“Wish you could ride a bike but never learned how? Or maybe you need a refresher in a judgement-free and traffic-free environment? This class is for you! Doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 80, we will get you rolling no time. With our safe and easy teaching methods, students will learn how to balance, pedal, start, stop, and steer a bike all in a two hour class. Bikes and helmets will be available for all participants to borrow! If you have a bike, bring it – mechanics will be on hand to make sure it’s running smoothly. Class meets in Gateway Discovery Park, NE Halsey St at 106th Ave, next to the Really Really Free Market event. Event runs from 3 to 6; plan on spending 1 ½ – 2 hours learning to ride. This FREE class is hosted by Portland Community College, Bikes for Humanity and the Portland Bureau of Transportation.”

En route to PCC Rock Creek and Sylvania!
(Photos: WashCo Bikes)

A fleet of 20 new bicycles is headed to two Portland Community College campuses on the westside. The bikes are part of a partnership between Hillsboro-based WashCo Bikes and PCC’s Sylvania and Rock Creek locations. [Read more…]

PCC groundskeeper Eric Roberts and his new work truck.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

Human brains tend to work more efficiently in quiet places. For college campuses with many acres of foliage and greenspace to maintain, the use of power tools and motorized vehicles is often at odds with a serene learning environment.

Portland Community College thinks they have an answer: bikes. Or, more specifically, three-wheeled cargo trikes.
[Read more…]

An abrupt closure of the Student Center at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus has left staff and volunteers with the school’s Bike Program scrambling and frustrated.

Tom Martin, the bike program coordinator at the north Portland campus contacted us today and said he and other staff were informed late afternoon on Friday about the closure and were given no prior notice or help finding another space on campus. Martin called the move, “A giant step backwards for students at Cascade Campus who need affordable transportation options.”

“The ASPCC [Associated Students of Portland Community College] funded bike program is being stonewalled and mothballed to the detriment to students, the community, and the environment,” Martin wrote in an email today that was sent to co-workers and volunteers.[Read more…]

A student rides on the South Park
Blocks on the PSU campus.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) has a new front in their effort to teach people about bicycling: They now offer college-level bike training courses in partnership with Portland State University (PSU) and Portland Community College (PCC).

The PSU class, Bike PDX: How to Commute by Bicycle, will be offered in two different sessions during PSU’s spring term which begins April 1st and runs through June 18th. Students can accrue one course credit for completion of the class.

Here’s the course description:[Read more…]

Rendering of plans. New parking
garage is in upper left, N.
Killingsworth St. is in lower right.

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…]

Architect’s rendering of underground parking
lot. The street on the lower right is
N. Killingsworth.

Back in October we shared the news that Portland Community College’s Cascade campus was planning to build a $9 million, four-story parking garage at the corner of N. Michigan and Killingsworth. Now there’s a new option on the table: an underground lot that would be built below existing campus buildings on N Jessup between Mississippi and Albina.[Read more…]

PCC has determined that the
corner of Michigan and Killingsworth
would be the best location for a
multi-story parking garage.
(Photo © J. Maus)

Portland Community College’s Cascade campus is considering the construction of a four-story parking garage on the northeast corner of N Michigan and Killingsworth. The project is part of district-wide expansion plans funded by a $374 million bond measure passed by voters in 2008.

While some neighborhood residents are alarmed at the potential impacts of a parking garage — especially its alignment along the bicycle boulevard planned for Michigan Ave — PCC officials say that the structure is not a done deal and they still might not have build it.[Read more…]