4/25: Hello readers and friends. I'm still recovering from a surgery I had on 4/11, so I'm unable to attend events and do typical coverage. See this post for the latest update. I'll work as I can and I'm improving every day! Thanks for all your support 🙏. - Jonathan Maus, BikePortland Publisher and Editor
We’ve done this too many times before. Someone is killed. We grieve. We pressure the city to do more. We show up on the street with signs and candles and flowers. Speeches are made.
But this time there was something different. The City of Portland acted before we even showed up.
It wasn’t until our community was faced with losing the Alpenrose Velodrome for good that many people realized just how much love exists for this facility.
We recently heard from Jim Graves of the Portland Velodrome Committee and Oregon Bicycle Racing Association Membership Director/Alpenrose Velodrome Director Jen Featheringill about what’s in store for 2019.
After kicking off about a year ago, the Portland Bureau of Transportation has released a major piece of their Northwest in Motion Plan (NWIM).
In the past week I’ve heard about two incidents that illustrate an often overlooked reason why we need more dedicated, protected bikeways in the central city.
The kids know.
With the Easter bunny hopping onto the scene so has arrived biking season! Like myself, you may feel that biking season never closed to begin with, but I still like celebrating the first big Kidical Mass PDX kids-of-all-ages family bike ride of the year on Easter. Also, with Pedalpalooza rides appearing hourly and Sunday Parkways details filtering in, bikey things really are picking up all of a sudden.
Our “season opener” was the biggest one yet with about 300 participants. We enjoyed cool but dry weather and had a wonderful egg hunt at the end. We even made the local TV news! Scroll down for some fun photos and the video coverage from KOIN…
A woman was killed on Friday afternoon while walking across NE Broadway. Local advocates have now planned a memorial event to highlight the inherent dangers at this section of Broadway and encourage the City of Portland to do more to mitigate them.
Bicycles and cars are vastly different types of vehicles and our laws should do more to reflect that.
That’s just one of many reasons I strongly support Senate Bill 998 currently working its way through the Oregon Legislature. The bill would allow bicycle users to treat stop signs and flashing red signals as yield signs (also known as “Idaho Stop” for a similar law on the books in Idaho for over 30 years). In other words, you’d only have to come to a complete when it was necessary due to oncoming traffic or some other safety-related condition. The law does not allow dangerous behavior and specifically requires bicycle users to slow to a “safe speed.”
As per usual, this reasonable concept causes many people to freak out. I went on local TV to try and calm some nerves and explain why I support the bill.
This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by the Oregon Coast Gravel Epic, coming to beautiful Waldport on May 4th.
I hope all your weekend dreams came true! Judging by the photos I’ve seen it looks like the spring weather was loved by all.
NOTE: Please see updates at end of this story. It was originally reported as a bicycle fatality; but we have since confirmed that the woman killed was walking prior to being hit.
Portland Police say someone has been hit and killed in the area of NE Grand Avenue and Broadway.
The rising number of people using cars on our neighborhood streets has many negative impacts. Among them are more crashes caused by people who make dangerous moves out of frustration, selfishness, impatience, or all of the above. One way to combat this is to constrain the driving environment so people have fewer choices and are forced to make safer movements.
And that’s exactly what the Portland Bureau of Transportation wants to do on North Michigan Avenue at Skidmore.
Here’s something new: the Portland Bureau of Transportation is set to invest $1.6 million on an arterial in east Portland before it gets on their list of high crash streets.
