BikePortland

Light review: Portland Design Works’ Aether Demon and Spaceship/RADBOT combo

Just part of PDW’s large family of lights.

— Note from the Publisher: Please join me in welcoming Nicholas Von Pless and Alana Harris to the BikePortland team. Regular readers know that this site does not review products very often. That’s something I’ve been wanting to change for a long time, and Nicholas and Alana are going to help finally make it happen. Stay tuned as we post more reviews and fine-tune the format to make these as readable and useful as possible. Email feedback to jonathan@bikeportland.org. Thanks for reading. — Jonathan

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Year: 2009
Brand: Specialized
Model: Rockhopper Comp 29er
Color:Black
Size:23 in
Serial: HH0454
Photo: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-W7Sj269ivQU/UwRdCzxKHAI/AAAAAAAAI4Q/ACDgTm03DMo/w675-h506-no/bike.jpg
Stolen in Portland, OR 97206
Stolen:2014-02-16
Stolen From: Garage on SE Harney St
Neighborhood: Brentwood
Owner: Levi Ruiz
OwnerEmail: mamono( atsign )gmail.com
Description: There were extended grips on the handlebars. The size is approximate, I think it was 23″ but could have been slightly smaller. I am 6’5″ so I need a big bike.
Police record with: Portland
Police reference#: 14-13652
This registrant does not have proof of ownership of this bike

Blue Raleigh Grand Prix

Brand: Raleigh
Model: Grand Prix
Color:Blue
Size:63cm
Serial:ND8082859
Stolen in Portland, OR 97217
Stolen:2013-01-26
Stolen From: N Concord and Killingsworth St
Neighborhood: Overlook
Owner: Josh Keeling
OwnerEmail: joshuabjorg@gmail.com
Description: Body is a little banged up, Brooks seat, new brakes, cheap fenders
Police record with: Portland PD
Police reference#: 14-151158
This registrant has documented proof of ownership of this bike

Gresham PD announces stepped up ‘Safe Routes to School’ enforcement

It’s always good to see local law enforcement agencies devote more time and attention to dangerous driving — especially around schools. Check out the press release below from Gresham PD to see what they’re up to…

Operation Safe Routes Helps Kids Get to School Safely

Speeders and inattentive drivers beware! Gresham Police Department’s traffic division is beefing up its education and enforcement of traffic laws around area schools. This focused enforcement will start immediately and continue to the end of the school year, June 11. Officers are hoping to ensure the safety of children and pedestrians; preventing accidents and instilling healthy driving practices.

Funds from a Safe Routes To Schools grant will pay for the additional, target-specific enforcement in Gresham’s school zones and surrounding areas. Particular attention will be given to the areas around Hall Elementary School (2505 NE 23rd St., Gresham) and Mt. Hood Community College (2600 SE Stark St., Gresham).

Officers will concentrate on school zones, student pick-up and drop-off locations, and crosswalks. Drivers who are identified as breaking laws will be stopped and may receive a citation in addition to an educational pamphlet.

Oregon laws require drivers to obey posted speed limits, including the posted 20 MPH zones near local schools during the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Drivers must also yield to pedestrians crossing streets within marked and unmarked crosswalks, stopping their vehicle before the solid white line when a crosswalk is in use and before reaching a stop sign.

Pedestrians too must obey traffic laws, comply with posted signs, cross within crosswalks and perpendicular to the roadway. Motorists and pedestrians alike are encouraged to remain alert and help keep each other safe.

Registration open for Oregon Active Transportation Summit

After several years in Salem, the annual Oregon Active Transportation Summit will be in Portland on April 21st and 22nd. Host organization, the BTA has just announced that registration is open. Check more details below…

Registration Open for 2014 Oregon Active Transportation Summit
Our Changing Communities, The Future of Active Transportation

Portland, Oregon – The Bicycle Transportation Alliance is excited to announce open registration for the 2014 Oregon Active Transportation Summit.

On April 21st & 22nd, summit attendees will join leaders from across Oregon for two days of discovery, networking, sharing best practices, and shaping the future of transportation. Transportation, planning, tourism, and health professionals; policy makers; advocates; researchers; and visionaries will come together to share the latest and greatest on what investing in biking, walking, and transit means for our communities.

Topics on the Agenda for the 2014 Summit include: Multimodal Design and Integrating Transit as the Backbone of Active Transportation Systems, Public Engagement and Equity, Land Use and Parking, Travel Forecasting, Safe Routes to School, Youth and Families, Regional Trails, Public and Private Investments and Economic Vitality, Running Successful Programs, and Future Challenges and Opportunities for Active Transportation Funding.

Read more

Portland Parks Rangers help man recover stolen bike

(L-R) Park Ranger Ray Turner, Seth Burke, and
Park Ranger Karras Kalivas, post-recovery.
(Photos courtesy PP&R)

Portland Parks & Recreation have some good news to share: They’ve helped a Portland man recover his stolen Surly Puglsey fat bike.

Here’s how it went down…

Seth Burke got his Pugsley stolen on from in front of a business in downtown Portland on Monday, February 10th. According to PP&R, who emailed us details about the theft and recovery, Burke worked hard to spread the word about his bike. We tell people all the time that the best way to get your bike back is to pound the pavement and tell anyone who will listen about your bike. Even so, after filing a police report and several days of looking and showing folks photos of his bike, Burke had lost hope.

Slowly but surely bicycling is
becoming welcome on roads near Mt. Hood.
(Photo by J. Maus/BikePortland)

How can you tell that bicycle tourism has hit a tipping point in Oregon (besides being a loyal BikePortland reader and following our steady stream of coverage on the topic)? We now have enough tourism-related news on our desks that we have to put it all together in a roundup.

This is the first time we’ve ever done a roundup on this topic and let’s hope it’s far from the last.

So here it goes…

As we wrote when it came out two weeks ago, the City of Portland’s recent poll of public attitudes about its coming transportation package has many interesting details.

Here’s one: despite what you might have heard or assumed, Portlanders of almost every stripe support better bike infrastructure by huge margins.

Graphic by BikePortland. Source: January 2014 telephone poll by DHM Research. Click here for the bike-related numbers and here for the poll’s full 92-page demographic breakdown.

Year: 2013
Brand: trek
Color:white
Serial: wtu120c5413h
Stolen in Portland, OR 97205
Stolen:2014-02-14
Stolen From: it was, believe it or not, stolen on SW broadway around 6:00 pm right in front of my office building with the Schnitzer concert hall across the street and a major even taking place.
Neighborhood: downtown
Owner: ann harmless
OwnerEmail: annharmless(at sign)gmail.com
Reward: 200.00
Description: it was a street bike and had a water bottle attachment on it. several unique aspects of the bike include the fact that though it was a street bike, I had dual brakes put on it. It had a pouch on the back attached to the seat and it had a bike rack with a spring on it. Right after purchase, I wiped out, so the seat (which is white) should have some scuff marks on it.
Police record with: portland
Police reference#: T14001435.
This registrant has documented proof of ownership of this bike

Wet and wild Chariot Wars light up inner eastside warehouse

Competitors at Mini Bike Winter’s Chariot Wars Saturday.
(Photos by M.Andersen/BikePortland)

The charioteers never saw the rainbow arching over their heads. They would have been crazy to let their guard down that long.

About 100 soggy competitors and spectators came together in one to three inches of standing water in a crumbling Clay Street warehouse Saturday afternoon for the seventh annual edition of a Portland institution: a Ben-Hur style gladiator battle conducted on homemade chariots drawn by minibikes.

We asked Bicycle Transportation Alliance Director Rob
Sadowsky to discuss Vision Zero in more detail.
(Photo by J.Maus/BikePortland)

Yan Huang, 78, was crossing Division Street on Valentine’s Day with her 80-year-old husband, walking in an unmarked crosswalk from curb to rounded-off curb across five lanes of auto traffic. She never reached the other side; a man in a left-turning pickup didn’t see the couple and steered into them, killing Huang.

The next day, Saturday, a silver minivan, whose driver remains at large, left the scene of its fatal collision with a person on foot on Southeast Powell at 124th.

On Sunday, a man was killed in a car when the drunken driver he was riding with slammed into a utility pole at Northeast 102nd and Fremont.

Deaths like these make news, but they’re not new. About one in 50 Americans will die an automobile crash. What’s new is that Portland’s transportation director says the city can and will begin to do something systematic to change this.

Safety advocates are urging fast action. Early Monday morning Oregon Walks launched a #PDXVisionZero Twitter hashtag and a petition to urge the city to follow through on Director Leah Treat’s promise to move toward “Vision Zero,” the philosophy that there is no acceptable level of traffic fatality.

Too many volunteer mechanics:
maybe that’s the problem.
(Photo by J.Maus/BikePortland)

Here’s the bike news from around the world that caught our eyes this week:

Broke mechanics: Why do bike mechanics make so little money? Here’s a pretty depressing slideshow that details the situation state by state.

Bad politician: After a Long Island teen had two classmates killed by cars while walking and then his mother was hit by a car while biking, he wrote his state legislator asking for more bike lanes. The legislator responded in a letter saying that “no one” in Suffolk County “should ever ride a bicycle” and that of those who do, “90 percent” get hit by cars. (If you’re not on Facebook you can read the news coverage.)

Light review: Portland Design Works’ Aether Demon and Spaceship/RADBOT combo

Black Specialized Rockhopper Comp 29er 2009

Blue Raleigh Grand Prix

Gresham PD announces stepped up ‘Safe Routes to School’ enforcement

Registration open for Oregon Active Transportation Summit

Portland Parks Rangers help man recover stolen bike

Bicycle tourism news roundup: Bikeway vids, bike-packing 101 and more

Portlanders disagree on bike infrastructure much less than you think

white trek 2013

Wet and wild Chariot Wars light up inner eastside warehouse

Q&A on ‘Vision Zero’: Three fatalities put city’s new safety promise to the test

The Monday Roundup: Broke mechanics, ridiculous legislator & more

Latest Headlines

Bodycam footage shows PPB officer blaming cyclist for road rage collision

Major closure of Broadway Bridge begins Monday

Weekend Event Guide: Cyclocross doubleheader, a Boring ride, mass protest ride and more

Tigard’s new mayor is an everyday bike rider

From the Archives

Protestor blocks bus and bike lanes on Division with his car