🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏

With River View access in the balance, NW Trail Alliance urges attendance at council meeting

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Map of the trail alignment in the River View Management Plan. Cycling advocates say if this trail alignment is adopted by City Council tomorrow the chances for bicycle access in the future are doomed.
(Map: City of Portland Parks & Recreation)

The Northwest Trail Alliance, a non-profit devoted to improving off-road cycling access in the Portland region, is urging its members to attend this Thursday’s City Council meeting. The group is concerned that if the Portland Parks & Recreation Bureau passes the River View Natural Area Management Plan in its current form, there will be no future for bicycle access in the 146-acre parcel.

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Tell Metro where bus stations should go on Powell, 82nd and Division

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It’s not yet official which route the line will take between Powell and Division, but project staff are pushing hard for that because of all the destinations on 82nd.
(Map: Metro)

This is a small preview to a big story we’ve been working on about Metro’s next big Southeast Portland project: the Powell-Division bus rapid transit corridor.

“Bus rapid transit” is the neat, fast-spreading idea of making a bus line feel and function like a train line. Part of that is that instead of a stop every two or three blocks, the big new buses will have stations (don’t call them “stops”!) every six to 12 blocks.

That means it’s especially important to get the station locations right. An online survey open through the end of this week asks where the stations should land.

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EVENT: Free Coffee for Bicyclists: Tomorrow, Weds 1/13, 7-9am

Bicyclists on Clinton: Get your FREE COFFEE tomorrow on your morning commute!

Great news! The Pedal PT crew will be out on the corner of SE 25th and Clinton tomorrow (Wednesday 1/13) for our monthly installment of “Free Coffee for Bicyclists” from 7am until 9:30am, featuring coffee from our awesome Clinton neighbors, K&F Coffee Roasters.

Come join us as we sip coffee, talk bikes, the pros/cons of the new Clinton diverters, and much more- Hope to see you then!

Kevin @ Pedal PT

Job: Mobile Engineer – Ride with GPS

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Job Title *
Mobile Engineer

Company/Organization *
Ride with GPS

Job Description *
We’re looking for an excellent senior mobile engineer (iOS or Android) to join our team.

The opportunity

We are a small, efficient team that gets a lot done with only 7 people. The core function of our app is to record & navigate bike rides, but as a companion to our website, it does quite a lot and we have ambitious plans for its future. We currently have a single mobile developer, Kevin, and you would be joining him in keeping our apps at feature parity, working through algorithmic/architectural problems, and reviewing each other’s code. Everyone on the team uses our product multiple times per week (we all ride at varying levels, mostly recreationally/commuting), and everyone’s input (including yours) shapes how our product & service evolves.

Our purpose

We strive to create great cycling experiences. We want people to go on better rides, more often. We don’t run any ads on the site or in the app, and are able to maintain a singular focus on serving cyclists and those who serve cyclists.

Some technical bits

The iOS app is mostly Objective-C with a little Swift, all our views are written programmatically (no Storyboards or Xibs), and we use SQLite directly rather than Core Data. The Android app is also native and uses SQLite. Both apps use GPS, bluetooth, the barometer (if available), handle photos, have some custom views & animations, and synchronize lots of things with our backend (which is mostly Rails). Between bike ride navigation, optimizing for offline use, and efficiently dealing with all the various bits of data that can be collected during a ride, we have solved lots of interesting and difficult problems (with many more forthcoming).

About us

We are an agile team of seven (four developers, one marketing/support/outreach/etc, two dedicated support) operating a large online business targeting recreational cyclists. You can view our website at http://ridewithgps.com and check out our mobile apps on both Google Play and iTunes. Our business is bootstrapped and profitable, focused on sustainable growth via user satisfaction and word of mouth advertising.

Our office is located in the newly renovated Bakery Blocks building, near NE 22nd and Sandy. We have standing desks, a bike repair station, a stocked beer fridge, and we regularly go on Friday office rides. Three of us are also avid motorcyclists, basically all things two wheels are OK in our book.

Here’s an example of an office ride: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/4718074
We were following this route from our Ambassador program: http://ridewithgps.com/ambassador_routes/65-council-crest-hewett-zoo-loop

Benefits

We offer competitive salary, an excellent office environment as well as health, dental and vision insurance, and a 401k with a 10% match. You’ll be equipped with a new Macbook Pro or iMac, a standing desk and any other productivity tools that are needed. We strongly believe in testing our own software, and as a result are more than happy to help defray some of the costs of cycling.

How to Apply *
Please send an email to zack@ridewithgps.com with your resume and some background information on what role you played in the most recent app(s) you have worked on. Please include at least a paragraph explaining your relationship to cycling as well. We’ll respond in a timely manner and move things forward for promising candidates.

Martin Greenough died one month ago: Here’s the latest from ODOT, the BTA and his girlfriend

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Martin Greenough ghost bike in front of ODOT HQ

One month after he died, a ghost bike for Martin Greenough remains locked
to a rack outside ODOT’s Region 1 headquarters in northwest Portland.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

One month ago today Martin Greenough died while cycling on NE Lombard at 42nd. Martin was new to our city. In fact, we learned from his housemate that his ride home from work that fateful Saturday evening was very likely the first bike ride he’d ever taken in Portland.

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My opinion: Once again, propaganda is poisoning Portland’s off-road cycling debate

River View Protest Ride-13

That’s no father and son on a bike ride. They’re
part of a vast “MTB industrial complex” that’s
merely a front for “their powerful corporate sponsors.”
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

You can tell when we’re on the cusp of possible progress for off-road cycling in Portland because the misinformation campaign by someone dedicated to stopping it has begun. Hopefully, our policymakers and elected leaders won’t listen this time.

With a city council meeting this Thursday to adopt management plan for the River View Natural Area, a guest opinion article published by The Oregonian is full of scare tactics and farcical conspiracy theories.

The essay was written by John Miller, a man who lives near River View, and it follows a long and sad line of similar attempts from activists and sympathetic media in the past. The headline, “Don’t let mountain bikers overwhelm natural areas,” sounds like it could be the start of an important discussion about the need to balance trail use with conservation goals. Unfortunately, Miller is more interested in hurting that discussion than moving it forward.

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Travel Oregon tourism workshops and better transit coming to the Gorge in 2016

Gorge Roubaix - Sunday-13

More bikes in the Gorge is a very good thing.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

If you’re interested in helping the Columbia Gorge keep ascending into the pantheon of world-class cycling destinations, Travel Oregon wants to help you.

The extremely bike-friendly state tourism organization has selected the Columbia Gorge for its “Tourism Studio Program” in 2016. This is “a professional bi-state development program designed to bolster the region’s tourism economy while maintaining its rich environmental and cultural assets.” After the same program was implemented in Clackamas County in 2011, that region witnessed a blossoming of bike-related tourism projects and initiatives.

The Oregon Department of Transportation’s continued connection and improvement of the Historic Columbia River Highway has been combining with enthusiasm by people up and down the Gorge who see their area’s huge potential for tourism that has low environmental impact but big economic impact. We’ve been covering all of this as it has come together in recent years, and it looks like we’ll have plenty more to cover in the years to come.

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Industry Ticker: Velo Cult launches custom program

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The Velo Cult Rando, built by Mark Nobilette.
(Photos: Velo Cult)

Our friends at Velo Cult — the famous bike/coffee shop, event space and tavern — are always up to something interesting. Their latest is the Custom Program.

Tapping into his connections to some of the best builders in the business, Velo Cult owner Sky Boyer has set up special partnerships that allow his customers to order custom, tailor-fit handmade bikes with extra-custom Velo Cult stylings and features.

Check out a few more pics and a description of the first two offerings below…

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