Portland’s top traffic signal staffer takes bike advocates for a ride

Good urban planning means the average person traveling around a city doesn’t need to know anything about what went into designing it – they can just get around intuitively. Peter Koonce, who manages the traffic signals and street lighting division at the Portland Bureau of Transportation, is keenly aware of this. Koonce and his team … Read more


Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

On the podcast: The ‘invisible urbanism’ of traffic signals

Download Episode Portland’s traffic signal guru, Peter Koonce, in our podcast studio.(Photo J.Maus/BikePortland) When you change something about a traffic signal, people don’t notice. They simply obey. Well, mostly. Maybe that’s why signals have quietly become one of the most important and unique ways that Portland has made itself a better place for walking, biking … Read more


Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

PBOT experiments with ‘intelligent’ new indicator light

One smart light.(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland) One unsung area where Portland is doing some very cool stuff for bicycling is with traffic signals and “ITS” — which stands for Intelligent Transportation Systems. The field of ITS encompasses all sorts of high-tech ways to make our streets smarter. From sensing vehicle patterns with RFID, to software … Read more


See PBOT’s latest tweak to Broadway/Williams bike signal

PBOT crew at work this morning.(Photos © J. Maus) A Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) signal operations crew was out at the new Broadway/Williams bike signal this morning. The new signal was installed on October 13th to try and decrease the amount of right-hook collisions that have plagued the intersection for several years. After over … Read more