While the Portland Bureau of Transportation looks to continue the positive trends of 2018 with projects on high crash streets, they haven’t forgotten about neighborhood greenways.
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Just a few yards beyond this sign is where Calum Breitenberg lost control of his car and killed someone.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Just after 11:00 pm on November 15th, 23-year-old Calum Breitenberg got into his Volvo sedan and drove northwest on Willamette Boulevard toward St. Johns. He had been drinking. A lot.
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This is amazing on many levels.
(Photo sent in by reader)

Reader M.N. sent us this photo. It shows the front window of a house on North Willamette Blvd near Wabash where the resident has a message for bike lane users:

“Citizens. Cut us some slack while we access our driveways! Bike lanes are for everyone. It’s the law.”

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PBOT visualization of new markings coming to NW Nicolai.

You’ve heard of rails-to-trails, how about rails-to-cycle-track?

That’s what in store for a defunct railroad bed on a 0.6 mile section of NW Nicolai Street that’s been paved over in the northwest industrial area. The Portland Bureau of Transportation plans to add some markings and a few other finishing touches to make this a two-way bikeway between Highway 30 and NW Wardway. It’s one of 18 projects that will be built will receive funding in the coming year thanks to $2,085,000 set aside for small-scale projects identified through programs in the city’s Transportation System Plan (TSP).
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The new median spans well beyond the intersection.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus)

North Portland’s streets continue to evolve as a combination of neighborhood demands, City of Portland paving projects, and opportunistic activism are coming together to make significant changes to bikeways.
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Despite the fact that Portland has fallen way off the pace when it comes to building physically protected bike lanes, we continue to build “new” bikeways with nothing more than paint and hope.

That’s why I’m so ambivalent about the new striping on North Willamette Blvd.
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Almost complete. The faint lines are where the remaining outside buffer stripes will go.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

The Portland Bureau of Transportation is nearly done with their Willamette Blvd restriping project. This is the street where neighborhood residents seized an opportunity to improve the bikeway, galvanized tons of support, and got PBOT commissioner Dan Saltzman to back them up.
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Tabor Rising’s graphic on the left. The thing they oppose on the right.

If your understanding of Portland is only through Portlandia episodes or the glowing, brochure-like visions shared in magazines and conference presentations, you might think we ride everywhere on perfect paths while passersby wave at us benevolently.

As real as it may seem, that happens only my dreams (thanks Debbie Gibson).
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Should be striped in the next few weeks.

In case you missed it (it came as an update to a previous story), the Portland Bureau of Transportation announced a plan Tuesday to update lane striping on Willamette Boulevard in order to create more space for bicycling.

After a paving project kicked off last month, a neighborhood group called Friends of Willamette Blvd seized the opportunity to re-stripe the street. They launched an online petition and encouraged people to email City Hall demanding better bike access between Rosa Parks and Woolsey (the boundaries of the paving project). The response was overwhelming (415 people in less than 24 hours) and it persuaded City Commissioner Dan Saltzman to direct the Portland Bureau of Transportation to re-stripe the street.

PBOT released their new plans for Willamette just four hours after we reported Commissioner Saltzman’s promise. Friends of Willamettee Blvd volunteer Kiel Johnson announced shortly after that they’re hosting a potluck on Saturday November 18th to celebrate.
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In just one day last week over 415 Portlanders signed a petition calling for safer cycling conditions on North Willamette Boulevard. And Commissioner Dan Saltzman (who oversees the Bureau of Transportation) agrees with them.
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