When Portland’s transportation commissioner arrived in town, he was almost a caricature of a newcomer to the Northwest.
This post is part of our SW Portland Week.
Alexandra Reis (she goes by “Ali”), a 30 year-old social worker who lives in north Portland’s Overlook neighborhood, is one tough cookie. She earned her urban cycling stripes on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan while going to graduate school at New York University. Now she’s putting her street smarts to use on her 11-mile daily commute to the outer limits of southwest Portland.
This post is part of our SW Portland Week.
It would certainly be ironic if Southwest Barbur Boulevard became the first arterial in Portland to receive a Copenhagen-style protected bike lane retrofit through a high-destination commercial area.
But that’s exactly what might happen if a regional committee chooses Barbur as the best route for a major new transit line. And getting around outer Southwest Portland would certainly be transformed.
This post is part of our SW Portland Week.
Jeff Knapp has two things to blame for his afternoon rides into downtown and back: a friend and a white stripe of paint.
“When I started bike commuting, that was right before it really took off,” said Knapp, 52. “You could sort of feel it was poised to take off.”
A friend of Knapp’s, who lived in Northeast Portland, started riding to work and talking about how pleasant it had turned out to be. So Knapp, a 20-year resident of the Garden Home area, decided to try.
Oregon’s next governor rides a tandem.
While we’ve been hurrying around Southwest Portland this week, we’ve been keeping half an eye on the drama unfolding in Salem. In the wake of Willamette Week’s report Thursday that Gov. John Kitzhaber unsuccessfully tried to get state employees to block release of thousands of his emails amid a criminal investigation of the overlaps between his public role and his fiance’s business, the governor has resigned and Secretary of State Kate Brown will be moving into the job.
According to her 2012 election registration, Brown lives with her husband in a 1914 home in Southeast Portland’s Woodstock neighborhood.
We’ve had four great job opportunities listed this week. Check them out via the links below…
This post is part of our SW Portland Week.
Part of Portland’s big idea of renaming “bike boulevards” as “neighborhood greenways” was that they’re not just bikeways; they’re spaces for street play, sports and other fun. And they’re also, the line goes, good for walking.
It’s easy to laugh that last part off on the east side of Portland, where almost every greenway is lined with sidewalks.
Not so in Southwest Portland, where neighborhood greenways are few but sidewalks are nearly as rare.
Welcome to your menu of weekend rides and events, lovingly brought to you by our friends at Hopworks Urban Brewery.
If you’ve got energy saved up from all the rain we’ve had, this weekend is the time to use it! The forecast looks very promising, and there just happens to be a ton of cool bikey things to do.
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of love among this week’s events. The BTA will share stories of bike love, the Portland Wheelmen (and Women) will ride to the roses, and even the folks at Puddlecycle have a heart-themed ride. Make sure your outfit has some red in it and enjoy the ride(s)!
This post is part of our Southwest Portland Week.
For a quarter-century now, neighborhood activists have been pushing to make SW Capitol Highway a nicer place to live, walk, and bike. Yesterday I joined up with local resident and Southwest Neighborhoods Inc Transportation Committee Chair Roger Averbeck for a closer look.
This post is part of our Southwest Portland Week.
It’s been a great week out here in southwest Portland. We’re learning a lot and enjoying the experience of being in a new place with new roads to explore and unique bicycling issues at play. I’ve gotten behind on my daily photo essays, so here’s the one from my ride on Tuesday.
This post is part of our SW Portland Week.
Here’s a confession: though I’ve driven on Southwest Barbur, ridden the bus on it, and walked along it to reach a vigil for a woman killed while she crossed it, in four years of reporting on the street and its problems I’ve never actually ridden a bike on it.
Until this week.
The City of Portland has released a new plan aimed at re-energizing their Bureau of Transportation.