You’d think a city with a storied bike-friendly legacy and arguably the best bike parking facilities and policies in North America would make the main entrance to its City Hall a testament to those values. But that’s not the case. In fact, for some reason the bike parking at Portland City Hall’s SW 4th Street entrance has gotten much worse in the past several months.
They “put a bird on it,” but they also removed the racks that actually worked.
Last night under the cover of darkness City of Portland transportation bureau crews cleared out the cones, signs, candles, photos and flowers that had created a traffic calming memorial to Fallon Smart on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.
The makeshift memorial in the center turn lane at the intersection of 43rd Avenue had grown from a few flowers on August 19th to a memorial so large that it closed Hawthorne’s center turn lane. In fact, closing the lane was a secondary and symbolic goal of the memorial — since it was that center lane that allowed Abdulrahman Noorah* to speed recklessly past another driver (who had stopped) just before he hit and killed the 15-year-old Smart.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation has announced two major new hires: a Communications Director and an Equity and Inclusion Manager.