🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
“Ride a bull. Bag an elk. Land a steelhead. Climb a mountain. There is no shortage of adventure to be had in Myrtle Point.” That’s one of the marketing slogans you’ll find on the City of Myrtle Point’s website.
After a 104-mile journey yesterday through the forests and river valleys that surround this small town, I think they should add, “Ride a bike” to that list.
As of the latest traffic counts from May of this year, westbound morning peak-hour and eastbound afternoon peak-hour bike traffic is now greater than motorized traffic. That means, traditional downtown traffic (i.e. traffic heading into downtown in the mornings and leaving downtown in the afternoons) has more bikes than cars on Clinton Street, one of our most popular bikeways.
Welcome to the weekly video roundup.
Between bikecamping, biking, city council, and everything else, it’s been a busy week. I hear the Olympics are happening but ignored them to review over 110 videos. Let’s start with River City Bikes, above; Dave G and Richard Schwinn (yes, he’s a Schwinn, also founder of Waterford and Gunnar cycles) talk about the beauty of classic bikes. I really liked it.
Greetings from Myrtle Creek, Oregon.
This small, once-mighty timber town sits on the banks of the South Umpqua River about 200 miles down I-5 from Portland. The official city motto is, “Where nature is your neighbor” and its most famous resident is none other than United States Senator Jeff Merkley.
I’m here to begin a four-day adventure that will give me an up-close look at the people and places that exist along the route of the Cycle Oregon Week Ride that’s coming up next month. Just like I did last year with my Five Days in Eastern Oregon series, this ride is part of a partnership with Cycle Oregon to help tell stories from the rural communities and great backroads that dot our fine state.
The City of Portland is slowly but surely adding dedicated bicycle access to downtown streets. The latest new bikeway is 2nd Avenue where the Bureau of Transportation has installed a half-mile of protected bike lane from SW Washington to Everett.
Travel Oregon is awarding scholarships to attend the 2016 National Bicycle Tourism Conference at Sirata Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida from November 2-5 2016 and the 2016 IMBA World Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas from November 10-12, 2016.
Apply Online Today. $500 scholarships are available for individuals who wish to only attend one of the events and $750 scholarships are available to individuals who wish to attend both events.
Scholarships are allotted specifically for individuals working on rural bicycle tourism-related projects throughout the state, and, who are able to attend the entire 2016 National Bicycle Tourism Development Conference and/or the entire 2016 World Summit in Arkansas.
The deadline to apply is 5 p.m. on August 31, 2016. Scholarship award announcements will be emailed no later than September 9, 2016. If you are awarded a scholarship, you are responsible to register for the event(s) you applied for and book airfare, lodging, etc.
Seeking to “break through to the next level” of effectiveness and political power, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance officially changed their name last night.
The new moniker, “The Street Trust,” was ratified by members by a wide majority at the the organization’s annual meeting last night in northeast Portland.
Board President Justin Yuen said the new name will enable the BTA to, “Fundamentally get to the next level of change we are all seeking,” and to, “Be able to influence the conversation in the region.”
“So much of executing on protected bikeways,” he continued, referencing the bike-related investments around TriMet’s Orange Line MAX project, “Is intertwined with investments in pedestrian and transit.”
Publisher’s note: We’re going to try something a bit different for our Ask BikePortland column. Instead of us bringing in an expert to answer the question directly in the post, we’re going to see if you — our fantastic and smart readers — can help with the answer. Please share your insights and tips in the comments. Thanks! – Jonathan
Today’s question came to us via email from Greg S.:
In case your bucket list of bike adventures wasn’t already full enough, here’s a new one for you: The Oregon Timber Trail, 650 miles of singletrack trails and logging roads that bisects the entire state.
And guess what? The trails and roads (90 percent of which are unpaved) are already there. All that’s left to do is to refine the route, create maps, buff out some rugged sections, put up some signage, and so on.
The trail is a collaboration between the Portland-based bike adventure guide company Limberlost, Travel Oregon, the Bureau of Land Management, and the United States Forest Service. Working together they hope to have a map and guidebook completed by the end of next year and officially open the finished trail in 2020.
“We’re seeking to create a world-class mountain bike experience,” says the trail’s very nice website.
At the end of June, the city passed a policy to prioritize pedestrian and cyclist access through temporary construction zones I talked to PBOT’s Street Use Permits department (CPAC) about the NW 19th and Overton apartments, which had the Overton bikeway closed for many months.
It’s the cheapest bridge project ever completed in the Portland region. For just $20,000, the city’s Bureau of Transportation has changed the face of an iconic and historic part of town. And they’re sort of bragging about it, which is awesome.
At the ribbon-cutting event for Ankeny Plaza today, City Commissioner Steve Novick delighted in how his Bureau of Transportation has radically transformed the streets between 2nd and 3rd Avenues in Old Town/Chinatown. “This is incredibly awesome,” he bubbled, before making a reference to Martha & The Vandellas’ classic tune, “Dancing in the Streets.”
If you thought bikecamping was a new fad or that it was just for extreme adventure-seekers, consider this: This weekend I joined several other families on a two-night campout at Stub Stewart State Park. We rode 40 or so miles each way from north Portland to the park’s wonderful little cabins nestled in the woods of bucolic Buxton (about 10 miles south of Vernonia).
What gets me so excited about what we did this weekend isn’t about how “epic” the ride was. In fact it’s the opposite of that. I love how accessible and doable it is for just about everyone. Not only did we have kids as young as six riding their own bikes the entire way, we had adults with us that had never done anything like it.