Bicycle builder extraordinaire, John Bam Climaco, is a bamboo enthusiast who has led workshops with Craig Calfee to master the art and science of building your own one of a kind bamboo bike frame. This 3 day workshop includes all the materials and guidance needed to create your own bamboo bicycle frame.

The mission behind the workshops is to share our passion for advocating for a more sustainable earth and advocate for the progressive livelihood of renewable materials such as bamboo and abaca (banana tree). We also aim to make professional bikes more accessible to people of all incomes, by building it yourself you can save thousands on a new bike. Finally, the heart of the workshop model is getting back to the makerspace, working with one’s hands, and learning that everyone has the tools and capability to build their own bike.

Check out finished bikes at Bambu Technologies on Instagram and Facebook.
For more on Bamboo bikes, check out: https://momentummag.com/how-green-is-your-bicycle-manufacturing

To reserve your space in the workshop, contact Portland host, Shawna at shawna.cain@presidio.edu

The suburbs: what to do? We have mostly disconnected streets and the ones that connect are wide and fast. This makes for less than ideal biking conditions. We have put bike lanes on these roads, but they are empty a lot of the time. Eventually, as transportation dollars become even tighter there will be push-back for spending this money.

Any time government builds something that doesn’t get utilized it appears as though we’re wasting our money. What can we do about this?

Slow-narrow vehicles are perfect candidates to use bicycle lanes. Currently many of these vehicles are not allowed in bike lanes. Mopeds can’t use bike lanes if they’re operating their motor, motorcycles definitely aren’t allowed in bike lanes. The relevant statue is here: https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/811.440 (2015 ORS 811.440 – When motor vehicles may operate on bicycle lane)

I think that on suburban arterials with speed limits often between 35-55 mph, slower vehicles are basically unable to operate on these streets without being allowed into a ‘slow lane’. Whether we continue to call the bike lanes or not to me is not important. What we should want is build up a coalition of users strong enough to lobby for more lane-miles, better connectivity and better maintenance of bike lanes on suburban arterials.

What do you think? Should we allow other vehicles into bike lanes on suburban arterials? Will this help get more bike infrastructure or maintain what we currently have, or would this simply create more conflicts between bicyclists and other users?

Electric bikes are already multiplying and are currently allowed in these lanes. We should think about this sooner rather than later.