BikePortland

Beware of a dangerous bump as you approach Blumenauer Bridge

Note: I’m well aware that some Portlanders (especially some who work for the City of Portland) think that I complain too much. I understand why folks think that, and I totally understand why. I’m also not ashamed of it. I think that’s part of the important role BikePortland plays in this community: To point out stuff that isn’t as good as it should be in hopes of making it better. Sometimes things just need to be said, even if it’s a downer. So here goes…

The very first time I rode across the new Blumenauer Bridge and went over the curb ramp transition from the bridge to the street on the southern end I was really disappointed when my bike and body went “kerplunk!” The bump is just too severe.

Here’s a video from a while back where I rode over the bump. You can hear it jostle my bike:

As soon as I rode it the first time I was shaking my head that we spent $14 million or so on this amazing new bridge, only to give it this dangerous and uncomfortable bump. That was several weeks ago, and I chose to not saying anything publicly because I didn’t want to rain on the big parade of excitement and enthusiasm. As soon as I did, there would have been (and likely will be now) a chorus of critics saying “those cyclists are such complainers!” or “that BikePortland guy is always mad at something” or “Come on, Jonathan that’s a tiny thing. Look at this great new bridge and be happy!”.

So I stayed silent.

Then last night I saw that someone I know hit the bump and had a really bad crash because of it (photo of aftermath at right). The person, a very experienced rider who knows the route and location well, had rented a Biketown and was headed north on 7th when they hit the bump and flew off their bike. They suffered lacerations on their ribcage and fingers and got pretty banged up. Luckily they had no serious injuries.

I should have spoken out sooner about this! I want everyone to know about this hazard.

Until it gets fixed by the city (they know about it and I assume a crew will address it soon), be extra careful as you approach the south side. The big bump is on the driveway as you go from the street to the bridge sidewalk/path. It’s more severe going northbound, but your speeds are likely a bit slower due to the incline. However it also requires attention going south.

And for anyone that has crashed on the bump, I’m sorry for not saying something sooner.

UPDATE, 1:21 pm: PBOT has announced they will fix the bump next week. See Tweet below…

Attention #pdxbikes #pdxtraffic: We will be modifying the southern curb of the #BlumBridge beginning next week. Please use caution and observe the BUMP signage in the interim. We anticipate the modifications will take approximately two days to allow for concrete to cure. pic.twitter.com/JAST5REOG2
— Portland Bureau of Transportation (@PBOTinfo) August 11, 2022

Weekend Event Guide: Swap Meet, Harry Styles, Bridge Pedal and more

Time to get ready for the weekend. As you make plans, consider grabbing a Gorge Pass. It’s just $40 for unlimited rides for you and your bike on any of the Columbia River Gorge transit shuttles. Find bike routes and custom itineraries at GorgePass.com/bikes.

Friday, August 12th

Riding Up That Hill – 6:00 pm at Laurelhurst Park (SE)
Inspired by the classic Kate Bush song that’s enjoying a renaissance of late, this ride will go from Laurelhurst Park to the Skidmore Bluffs and along the way you’ll learn the finer points of the dance. More info here.

Monster Ride – 7:30 pm at Multnomah County Multicultural Center (SE)
If you’re looking for an excuse to dress up like a monster and ride around town, this is the event you’ve been waiting for! More info here.

Saturday, August 13th

Bicycle Swap Meet – 9:00 am to 2:00 pm at Chris King HQ (NW)
A good, ol’ fashioned swap meet where you’re sure to find some gems. Hosted by Chris King so you know there will be some super nice stuff to be had. More info here.

Music for an Adaptive Bike Ride – 10:00 at Adaptive Biketown HQ near OMSI (SE)
A bike ride hosted by Cassie Wilson inspired by the music of Harry Styles? Yes! Join The Street Trust and for a ride that will open up your eyes to Harry’s wonderful tunes and to people with disabilities who love riding bikes as much as you do. More info here.

North Portland in Motion Ride – 10:30 am at St. Johns Plaza (N)
One of a series of rides led by a Portland Bureau of Transportation planner that will give you a real-life look at the projects being considered in the North Portland in Motion plan. Bring your open mind and utopian vision of cycling on the peninsula! More info here.

Sunday, August 14th

Bridge Pedal – All day on all the downtown bridges
It’s the big one! The 26th annual Bridge Pedal is your only chance to bike on the big bridges like Marquam and Fremont with thousands of other people. I plan to be there so look for the dorky dude with a microphone if you want to be interviewed! More info here.

Clue Ride – 5:30 pm at Revolution Hall (SE)
It’s another interesting ride in the theater-and-costume genre. If you liked the Big Lebowski Ride or Bike Play, this is right up your alley. This time, ride leaders and their friends will perform skits dressed in old-timey garb and riders will have to guess whodunnit. Prizes at the end. More info here.

Have fun out there this weekend! And remember to check out the Gorge Pass and thank them for supporting our work.

CORRECTION, 8/12 at 8:57 pm: This post initially had the North Portland in Motion Ride under Sunday. It is on Saturday. I regret any confusion this may have caused.

Oregon Humanities Pedalpalooza ride tells Portland’s ‘civic love’ stories

Given all the rumors of Portland’s downfall, it can be hard to remember there are so many people who love this city and actively work to make it a better place for everyone. Oregon Humanities wanted to highlight some of the ways people show their love for Portland, and what better way than a Pedalpalooza ride?

Last night, I joined the Oregon Humanities “Civic Love” ride, intended to show off how Portlanders have demonstrated “love for society, expressed through a commitment to the common good.” Oregon Humanities Program Manager Rozzell Medina led the ride, guiding a couple dozen people to several sites representative of this ethos. Throughout the evening, we heard from people who show their civic love for Portland in different ways, together forming an ecosystem of people who care about this city and the people who live here and use diverse tactics to make change.

The ride began at Lovejoy Fountain Park downtown. From there, we headed a few blocks west to a plaza at Portland State University near the headquarters of North Star Civic Foundation, an entrepreneurial foundation that works to encourage bold civic leadership. North Star’s Executive Director Caitlin Baggott Davis shared her thoughts on how to best demonstrate civic love and overcome what she called “civic distress” – a problem currently ailing many Portlanders.

The antidote, Baggott Davis said, is civic friendship, which is cultivated while working with other people to advocate for societal change.

“Civic friendship is the jam. It’s how you bring together people across different experiences to share knowledge and a vision of what the city could look like,” she said.

Baggott Davis published an op-ed in the Portland Tribune earlier this year expanding on her view, essentially calling on Portlanders to be the change they want to see in the city. This was a key theme of the ride: instead of falling into despair, why not help?

Caitlin Baggott Davis, executive director of North Star Civic Foundation

Next, we rolled north to Skidmore Fountain near the Saturday Market to learn about Street Books, a local bike-powered mobile library bringing books to people living outside. This site is where founder Laura Moulton met one of her most valued Street Books collaborators, Ben Hodgson, when he visited the library cart while he was homeless. (Since then, Moulton and Hodgson have cowritten and published a book about the mobile library.)

Moulton said she has found a lot of value in being able to go out into Portland’s streets and use the power of books and bikes to reach people who are rarely included in conversations about how our city works. Now that Street Books has been a beloved city institution for some time, Moulton said she is able to use the platform to advocate for larger changes.

“We’re in a position to be able to remind people that everyone needs a seat at the table. Everyone deserves to participate in deciding what makes a place great,” Moulton said.

For the last part of the ride, the group headed across the Steel Bridge to the Rose Quarter. On the way, we were treated to the beautiful views of the Willamette River at dusk on a summer evening. This kind of natural beauty might be commonplace to Portlanders, but it never gets boring, and it’s something that most everyone who lives here can agree on.

At the Rose Quarter, Albina Vision Trust Board Chair Rukaiyah Adams joined us to talk about how civic love can help us overcome some of the biggest blights on this city’s history.

The Albina Vision Trust advocates for renewing Portland’s historically Black Albina district that was largely decimated with the construction of I-5 and the Rose Quarter. Irreversible damage was done when the city razed houses occupied by Black Portlanders to clear space for the Veterans Memorial Coliseum and the freeway, and the testament to that destruction is still very much intact.

“We essentially destroyed the homes of Black veterans to build a monument to white veterans,” Adams said. “For Portland, this is the equivalent of a Robert E. Lee statue.”

However, Adams said she remains optimistic. She said we can’t overlook the flaws of our city and we have to be honest about the past, but we also need to find some way to move forward.

“The way we express love is by telling the truth,” Adams said. “We have to find a way to work together to love each other and to express love in urban design.”

If the idea of embracing civic love sounds overwrought to you, just remember you may be doing it already. Whether we say it outright or not, we show optimism and hope in what this city could look like every time we get on a bike. Though this ride expressed it more directly, I believe every Pedalpalooza ride is a civic love ride.

Job: Executive Director – Salmonberry Trail Foundation

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Job Title

Executive Director

Company / Organization

Salmonberry Trail Foundation

Job Description

SALMONBERRY TRAIL FOUNDATION
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR position description
August 3, 2022

The mission of the Salmonberry Trail Foundation 501(c)3 is to build a world-class recreational trail that enriches the Oregon outdoor experience for all. When completed, the Salmonberry Trail will provide safe transportation, contribute to community health and wellness, encourage forest education and recreation, and facilitate cultural and historic preservation and interpretation.
The Executive Director in collaboration with the Board of Directors and strategic partners will:
• Build a financially viable and sustainable organization.
• Marshall the resources to fund and build an 87-mile non-motorized, multi-use trail along the old Port of Tillamook Railroad rail corridor from the valley to the coast.
• Support local economies through new economic opportunities along the corridor.
• Improve and increase access to public lands for a wide range of users and communities.
• Maintain and improve the sensitive river and coastal environments, while preserving the Trail’s right-of-way.
• Preserve, interpret and share the Salmonberry Trail’s cultural, natural, and historic significance.
The Executive Director is responsible for implementing the overall strategic direction, leadership, staffing, and administration. The position requires spirited leadership, a passion for the mission, and building deeply collaborative relationships. Other key duties include fundraising, marketing, and community outreach. The position reports to the Board of Directors.

Strategic Priorities:
Maintain excellent board relations. Forge an effective partnership with board members on Mission, Strategy, Evaluation and Budget. Be proactive, consistent, professional, timely and accurate when communicating with all board members.
Build trail. Lead a team that will raise funds and enlist support for building sections of trail in Washington and Tillamook counties. Partner with county, regional and state project managers on the land use planning process, providing input for technical reports, and the sharing of information. Proactively communicate with agency and community partners.
Grow a community of supporters. Build support for the Trail. Work closely with the Salmonberry Trail Intergovernmental Agency “STIA”, Tillamook and Washington County commissioners, Port of Tillamook managers, Department of Forestry, Parks and Recreation, ODOT, Metro, elected Senators and Representatives, and others. Spearhead volunteer events and grow the volunteer base. Show gratitude by thanking donors and volunteers. Celebrate and communicate successes. Represent the Foundation at public forums, foster good relations with communities and homeowners adjacent to trail. Guide web and marketing communication specialists to keep the story of Salmonberry Trail alive.
Secure funding from diversified sources to support organizational growth and build trail. Create and implement a fundraising strategy that includes individuals, businesses, foundations, and public sources to support organization growth and provide matching funds for infrastructure proposals. Create and manage a development team and fundraising operations. Accurately manage data in CRM system.
Develop organizational capacity to support growth. In-line with an approved budget, increase organizational capacity to deliver on current commitments and build toward future. Manage organizational operations including hiring, training, retention of competent, qualified staff. Step-up to and address performance situations as needed with a fair and professional performance review process. Evenly apply the policies and procedures in the Employee Handbook.

Professional qualifications:
• A history of transparent and high integrity leadership.
• Five or more years senior nonprofit management experience.
• Experience and skill working with a Board of Directors.
• High level strategic thinking and planning.
• Comfortable in an entrepreneurial environment.
• Ability to effectively communicate the organization’s mission to various audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to oversee and collaborate with staff.
• A history of successfully generating new revenue streams and improving financial results.
• Active fundraising experience. Excellent donor relations skills and understanding of private and public funding communities.
• Demonstrated success in establishing relationships with individuals and organizations.
• Solid organizational abilities, including planning, delegating, program development and task management.
• Strong financial management skills, including budget preparation, analysis, decision making and reporting.
• A bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Strong work ethic.
• Bilingual a plus.

Compensation & Benefits
• Base salary $90k-$110k, DOE.
• Health and other benefits.
• Remote work & Flexible schedule.
• Work/Life balance encouraged.

How to Apply

Send us a message at jobs@salmonberrytrail.org to get started. We look forward to hearing from you.

Why public transit is part of our family life

Disclaimer: Before I share our family transit adventures let me acknowledge my privilege: taking public transit is a choice for us. We have enough money to fund our old minivan and a typical driving life (or at least we did, before gas and food prices took a jump.) Many people don’t have a choice. They schlepp kids and groceries via transit (or on foot) because they can’t afford a car and gas, or a disability makes them unable to drive, or they’re immigrants without papers or licenses. For plenty of folks, public transit use is a necessity born from a lack of privilege. Riding the bus with young children isn’t a sacrificial chosen “adventure” it’s just a regular chore, like washing dishes or changing diapers. I want to acknowledge these public-transit families first, because in an absolutely unglorified way, they are out there riding transit every day, while I am merely making some first attempts on occasion.

That being said, I’m going to share about these privileged transit rides because I think mass transit use is better for society — but shifting car-driving Americans from their personal vehicles to public buses and railways will require a significant change in the habits of those who can make this drive-or-ride choice.

If we’re going to reduce cars on the road (and make walking and biking better for everyone), it’s people like me that need to make the change. We could drive, but will we choose to ride?

“It can be hard to hold on to the ideal of making a better world when baby’s diaper just exploded, the toddler spilled a full cup of juice, mommy is out of coffee – and we’re late!”

So, why make that choice?

If you’re reading this, you can probably already make a long list of reasons, so I’ll just say that choosing to use public transit can be one of those little daily acts to make society a better place; a drop in the bucket, like turning out the lights, taking shorter showers, or recycling instead of sending trash to the landfill. It’s a small impact if only one person does it, but on a grand scale — if we can convince way more people to do it — the impact for the greater good would be significant.

That’s a nice ideal, but it can be a hard sell for a parent of little ones. The family needs to go someplace today, and their transportation choice will have an immediate impact on mama’s sanity and schedule. It’s one thing to take the bus as a solo work commuter, but quite another to wrangle multiple children, stroller, diaper bag, and sippy cups in time to make the train. It can be hard to hold on to the ideal of making a better world when baby’s diaper just exploded, the toddler spilled a full cup of juice, mommy is out of coffee – and we’re late!

Despite the challenges, using mass transit is good for us, not only in a hoped-for-ideal, but also for our own family life directly.

One of the biggest benefits is that I’m preparing my children to be independent transit users, which will give them the means to get themselves to their own activities. While they are little, this feels a lot like having the toddlers “help” with household chores: it’s not immediately helpful, but building such habits in our children will pay off in the near future. It will be life-changing for our kids to be able to get themselves to their own activities! As I have written before, I don’t want to spend every afternoon for the next decade driving kids all over town to their activities (nor could I, with five children and one driver). I want them to be able to get around on their own (and free myself from taxi duties — a win-win!).

Still, in our current phase of family life (with five kids ages 8 through infant), using public transit is hard. It feels like a sacrifice. It takes longer and is significantly less flexible than driving our personal vehicle. The normal trials of transit use, like missing an hourly bus with cranky toddlers in tow, feels like a disaster. Yet therein lies one of the more important benefits of our family’s public transit journey: we are living out our values in a way that is sometimes hard and requires us to give up our personal convenience and privilege. Isn’t this one of the more important lessons we want to teach our children?

Every time we use transit instead of driving, we are teaching our children and ourselves how to make choices based on what we value, rather than what is most easy, comfortable, or commonplace. We can choose the public good over personal convenience. When using transit really feels like a sacrifice, I hold on to this: doing what is hard, but right, is one of the most important lessons I will teach my children. If riding the bus can help me to teach that lesson, then I can try to think of the sacrifices involved as little gifts to all of us.

With that in mind, we are setting a small goal to begin exploring our community via bus and light rail. We have plans to replace a weekly car trip with a MAX ride. I’m nervous about committing to this, but our modest biking goals really changed our family’s transportation lifestyle for the better. Over the past year, we’ve replaced most of our short car trips with bike rides. We are happier and healthier. We’re more connected to our local community, and we’re closer as a family. I’m hopeful that our modest public transit goals will help us grow even more, and I’m eager to see where those bus and rail lines take us.

Has your family made the shift from cars to transit? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a note in the comments or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you. Happy (carfree) travels.