Two weeks to two wheels: Portlanders share bikes and skills with new pay-it-forward program

Bikes for Humanity

Central City Concern tenant Billy Murrell works with Bikes for Humanity Volunteer Holly Kvalheim to build the bike that’ll become his.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Down the elevator into the basement of an Old Town housing project, around three corners and under the fluorescent lights of one of the six beige rooms labeled “storage,” Mark Sando was walking in a more or less constant loop around the part of the floor that wasn’t carpeted two feet deep in broken bicycles.

“We don’t need to loosen this enough to slide this up and down, we only need to loosen it enough to rotate the handlebars to the right alignment,” he told the ex-con leaning over one of the room’s four workstations, who nodded in understanding.

Read more

Weekend Event Guide: Peep parade, bike camping, trail work and more

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
peep13938919692_3f68eb9f6c_k-1024x610

Little peeps and their people.
(Photo courtesy of Kidical Mass PDX)

Welcome to your menu of weekend rides and events, lovingly brought to you by our friends at Hopworks Urban Brewery.

Looks like the calendar is a bit light this weekend. It is Easter weekend after all and lots of folks will just chill on Sunday with family and friends.

Then again, if Easter isn’t your thing, Sunday would be a great day to be on the roads given how few people will be driving.

No matter what you do this weekend, you’re probably sure to see a few people with huge bunny ears on their helmets. Of course here in Portland, we see that type of thing year-round so it’s really no big deal.

Read more

Travel Oregon adds cycling component to “7 Wonders” marketing campaign

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Travel Oregon announced earlier this week that they plan to add cycling to their “7 Wonders” marketing campaign. This could be a great boost to Oregon’s bicycle industry and to bike tourism in the state in general.

Check out the teaser Travel Oregon has shared:

7 Wonders of Oregon Campaign Launches Cycling Component

Travel Oregon’s added a new cycling component to this year’s 7 Wonders marketing campaign. We’ve asked 7 of the best Oregon bike builders to make 7 custom bikes, each inspired by a different Wonder. The story of how they are built and the landscapes they are designed for will inspire bicyclists to imagine Oregon as an ultimate cycling destination. Can’t wait to see what the bikes look like? Well we can’t wait to share.

Tune in during early May for the big reveal. We’ll be sharing cycling content all summer long!

This isn’t the first time Travel Oregon has made bicycling one of its top marketing priorities (not by a long shot).

We’ve asked for more details and will update you as we hear more about it.

Dear everywhere else: This is how to do a detour. Sincerely, Multnomah County

detour done right fb2

Service work on the Burnside Bridge Thursday, perfectly executed.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

With a few dozen orange cones and minimal fuss, a team of bridge inspectors and a county traffic safety specialist assembled a perfect Portland-quality detour on the Burnside Bridge Thursday.

It might seem like a small matter, but anyone who’s ridden a bike or walked near many construction detours knows how frequent it is for them to push people into mixed-traffic lanes rather than meddle with the flow of cars — even on streets that are far wider than they need to be for cars to keep flowing freely.

Read more

Right-hook risk drops with flashing “Yield to Bikes” sign on NE Couch

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
New safety signal at Couch and Grand-5-8

The right-turn warning at NE Couch and Grand is the only such sign in the country.
(Photos: J.Maus/BikePortland)

As Portland edges closer to possibly adding protected bike lanes to its downtown, a new study has found that one of its most unusual bike-lane intersection treatments seems to be working.

The LED sign above the intersection at NE Couch and Grand that flashes “Turning Vehicle Yield to Bikes” seems to have reduced right-turn conflicts by more than 60 percent since its 2011 installation.

Read more

Bike-powered grocery delivery service aims for major expansion

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Rolling Oasis, a Lents-based nonprofit that home-delivers $20 worth of organic produce to its customers each week, is angling to leap from Southeast into Northeast, too.

Proprietor Brandon Rhodes launched the service a year ago and has been delivering since then in his own Lents neighborhood ever since, adding extras like coffee and jam for additional fees.

“We want post-retail grocery innovations to be accessible for all of our neighbors, not just those who can afford it,” Rhodes writes in the description of the new Indiegogo campaign Rolling Oasis has launched to complete the expansion. “Alternative delivery services inflate their prices beyond what you’d find at Fred Meyer — leaving tighter-budget households behind.”

Read more

Sneak peek inside TriMet’s new Orange Line MAX trains

max-jimpics-11

Lower hooks and more room in new MAX trains coming to the Orange line.
(Photos by Jim “K’Tesh” Parsons)

TriMet has spent just over $79 million on 18 new MAX trains that will run on the Orange Line when it opens in September. If you board the new “Type 5” trains with a bike, you’ll notice that they differ in some key ways.

Yesterday TriMet gave a few lucky folks a chance to step inside and get a closer look. Our correspondent Jim Parsons was one of them.

Read more

Oregon lawmakers try (again) to raise speed limits

SW Portland bikeways-3

It might get faster down there.
(Photo J. Maus/BikePortland)

Despite a clear connection between speed and fatal and serious injury crashes, ten Oregon lawmakers are sponsoring a bill that would raise our state’s freeway speed limit to 75 miles per hour.

According to the text of House Bill 3094, it would increase the speed limit from 65 to 75 miles per hour on interstate highways (only for cars, large trucks and buses will stay at their current max of 55 mph). The bill also establishes a maximum speed limit of 65 miles per hour on state highways and limits the Department of Transportation’s authority to decrease freeway speed limits, except in work zones.

Read more

Bike/walk advocates unveil plan for Oregon to zero out road deaths

vz cover

The cover of the new report.

Two Portland-based advocacy organizations have released Oregon’s first detailed proposal for a “Vision Zero” policy that they say could completely eliminate road deaths and serious injuries.

The plan from Oregon Walks and the Bicycle Transportation Alliance describes itself as “A Unifying Vision for Street Safety for Oregon.”

The two groups assembled the report with input from officials at various government agencies, including the City of Portland and Oregon Department of Transportation. It’s the first big component of a coordinated campaign by the two organizations, part of a national effort to spread the Vision Zero concept.

What’s inside? Maybe the most significant ingredient here is the five-page list of specific recommendations at the end. Here are nine particularly interesting selections from that list.

Read more

Weak links: City finds traffic hot spots on neighborhood greenway system

auto count map

The first numbers are rolling in from the first comprehensive analysis of the country’s first connected bicycle boulevard network, and they show some clear problem spots.

SE Clinton at 22nd.

The side-street bikeways are known in Portland as neighborhood greenways to capture their appeal as places to walk, jog, shoot hoops and so on. But the City of Portland’s project shows that six — inner SE Clinton, SE Lincoln near 53rd, NE Tillamook near Grant High School, SE 86th near Powell, inner Northwest Johnson and upper NW 24th — clearly fail national standards for auto counts on bike boulevards.

Read more

Latest Headlines

I’m going on hiatus

Come to BikePortland’s 20th birthday and beer collab release party!

Big day for PBOT budget as new revenue proposals head back to Council Wednesday

Monday Roundup: Paris in Brooklyn, ‘Trail Towns’, e-bike reviews, and more

From the Archives

The 10 busiest bicycling spots in Portland