🚨 Please note that BikePortland slows down during this time of year as I have family in town and just need a break! Please don't expect typical volume of news stories and content. I'll be back in regular form after the new year. Thanks. - Jonathan 🙏
Among the many projects funded this month by Portland voters is one we first covered in early 2013: a network of protected bike lanes in downtown Portland.
The new local gas tax will send a projected $2.8 million to the project, joining with $6 million in federal funds the project scored in 2013 and $600,000 in other local funds.
Something big is happening in Portland: We’re entering an era where streets are seen as places for much more than private vehicle travel and storage. An era where the public right-of-way can reach its potential as a thriving place that adds to the vitality and energy of our city.
Livable streets are in Portland’s DNA, but a combination of factors have recently come together to energize and formalize the movement and soon it could be enshrined in official city policy.
The City of Portland Bureau of Transportation is in the process of selecting a private firm to develop a “Livable Streets Strategy.” According to the request for proposals (PDF), the city is, “looking at innovative ways to open Portland’s streets, parking spaces, plazas, and alleys to a range of events, programming, and physical infrastructure that reinforce the idea that public streets are public places to be enjoyed by all ages and abilities.”
We knew something special was afoot ever since Transportation Commissioner began literally jumping up-and-down and chanting “Bet-ter Block! Bet-ter Block!” at the opening of the Better Naito project in 2015. The three-way romance between City Hall, the Bureau of Transportation and Better Block PDX has helped create the political and public momentum neede to re-think how we use our streets. But it didn’t start there.
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Our bike parking coverage is sponsored by Huntco.
There are two things you can never have enough of in Portland: bike parking and great beer. Especially when a friend buys the beer*.
Every year the Community Cycling Center’s Holiday Bike Drive gives 300 kids a new bike. But what about the families that can’t make it to inner north Portland to pick one up?
As Jonathan wrote on Friday, this weekend’s Electric Bike Expo has been a milestone for Portland, a metro area that offers a rich bike-friendly culture but also has enough hills that many people are effectively shut out of it.
Enter e-bikes. And enter the expo, a free event outside the Lloyd Center movie theater that brought in vendors from around the country. As an e-bike newbie — I’ve written about them plenty but only ridden one before — I spent a few hours there on Saturday to see some of the products and talk to the customers and sellers. Here’s a quick tour of what I found.
This dispatch from the street comes from contributor/subscriber Ted Timmons
There’s been a lot of coverage of the SE Ankeny bikeway improvements and the city posted their plans, but I rolled through there Friday and noticed it’s actually becoming a reality. The diverter is diagonal with two exceptions: the center section is in line with the bike path and one side of the diverter had to be placed differently to accommodate a manhole cover.
This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by Hassalo on Eighth, now leasing in the Lloyd District.
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Adhesive cars: Google has patented a “sticky layer” to hold people on the hood of self-driving cars after a collision.
Car ethics: Should a robot car choose to kill its driver or a child in front of it? There’s a more fundamental ethical question, says N+1. “Why was the car going so damn fast in the first place?”
Our Santa Cruz bikes were jacked either this morning from our garage in Hillsboro. We live in a quiet neighborhood and whoever stole our bikes knew what they wanted as the bikes were all the way in the back of the garage and not obvious from the street.
One is a large gray Mens’ Heckler with the Shimano unified brake/shifter combo levers, which they didn’t make for very long so this should be easy to spot.
The other was my girlfriend’s gold flake small Juliana, a very unique color, with SRAM XO components, so this should be easy to spot as well.
The electric bike revolution has landed in Portland.
All weekend long at the Electric Bike Expo the world’s top e-bike brands are offering free test rides of over 100 different models. I swung by on Friday afternoon to get a closer look.
Starting this Monday (5/23), traffic patterns on North Willamette Boulevard will change dramatically for up to four months.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation is replacing a viaduct that spans across the bluffs between North Chase and Fowler which requires them to close the entire northern lane. During the closure, all northbound auto, truck and bus traffic will be detoured up to Lombard. Willamette will remain open for bicycle riders in both directions — but northbound bike traffic will be routed up onto the sidewalk.
Here are the details from PBOT: