Michael and I had a great time riding and reporting all over east Portland last week. While we’ve posted over 150 images in our photo gallery and nine front page stories, our notebooks still have plenty of items worth sharing with you…

A visit to The Outer Rim, Portland’s easternmost bike shop

Brandon Fite, manager of the The Outer Rim.
(Photos J. Maus/BikePortland)

Unlike in neighborhoods that ring Portland’s central city, where it sometimes feels like there’s a bike shop around every corner, there are very few bike shops east of I-205. In fact, there are only two.
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Jim Chasse became excited about bike transportation while working on the 2010 city bike plan and is part of the very successful East Portland Action Plan bicycle subcommittee.
(Photo M.Andersen/BikePortland)

When East Portland biking advocate Jim Chasse met the young state legislator who had just ousted incumbent Patrick Sheehan, he got right to the point.

“I told Shemia Fagan, ‘This is what we need: We need Powell Boulevard,'” Chasse recalled Thursday. “‘We need $80 million, $60 million. And if you can’t get it for us, we’re just going to fire you.'”
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A person bikes past Lentz Automotive, an auto shop whose owner objected to bike lanes added to outer SE Holgate in 2009.(Photos M.Andersen/BikePortland)

This post is part of our special, week-long focus on east Portland.

It was one of the boulders that broke Portland’s bike wave: a redesign of SE Holgate Street that converted one mixed traffic lane in each direction to a huge buffered bike lane between I-205 and 122nd Avenue.
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This is Haider, a 32-year-old Iraqi man I met on his daily commute
from SE 82nd & Division to downtown Portland.
(Photos J Maus/BikePortland)

This post is part of our special, week-long focus on east Portland.
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Maybe we should hire Walmart parking lot engineers to design our streets.
(Photos M.Andersen/BikePortland)

This post is part of our special focus on east Portland this week.

When people talk about using “traffic calming” to design a “commercial greenway” — like the one proposed for NE 28th Avenue — it sometimes comes off as a strange, experimental sort of magic that we’d probably have to visit Europe to understand.

But we don’t. Most Portlanders — most Americans — walk or drive through areas that are models of safely shared space almost every day of our lives. But we don’t call them greenways or woonerfs or home zones.

We call them parking lots.

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Sunset atop Rocky Butte during 2010 Pedalpalooza. Join us
(Photo J. Maus/BikePortland)

We hope you’re enjoying our special coverage from east Portland. I think I can speak for Michael (he’s nodding next to me here at our remote office in the Starbucks at Gateway Town Center) and say we love being out here. New streets, new people, and new perspectives.[Read more…]

From barflies to neighborhood officials, most east Portlanders seem to agree on the highest-priority biking improvement for east Portland: a few really good neighborhood greenways.

Consensus has benefits. The 130s Greenway is scheduled to be built next fall, and the 100s and 150s greenways are in the works.

The East Portland Access to Transit project, including the 130s Greenway and sidewalk improvements along Division Street.
(Image courtesy City of Portland. Annotated by BikePortland.)

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Employee parking at Texaco, SE 122nd and Stark.
(Photos J.Maus and M.Andersen/BikePortland)

This post is part of our special focus on east Portland this week.

In yesterday’s Monday Roundup, we linked to the most comprehensive listing I’ve seen of privileges that many people who start biking enjoy. But one item on its list is more complicated and interesting than it might seem: geographic privilege.

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This post is part of our special focus on east Portland this week.

Not every bike trip east of I-205 is terrible. In fact, parts of Kathleen McDade’s daily commute from Gateway to Ventura Park are downright pleasant. But as is often the case here in east Portland, it’s the crossings of major arterials that really make her nervous.[Read more…]

122nd Avenue between Stark and Market.
(Photo M.Andersen/BikePortland)

122nd Avenue is part of Portland. But it doesn’t look like “Portland.”

Instead, it looks like America. And that means it’s a pretty big opportunity.

[Read more…]