BikePortland

Dispatch from Beaverton’s inaugural Farmers Market Ride

— This story is from our Washington County correspondent Tina Ricks. Your monthly subscriptions and other financial support help make Tina’s work possible. Thank you!

Sometimes leading a short ride is a great way build a bike community and get people excited about riding. On Saturday July 27, Beaverton resident Rachel Philip in Beaverton did just that. To encourage her neighbors and friends to use bicycles for more for short trips, she organized a ride from Highland Park Middle School to the Beaverton Farmers Market in Central Beaverton – a ride of about two miles.

For several years, Portland’s Hami Ramani has organized community bike rides every Saturday morning to the Portland Farmers Market at the South Park Blocks on the Portland State University campus. But that’s a long way by bike from Washington County and folks would have to ride and/or hop on MAX light rail to participate.

Now, with inspiration from Ramani, Beaverton has a market ride of their own!

“I feel like people might not want to go ride for an hour or so. But it’s easy to get from the Highland neighborhood to Central Beaverton,” Philip, the ride organizer, said when I met up with her at Saturday’s inaugural ride. Philip wanted to lead a short ride to show neighbors how to get around by bike for short trips, and to encourage biking for everyday life.

Philip has an Urban Arrow cargo bike that she uses most weekdays to take her children to preschool. “It’s either a really expensive bike, or it’s a really cheap car,” she said with a smile. Her family made the decision to buy a cargo bike instead of a second car about a year ago and her daily ride to preschool takes her from her home in central Beaverton through the Highland neighborhood, where there are a lot of low-stress streets and shade.

Neighbors Ryan and Kathleen Simpson and their daughter Reese arrived by bike, Burley trailer, and on foot (Kathleen is a runner who doesn’t have a bike yet). Ryan works at home, but he rides his daughter Reese to her daycare every morning and evening. “It’s a great way to start the day and end the day,” Ryan said. He’s an active road cyclist, but also interested in family biking and making cycling a part of everyday life.

Steinar and Angela Neidig also arrived with their family, ready to ride to the market. They moved to Beaverton from Portland in the last few years, and used to ride frequently in Portland. “We did all the rides in Portland,” Angela said. “But we’re still getting used to riding out here.”

The route took us on a ramble through mostly quiet neighborhood streets, some bike paths through a park, a few crossings of major roads, and to the farmers market. We stopped in front of Beaverton Library as our final destination, only because the bike parking shed at the market was overflowing. A good problem to have.

Philip has advice for others in Beaverton, Hillsboro, or Washington County who want to start a community bike ride: “Pick a place where people are excited to go.” For her, the obvious choice was the farmers market because, “everyone loves the market.” In addition, the Beaverton Farmers Market organizers are trying to encourage no-car transport to cut down on parking hassles in the neighborhood. The market even promoted this ride (and the rest in the series) in their newsletter. She suggested other events like neighborhood concerts or gatherings that are happening throughout the summer. She scouted out the route ahead of time, planning where a large group could ride together without getting separated, and where they could cross major streets safely. Philip also recruited a few volunteers from Ride Westside to do corking and sweeping.

Philip took care of all these details so that the ride was as smooth as possible. “Getting people to consider leaving the car behind means showing them how easy it can be to do,” she said.

There are three more rides in this series, all beginning at Highland Park Middle School (7000 SW Wilson Avenue in Beaverton) and ending at Beaverton Farmers Market. The rides are on August 10, August 31, and September 14, meeting at 9:45 a.m. Follow Ride Westside on Instagram for updates and more information.

A note from the publisher

Hi everyone. Hope your summer is going well. Just a quick note to share that I’ll be out of town for the next 10 days or so. That means things will look a bit different here on the blog and our social channels. I should have time to edit a few guest articles and post a few random things on social. And I might be able to respond to major breaking stories if warranted, but I’m not going to promise much beyond what I’ve already got in the hopper.

I will also not be at Bike Happy Hour tonight or the following week (Wednesday 8/7), so make sure to see Carey Booth if you need a name tag or stickers or anything else. I’ll be back at Bike Happy Hour on August 14th and back in the Shed on August 12th.

Note that this is a family trip (my mom’s 75th birthday down in southern California!), not a work trip, so my focus will be on family and taking a break from the daily grind of BikePortland. Please be patient and alter your expectations. I’ve got another trip coming later in August but I’ll share more on that when I get back from this first one.

Thanks for your understanding and support.

Here’s what you need to know about upcoming Springwater path closure

The Springwater Corridor is as important to bicycle riders as nearby SE McLoughlin Blvd/Highway 99E is to drivers. That’s why, when a sign appeared at the Springwater’s northern entrance last week announcing a full closure for five days, many of our readers took notice.

Not only is closing off this vital cycling corridor a big deal, but the signs appeared out of nowhere and there was no other information posted online or in any kind of statement from either Portland General Electric (whose name was on the signs) or Portland Parks & Recreation (who owns and manages the Springwater path).

I posted all the information I could find last Thursday. Then on Friday, after many folks had tuned out for the weekend, I heard back from officials at PGE and Parks. They confirmed a project was taking place, but the dates and times were different than what was posted on the signs. Given the significant detour required for a closure like this, folks need time to learn about a closure and make plans on how to handle it.

It wasn’t until yesterday (Monday, July 30th) that I finally confirmed precise details of the closure with a PGE official. Here’s what you need to know…

According to PGE Spokesperson Drew Hanson, the path between SE Ivon to the turnoff at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge (where the train overcrossing tunnel is) will be closed on the following dates and times:

For two days between Aug. 5 and Aug. 9 (likely to be Aug. 5-6, but schedule flexibility given due to heat event in the forecast)
Aug. 26-28: Partial trail closure
Aug. 29-30: Complete trail closure

“We know this can be inconvenient to cyclists and pedestrians that use the trail, and we appreciate their understanding while PGE performs maintenance and repair work along that section of the trail,” Hanson said.

Hanson said the closures are needed so PGE crews can perform routine system maintenance. New signs should be posted by today (Wednesday, July 31st) and flaggers should be present during closures directing traffic to alternate routes.

For more information, call PGE Customer Service at 503-228-6322 and ask about the Springwater. Or visit the Portland Parks closures and delays page.

Here’s the detour map:

Concrete planters for calming traffic removed after frequent collisions

The City of Portland is removing traffic-calming infrastructure because drivers run into them too often. While that might seem like success to some, continued clashes between car drivers and concrete planters has led to high maintenance costs and transportation officials say it’s not worth the effort.

Several readers have reported to BikePortland recently that the large, round, concrete planters installed on bike routes throughout the city have gone missing. When the first batch of these were installed in 2021, we said they were a very big deal because their size and stature seemed unavoidable and it was a relatively bold safety move by the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT).

The round, 2,500 pound planters filled with concrete were installed at strategic locations to protect bike lanes at conflict points, to reduce speeds and lower car traffic volumes on neighborhood greenways and other key bike routes. They would often come with yellow advisory 15 mph “shared street” speed limit signs and reflective material to enhance their impact.

Concrete planter at NE 53rd and Irving on August 5, 2022. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

These planters emerged from PBOT’s Slow Streets Program which began in May 2020 during the Covid pandemic with flimsy signs and orange plastic barrels placed in streets at 200 locations. The idea was to calm drivers and improve safety for walkers and bikers during a crisis when Portlanders needed more outdoor, Covid-safe public spaces in a hurry. In 2021, PBOT opted to make 100 of those locations permanent, using more robust materials in hopes they’d require less maintenance than the signs and plastic barrels.

But that’s not how things have turned out.

In May of this year, Portlander Ted Timmons (and amateur pilot and aerial photographer) emailed 311 (311@portlandoregon.gov) to report one missing near his home in the North Tabor neighborhood. “Until recently there was a large concrete planter on NE 53rd near Irving,” Timmons wrote. “It is gone. What happened? Will it be replaced or is it permanently gone? I own a house within sight of it, and I really appreciated how it helped with traffic calming.”

A few weeks later, Timmons received a response from PBOT Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller, telling him it was removed, “due to excessive maintenance issues.” “It kept getting hit,” Geller wrote. “Which created a consistent maintenance burden for PBOT staff. In the future, there may be other more permanent improvements that can be installed at this intersection but there is nothing identified yet.”

The planter at NE 53rd and Irving was installed in 2022 to calm traffic near one of PBOT’s advisory bike lane installations.

A month after Timmons emailed, I heard from reader Chris H. He noticed planters had gone missing in two locations along the North Central Avenue neighborhood greenway (at N Richmond and N Chicago). Chris emailed PBOT’s Geller to ask where they’d gone. Geller offered the same response he gave Ted T, and then added, “The concrete planters were installed in large part to reduce maintenance issues with the plastic orange barrels that were initially installed in May of 2020. Unfortunately, the tight turning radius created a consistent maintenance burden for PBOT staff.”

Chris called the decision “discouraging and frustrating,” and wrote to Geller that he’d be forced to, “avoid N Central during commuting hours from now on.”

The decision to remove these planters wasn’t Geller’s alone. The May 2024 Slow Streets Draft Evaluation Report (PDF) released by PBOT says despite being popular with the public, the program wasn’t effective at calming traffic, and some locations were hit so many times by car users it drained maintenance resources.

“Overall, speed and traffic volume changes were mixed making it difficult to attribute any changes in traffic operations to the Slow Streets program,” reads the draft report. And from a roadway design perspective, the report says the goal of converting 100 locations to more permanent treatments might have been too ambitious and didn’t allow PBOT engineers to do thorough site analysis for each one. (As of May 2024, PBOT says 62 locations have been converted.) “The wide-spread approach led to some locations with unexpected operational issues that required significant maintenance to correct. Individual site assessment by engineering staff will help avoid future maintenance issues,” states the report.

This planter has been shoved several feet from its original location. (Photo: PBOT)

The original “a-board” signs and orange plastic barrels were moved so often, PBOT contractors had to make weekly (and often more frequent) site visits to put them back in place. PBOT assumed 2,500 pound concrete planters would fix this problem. Turns out they underestimated the force and frequency with which some drivers’ cars hit them.

According to maintenance records, in the 20 months between July 2021 and April 2023, PBOT fielded 75 requests for upkeep at 55 locations. 60 of those requests required two PBOT maintenance workers to respond with a winch-equipped vehicle or small forklift to move the planters back into place.

With high maintenance costs and inconclusive data on speeds and traffic volumes, PBOT’s report says their Slow Streets infrastructure is “not impactful” and they prefer more traditional traffic calming methods like diversion and speed bumps.

PBOT’s conclusions in the report were likely influenced by a directive (PDF) from City Traffic Engineer Wendy Cawley. Effective March 11, 2024 Cawley called out a variety of temporary materials PBOT uses — including “planters” and “paint and post installations” — and said staff are no longer allowed to use them without prior approval and they can be used only in limited situations.

“Temporary materials require more maintenance than permanent infrastructure when left in the field for long periods of time,” the Cawley memo reads. “PBOT is facing a fifth year of budget cuts and cannot afford to reliably maintain temporary materials/infrastructure at the current level of usage. Additionally, the aesthetics of temporary materials do not support the vision for Portland that City Leadership and Portlanders have.”

If concrete planters are used, Cawley says they, “must be protected by concrete curbing to minimize vehicle strikes and the need to reset or move materials back into place.”

While PBOT has cooled on Slow Streets-style installations, the public seems to have loved it. PBOT received over 2,000 comments about the Slow Streets Program and presented about it to over 50 neighborhood associations. PBOT says the comments were “overwhelmingly positive” and “staff consistently heard that Slow Streets had a positive impact on Portland streets and communities.”

Overall, the signs and planters have functioned well as gateways to greenways and in helping raise awareness of safer bicycle routes and the people who use them; but PBOT believes they haven’t worked as a permanent traffic engineering solution.

To effectively calm Portland streets it will take an even more robust approach from PBOT. And they say they’re ready to do it with more engineering analysis and more permanent infrastructure, as long as they can identify the funding to make it happen.

Learn more:

‘Bike canopy’ at new PPS building offers covered, solar-powered bike parking

Multiple Pathways to Graduation building on NE 16th and Glisan. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

A new Portland Public Schools building that is set to open this fall will have one of the coolest bike parking facilities in the city. While riding home from Bike Happy Hour last week I peered over the construction fence at the forthcoming Multiple Paths to Graduation building on Northeast 16th (near Benson High and Buckman Field). What I saw was a three-tiered roof covering over 50 bike parking spots in the main front courtyard of the building.

This building is being constructed as part of the 2020 PPS School Improvement Bond. It will house student programs, a gym, makerspace and other services.

The bike parking structure, which PPS refers to as the “bike canopy,” consists of six rows of eight staple racks (two rows under each roof) and several other staples assembled around the edges. There are also overhead lights mounted on the ceiling of the structure for visibility at night. I’m not sure if any security measures will be in place, but the high-visibility location should help deter some theft.

This bike parking is yet another example of how PPS is not cutting corners when it comes to giving students and staff ample places to park bikes. Last year I was amazed at the bike parking I saw at the new Lincoln High School campus in southwest. And when Roosevelt High School in north Portland was renovated in 2018, PPS installed quality, covered bike parking there as well.

The only quibble I have with this bike parking is the rack spacing. People with cargo bikes or other types of oversized bikes might have trouble when the racks are full. Other than that, this is really great work by PPS!

And the icing on the cake is that this new building and bike parking sits atop what used to be a lowly parking lot. This building is set to open to students this fall. Learn more here.

Comment of the Week: How a $100 bike changed one person’s life

This week, reader “dw” wrote a comment which, as someone pointed out, was “nearly a guest BP article.” That’s true, and it was also an inspiring story.

Writing in response to our post about how Oregon has chosen to spend its $197 million in federal climate change funds on cars, dw talked about how riding a bicycle, and then an e-bike, ushered in a set of needed lifestyle changes which had always seemed out of reach.

Cycles of dieting, exercise — those strategies never stuck. But then dw bought a $100 bike, and here’s what happened next:

I also have a $3000 “luxury” ebike”, as my coworkers like to joke, that I spend about $200 a year on maintenance for. I’ve had mine for a little over 2 years and have put 10,000 miles on it.
I had a set of recurring mental and physical health issues that basically all boiled down to “lifestyle changes” for treatment. I went through cycles (no pun intended) of getting my diet under control, failing to get any exercise, feeling terrible physically, falling into a depression spiral, then letting the diet go because I felt like none of it really mattered so I might as well have Oreos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

After not riding a bike since I was a kid, I ended up buying a used craigslist bike from some guy in Tigard for like $100 just because people riding bikes around my neighborhood looked like they were having a pretty good time. It hadn’t occurred to me that a bike could be a useful tool for transportation until I realized I could ride to Freddies in 10 minutes. I still drove to work, but basically every day for a month before/after work I was out riding to get all my errands done; riding to the grocery store, the barber, my favorite coffee place, the post office with a jank package-carrying setup on my no-rack 70’s road bike.

Toward the end of the that month I realized that I felt better than I had in years – and I made the connection that the bike was tricking me into getting exercise without having to “fit” it into my day.

The ebike has taken my radius of what I can accomplish – including commuting to and from work – and expanded it by several times. I still sometimes ride my analog bike to work, but anything above 65 degrees has me showing up to work a wet, sweaty mess to work. So I like that I can get some movement in my day without sweating like a hog. I can also cycle in my civilian clothes. I can carry tons of stuff up hills no problem. It really has replaced about 99% of my car trips. The only reason I still have my lil 08 fit is because it’s paid off and the registration + insurance is cheaper than what I’d pay for a rental whenever I drive. If/when it craps out I probably won’t buy another car.

I think ebikes open up utility cycling to an even wider range of body types, fitness levels, and lifestyles. As a public health intervention, I can’t think of a better way to get people moving than to make it fun, useful, and something they already do. Aka getting around.

I’ll end with a repetition of Lois’ point: Why in the (rapidly overheating) world are we NOT making this a no-cost/low-cost option for more people?

Thank you dw. You can read dw’s comment, along with many other strong comments, under the original post.

Monday Roundup: VP Harris on climate, 70-plus cyclists, freedom to speed, and more

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. Here are the most notable items we came across in the past seven days…

End of an era: The Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT) in Eugene has closed its doors, but its mission will live on. The building will be taken over by a transportation advocacy organization and be called the Nexus for Eugene Sustainable Transportation (NEST). (BEST Oregon)

Kids on bikes: A brilliant idea from The Netherlands where they’ve built a pump track bike path. Don’t miss the video that shows kids riding in the rain (without helmets!) on opening day. This is the kind of innovation we need in Portland. (GLD)

Climate Kamala: A credible source who’s covered California climate policy and politics for a long time thinks Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris could do good things for transportation reform. (Streetsblog LA)

70s and cycling: A senior living facility in southeast has launched a bike club and several 70-plus residents have taken to the streets on bikes. (The Bee)

E-bikes changing lives: A positive story from San Francisco, where a “quiet movement” of families replacing cars with cargo bikes is showing it has real staying power. (SF Gate)

Wrong direction: Given that Portland’s bike and scooter share systems are growing, yet becoming less financially accessible at the same time, this story about a new report that calls for more public funding of micromobility systems seems very relevant. (Streetsblog USA)

Causing crashes: The rise in shared bikes and scooters has led to a sharp rise in injuries from those modes, according to new research. (Quartz)

Good sign: The number of pedestrians killed in the state of Colorado is down 24% from 2023 and officials say less risky driving behavior coupled with new enforcement and infrastructure initiatives are the reason. (Colorado Sun)

Sisters cycle against the odds: Imagine being threatened in your home town for daring to ride your bike and then having to escape a repressive regime just to get to the Olympic games. That’s what the Hashimi sisters from Afghanistan went through prior to competing. (CBS News)

Freedom and driving fast: Enjoy this deep dive into Germany’s autobahn and you’ll understand why efforts to set speed limits (to save lives and the planet) have come up against very American-like notions of freedom and the all-might automobile industrial complex. (Slate)

Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week. The Monday Roundup is a community effort, so please feel free to send us any great stories you come across.

Job: Mechanic – Cynergy E Bikes

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Job Title

Mechanic

Company / Organization

Cynergy E Bikes

Job Description

Looking for part time or full time mechanic. Knowledge or Electric Bikes is a plus.

How to Apply

send resume to samik@terrasantallc.com or call 503-349-6777

Podcast: In the Shed #24 with Portland Mercury Reporter Taylor Griggs

I know it’s late, but I didn’t have time to get this one finished before I left The Shed around 2 today, so here it is!

It was so fun having Taylor Griggs back in the shed. Remember Taylor? She wrote for BikePortland from late 2021 to May of last year and then the Portland Mercury scooped her up. I only have a few minutes, so I’ll cut to the chase (and won’t capitalize)…

This episode is chock full of great stuff: Fake bike lane citations -under-designed bike lanes – a green ribbon bike network – riding to Troutdale for ice cream – exercise and e-bikes – portland tennis courterly – prank calls – SK Northwest and the Springwater trail saga – I-5 Rose Quarter

Links we mention:

And here’s a pic of the fake citation Taylor’s friend is giving drivers:

Thanks for listening!

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great weekend and see you back here on Monday.