🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
Sometimes we all make mistakes. TriMet wants more people to think about the fact that some mistakes can be fatal.
It can be difficult to talk about this subject without blaming the victims of traffic violence. To its credit, the video TriMet released today focuses on examples of people who are acting both illegally and at least a little recklessly rather than (as the New York City transit union did recently) condemning people simply for not being cautious. There’s a big difference.
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Dangerous activity: Phoenix decided to promote safe bicycling with a series of “graphic novels.” In the first, a dog runs in front of a young man biking without a helmet; he flips 180 degrees upside down and smashes his head on the ground, making his brain visible.
Healthy activity: Every hour a Dutch person spends cycling adds one hour to their life expectancy.
Bike transportation is essential to the future of Portland. But every year it also becomes more and more a part of Portland’s history.
At a free event next week, a local biking writer and three Oregon biking advocates will meet up at a brewpub to talk about the history of biking in Portland — both its early heyday in the 1890s and the modern renaissance that began around 1970.
First, Portland author April Streeter (of Women on Wheels and Treehugger) will talk about seven “unforgettable characters who have shaped Portland’s bike culture,” going back to the 1800s.
Then Mychal Tetteh of the Community Cycling Center, Rob Sadowsky of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and Steve Schulz of Cycle Oregon will join a panel about the movement’s modern history. I’ll be moderating.
As Portlanders debate ways to deal with the city’s continuing surge of housing prices, a coalition of local affordable-housing developers and service providers says Portland can’t afford to continue banning so-called “missing middle” housing from most of the city.
Duplexes, triplexes, internal home divisions and two-story garden apartments are common throughout many of the neighborhoods Portland built in the early 20th century. Today, those neighborhoods are the city’s most walkable, bikeable and transit-friendly — but since 1959, city code has made it illegal to build more neighborhoods like that. Homes with multiple kitchens or space for fewer than two cars are forbidden even on most residential land in the central city.
Looking for a new gig? We’ve got six great job opportunities that just went up this week.
Learn more about each one via the links below…
–> Bike Tour Guid/Rental Staff – Cycle Portland
–> Assistant Store Manager – Woodburn – Pearl Izumi
–> Inside Sales Representative – Cyclone Bicycle Supply
–> Sales Support Specialist -Cyclone Bicycle Supply
–> Service Department – Bke Friday
–> Bike Mechanics/Bike Builders – Bike Gallery
Portland’s regional government unanimously approved a plan to allow mountain biking trails in the North Tualatin Mountains Natural Area Thursday in a session that gushed with praise.
“This project took a lot more work than I thought it was going to,” said Metro Councilor Sam Chase, whose district includes the natural area just north of Forest Park, to chuckles around the room. “We have really come to a fantastic place.”
The vote came despite organized objections from a cluster of people who live nearby, in some cases with property immediately bordering the public land. As we reported last week, some of them held a protest outside Metro’s headquarters to argue that allowing mountain biking trails in the natural area would do undue harm to local wildlife.
For many traffic crash victims the difference between getting a check from the insurance company and getting nothing comes down to one document: a police report. And for an increasing number of Portlanders the time it takes to receive a copy of that report has ballooned from two weeks to up to six months.
These victims are in limbo. Without a police report they can’t get paid what they’re owed and they can’t fully heal emotionally because they often aren’t even able to find out basic information — like the first and last name — of the person who hit them.
Three months after Portland lost one icon behind its annual Bowie vs. Prince ride, the other has also left the stage.
A lawsuit (PDF) has been filed in the death of Martin Greenough, the man who was killed while bicycling on NE Portland Highway (a.k.a. Lombard) on December 12th of last year.
Greenough’s family filed the lawsuit yesterday. The suit says that the City of Portland, the State of Oregon, and the man who hit Greenough, Kenneth Smith, are all at fault for his death and are asking for $3.6 million in damages.
As we covered at length here on BikePortland, Greenough was hit in a section of Lombard — where the bike lane stops and the road narrows under the NE 42nd Avenue overpass — that was a known danger spot. We reported on the exact location just one day before he was hit. Tragically however, we learned Greenough was new to town and was very likely following the route suggested on official city and regional bike maps.
In the lawsuit, Greenough’s lawyer claims both the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Portland Bureau of Transportion had been aware of the “pinch point” for at least a year before the collision and that they failed to “failed to provide for safe travel for both motor vehicles and bicycles.”
Welcome to this week’s roundup! Our first video (above) is a great 10-minute trailer about the Tall Bike Tour and fringe society. It’s somehow related to The Winking Circle (artsy straightedgers?) near Toronto. In any case, the trailer is really interesting even as a standalone piece.
Dozens of volunteers are now meeting weekly to plan temporary human-friendly makeovers of Northeast Broadway and the Burnside Bridge this spring and summer.
Better Block PDX’s next “work party” is tonight at Pizza Schmizza at NE 7th and Broadway, from 6-7:30 p.m. Next Wednesday it’s the same time at Black Water Bar, NE 9th and Broadway.
The Broadway demo will create a protected bike lane for one week, from May 9-15.
