BikePortland

Springwater development may nix trail improvement

[Click to enlarge]

SK Northwest, a seller of boats and personal watercraft currently located on NE Sandy Blvd, has filed an application to construct a new building on the Willamette just south of OMSI between SE Caruthers and SE 4th Ave. (see map). In their application to the Bureau of Development Services the company has requested an exemption from an existing greenway trail easement that runs across the property on the riverfront.

According to a representative from Portland Parks and Recreation, SK Northwest has “several concerns with the trail and trail users.” These concerns likely stem from the fact that they want to build a new dock to store their boats and they don’t want to deal with trail users coming onto their property.

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Six Portland Police officers from the Traffic Division recently underwent a comprehensive, 40-hour pedestrian and bicycle crash investigation course offered by the Institute of Police and Technology Management (IPTM) in Jacksonville Florida.

According to IPTM literature, the course addressed the special dynamics involved in pedestrian and bicycle traffic crashes. From reaction times to victim injury analysis to environmental factors. In addition to classroom instruction, the officers participated in staged crash situations that gave them hands-on experience.

Fat Tire Farm is hosting the premier of “Roam”, a new movie from The Collective, a group of filmmakers, photographers and mountain bikers from British Columbia.

Far from a couple of riding buddies with a camcorder, these guys do amazing work. They do for mountain bikes what the BBC does for nature, combining stunning visuals with innovative camera techniques and an engaging soundtrack.

Hard to believe it’s been a year since my first post.

740 posts later I want to say thanks to all of you for your support and feedback.

Because of your participation, this site has had a real impact on the bike scene. Here are just some of things we’ve accomplished in the past 12 months:

[Wyatt and Lauren
have reason to smile.]

Lauren Donohue and Wyatt Baldwin of byCycle.org just released a very cool feature of their Trip Planner that lets webmasters and bloggers copy/paste a bit of HTML code into any website to give visitors street-by-street, bicycle-friendly directions.

It’s just like Mapquest or Google Maps…for bikes!

You can give this a try over in my sidebar right now. Or, if you’re a webmaster or blogger, here’s the page with the code you’ll need to put it on your own site.

[Karla Keller makes her case,
under the watchful eyes of Evan Manvel
and Mark Ginsberg.]

Karla Keller, ODOT’s Maintenance Manager for Portland, brought along all sorts of stuff for the presentation of her proposal to ban bicycles on metro area highways. She passed out 18 pages of impressive, full-color aerial photos, maps, and internal memos. But unfortunately she forgot the most important thing of all…sensible justification for her proposal.

You’ve seen the classy flyers, you’ve read about it on your favorite blogs, your friends keep talking about it. It’s Filmed by Bike, a smattering of bike film shorts (some of them made right here in Portland) coming to you this Friday night at the Clinton Street Theater.

This is the little film fest that could; growing from 80 people its first year to an expected crowd of over 500 this year. For Festival Director Ayleen Crotty, it’s all about the filmmakers. She says that, “60% of them put their pieces together just for this festival, and there are always a handful of submissions from people who had never before made a movie.”

The bike move crew was it again today…and this time, it was all about puppets. Bruce Orr and Carla Forte are local artists and puppeteers who needed to move their stuff (which included a bunch of silly puppet props) from the Mississippi area to St. Johns.

The puppets definitely added to the usual silliness and fun. Here’s a few notes and links to photos:

I think there were about 25 people (here’s a fun group photo).
Two reporters showed (here’s the Oregonian story).
Sara Stout showed up with her massive, green sidecar-go bike. She brought along a game of tennis, a few harmonicas, and her lovely dog, Betty.

[Posted by “Wendy”]

If anyone comes across a new silver Brentwood KHS bike, serial #441162203 please contact me. If you bought it recently, not knowing it was stolen, I will buy it back from you. It was perfect for me, good fit and size.

So sad.

iflourish_art@yahoo.com

Citizen initiated complaint results in citation

Lawyer Ray Thomas must be very proud. Back in January I posted about a new campaign he was promoting that would take advantage of existing statutes to empower cyclists to initiate a legal process to bring motorists to justice even if the motorist wasn’t cited at the scene of the crash.

[Clarence at work]

I love it when Clarence Eckerson of BikeTV comes to town. The NYC resident, whose heart belongs to Portland bike fun, showed up at Breakfast on the Bridges last Friday and put together this fun and inspiring movie. It features interviews with volunteers and bike commuters who stopped for the free pastries and coffee.

Far beyond just documenting bike fun, Clarence does amazing work with his camera. He is the videographer for The Open Planning Project, a NYC-based non-profit with a mission to “build technology to enhance the role of the citizen in democratic society.” He’s currently in Portland researching an upcoming production about the history of the Mt. Hood Freeway.

[This is sort of long so if you can attend the meeting on Friday please scroll down for time and location.]

This Friday the Oregon Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee (OPBAC) will meet in Portland (see agenda and location below). One of the topics on the agenda is a proposed bicycle ban on metro area freeways. This proposal came out of nowhere and quickly earned disapproval from the BTA and super-lawyer Ray Thomas.

Springwater development may nix trail improvement

Six officers get certified in bicycle crash investigation

MTB movie to premier at Clinton St. Theater

BikePortland.org turns one!

Major development in byCycle’s Trip Planner

Bike ban proposal back to the drawing board

Filmed by Bike coming this Friday

Puppet parade bike move

Stolen: Silver KHS

Citizen initiated complaint results in citation

BikeTV does B on B and comes to local TV

Update on highway bike ban proposal

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From the Archives

Advocate has near-death experience on Barbur, a street he’s pushing to make safer