If I owned a business on Williams I’d want to celebrate these potential customers too.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

Imagine a business district that celebrates cycling and welcomes those who do it with open arms. That’s what we have on North Williams Avenue.
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One of the many victims of slippery striping on N Williams Ave.
(Photo via Nextdoor)

In the past two days dozens of people have wiped out while bicycling on Williams due to slippery new lane striping that was recently installed after a repaving project.

We started getting reports via email and on social media on Tuesday. The more we asked for your feedback about the problem, the more crashes we heard about.

Here’s just a sampling:

Courtney: Yep! My back wheel slipped yesterday during evening commute. I barely stayed upright and a rider a couple bikes ahead of me slid out. I didn’t see anything else in the road that could’ve caused a skid besides the paint.

Billy: Yep. Last night. Bad crash… I’ve been a bike commuter for 15 years and last night’s incident was the strangest thing. It was like my front wheel was suddenly on ice. I walked the rest of the way home and told my fiancé that it was like I had forgotten how to ride a bike.

Christopher: I saw a cyclist wipe out right there last night during rush hour. Another took a skid trying to dodge the downed cyclist.
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Bike traffic on North Williams… coming soon to NE Cleveland.
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The Portland Bureau of Transportation just announced a repaving project that will require bicycle users to detour off North Williams Avenue for two weeks beginning this Tuesday.

PBOT plans to grind down and then repave Williams as part of regularly scheduled maintenance on a one-mile stretch between Beech and Killingsworth. The project will require lane closures from September 4th through September 18th from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm and possibly on weekends. They also say bicycle users “will be detoured” around the work zone onto an adjacent street.

Here’s more from PBOT:[Read more…]

Kenton Cycle Repair’s new location off Denver Ave.
(Photo: Kenton Cycle Repair)

There’s been a lot of shuffling of bike shops in Portland in the past few years. There are several reasons we see bike shops move or go out of business. There’s always a pendulum swing and shake-out in a city whose enthusiasm for cycling sometimes outpaces its actual support of it. Rent increases are another major culprit. Bike shops aren’t exactly cash cows and most owners operate on very thin margins. Finding the right space with the right size at the right price is not easy — especially in a city where landlords and developers would rather own multi-story residential buildings.

With that, here are the updates we’ve got for you (scroll down to get all the details):

• Upcycles moves out of Woodlawn
• Kenton Cycle Repair moves into much larger space
• Metropolis Cycles changes plans
• Announcing the Breadwinner Cafe!
• East Portland shops step up to help

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(Photos: Metropolis Cycle Repair)

Portland’s busiest cycling street is about to get even better for bike lovers.

A new shop has opened in the bustling commercial block of North Williams Avenue between Failing Street and Shaver. And Metropolis Cycle Repair on North Page Street is planning to move across the street to a new and larger location.

The new shop is called 3928 Bike Shop and is located at — surprise, surprise — at 3928 N Williams Ave. That’s right across the street from the Hopworks Bike Bar in the old Jesuit Volunteer Corps building. It’s a new endeavor from Portland Bicycle Studio owner Molly Cameron. Cameron, a well-known figure in the racing scene, calls her new store a “pop-up bike shop”. She’s not a newcomer to the area, having opened her first shop (“Veloshop”) a four blocks east on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. back in 2001.
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Peak-hour traffic on Williams Avenue.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

It’s been a few years since the last time we shared a look at Portland bike traffic. With the sunny weather we’ve been having and the first year of the Bike More Challenge in May instead of September, I figured it was time to take another look.
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Woman accused of road rage on North Williams last night.
(Photo: Jessica Roberts)

An interaction between road users on North Williams Avenue during rush-hour last night turned ugly when a woman driving a car physically threatened a woman who was cycling by swerving her car into the bike lane and then chasing her into a nearby restaurant.

It started around 5:15 pm when Piedmont neighborhood resident Jessica Roberts saw a woman in a white sedan using her cell phone. Roberts told us this morning she first saw the woman on her phone when her car passed her while she was biking in the bike lane near North Stanton (Dawson Park). As usual during the evening rush Williams was completely backed up with auto traffic. Upon passing by the woman’s vehicle a few seconds later (near Fargo Street) Roberts looked at her and yelled, “That’s illegal!” In response, the woman, “Looked up and just exploded with rage,” Roberts says.
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The scene of the crash. George was taken to hospital with what police describe as “non-life-threatening” injuries.
(Photos: Josh Berezin)

Sorry to be the bearer of more bad news, but there’s been another traffic collision that sent a person to the hospital.
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The new curb extension on northeast corner of Williams and Killingsworth.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

The other day while biking home up North Williams Avenue I got a surprise. As I crossed Killingsworth, the usual cut-through I used to enjoy was gone. Instead of the bike lane leading me to a curbside channel with a median island buffer between me and people driving in the opposite direction, I had to ride head-on into traffic. I didn’t think much of it because it was an active construction site, but I wanted to find out what was going with this very busy intersection in the north/northeast Portland bike network.
[Read more…]