A few of the first-timers at last weeks happy hour (except you Pamela). (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Bike Happy Hour Every Wednesday, 3-6 pm Gorges Beer Co. (2705 SE Ankeny)
I hope you have time to join us on the patio for Bike Happy Hour tomorrow. Bring sunscreen or coverings because it’ll be a sun-filled evening with temps in the mid-80s. Last week we had so much fun. I met tons of new folks (hi Bill, Chris, Brenna, Paige, Sophie, Mack, Benjamin, Nick, and Nikola!) and had a really nice time.
This week we have two special guests with at least two things in common: Keith Wilson and Marshall Runkel. Both of them want to be the mayor of Portland and they both want to meet you. As per tradition, we’ll welcome them to the mic around 5:00 pm.
Keith Wilson at Bike Happy Hour, February 15th, 2024.Marshall Runkel in the Shed, June 14th, 2024.
Wilson owns a freight trucking company and is active on other issues as well — especially homelessness. He joined us at happy hour back in February and shared memorable words about his personal and professional background. He also answered questions from the crowd. I made a podcast about it if you weren’t there.
We’ll be on the patio at Gorges Beer Co from 3:00 to 6:00 pm tomorrow (Wednesday, 6/19). Quiet time starts at 3:00 (when it’s more chill and I have more time and energy for conversations), the free fries come out at 4:00 (you can help sponsor them here), and open mic is at 5:00. Remember, you don’t need an invitation to speak! This is a community space open to everyone. If you have something to announce, promote, or get off your chest, come on out. We’d love to hear from you.
(Video and photo gallery (below): Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
I hope everyone had a wonderful time at Sunday Parkways. I was out there Sunday and enjoyed every minute of it. The people, the serene streets, the parks full of vendors and vibrancy — Sunday Parkways showcases Portland at its best. And it’s the Portland I want to make more common than just 15 hours a year!
This was the second of three open streets events organized by the Portland Bureau of Transportation this year. The next one is September 22nd and will be focused on southwest Portland. You can learn more about the events on PBOT’s website.
In my video (watch it above) you’ll see folks dancing to DJ Prashant’s Bollywood beats, hear a short poem from writer and Street Roots vendor “Dumpsta D,” get to pet sweet little pup “Ocho,” meet William Francis from Community Cycling Center, sit down with a volunteer from Extinction Rebellion (whose name I didn’t get for some reason), and a few other scenes and surprises. You can watch it above or via our YouTube channel (which you should totally subscribe to!).
Have you seen it yet? The Engineering Bingo Card video by Buff Brown that’s been making the transportation advocacy rounds this past few days? Brown is a transportation planner, engineer, bicycle advocate — and now a rapper. He’s not bad either, really! His bingo card rap is a wicked package of the most common excuses every safety advocate hears about why their [crosswalk, speed bump, sidewalk, bike lane, signal] can’t be approved. Enjoy!
OK, that’s the video, now to blow off a little steam. Many Portland transportation advocates have a folder of rejections they’ve received over the years from PBOT engineers, planners, and staff. Call them our rejection collections. We pass them around, talk about them way past their shelf life and generally obsess about them.
Here’s my tale of the rejection I can’t let go, one weird enough it doesn’t make Buff’s bingo card.
Transportation engineer and advocate Buff Brown presented his Engineering Bingo at the 2024 California Bike Summit.
A few years back, me and my buddy noticed that the flashing school-zone light across from Ainsworth Elementary School, in Portland Heights, was poorly located. Weren’t these warning lights supposed to precede the school? So we went to work — documented the problem; found a more appropriate pole uphill on SW Vista; wrote a 3-page PDF describing the situation and solution; sent it off to PBOT … and waited, and waited, and waited.
Finally after three months, I got hold of the traffic investigator assigned to us and got my rejection. The reason? The pole where we wanted to relocate the flashing light was uphill from the school, at an elevation above the grade of the school-yard, which disqualified it as a location. (Streets on hills are like that.)
Ba-da-boom.
Yeah, it’s a head-scratcher. I ruminate on it in my idle moments. All I’ve been able to come up with is a situation where a school was bounded by a road at a different elevation from the local roads, such that the elevated road didn’t intersect locally. But that’s not the case with Ainsworth or its annex. You get to both by Vista. Anyone with a lick of sense could see that one of its two flashing lights needed to be placed on the approach from the south.
It all worked out in the end. After a years-long hiatus due to exasperation, I was coaxed into picking up the project again. The Safe Routes to School people came in and did a lot of traffic calming, they were wonderful. A new vice-principal with a fire-in-her-belly about safety became an ally. And now, young children can walk to school a little more safely because the flashing beacon alerting drivers to their presence is appropriately placed at the approach to the school, not directly across the street from it.
But it took five years, a few experienced advocates, two rejections by engineer-types, and a motivated vice-principal to make it happen. At least that’s how I remember it.
Marshall Runkel in the BikePortland Shed, June 14th. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Marshall Runkel wants back into Portland city hall, a place he first worked in 1995.
Runkel swung by the Shed on Friday for his first in-depth interview since he announced his bid for mayor last week. Listen to the full interview in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts. Or keep reading for excerpts and more about Marshall.
I first met Runkel when he was chief of staff for former Commissioner Chloe Eudaly. He was engaged on cycling and transportation issues during the two years his boss was commissioner-in-charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Runkel left city hall at the end of 2020 when Eudaly lost to Mingus Mapps.
That was a pivotal year for many of us as the pandemic and protests became a big part of Portlanders’ lives. In our interview, Runkel shared that he needed to take a break. “I took a couple of months and just tried to collect myself and had no appetite for politics,” he shared.
Runkel focused on his family and went to work in the clean energy field, doing home renovations and HVAC work. Since leaving city hall he’s also worked as VP of local government affairs for political consulting company Strategies 360.
Runkel and I talked about a wide range of issues, from how he’ll separate himself from Commissioner Eudaly, to his role in mediating the relationship between bike activists and police during the standoff over Portland Critical Mass in the early 2000s. I asked Runkel what specific experiences he has that qualify him to be mayor, what he thinks of Portland voter sentiment at the moment, what type of basketball player PBOT bike coordinator Roger Geller is (the two played on the same rec league team), if he thinks Portland is doing enough for bicycling, and a lot more.
Below are just a few of our exchanges, followed by a video with selected clip from the interview:
Why jump into this race?
I thought about it for a really long time… In my heart, in my head, I know I can do that job. I know I can help the city. I’ve got the experience and the know-how. And it felt like I owe the city. The city has been incredibly kind to me… when I ended up here, it really did feel like home. And I thought I had to at least try. I couldn’t turn down an opportunity to give something back to the city.
What makes you think you can do the job?
I have a lot of specific experience. I’ve spent years and years on housing and homelessness issues. Dignity Village was my project way back when… and I did the organizing that led to the creation of the Housing Investment Fund. I’ve got specific experience in our biggest problems — and homelessness and housing are obviously that. And in our biggest opportunity, which is clean energy. It’s a huge competitive advantage that we have a local source of revenue for doing that work. We’re not going to solve the global problem here in Portland, but I think we can help show the world the creative, interesting, positive solutions.
A lot of people will see you as the ‘Eudaly guy’. How will you handle that on the campaign trail?
I helped Chloe get elected because we had whole buildings full of people who were getting evicted. Like double digit number percentages of kids in schools, families, were affected by eviction. We needed to stick the finger in the dike. That was my motivation, it was literally tearing our community apart and we needed to do something, and Chloe was proposing to do something. And that’s why [I worked with her].
If people don’t like me because I worked with Chloe, I can’t do anything about that, but I think if people listen to me and pay attention a little bit, it’ll be pretty clear that I’m not Chloe Eudaly. We’re different people and have different ideas and different approaches.
What has been your relationship to transportation throughout your life?
Growing up on the east [coast], I didn’t get a driver’s license until my mid-twenties. I didn’t really need to drive. The biggest adjustment about coming to the west coast was how much everybody drove. I took the bus to work for a decade or so. I love riding the bus… there’s a little community, you get to know that people ride the bus all the time. There’s a certain freedom about it, too, because I didn’t have to worry about parking, or, I could have a beer or two after work and not have to worry about driving.
And I credit bike activists in Portland for getting me on my bike. I rode with them [Critical Mass] a bunch of times [as a staffer for Commissioner Erik Sten]. It was fun. I got to know a bunch of people and that’s what kind of [taught me about] how the engineering choices affected safety and I saw the city through a new set of eyes.
Do you think Portland is doing enough, too much, or not enough to encourage more Portlanders to ride bikes?
Not enough. I think there’s a lot to do. It’s one of the things that I’m most excited about. My idea from the [PSU Traffic and] Transportation class [which he completed with Commissioner Eudaly in 2018] was about what I call ‘active transportation stations’. We’ve taken the bike share and scooters and kind of jumbled them up in a bag and threw them around the city. There’s no organized approach. I think that they could be very significant last-mile parts of our transportation system.
I would give us an F-minus on station areas. Like, unless you really love concrete… There’s very little commerce that occurs. There’s public safety issues. And the answer seems to be ‘We’ll have more security.’ Well when I see a security guard, it doesn’t necessarily communicate safety to me. I could transform these stations into real, little community hubs. It’s not just about transportation, it’s about activating those spaces into places where you would actually want to go.
On his leadership style:
I don’t think I’m special in any way. I think my values match the most people in Portland’s values, and because I have experience in politics, I know how to turn those values into things that we can do. And, more importantly, maybe help other people who have great ideas make their ideas happen.
I don’t care about getting credit, I prefer other people get credit. That’s not my thing. It’s not about the greater glory of Marshall Runkel. That’s not what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to do something meaningful and good for our city. And that’s all I want to do. I don’t want some higher office. I don’t want to be governor or senator or be in congress. This is the job I want.
I’m 59 years old. I think this is going to be one of the last big things I do in my life and I’ve got a lot of energy and and ideas and I enjoy working with people. It’s fun for me to think about these projects and work with people. That’s, that’s why I’m running. Because I just couldn’t sit by with these thoughts and feelings and not at least try.
You can meet Marshall at Bike Happy Hour this week. He’ll join us on the Gorges Beer Co patio on SE Ankeny and 27th from 3:00 to 6:00 pm. Come around 5:00 to hear him speak.
— Listen to the full episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
UPDATE: as of 6/18 at 12:45 pm, the path is now open!
The path on the lower deck of the Steel Bridge has been closed for a week now. It’s a crucial connection between the central city and many neighborhoods and destinations in north and northeast Portland.
According to reports from readers, the path has been closed since at least last Monday — not to mention intermittent closures and other obstructions in the area due to Fleet Week and Rose Festival activities (which began June 5th).
A spokesperson from the Portland Bureau of Transportation told BikePortland the reason for the closure is a technical malfunction. Here’s the full statement PBOT Communications Director Hannah Schafer:
“The cameras on the bridge were not functioning properly earlier this week due to a communications issue. When the cameras are disabled the Bridge Tender does not have the visual confirmation they need to confidently open/close the walkway, so they leave it closed for safety. A contractor has been called by the Bureau of Technology Services to fix the cameras and we hope they will be operational again soon so people walking, biking, and rolling can use the walkway. We hope the cameras will repaired and the path reopened ASAP. I don’t have a date for reopening at this time.”
In the interim, people can use the upper deck of the Steel Bridge (though the sidewalk there is more narrow, bikes can take the lane of course) or use an alternate bridge to get to their destination.”
Hopefully this gets sorted out right away, because the upper deck of the Steel Bridge is not a feasible option. The sidewalk is very narrow and not adequate for sharing between bicycle users and walkers. I worry if folks bike up there, it could lead to interactions that go badly. And taking the lane on the road is equally fraught. If PBOT wants people to even consider it, they should install temporary traffic calming and/or signage to make it safer.
Riding eastbound on Steel Bridge sidewalk.25 mph speed limit and hill make this nerve-wracking.Steel Bridge sidewalk.
Hang in there, and please let me know if you notice the gates open back up.
It’s nice to get out of Portland once in a while, and BikePortland’s new Washington County contributor, Tina Ricks, let us do that last week with her post about a policy ride with elected officials from Beaverton and Tigard.
Given the volume and quality of comments her post got, many of you enjoyed trekking along too.
“Free-agent” wrote in with a couple of observations about riding in the area, from someone who is new to it. It’s the kind of comment which sometimes gets crowded out by the fireworks of policy discussions and politics, but its calm, matter-of-fact tone seemed just right as we move into summer.
This article is spot-on with what I have observed and noted from others during conversations, including my high school students. I recently moved to South Beaverton after having lived in inner SE Portland for almost 25 years. I see many people riding trails like the Fanno Creek Trail (we live two blocks away), but far less on actual streets. I see people often park their cars and pull their bikes off to ride them, rather than ride to them. I am hopeful for the future based on what I have observed over the past two years.
One positive I have noticed is that drivers are much more respectful here. I rarely encounter angry drivers.
One critique I have is the serious lack of off-road riding opportunities; it’s far worse than Portland and that’s saying something. The city is really missing out on having off-road opportunities sprinkled throughout the community that riders of all ages can access by paved trails and bike routes. There are plenty of areas around the city for things like skills parks, and other spaces that would make for linear off-road opportunities for riders of all ability levels (adjacent to the Westside Trail comes to mind). There is basically one place to ride off-road, Eichler Park, and it is in major need of an upgrade. I skimmed the most recent Tualatin Parks Trail Plan and it seems like mountain biking had yet to be invented when writing it.
Let’s start things off with a recap of the best stories our community came across in the past seven days…
How to respond to haters: This is a must-watch video of the Mayor of Quebec masterfully responding to the disingenuous “Shouldn’t cyclists pay for the roads?” question. (X)
Say “speeeed!”: As we still process a man shooting out Portland’s automated speed cameras, officials in Washington DC are learning to love them because the cameras not only reduce speeds but the drivers who do it provide a nice stream of revenue needed for other things. (The Washington Post)
Surprising helmet advocates: My head hurts after reading this story about how Dutch officials — after decades of being the example of helmet-less cycling nirvana — are now urging folks to wear a protective head covering. (The Guardian)
More helmet love: Chef Gordon Ramsay is the latest star to crash their bike and use their large platform to tell everyone to wear a helmet in case it happens to them. (BBC)
Justice: A prominent Los Angeles philanthropist received a sentence of 15 years to life for speeding in her SUV and killing two young boys in a hit-and-run. (NY Times)
Unsafe senator: U.S. Senator John Fetterman is a repeat offender when it comes to unsafe driving, so much so his staff won’t ride with him and they refrain from texting when they know he’s driving because they know he’ll respond. (The Washington Post)
Induced demand: New research on a bike lane in Switzerland revealed that the construction of a new bikeway led to a 20% jump in weekday traffic. (Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Studies)
Politics and polls: The people of San Francisco have spoken in a new poll about their city and have made it clear they want more carfree spaces and better transit. Please please please someone in Portland do a poll like this before November! (Streetsblog SF)
Training camp: What’s one of the fringe benefits of investing in off-road bicycling trails and being a place that embraces cycling with open arms? You get the U.S. Olympic Cycling Team to train in your city! (5 News Bentonville)
Biketown for none: The City of Portland’s latest move to reduce benefits of its Biketown For All program might save money in the short-term, but it was a very bad policy idea in the long term, says local reporter Taylor Griggs in her latest op-ed. (Portland Mercury)
Ride Westside Policy Ride group photo at Beaverton Central MAX station. May 18th (Photos: Tina Ricks/BikePortland)
“Culturally, there’s a shift going on in Beaverton. A lot of people around metro Portland might think of Beaverton as the place where you go to Walmart or Target. But that old Beaverton is dead. We’re trying to build a new Beaverton where people can walk and bike. We’re building infrastructure for decades-long change.”
That was Beaverton City Councilor John Dugger on May 18th at Ride Westside’s Beaverton Policy Ride on May 18th. Dugger and Beaverton City Councilor Kevin Teater led a ten-mile loop around the city and its neighborhoods, looking at the good, the bad, the ugly, and the improving not-so-ugly bike infrastructure in the city. Also on the ride were Tigard City Councilor Yi-Kang Hu and members of Ride Westside.
I was there (as one of the founding members of Ride Westside) and as we rode along I pondered a question that I hope was also on the councilors’ minds:What would it take to make Beaverton into a place where kids, families, and riders who don’t want to jockey with traffic could feel safe on bikes?
Ride Westside’s Mick Orlofsky (L) with Beaverton counilors Kevin Teater and John Dugger. Teater with Tigard City Councilor Yi-Kang Hu.
My neighbors in Beaverton want to bike. A few ride regularly, but most keep their bikes in the garage — behind the lawnmower, covered in dust. Sometimes they strap their bikes onto cars and drive to the Banks-Vernonia Trail or the Providence Bridge Pedal where they feel safe riding. When they come home, the bikes go back in the garage.
Let’s call them the Dusty Bike Constituency. And there are a lot of them. They like the idea of biking, but they don’t want to die on a 45 mph road with a stripe of paint for a bike lane.
So let’s go on a ride and see if we can find any keys to unlock cycling for these reluctant riders and everyone else who wants to go by bike in Washington County.
We started at the Beaverton Central MAX station outside City Hall.
Evelyn Schiffler Park (Photo: Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation Division)
First Stop: Evelyn Schiffler Park near Central Beaverton
We rode through downtown Beaverton, past Beaverton High School, to our first stop in Evelyn Schiffler Park. Like a lot of Beaverton parks, it’s criss-crossed with bike paths built and maintained by Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District (THPRD).
Dugger sees the THPRD’s 70-mile path network as transportation. “The paths are critically important for the ten, twelve, and fifteen-year-olds who want to bike. We want to create a culture of cycling so it’s safe to go everywhere.”
It’s not just about ten-year-olds, it’s also about their parents. “We have to build trust with their parents through safety,” Dugger said. “I can go anywhere I want, mix in with cars, it doesn’t bother me. But for a lot of people, that’s terrifying. Creating safety for younger riders expands the pool of people of all ages who are willing to ride.”
Would the Dusty Bike Constituency ride this first stretch, from Beaverton Central MAX to Evelyn Schiffler Park? Probably. It’s mostly quiet streets, some off-street paths, and decent bike lanes.
Unimproved section of SW Stillwell Lane
Second Stop: The Missing 125th Street at SW Stillwell Lane
We continued on through suburban streets, and took a paved path at SW Stillwell Lane across a long narrow strip of wild land, right in the middle of Beaverton. It’s full of trees and shrubs, and an unexpected home for wildlife. “You can ride a bike through this, but only if you have a mountain bike or a gravel bike,” said Councilor Teater.
As we pedaled past, Dugger called out, “This space belongs to the city, and was never developed into a road. We don’t have any plans to do it, and the neighbors would flip their lids if we did.” (A neighbor called from his porch: “I hope they never do!”)
Dugger would love to see trails or park infrastructure in this undeveloped area, but it would take coordinating with THPRD. “Having these pockets of land will help a lot for our bike and pedestrian transportation vision,” he said.
Would the Dusty Bike Constituency ride from Evelyn Schiffler Park to SW Stillwell Lane? More than likely. Most of our way was on quiet streets with little traffic. If the 125th Street wild land became a bike corridor with paved paths, absolutely.
Beaverton rider Thom Drane and family.
Third Stop: Fanno Creek Trail at Greenway Park
We carried on through neighborhood streets to catch the Fanno Creek Trail at Greenway Park. This trail is a major connector (some of it is on the former Red Electric rail line) but it’s also known for flooding. Parts of the trail are seasonal, but the uptime when the trail is passable is in the high 90% these days. Teater said that’s been a priority for THRPD: “They’ve done a lot of work lately to make this happen.”
Along the way, I chatted with one of the riders, Thom Drane. Thom has a Bullitt cargo bike that he modified himself, and lives in Central Beaverton, which he and his wife chose for its central location and bikeability. He regularly bikes one of his kids to preschool, about three miles each way.
Drane chose his route to preschool that doubles his time from ten minutes to twenty because it’s safer and has less traffic. “Beaverton and THPRD does a decent job of taking care of debris on roads and paths. If the community puts in this infrastructure, I want to make sure it gets used,” he shared.
How would the Dusty Bike Constituency feel about the Fanno Creek Trail? Great, when the trail isn’t under water. When the trail is flooded, the Dusty Bike Constituency would drive.
Pep talk before crossing Hwy 217 at Denney Road. (Photo: Ian Grant)
Fourth Stop: Fanno Creek Trail Crossing Hwy 217 at Denney Road
After our next stop, we rode through some seriously hairy road construction on the Denney Road bridge over 217. We only had a narrow twisty space to cross, but in the future it will be a wide multi-use path.
Before we crossed 217, Teater mentioned that the engineering is complete to add a 12-foot shared bike and pedestrian path on the north side of Denney Road to Scholls Ferry Road where there currently are no bike lanes (or they are spotty). That will be a key connection and will close a gap in the Fanno Creek Trail.
Would the Dusty Bike Constituency ride across the Highway 217 crossing? When the bridge and sidewalk construction is finished, maybe, if these new lanes connect to where they want to go in a safe and protected way. Would they ride the protected Fanno Creek Trail? Absolutely.
Fifth Stop: Beaverton’s Industrial Area at SW Western and SW Fifth
Southwest Fifth Avenue is Beaverton’s industrial area, as well as a protected, slow, low-traffic street that is a major bike thoroughfare cyclists use to avoid Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway. According to Dugger, the city worked with the businesses on Fifth to give them wider turn lanes for trucks and a slow-speed road that doesn’t attract more cars.
Would the Dusty Bike Constituency ride on Fifth Avenue? Maybe, if they knew about it. The street felt wide and slow. Although the bike lanes are only paint, there’s just not that much traffic.
On SW Watson at Canyon Rd (Hwy 8). (Photo: Ian Grant)
Sixth Stop: SW Millikan Way
The last part of our ride took us into the heart of Central Beaverton, where we crossed train tracks and two ODOT highways (Hwy 8/Canyon Road/Tualatin-Valley Highway, and Hwy 10/Farmington Road). These roads are, as Dugger calls them, “gashes across the heart of Beaverton.” They feel perilous and are wide, noisy, and full of cars.
We stopped behind the Royal Manor apartments near SW Lombard where there’s a cycling connector from SW Lombard Avenue and the Beaverton Transit Center onto Millikan Way. The city is currently designing the SW Millikan Way Extension Project. The eventual plan for Millikan Way is to be a route into Central Beaverton, from the Tualatin Hills Nature Park all the way through Central Beaverton to Highway 217.
Dugger said the Millikan Way project will allow people to walk to the MAX station and make good on billions of regional light rail investments.
Would the Dusty Bike Constituency ride across two highways and train tracks to get to the Beaverton Transit Center? No. It was stressful even with a large group. But the future Beaverton Downtown Loop Project will help with this.
Last Stop: Beaverton Central MAX Station
We continued down the existing Millikan Way back to our start at Beaverton Central MAX station. In its current state, it’s narrow and twisty, with only sharrows for bikes. But it’s also an extremely low-traffic street, so it works.
Would the Dusty Bike Constituency ride on the new redesigned Millikan Way? If it’s anything like the designs in the plans, absolutely. But only if Millikan connects to where they want to go, and doesn’t become another stop-and-start series of disconnected bikeways.
Dugger and Teater have high hopes for the future of Beaverton, based in part on the ride itself. “The fact that we had two Beaverton City Councilors and a Tigard City Councilor doing a policy ride on bikes is a small earthquake,” Dugger said, as he shared that even more local elected officials wanted to come but couldn’t make it.
Teater wants to shift local transportation dialogues away from talking about car parking and toward accessibility. “How are people accessing the places they want to go? These conversations are not just about riding bikes. How is our community connecting with itself?,” is how he put it.
I hope Dugger and Teater are right. I want to live in that Beaverton that they’re building. And maybe some of those bikes in my neighbors’ garages will get dusted off more often.
Ride leader Mykle Hansen passes out his Bloopernet devices at the Bleeps and Bloops ride last night. Watch and listen to sounds from the ride in the video below. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
One of my regrets with BikePortland is how long it took me to finally start making videos. And not just to feed the social media video beast, but because in order to fully understand a community, you can’t just read about it and look at silent photographs. You must hear it.
That’s why I was excited to finally cover the Bleeps and Bloops Ride last night. I’ve known ride leader Mykle Hansen since the old Zoobomb days and that time he rode a tall bike 100 miles for Reach the Beach. Hansen is wonderfully creative and always into something interesting. I have no idea what all the buttons, knobs and dials do on the sound-making contraption he unfurled from a huge suitcase and mounted to the front of his cargo bike do. And then there’s his proprietary “Bloopernet” device that allows multiple people to sync up sounds wirelessly. How does that work? I’m not really sure, but I know I love it.
And I’m not the only one.
Bleeps and Bloops — what Mykle describes as an “acoustic bicycle adventure” and a “musical parade of migratory soundbirds” — has happened a few times in recent years, and folks are starting to get into it.
Several dozen audiophiles rolled up to Control Voltage on North Mississippi before the ride to compare set-ups, attach cables, and warm-up their sounds for the ride. Every type of “noise-toy” is welcome. There were keyboards ziptied to handlebars, a few melodicas, a tambourine, and several more complex devices I can’t accurately describe. (That’s why you should watch and listen to the video below, where a few riders describe their set-ups.)
Once we rolled out, the group morphed into a mobile, melismatic mob that meandered the Mississippi neighborhood as delighted onlookers stopped to listen. I turned off before the end, but can only imagine the symphony of sounds as the sun set at Skidmore Bluffs.
There’s an argument to be made that bicycling and transportation activists (aka the “all powerful Bike Lobby”) are one of the most influential and engaged voting blocs in Portland. Yes I’m biased, but consider this: before the cascading crises of recent years drowned it out, active transportation was consistently among this city’s most highly prioritized issues; some of our most powerful and well-known public figures have rested much of their legacy on building (or fighting) major transportation projects; Portland was the first major US city to earn a “Platinum” bike-friendly city award after a campaign that galvanized political and business leaders; and if you add up all the candidates we’ve hosted at Bike Happy Hour it’s surely the most popular venue for politicking in the city.
On Monday, four Portlanders will host an event that will make the case even more convincing.
“Bikes, Homes, and City Hall” will be a one-hour long, online, joint house party event with the specific goal of helping elect one Portland City Council candidate from each district. And because of Portland’s small donor election system, all organizers want is $5 for each candidate from every person who logs in.
Housing and transportation activist Michael Andersen said he helped organize the event to boost candidates he thinks, “Have a clear path to win in November, but may not be the very highest-profile in their district.” “We think all four deserve particular attention from Portlanders who think better biking can serve the city,” Andersen added.
“We need a city council that works to build bike lanes, not remove them,” said even co-organizer and noted cycling activist Kiel Johnson. “We need a city council that understands the importance of good policy and has the guts to implement that policy. These candidates have stood out for their ability to help us create a city where anyone can bike and live wherever they choose to.”
Johnson and Andersen are trying to game the system. They know a low-commitment, low-donation, high-volume approach wouldn’t make sense in most cities. But in Portland’s small donor election system, bumping up a candidate’s total unique donor amount to 750 makes a huge difference because it unlocks double the matching funds — up to $80,000 — compared to the 250-donor tier. And a bump to 1,250 (in the case of Morillo) unlock $120,000.
Simply put, $5 bills are powerful political tools in Portland that should be wielded by everyone who cares about our city.
Organizers hope to raise $20,000, “Enough to give all these candidates a huge burst of momentum — and to make a big political splash on behalf of equitable transportation, abundant housing, and a city for everyone.” Good attendance will also burnish the reputation of bike activists as a powerful voting bloc.
The event will begin at 6:00 pm this coming Monday (June 18th). You can register here.
When it comes to safety for bicycle riders, there’s perhaps no more harrowing interaction than when you are passed on a rural road that has little or no shoulder.
That’s why advocates pushed to change Oregon’s bicycle passing law in 2023. They felt the previous version of ORS 811.420 lacked clarity and caused some drivers to get impatient and/or pass bicycle users too closely. The law now makes it clear that drivers can cross the centerline to pass a bicycle rider and that they must slow down while doing it.
But a law is meaningless unless people know it exists and alter their behaviors to comply with it. That’s where education comes in. On that note, I was pleased to see ODOT upload a new video to their YouTube channel a few days ago about the new law. It’s a relaxing animation with a “Be Patient & Hold Back” logo that features someone in a meditative pose on the thumbnail image.
Here’s the text of the video:
“When you’re driving in Oregon, it’s now legal to pass people on bicycles in a no passing zone, as long as they’re riding at less than half the speed limit.
First, be patient and hold back for a good moment to pass. Once it’s clear, move fully into the next lane and pass at five miles below the speed limit. This avoids crowding riders, keeping them safe from the force of passing vehicles. Lastly, wait until you see the riders in your rear view mirror before you move back over.
Share the Road, so we can all get there safely.”
I hope this is played at DMV offices and that there are social media ads, and a radio and TV commercial version. I’m not aware of any media buys yet and I’m skeptical it will have the broad reach it takes to inform a majority of drivers in our state. But nonetheless, it’s nice to know ODOT is thinking about bike safety and the message and video is very well done.
This Sunday you’ll have a chance to see one of the coolest and rarest bikes in the world: A one-of-a-kind Cinelli Laser Rivoluzione that broke the Internet when it was resurrected a few years ago and hasn’t been displayed publicly since 1987.
The bike belongs to Amy Danger, or who’s better known as @adangerPDX to her 46,000 followers on Instagram. Danger was just a casual cyclist in when a random stop into Cyclepath Bike Shop in 2017 changed her life.
“I was walking around into the back to pick up a few bike racks for a garage I was building for a client,” Danger shared in a phone interview today. “Then I saw, leaning against a wall, what I now know to be a track bike, but at the time I didn’t understand it. It didn’t have gears. It didn’t have brakes!”
The simple lines and design drew Danger in. She went home and Googled it. “A week later I bought my first fixed gear,” she recalls. Today Danger considers herself a collector and has a huge following on Instagram where she posts photos of the 30 or so bikes in her collection.
She’ll return to Cyclepath on Sunday as a featured exhibitor at Custom Bike Love, a free bike show that will feature 10 bikes from Danger’s collection as well as other custom bikes and vendors. Anyone with a cool custom bike is welcome at this community show-and-tell session.
This Lotus Sport 110 will also be on display.
The Laser
The star of the show will be Danger’s most prized possession: A one-of-a-kind Cinelli Laser Rivoluzione. The bike debuted as a prototype in 1987, and after being battered and bruised and raced hard for years, it was almost sent to the scrap heap and lost forever. It was a fluke that Danger even came across it online one day in 2019. In a must-read 2022 post on The Radavist, Danger recounted what went through her mind when she realized a collector in Milan had it. “I lost my mind. I recognized it instantly and launched into a tormented spiral about how much I would love this bike but could never possibly own it.”
Danger sacrificed much of her collection to obtain the Laser and then spent a year on a full restoration.
What’s so neat about it?
“It’s hardly recognizable as a bicycle,” she shared. “It deviates so heavily from the double triangle that we’re accustomed to that, just to look at it, you know immediately something wacky is going on. The seat tube is completely missing and it also has a really interesting fairing on the front.”
I’m no expert, but the bike moved me when I first saw it in person at the 2022 Bridge Pedal when I bumped into Danger on a carfree I-405. Its wackiness is subdued by beauty and the ease with which one can imagine flying around on it. We’re lucky Danger brought it to Portland. And luckier still there were enough local craftspeople to help with the restoration, so Danger didn’t have to ship what she calls an, “incredibly precious piece of metal” back to Italy. Cinelli offered to restore it (and Danger worked with Cinelli’s owner Antonio Columbo and the bike’s builder Andrea Pesenti to plan the project), but Danger found ample talent locally to get it repaired and painted. “Portland is part of the story of this bike, and that thrills me,” she said.
You can share the thrills Sunday at Cyclepath between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm. The event is a benefit for Girls Build, a Portland-based nonprofit. The raffle will include prizes from RockShox Rudy, Smith helmets, Silca pump and tools, Ultradynamico tires, Wolftooth tools and swag, and Cyclepath merch. More info here.
