When an urban neighborhood holds a beloved street festival, space becomes scarce — and less space-efficient transportation options become a much worse way to get there.
When I started getting seriously interested in bicycles a few years ago, I already knew they were pollution-free, cheap, healthy, quiet, nonlethal and space-efficient.
What threw me for a loop, when I was talking to other Portlanders who were already interested in bicycles, was that they kept talking about community. Biking (and walking, and public transit) connected them with their neighbors and surroundings in a way that driving can’t.
A man whose legs were paralyzed in an unsolved 2013 hit-and-run on Interstate Avenue has sued the city, state and regional transit agency for $21 million.
Mike Cooley’s wife Lori, who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told us in a May interview that she’s motivated in part by the lack of changes to Interstate Avenue’s bike lanes despite years of serious collisions on the street.
“Something has to be done to make that road safer or just shut it down for bikes,” Lori Cooley said. “There’s just too many injuries there.”
Rodney Avenue, already a decent low-stress alternative to the Vancouver-Williams couplet, is lined up for an upgrade to full neighborhood greenway status.
At an open house next Wednesday evening, the Portland Bureau of Transportation will be asking people for their thoughts on the plans.
To make the route comfortable for all riders, the city will need to find good ways to help people navigate two jogs in the street grid, at NE Alberta and NE Fremont (pictured below).
After two years of operating a satellite bike repair shed in North Portland’s public mixed-income New Columbia community, the Community Cycling Center is deepening its community involvement.
The nonprofit bike shop and biking-for-everyone advocacy group is combining bike events and education with a rising educational philosophy known as “Thrive” in an effort to help residents change their city for the better.
“A lot of the time organizations go to a community and they don’t really try to help, but you give them what you think they need,” said Sheena Ilaoa, an educator who just finished a summer designing the new curriculum for the CCC. “What we’re trying to give them is tools.”
There’s a new bike repair shop that’s open for business just a half-block off the busy N Williams Avenue bike corridor. Sherifa Roach, a nearby resident, recent United Bicycle Institute graduate and veteran volunteer at local bike shops, has opened Black Bird Bicycle Repair at 104 N. Failing Street (between Williams and Vancouver).
I’d heard from a few sources that someone was operating a bike shop out of an old school bus, so I swung by yesterday for a closer look. Sure enough, there was Sherifa, giving away bags of popcorn as part of the RAD event, and smiling in her apron in front of a big purple bus parked in the alleyway behind her. She was proud to give me a tour of the inside (which I found surprisingly roomy).
Sherifa pointed out how her partner had completely remodeled the inside of the bus. He wired it up with new electrical outlets, built wooden work benches, installed new lighting, added some security bars for the windows, and built a ramp off the rear door so people can roll their bikes right on up.
[Read more…]
North Portland resident Scott Stephenson is still shaken up after being involved in a road rage altercation on North Williams Avenue last Saturday. Stephenson, 31, says he and a woman driving a car got into a shouting match and that the woman escalated the situation by intentionally swerving her vehicle into him, knocking him to the ground, and then fleeing the scene.
After hearing about Stephenson’s story, I contacted him directly to hear his side of the story. Here’s how he remembers it…
Stephenson was stopped in the bike lane, waiting at the red light at N. Fremont at about 1:00 pm. As his light turned green, a woman was getting into her car just outside the Williams St. Market. She left her driver’s side door open, and Stephenson says his arm “grazed her door.” “It was no big deal,” he recalled, “So I just kept on going.”[Read more…]
Portland Community College has approved plans for a new parking garage at their Cascade campus in North Portland — and it won’t be the four-story, $9 million structure that many people (including myself) were concerned about due to its potential impacts on the future Michigan Ave bike boulevard.
Instead, PCC announced today that a proposal for an underground parking facility on N. Jessup between N. Albina and Mississippi was approved in late December and they’re “going forward with it.”
[Read more…]
Biking continues to improve for residents of North Portland. The City just unwrapped a small but important improvement that will improve bike safety during pick-up and drop-off on the main road outside Cesar Chavez School on N. Willis Blvd.[Read more…]
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