Many Portland bike users don’t realize how to use
detector loops like the one at NE Tillamook and
MLK Boulevard.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Though a bill as seemingly uncontroversial as state Senate Bill 533 isn’t the sort of thing we’d usually bother covering, some coverage today that originated in The Oregonian certainly has people talking.

As the O correctly explains in the seventh paragraph of the web version of its front-page story, SB 533 would make it legal to “proceed with caution” through a red light that is trying, but failing, to detect one’s bicycle or motorcycle. This would only be allowed after someone has waited through a full cycle.

Here’s how Oregonian reporter and columnist Joseph Rose and his editors chose to explain this bill:

[Read more…]

TriMet requires its drivers to keep electronic
devices off and out of sight while working.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

TriMet’s total ban on the use of electronic devices while driving seems to be working, though some of the transit agency’s operators still seem to flout the rule.

The Oregonian’s Joseph Rose opened his notebook Thursday to share a wealth of reporting about TriMet operators’ use of electronic devices, including the results of a public record request showing that the number of complaints received by TriMet about drivers and cell phones fell from 530, in the two years to 2009, to 80, in the two years to 2013.

In 2010, as one of his first orders on the job, General Manager Neil McFarlane began requiring operators to keep their cell phones off and out of sight while on duty. Matters came to a head when one passenger captured a video that seemed to show a driver with a history of past incidents reading a Kindle while behind the wheel of a bus on Interstate 5.

[Read more…]

Joseph Rose

The Oregonian (and many other newspapers) might be in the midst of major newsroom shrinkage and other changes to its print edition, but that hasn’t stopped them from launching a new blog about “the culture of the commute”.

The “Hard Drive” blog officially launched today and will be written by Oregonian staff reporter Joseph Rose. Rose told me he’ll cover everything from TriMet to bike lanes. “Slap a “Share the Road” sticker on my forehead,” he wrote in an email about his new endeavor, “I want to be at the center of the whole bike-car-bus-walk-light rail continuum.” [Read more…]