vast opposition to electric scooters as Mayor Anne Hidalgo says they don’t fit into the cities plans to support biking and walking. (Tech Crunch)

Lyft and bike share: When Lyft raised fees for Biketown in Portland, it underscored the peril of having our bike share system owned by a private corporation and renewed talks of a public takeover. Turns out we’re not the only city whose close ties to Lyft causes stress. (Curbed)

Thanks to everyone who shared links this week.

‘Greening Ambassadors’ will be hired to help east Portland battle climate change

We need much more than bigger hats. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
(Graphic: APANO)

As the impacts of climate change have stomped into Portland, it’s becoming very clear that east Portland bears the brunt. Because there are fewer parks, fewer trees, and more roads and other paved surfaces, our (now) annual heat waves scorch that part of our city.

Back in June, environmental nonprofit organization 350 PDX hosted a bike ride in east Portland to highlight the need for climate resiliency and the value of shade. When it comes to beating back a warming planet, green infrastructure is one of our greatest weapons.

Now there’s a really cool opportunity to work on-the-ground to bring more of that to east Portland.

The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) is looking for three people to serve as Greening Ambassadors. Richa Poudyal, an independent consultant who is helping APANO launch the program, told us this morning that, “The program is a chance for east Portlanders to create and implement climate resilient solutions for their own neighborhoods instead of perpetually waiting and relying on government institutions.”

Applicants must live east of 82nd Avenue, and be 14 years of age or older. If selected, ambassadors will work with APANO to organize a block party and a tree planting event this summer. Ambassadors will also work with APANO to flesh out their vision for what a green block will look like — and then figure out how to actually implement it.

The program will train ambassadors to be climate justice organizers, pay a $600 stipend, and provide $8,000 for each participant to spend on block-greening projects.

Deadline to apply is April 15th and the job is from May to December of this year.

You can apply online here.

Governor nominates senior Blumenauer advisor Tyler Frisbee to TriMet board

“We need a robust transit system if we are going to tackle climate change, help people move out of poverty and homelessness, and reinvigorate our downtown.”

– Tyler Frisbee, incoming member TriMet Board of Directors

(Photo: Frisbee at the National Bike Summit in Washington D.C. in 2012 by Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Tyler Frisbee is slated to be a member of the TriMet Board of Directors. Frisbee was nominated by Oregon Governor Tina Kotek late last month.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Frisbee served six years as a legislative assistant in the office of Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer and was a liaison for bike and transportation advocates. After leaving Blumenauer’s office in 2014, she served as policy director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition for one year. Following her stint at SFBC, she worked at Metro for nearly seven years on government affairs and policy development.

Last month, Frisbee returned to Rep. Blumenauer’s office with the new title of senior strategic advisor.

The nomination came just a few weeks after we reported on comments about TriMet Governor Kotek made in an interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting on March 3rd. “I don’t think we’ve paid enough attention to how TriMet is doing their business,” the governor said.

Frisbee (in striped shirt with mic) at a panel discussion about the future of transportation in 2017.

Besides her resume and track record around bicycling and progressive transportation policies, one of the most high-profile projects Frisbee worked on at Metro was the unsuccessful Get Moving 2020 transportation funding measure campaign. In 2017, Frisbee was one of three panelists (along with former PBOT Director Leah Treat and Chris Rall, a regional organizer with Transportation for America) at an event hosted by the Portland chapter of Young Professionals in Transportation. When the topic of choosing projects for the 2020 funding measure came up, Frisbee’s predilection for political compromise came through. “I don’t think we’re at the point of picking projects yet. And it’s not about a percentage [of which which modes get funded], it’s about what projects do you need to get people on board. You have to build the package for the yes votes.”

These are precarious times for TriMet as the agency continues to try and dig out of a major slump brought on by the Covid pandemic and years of bad headlines about system safety. While they’ve made significant service changes as part of their promising Forward Together plan and ridership is ticking up compared to the last few years (total boardings in February 2023 were up nearly 19% over the previous year), they are also on course to raise fares for the first time in a decade and the massive shift away from office commutes create ominous clouds for the future.

Reached via email this morning, Frisbee said she was honored to be nominated. “We need a robust transit system if we are going to tackle climate change, help people move out of poverty and homelessness, and reinvigorate our downtown,” she shared in an email. “I appreciate that Governor Kotek sees how connected all of these challenges are, and understands TriMet’s role in tackling them.”

If her nomination is approved by the Oregon Senate, Frisbee will serve a four-year term on the board that starts June 1st and runs through 2027.

Correction, 4/7 at 9:03 am: The original version of this story said Frisbee had been appointed to the TriMet Board. That was wrong. She has just been appointed and will have to be approved by the Senate before her appointment is official. I regret the error and any confusion it caused.

PBOT: Despite concerns, no major traffic impacts from Hillsdale Rose Lane project (yet)

Looking west on SW Capitol Hwy in Hillsdale Shopping Center. (Photo: PBOT)
(Source: PBOT)

When the Portland Bureau of Transportation announced a plan to construct a ‘Rose Lane’ through the Hillsdale Shopping Center on SW Capitol Highway, the news wasn’t universally well-received. In fact, there was so much pushback from some Hillsdale community members that several organizations — the Hillsdale Business and Professional Association (HBPA), the Hillsdale Neighborhood Association (HNA), Southwest Trails PDX (SWT) and Southwest Neighborhoods Incorporated — launched a petition to delay the project.

Despite the backlash PBOT pushed ahead and constructed the bus-and-turn (BAT) only lane on a one-mile stretch of SW Capitol Hwy from Barbur Boulevard to Bertha Court last fall. So, now that the paint on the Rose Lane has been dry for some months, how’s Hillsdale faring? According to a new PBOT traffic data monitoring report, the impact doesn’t appear to be as dramatic as some people feared.

Before the Rose Lane
A sign in Hillsdale demonstrating the pushback against the Rose Lane. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Hillsdale business owners and residents had a few concerns about this project. For one, some worried that the BAT lane would impact business access, and that its implementation would back up traffic in the area to such an extent that their shops would shut down “in a matter of months” (per the petition against the Rose Lane). People were also worried that the new traffic operations on Capitol Hwy would cause excessive traffic routing onto local neighborhood streets, and they argued that PBOT has made overstated assertions about how beneficial the Rose Lane would be for transit trip times on this corridor.

PBOT’s new report doesn’t comment on how well these local businesses are faring, but in December, BikePortland’s Lisa Caballero reported that Hillsdale businesses seemed to be doing quite well despite some claims to the contrary. The report does say that PBOT has “observed longer traffic queues, particularly during the PM Peak Hour westbound on SW Capitol Highway from SW Barbur to SW Sunset.” To remedy this, the bureau will be “advancing signal modifications to help mitigate this queuing.”

The report also states that local service streets only saw a minor uptick in both daily and peak hour vehicle volumes.

“Daily traffic volumes decreased on all monitored local streets except three, and those increases ranged between 25 and 31 additional vehicles per day…For local streets with increases of Peak Hour vehicle volumes, increases ranged between 3 and 14 additional vehicles during Peak Hours,” the report states. “While these changes are within expected standard fluctuations in daily volumes, we understand that people living on these streets may notice and feel a difference.”

Here are other takeaways from the report:

  • There have been no significant changes in speeding, when comparing 85th percentile speeds on arterial streets or local streets.
  • We have not observed changes to vehicle volumes or other patterns on arterials that trigger mitigation, but we will continue to monitor, collect data, and gather feedback from community stakeholders.
  • While daily vehicle volumes on arterials were lower, all decreases are within expected seasonal fluctuations in daily volumes. Daily traffic volumes decreased on all monitored major streets, with total daily volumes decreasing between 2 percent and 12 percent. Lower traffic volumes on major streets are typical during winter months, and all observed decreases are below or within expected seasonal adjustment factors ranging from 10 percent to 15 percent.
  • All local streets remain well below our preferred threshold of 1,000 vehicles per day, including streets that are not designated Neighborhood Greenways

PBOT says via the report they’ll work to reduce congestion with tools like signal timing and adjustments to lane markings. After these mitigation measures are completed, staff will go out for another round of data collection and release another report this summer.

The scope of this report didn’t include data about if the BAT lane is working to make transit trips faster — the ostensible purpose of the new bus lanes. The PBOT press release about the report states that “this project was designed to help buses bypass congestion on SW Capitol Highway, and it is expected to support bus speed and reliability as travel activity continues to grow into the future.” People who ride TriMet bus lines 39, 44, 45, 54, 56, 61, and 64 are all impacted by this project, but it’s unclear from the report if their travel times have been reduced.

When a project sets out to make non-car transportation faster, easier or more accessible, there may be some trade-offs for people driving cars, at least in the short-term. It would stand to reason that this is actually one of the main points of a project like this one: to encourage people to rethink their choice to drive single-occupancy vehicles.

You can read the full report here (PDF).

Family Biking: Reflections on my 2-year biking birthday

It’s been two years since our family embarked on this biking life adventure. I’m savoring the joy, happy memories, and growth that biking has brought into our lives. I’m smiling at the photos of our first early, nervous, excited rides around town. And to my husband, I’m adding a wink and a happy jab of “I told you so!” (since he didn’t think I’d actually ride a cargo bike with kids).

Biking with my kids has been the most fun life-change that I’ve made since facing down the challenges of motherhood. Being a stay-at-home parent can magnify the challenges, and it’s easy to feel stuck. Some parents find a way to refresh themselves by carving out “me-time,” but I have found it nearly impossible to do so consistently. What I really need is a consistent way to spend time with my children in a way that refreshes me. Think of it as, ”me-time” but with the kids in tow. 

Exercise, fresh air, and park visits have always provided that to some degree. But after four kids, walking to parks with a stroller and little legs is more of a drag, and loading kids into car seats is a least-favorite chore. While my older kids crave adventures on scooters or bikes, my younger kids still need to be carried. 

Happy Birthday to me!

That’s about where things stood two years ago, when I was fishing around the internet late one night, apparently feeling exactly like Emily Finch did, when she looked up “family bike” and famously found a bakfiets. When I searched how to bike with kids, BikePortland’s article on the amazing Finch mama popped up on my screen. Finch biked everywhere with her six young children. Re-reading that post today, I see how much I share in Emily’s experience, and I am filled with gratitude for BikePortland’s article on the mom who inspired me and showed me how it’s possible to bike as a family, even with many little ones. As Jonathan wrote in that piece:

A switch had flipped for Emily, and you could blame it on a bakfiets. “I was at a time in my life when something had to change,” she said, “When I saw that bike, I knew it. I said, ‘This is it. This is going to change my life.’” And it did.

Yes! That’s exactly it! Two years later, I still feel that way, every day I get on the bike. This bike has changed my life. I feel closer to my neighborhood and community. I have something I am looking forward to every day: a bike ride with my children. Or, as Emily explained to BikePortland:

Emily bikes for a simple and somewhat corny reason. It makes her happy….“I love my bike,” she insisted repeatedly during our conversation, “I really do. Because it’s changed my life. I can’t really explain it. In the end, my bike just brings me happiness.”

Yep. That’s it. It’s happy. Simple, joyful, happy.

So if you are the mama surfing the internet late at night, needing a change, and dreaming about biking with your children, or getting outside more, or spending less time in minivan prison, and you are wondering if the investment in a cargo bike is worth it: the answer is yes! I whole-heartedly encourage you to give it a try. A beautiful journey awaits. I do hope you’ll find a bike and start to ride with your children. I know it’s bold to say it, but it really might change your life. Or at least make it a little bit more fun, especially with the kids along for the ride.

Guest Opinion: Freeway fight moves to Salem and we need you!

(Inset photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

“This is the most significant opportunity for us to demonstrate to legislators across the state that Oregonians are eager to support good transportation investments that don’t bankrupt the state, don’t fry the planet, and don’t fill our communities with air pollution.”

– Chris Smith, No More Freeways

Written by Chris Smith, a co-founder of No More Freeways and member of the Just Crossing Alliance.

Fighting freeway expansion is a marathon, not a sprint, but right now we need to sprint to Salem.

BikePortland readers who have followed our freeway fights know that a decade ago we battled the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) to a standstill, only to have the freeway lobby shift their expansion efforts south to Rose Quarter. While ODOT is trying to find a design that satisfies multiple stakeholders (and fill a $1 billion funding hole), expansion advocates have revived the CRC with the Orwellian name of the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program (IBR).

The IBR team is more sophisticated than a decade ago; they’ve already spent about $10 million pushing a greenwashed their narrative that we have to replace this bridge before it collapses in an earthquake (and inflation drives the price tag up even further) while soft-pedaling the five miles and seven interchanges of freeway expansion that are not related to the seismic concerns of the existing span.

But our side has also gotten more sophisticated. No More Freeways is part of the 33-member Just Crossing Alliance (JCA) to make sure that an eventual bridge replacement is centered in environmental and climate justice.

The 33 JCA member organizations will be in Salem next week for a Transportation Day of Action on April 13th showing legislators there’s a more responsible path to ensure this bridge gets built to our community standards without bankrupting the state. We’ll be focusing on our Right Size, Right Now campaign with our SAFER platform:

  • Size Matters
  • Accountability
  • Fund Transit & Safe Bike, Walk, and Roll
  • Environmental Justice
  • Resilient to Earthquakes

JCA members want to see the existing bridge replaced, but only with a right-sized version that has excellent transit options and doesn’t include billions of dollars of wasteful spending on additional freeway interchange expansions. We fear that without significant oversight from the Oregon Legislature, ODOT and the IBR team will stumble forward with a bloated, massively oversized project that will once again fail to deliver a new bridge because of agency hubris, exorbitant cost overruns, and numerous forms of likely litigation related to the Coast Guard’s concerns and advocates’ insistence ODOT’s freeways pass basic scrutiny of environmental law. 

Virtually every major ODOT project in the past twenty years has gone substantially over budget, robbing the state of billions of dollars we need for other crucial statewide transportation investments. 

Why we need your support right now...

The author, Chris Smith, speaking against the precursor to the IBR project in 2007. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The current center of the battle is legislation to provide Oregon’s “down payment” of $1 billion on the $7.5 billion  project. The imaginative proposal from the Joint Transportation Committee: borrow it from future General Funds (the ones that pay for housing, education, health care) and future gas tax and vehicle registration fee revenue (when ODOT already says it cannot maintain the roads adequately). In other words, we’ll force our kids to pay for it, while neglecting to fund the basic road safety, climate, seismic and maintenance initiatives that we should pay for ourselves at present to prepare for our children’s future.

The JCA believes that the Oregon Legislature should honor their financial stewardship obligations and require ODOT to right-size this proposal. The legislature has the power of the pursestrings to put guardrails on this project and demand ODOT explore options like a lift bridge or a tunnel that would significantly reduce costs and project bloat, ensuring Oregon has the resources we need in the years ahead for the substantial investments in transit, passenger rail, street safety and maintenance across the state. This financial commitment from the state will allow ODOT to continue to pursue federal funding to assist with this project and keep the IBR on schedule without committing to the disastrously oversized project as currently proposed, along with its attentive cost overruns. 

This is the most significant opportunity for us to demonstrate to legislators across the state that Oregonians are eager to support good transportation investments that don’t bankrupt the state, don’t fry the planet, and don’t fill our communities with air pollution. 

We’re a people-powered campaign and we need you to join us. You can help by:

Many of us will be taking the Amtrak Bus leaving Union Station at 7:00 am on April 13th. Tickets still available – come ride down with us!

Pressure builds on Oregon lawmakers to pony up for safer urban arterials

Southeast 82nd at Foster. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
HB 3113 “Great Streets Bill” Hearing
— Thursday, 5:00 pm Joint Committee on Transportation
— Bill overview
— Hearing information

It’s finally time for Oregon lawmakers to consider a new pot of funding that would improve safety on main streets and orphan highways across the state.

In January 2022, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) launched a new program called “Great Streets.” It came as the agency faced growing pressure to speed up safety projects on urban arterial streets after two people were killed while walking across Northeast 82nd Avenue (an ODOT-owned highway) in separate collisions within two weeks of each other.

Those tragic deaths forced ODOT and their bosses on the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) to finally reckon with the boiling pot of outcry from local leaders who’ve warned of safety risks on these dangerous and notoriously deadly arterials for decades — and who feel Oregon’s vast spending on freeway megaprojects doesn’t reflect urgent community needs. As ODOT took steps to transfer ownership of 82nd to the City of Portland, they also realized they had to put more non-freeway money on the table in a show of good faith.

In March of last year, the OTC allocated $50 million from President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill to kickstart the Great Streets program. There is so much demand for non-freeway projects across the state that they received grant applications totaling $140,726,840 — over 400% of that $50 million. Those grants will be awarded later this fall and ODOT has said they will use the first tranche of funded as a “proof of concept” so they can refine the program for future disbursements.

The program is specifically meant to fund projects that, “improve safety and multimodal access on state highway corridors that also act as community main streets.” ODOT lists things like sidewalks, bicycle facilities, bus shelters, traffic calming devices, street trees, road diets, and crosswalks as eligible investments.

Now it’s the Oregon Legislature’s turn to step up and put more money into this pot. The question is: How much are they willing to spend?

There are two bills in the legislature that would seek to fill up the Great Streets coffers, and one of them will get its first public hearing tonight (4/6 at 5:00 pm) at the Joint Committee on Transportation.

What Great Streets funds can be spent on. (Source: ODOT)

House Representative Khanh Pham (D-SE Portland), a former community organizer who lives just off 82nd Avenue, is chief sponsor on House Bill 3516, which seeks $200 million out of the state’s General Fund (a $25 billion pot of personal and corporate income taxes) over a two-year period. There’s an nearly identical bill, HB 3113, sponsored by House Rep. and Joint Transportation Committee Co-Chair Susan McClain (D-Hillsboro) that leaves the funding amount blank.

HB 3113 is the one that will get a public hearing tonight, and the lobbying effort to make sure the amount is as high as possible has already begun.

“With an additional $100 funding in funding made possible via HB 3113, we can reduce the number of serious injuries and deaths on our most dangerous Orphan Highways while strategically investing in vibrant, safe, and sustainable main streets across Oregon.” reads a statement on a petition from The Street Trust. The nonprofit is working hard to turn out supporters of the bill. As of this morning over 300 Oregonians from 72 different zip codes have signed the petition.

There’s major support for this program in large part because Oregon’s State Highway Fund has constitutional restrictions about what it can be spent on (“exclusively for the construction, reconstruction, improvement, repair, maintenance, operation and use of public highways, roads, streets and roadside rest areas”). Money from the General Fund would give cities and counties much more flexibility to fund a wider array of projects.

Dan Huff, the city manager for the City of Mollala, a small town in Clackamas County about 30 miles south of Portland, wrote in his testimony for the bill that, “funding constraints limit our ability to focus on on… the safety, multimodal accessibility, equity, and climate mitigation enhancements that align with mutual state and city goals. HB 3113 would allow us to prioritize larger projects such as widening and access improvements for bikes/pedestrians on Highway 213.”

Michael Andersen, a senior housing and transportation researcher with the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit think tank, supports the bill because anything that reduces the need for car ownership, is an economic boon for the State of Oregon. “One of the biggest ways to reduce the cost of new buildings, with the fewest negative tradeoffs, is simply for their users to need fewer parking spaces,” he wrote in testimony submitted to the committee. “When the residents of a building or the customers of a store don’t need as many parking spaces, then all economic activity becomes cheaper and the associated space and money can be put to other, more profitable use.”

Details on tonight’s hearing.

Inaugural Bike Happy Hour recap and pics

Just another Wednesday? No! It was a bike party! (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Bike Happy Hour – All are Welcome!
— Every Wednesday 3-6 pm
— Rainbow Road – SE Ankeny & 28th
— Gorges Beer / Crema Coffee / Ankeny Tap & Table
— $2 off drinks (coffee & non-alcoholic too!)

The inaugural Bike Happy Hour was really fun and you should definitely swing by next week.

We helped get this event off the ground because the owner of Gorges Beer Co. and Ankeny Tap & Table — which are on either side of the Rainbow Road promenade on SE Ankeny and 28th — wanted to plant a flag as a bike-friendly business and wants to make this carfree plaza a more welcoming destination. We also wanted to do our part to create a vibrant and healthy bike scene in Portland.

Judging from the great turnout last night, we are well on the way to doing that!

So many smiling faces showed up (scroll down for pics!). A few folks brought their little kiddos, and everyone was in a fun and social mood. The conversations flowed as easily as our $2-off drinks (some folks walked over to Crema Coffee & Bakery to use their discount on hot drinks) and we hung out on Gorges’ nice raised patio. After the doom and gloom “bike decline” headlines it was reassuring to be around bike-minded people and to watch all the riders roll by on Ankeny.

Post-pandemic and with so many people working from home, there’s a strong need to socialize and connect in real life. And for several people I talked to last night, they miss their daily bike commute and are hungry for a reason to ride. Check out more pics below the jump…

Just a few of the folks who showed up. If you don’t see yourself, sorry! I wanted to snap everyone but wasn’t able to catch a few of you.

I saw a bunch of old friends, met several BikePortland readers for the first time, and was able to put a few commenter names to faces (thanks to Ted B for having everyone wear name tags!). I’m also thrilled because our wonderful server Una said it was the busiest Wednesday they’ve ever had. Bikes mean business, baby!

I want folks to realize this is not a BikePortland event! Yes we are organizing and promoting it, but it’s really for everyone. We just want the entire community to know that every Wednesday, from 3-6 pm you can stop into Gorges (or Ankeny Tap or Crema) and get cheap(er) drinks and bump into other riders. You can order from a full menu of great food too, and they’ll bring it right out to the patio (I recommend the Reuben and cole slaw, Taylor recommends the Smoldering Embers bloody mary beer).

I talked to one person who plans to invite their cycling team in the future and folks are already talking about using this as a meet-up spot for their Pedalpalooza rides this summer! Another cool thing about the space: There’s a small parking lot right next to the patio, and I realized last night it’s a natural spot to have a bike show-off area. Folks milled around the parked bikes and did test rides of each other’s bikes. As this event solidifies, we also have the option of using the upper floor event space at Ankeny Tap & Table for speakers, presentations, panels, live interviews, and so on. We’ll also move to that spot if the weather is bad and we need to get warm.

And if you were one of the many people who biked by and wondered what was going on, sorry it wasn’t more obvious. We will add more visual cues and signage in the future.

Hope to see you there next week. Or the week after that. Or the week after that. Every Wednesday, 3-6 pm on the Rainbow Road promenade. Tell your friends (or foes, because it’s healthy to talk to people who see things differently).

Thanks to everyone who came out!

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