Peter Loewi is a regular BikePortland.org reader, PDOT intern, and dedicated Veloshop Team member (he once had his mouth wired in pink to show his team colors!).
When he noticed a recent NY Times Travel article on Portland made no mention of bikes he decided to give them a piece of his mind…and they printed it!
The LDTMA (Lloyd District Transportation Management Association) recently held an open forum to discuss bike issues in the Lloyd District area. They invited several NE Precinct police officers and traffic division commander Bill Sinnott. During the Q&A session, someone asked to see a list of the most common bicycle infractions and the cost for each of them.
I followed up with Bill and he took the time to compile this nice list. While you read it, keep in mind that cops actually write very few tickets to cyclists each year (this will be changing in the future), but I wanted to publish this just so we’re all on the same page.
I’m down in Orange County visiting family and I won’t be back until Dec. 29th. I’ve only been here about 5 days now, but I already miss Portland. We’ve rented a mini-van and I’ve done more driving in the past few days than I have for the past 6 months. Everywhere I look there are rivers of cars…
Sam Adams has just posted a survey that allows you to weigh in on how you think the city’s transportation money should be spent. This is an exciting opportunity to cast your vote and let the folks at City Hall know how strongly you feel about the key role of bicycle access in the future of our city.
Read more over at Sam’s blog.
by Jessica Roberts, Metro Area Advocate for the BTA
I attended last night’s budget forum, hosted by Commissioner Sam Adams.
I’m pleased to say that bicycling was well represented. Over 30% of participants arrived by bike, and it was clear through the course of the evening that this was a crowd that loves riding a bike.
Chris Smith is full of great ideas lately. Earlier this month, he started working with the folks at KBOO radio to offer past and future episodes of the popular KBOO Bike Show as MP3s for our listening enjoyment. Now he’s gone and put together an aggregate site called “The Portland Bike Channel“.
There’s another new bike lane stencil that just hit Portland streets. This one was made to commemorate the University of Portland women’s soccer team on their NCAA championship victory. It lives on N. Willamette Blvd.
I ride by there all the time so I look forward to introducing myself.
[Thanks to Roger Geller for sending me this photo]
Some of you may remember that Joe Biel (founder of Microcosm Publishing) is working on a documentary about bike art. He was particularly interested in Portland’s whimsical bike lane characters.
I just heard from Joe that after a few meetings and phone calls he was given the opportunity to design and lay out his very own bike lane character. So here it is, courtesy of Joe Biel. It lives on NE 33rd, just past the Columbia Slough (by the DEQ).
To see more of Portland’s bike lane stencils, check out these photos.
A few months ago I was smitten with PDX airport because of their new and vastly improved bike access. After reading my post, several folks were inspired to ride to the airport to take advantage of the new bike lane and enclosed long-term bike parking facility.
However now all that has changed. A few riders scoped out the facility in advance of a recent flight and were dismayed to find it is now locked with a sign that says it’s only for airport employees. I went and read the original press release (PDF) and sure enough, this was the plan all along. I must have used the facility before it was finished being built.
The Pedalpalooza craziness has already begun…and it’s only December. Check out the new interactive feature over on the Shift website. You can make the bike fun action figures say anything you want.
Chris Smith has posted PDFs and summaries of the presentations from the PSU Traffic and Transportation class. Several of them are bike-related and they provide great insight and ideas about how to improve biking conditions in Portland.
The Southeast Precinct of the Portland Police Bureau have started a bike theft awareness campaign.
Officers have been standing on the Hawthorne Bridge in the early morning and passing out forms for cyclists to fill out and return to them. According to one cyclist, who was stopped last Tuesday at 6:30 AM, the form asks for your driver’s license number, name, address, phone number and date of birth. It also asks for a thorough description of your bicycle including the approximate value and serial number.