The Monday Roundup: Distracting dashboards, no more signals, straight talk from L.A., and more

This week’s Monday Roundup is brought to you by Chris King Precision Components who would like to invite you to their upcoming Open House and Builder’s Showcase this Saturday, October 14th.

Welcome to the week. I had a wonderful time exploring Paris, the French countryside, and Amsterdam over the past few weeks (photos and thoughts coming soon!). It looks like the site was in great hands while I was away. Let’s hear it for guest editor Michael Andersen, comment moderator Ted Timmons, and contributors Steph Routh, Kate Johnson, Leah Benson (on Instagram), Kiel Johnson, and James Buckroyd.

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Ongoing collection for the homeless

We make regular runs to the local homeless shelter with clean socks & underwear, clothes, bedding, and small personal hygiene items (toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc.).

Clean socks, especially, are always needed. (They don’t need to be new, just hole-free…and clean.)

Drop anything you have to donate at Rivelo any day we’re open.

Thursdays and Fridays, 11-6. Saturdays and Sundays,10-5.

401 SE Caruthers Street at Water Avenue near the Tilikum Crossing

Job: Mechanic/sales – Splendid Cycles

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Job Title *
Mechanic/sales

Company/Organization *
Splendid Cycles

Job Description *
Splendid Cycles is Hiring!
Are you in the bike biz to help people? Do you love working on quality bikes? Need a low stress, high-reward work environment? If you answered yes to those questions and you’re a mechanic with at least 5 years of bike shop experience, we’d like to meet you.

We’re an industry leader in cargo and electric assist bikes looking for skilled and experienced mechanics. We have one immediate full time position available; and one part time position opening in 2018.

We offer competitive wages, benefits, humane hours, no-drama work environment, and the best customers ever.

Consult our website for a more detailed job description: http://www.splendidcycles.com/about-us/employment-opportunity/

How to Apply *
send a resume and cover letter to barb@splendidcycles.com

Beyond freeway expansion, here’s how local streets would change with I-5 Rose Quarter project

A visual summary by ODOT of the surface-street changes proposed in the I-5 Rose Quarter Project.
(Images: ODOT and Google Street View)

When they explain their support for spending hundreds of millions to add two new on/off freeway lanes and freeway shoulders to Interstate 5 at the Rose Quarter, Portland city leaders have a go-to answer: better surface streets.

It’s true, Mayor Ted Wheeler conceded last month, that more freeway throughput at this interchange would do “very little to arrest congestion.” Instead, more driving is likely to fill any new space that might open up on the freeway, ultimately leaving cars and trucks as jammed as before (though possibly elsewhere on the road system).

But from Portland’s perspective, Wheeler said, the $450 million Rose Quarter project is “mostly a bicycle and pedestrian play.”

OK. So we wanted to know what, exactly, are taxpayers getting in this location that would improve biking and walking?

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Two-week Morrison Bridge closure begins October 9

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Via Multnomah County press release:

Two-week Morrison Bridge closure begins October 9

The Morrison Bridge will be closed to all traffic for as long as two weeks starting Monday, October 9 at 12:01 a.m. During the closure a contractor will pour concrete for the west leaf of the lift span deck and balance the counterweight to support the heavier new deck. A two-inch concrete layer will be poured into the top of the new steel grate deck, to provide better traction. The bridge closure is needed because vibrations from traffic can damage new concrete while it cures, or hardens.

The closure will impact motor vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians. The bridge will reopen earlier than Sunday, October 22 if the work is completed ahead of schedule. The project is nearly complete. During the week of October 23 there will be lane closures at off-peak hours while the contractor removes construction equipment. All six traffic lanes will be open by October 31.

The two-week bridge closure will impact traffic on nearby roads and bridges. Details of the traffic plan include:
Ramps between the Morrison Bridge and Interstate 5 and Interstate 84 will be closed, except for the ramp from the Morrison Bridge westbound to I-5 north.
The closure will increase congestion on the Hawthorne and Burnside bridges during commute hours. Commuting drivers may want to avoid the drawbridges by:
Using the Marquam and Fremont bridges westbound in the morning to access downtown
Exiting downtown via Interstate 405 to the Marquam and Fremont bridges to access I-5 and I-84 in the afternoon
Due to construction that has closed two lanes on the Broadway Bridge, the bridge is not recommended as an alternate route.
Motorists can also access I-84 eastbound at NE Grand Avenue and NE Everett Street or NE Irving and NE 16th Ave.
Access to I-5 north on the eastside is from the ramp at NE Broadway and N Williams Ave.
I-5 south traffic can access the onramp to Highway 99E/U.S. 26.
Commuters may want to consider using the MAX Light Rail System to get into and out of downtown during the closure. Go to trimet.org to plan your trip or call TriMet’s Rider Support team at 503-238-RIDE (7433), between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. seven days a week, for trip planning help. TriMet bus and Portland Streetcar riders should expect traffic congestion in the central east side and plan extra time for their trips.

During the closure Hamilton Construction will complete the concrete pour, remove scaffolding, and demobilize from the west pit on the lift span. The contractor will also balance the west leaf, since the new deck is much heavier than the old deck made of fiber reinforced polymer. A number of components are being upgraded to accommodate the heavier deck.

Depending on the weather this month, the contractor may need to close the Morrison Bridge for one weekend in spring 2018 to apply the final overlay coat to the lift span deck. The overlay resembles asphalt and provides a smooth ride with good traction.

Multnomah County maintains the Morrison Bridge and five other Willamette River bridges. The county has coordinated planning for the Morrison Bridge closure with the Portland Bureau of Transportation through the Get Portland Moving effort to limit the effects of construction projects in the right-of-way on the general public. The agencies are coordinating construction of the Multnomah County Central Courthouse and PBOT’s paving project on SW Main St. to minimize traffic impacts.

For more information, visit www.multco.us/bridges, or follow @MultcoBridges on Twitter.

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Interview: Samantha Taylor on e-bikes, helmets and looking good by bike

(Photo courtesy Samantha Taylor)

This is the sixth installment of our Women’s Bike Month interview series written by Steph Routh. This content is sponsored by the Community Cycling Center and Gladys Bikes.

Samantha Taylor learned how to ride a bike when she was a kid, but cycling didn’t become a part of her life until last August, when she saw the job opening for Development Manager at the Community Cycling Center. She lives in the New Columbia neighborhood near The Hub and, in her own words, “put two and two together and realized that the Cycling Center was behind The Hub.”

“Cycling was never a mode of transportation for me before,” Taylor said. “When I learned more about trimodal transportation and transportation equity at the Cycling Center, I became a lot more interested in cycling not just as recreation but also transportation.”

Working at a nonprofit replete with bicycle access doesn’t magically remove all barriers to cycling, however. Cost and adaptive needs can still prevent cycling from being a convenient choice.

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Gal by Bike: How guerrilla artist Dawn Furstenberg started making ‘road signs for the soul’

Dawn Furstenberg was here.
(All photos: Furstenberg)

— This post is by our Gal by Bike columnist Kate Johnson.

As a wise film character once said, life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.

While you’ve been sleeping, guerrilla bikeway artist Dawn Furstenberg has been hard at work to remind you of that fact.

Perhaps you’ve ridden down Clinton or Tillamook a million times, your eyes looking straight ahead. Your mind is wandering — thinking about what you’re going to cook for dinner or which film Hollywood Theater should play in 70mm next. Then you start to wonder, “what does 70mm really mean anyway? And, “did I remember to marinate the tempeh?” And just like that, your commute is over.

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Portland’s BikeCraft fair is back for the 2017 holidays

BikeCraft 2012-2

BikeCraft 2012.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

After a year on hiatus, Portland’s only bike-specific craft fair will ride again this December.

The simple idea, as phrased by co-producer Elly Blue of Microcosm Publishing: “Anyone who makes something bike-centric can pay a small tabling fee and come sell their stuff to a crowd of happy cyclists. It’s informal, fun, and all about building community and supporting the kitchen table and small business economy.”

This year’s event happens the weekend of Dec. 15-17 at the Bike Farm, 1810 NE 1st Ave. just north of Broadway. It’s free to attend Saturday and Sunday; this year there’ll also be a paid preview party on Friday night to benefit the Bike Farm’s mission (a cheap place to crank on your bike and/or learn how) and to let people “shop early in a festive but less busy setting,” Blue says.

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TriMet is firming up its designs for outer Division bus stations

The latest rendering of future bikeway-bus interaction on outer Division Street.
(Images: TriMet)

Portland’s regional transit agency is hoping to raise $175 million for bigger, faster-moving buses on Southeast Division Street, and some major bikeway upgrades would be in store.

From SE 82nd Avenue to the Gresham city limits near 174th Avenue, the agency is planning to pay for a vertical barrier, mostly a series of concrete curbs, to protect the bike lanes that will have been recently widened and buffered by a separate City of Portland project. And when the Division bike lanes pass bus stops — as they would at 87th, I-205, 101st, 112th, 122nd, 130th, 135th, 143rd, 148th, 156th, 162nd, 168th and 174th — they’ll often be wrapping to the sidewalk side in order to reduce bike-bus conflicts.

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Tilikum passing: Which side is right for faster bikes?

Sunday Parkways September 2015-5.jpg

Ride right, pass left? Or the other way around?
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

I got a call this week from Portland resident Alec Boehm, who’s looking for advice on a question many Portlanders have grappled with over the years.

When people biking and walking have dedicated spaces on a relatively narrow multi-use path, should faster bikes pass slower bikes on the right, or on the left? And (by the same token) should people who expect to be passed keep to the left of the biking lane, or to the right?

You can see the same situation constantly on the Hawthorne Bridge, and sometimes the Broadway, too. Until this week, you could sometimes see it for northbound bike traffic on Naito Parkway’s temporary protected biking and walking lanes, too.

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Guest post: My day as a Portland Public Schools bus driver

Brock Dittus.
(Photo courtesy Brock Dittus)

This essay was written by Brock Dittus.

I pull my 2007 Jamis Coda out of the basement and get ready for my ride into work on a dark and slightly rainy Monday morning. It’s been ten years now since I first started working as a school bus driver, and while I spring awake at an early hour, I’m not bothered by riding in the dark.

I run a dynamo lighting system that brightly illuminates the road in front of me on my way into work, and got used to wearing a reflective vest so that unsuspecting drivers in the industrial areas (north of Columbia Boulevard in northeast) approaching my workplace can easily see me. On days when it pours I wear my rain pants and rubber galoshes, but this morning I’m just a little damp when I check in with my dispatcher and get the key to my vehicle.

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From the Archives

With six kids and no car, this mom does it all by bike