Sometimes we all make mistakes. TriMet wants more people to think about the fact that some mistakes can be fatal.

It can be difficult to talk about this subject without blaming the victims of traffic violence. To its credit, the video TriMet released today focuses on examples of people who are acting both illegally and at least a little recklessly rather than (as the New York City transit union did recently) condemning people simply for not being cautious. There’s a big difference.

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A local beer entrepreneur’s reach-for-the-stars campaign to name Portland’s newest bridge after Jean-Luc Picard has succeeded, at least for one day.

Google Maps currently lists the walking-biking-transit bridge as the “Jean-Luc Picard Wunder Crossing,” just as Owen Lingley suggested in a pair of billboards he put up at his own expense last year.

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Crossing Tilikum.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Two months ago, we made an unfortunate error: We ran a post observing that the new Tilikum Crossing was simultaneously boosting bike traffic and reducing bike congestion on the Hawthorne Bridge sidewalks.

Trouble was, the source of our data — the Hawthorne Bridge’s automated bike counter — had been malfunctioning, so the findings were bogus.

Now the better data has arrived … and it shows pretty much the same thing that the fake data had seemed to.

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Here’s another way to go.
(Map by Google)

Sometimes, you just have to stop reading the signs.

That’s the advice from BikePortland reader axoplasm, who responded to Tuesday’s post about the hassles of navigating to the east landing of Tilikum Crossing with a homemade route of his own that he said is “slightly longer” but “much faster, with simpler crossings and saner stoplights.”

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Issues identified in Justin C.’s letter below.
(Map: Google. Annotations: BikePortland)

How many inconveniences does it take to add up to a serious problem?

For about a year now, we’ve been watching the expanse of east-side paths to Tilikum Crossing with unease. We’ve heard from many readers, publicly and privately, about its many issues. But like most of us, we wanted to give TriMet and the Portland Bureau of Transportation a chance to get it built, celebrate the good parts and work the kinks out before talking about what can be done to fix the problems here.

After more than a month of Tilikum crossings, it’s time to start talking about what’s still wrong and what can be done. And we couldn’t frame the situation better than one reader, Justin C., did in an email to BikePortland last week.

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It’s a long way up, but you can do it if you want.
(Photo M.Andersen/BikePortland)

For a lot of us, Tilikum Crossing is a hill.

Portland’s newest bridge is 77 feet above the water at the peak, and that means there’s a steady grade of just under 5 percent for hundreds of feet. That’s different than Portland’s other bridges, most of which rest a bit lower and focus their grade into shorter climbs on either end.

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Tilikum Crossing during Sunday Parkways last weekend.
(Photos: J.Maus/BikePortland)

Correction 10/5: Unfortunately, an earlier version of this post was based on inaccurate data. As explained in the comments by Portland Bicycle Planning Coordinator Roger Geller (and first noticed by reader Psyfalcon), the Hawthorne counter failed to capture eastbound bike data from Sept. 9 through the end of the month. This problem wasn’t noted on the city’s website but we should have noticed the east/west discrepancy and checked with the city before running this story.

This means it’s likely that the Tilikum has boosted total bike traffic across the Willamette, but that Hawthorne bike traffic hasn’t dropped by anywhere close to one-third. It’ll take several weeks to learn the truth. In the meantime, we regret the error. The original (incorrect) version of the post follows.

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Yes, apparently city engineers sometimes use the Unipiper to designate bike lanes. We’ll call it affectionate good humor.
(Images from a city engineer’s design dated April 2015)

Well, this would definitely be odd if it happened.

Despite a continuing gusher of evidence that adding some sort of vertical separation to bike lanes makes them much better at getting people to actually ride bicycles, the City of Portland was, as recently as April, drawing up “preliminary” plans for an entirely new street in the South Waterfront that had a bike lane painted into the door zone of a road bed.

Two days after we emailed him about the plans, city spokesman Dylan Rivera said the sketch (which is dated May 5, 2015 and lists April 2015 as its “date approved”) was “per the 2009 city council approved street plan for the area” and that “we are considering other options.”

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An estimated 40,000 people crossed Tilikum Crossing Sunday on foot, bike, skateboard, scooter or wheelchair.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

With walkers and in strollers, on hopalongs and (in the case of quite a few happily panting dogs) on leashes, Portlanders packed a series of previews Sunday of Tilikum Crossing, the first bridge in the United States to carry buses, bikes, trains, streetcars and people walking but no private cars.

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Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People.
(Photo: TriMet)

If you, like us, have spent the last five years dreaming of the day you’ll be pedaling across Portland’s lovely new car-free bridge, this weekend is your first chance.

The Tilikum Crossing will temporarily open to bike traffic this Sunday, Aug. 9, for two events: first, the Providence Bridge Pedal, the paid ride that loops across Portland’s Willamette River bridges; and second, a three-hour open window that TriMet is calling “The People’s Preview.”

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