Cycling News & Blog Articles

Our post on the passage of Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan inspired many fine comments, most of them centered on the quote we highlighted from Metro president Lynn Peterson, “When 67% of the people in Clackamas County get up in the morning and have to go to three other counties to work — commutes that are not not easily done by bike or pedestrian or bus or transit or even by auto at this point — then we have some real equity needs within our region.”

Peterson was justifying the need for road expansions. But BikePortland commenters got to the essence of the region’s challenges with a discussion about proximity and travel distance.

Once again, a comment by Todd/Boulanger caught my attention. He makes the point that Metro solutions to the “work, housing, school” destination conundrum seem to emphasize road expansion, over creating better integrated communities.

Here’s what Todd/Boulanger wrote:

I love Lynn’s past work at Lake Oswego and WSDoT, but reading her highlighted quote, I have to wonder if she has now been fully captured by the vehicular status-quo at Metro.

Dana Deardorff. (Images: Portland Velo via Facebook)

Approximate location of collision circled in red.

Friends are remembering a dedicated group ride leader and Portland Velo Cycling Club member who was killed in a collision while cycling in Washington County in November.

According to a statement released today by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, 78-year-old Dan Deardorff was riding northbound on SW Roy Rogers Road just south of Al’s Garden Center between SW Beef Bend Rd and SW Elsner (about 10 miles southwest of downtown Portland) at around 11:38 am on Monday, November 20th. Police say Deardorff “veered across lanes of travel” and collided with a driver who was going southbound. “[The driver] was unable to stop before they impacted,” the Sheriff’s office wrote.

The driver called 911 and stayed at the scene to perform lifesaving duties. Police say impairment is not considered a factor and an investigation is ongoing.

Mangled bike racks and bike didn’t stand a chance against an SUV driver. (Photos sent in by a reader)

The driver of an SUV slammed into an on-street bike parking corral on SE Stark this morning. The collision flattened and/or uprooted six City of Portland-issued staple racks and a bicycle that was locked to one of them.

A reader sent us photos of the aftermath and I just had a quick call with a person named Cole, who happens to be the bike’s owner. She was across the street around 8:00 am this morning and witnessed the driver turn onto Stark from Sandy. “They drove straight into it and took all of the racks out. And my bike is totaled,” Cole said.

Cole said the driver was headed north on Sandy and turned right on Stark. The bike corral is on the southeast corner of the Sandy/Stark intersection right in front of The Slammer Tavern. The location is just two blocks east of the crossing I wrote about yesterday — the one where many drivers are ignoring the law and driving through a gap in a median that’s supposed to be bike-only.

“[The driver] says he didn’t see it,” Cole added, recalling a conversation with the driver, whose vehicle is still parked on Sandy with its bumper on the ground and a very bent wheel. “The whole thing is kinda’ sketchy. I don’t know how you couldn’t see it!” she said.

A rider pedals north on SE 12th just before Salmon. More photos below. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The City of Portland has installed a very helpful new link in the inner southeast bike network. There are now double-buffered bike lanes on SE 12th between Madison and Salmon. The Portland Bureau of Transportation completed striping the new bike lanes in September.

“This new stretch of bike lane connects two important pieces of infrastructure in SE Portland: the Central City in Motion Hawthorne/Madison improvements and the Salmon Neighborhood Greenway,” wrote PBOT in a social media post Wednesday.

The bike lane is unprotected and offers only paint as a separation from other road users; but the “double-buffered” design means that there is space between the one general purpose lane to the left of the bike lane and the door-zone of parked cars on the right. The previous cross-section included two general purpose lanes and two lanes for free car parking. PBOT swapped the eastern general purpose lane for the new bike lane.

This a nice connection because 12th handles a lot of bike traffic from the Ladds Addition area (and points south) and the new bike lane connects directly to the popular greenway on SE Salmon. At Salmon, PBOT has previously installed a concrete barricade to tame traffic and the street has a 15 mph “Shared Street” advisory speed limit. It also leads to a nice little coffee place (Good Coffee) on the corner of Salmon and 12th.

Protestors wore red and assembled outside Metro headquarters before the vote. (Photos: Sarah Risser)

At their meeting Thursday, members of Metro Council voted 6-1 to pass the most powerful and influential transportation plan in the region. The 2023 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) includes over $68 billion in investments on 771 projects across 24 cities and three counties. It also enshrines policies that will have vast influence on how funding and capital project implementation decisions will be made for the next five years.

It’s important to keep in mind that the RTP doesn’t fund specific projects. It is just a “menu, not a funded plan” according to Catherine Ciarlo, Metro’s planning director. Local jurisdictions identify available funding and propose specific projects they’d build if/when the dollars become available. That being said, the 578-page, federally mandated plan sets into motion how cities and local jurisdictions must plan road and mobility networks.

Thursday’s vote updates the 2018 RTP that was set to expire December 6th. That abbreviated timeframe meant Metro Council had no choice but to adopt it lest they wanted to throw the entire region into a chaotic federal funding blackout. That reality was not normal. The vote was supposed to happen months ago, but Metro’s Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) that develops the RTP, saw their agendas “blown apart” (in the words of Metro Councilor Christine Lewis) for several months due to the need to discuss tolling, which set back the timeline.

The foregone conclusion that the RTP would be adopted Thursday didn’t stop dozens of activists from climate group Extinction Rebellion (XR) from airing strong concerns during a pre-meeting protest outside Metro headquarters in northeast Portland.

Detail of event flyer showing tunnel model. Aerial view from Columbia River looking north into downtown Vancouver. (Photo: Bob Ortblad)

What if, instead of a new bridge over the Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver, we built a tunnel instead? Ever wondered how exactly that would work? At an open house in Vancouver later today (Friday, 12/1) you can see a real-life model of the idea and learn more about it from the guy who’s been pushing the idea for years.

If you’re a regular BikePortland reader, you have probably heard of the “immersed tunnel” concept for the Interstate Bridge project. We profiled the concept in February 2022 and introduced you to its main advocate, a retired engineer and dedicated transportation activist named Bob Ortblad. Ortblad hasn’t just proposed a tunnel instead of a bridge, he’s been an outspoken critic of the current Interstate Bridge Replacement Program (IBRP) design and the staff who’ve repeatedly dismissed the tunnel.

Ortblad believes a tunnel is better than a bridge for myriad reasons; including safety, land use, and environmental impact — but IBRP leaders have dismissed the design. In posts made to social media, they say the tunnel isn’t feasible because it wouldn’t have off/on-ramps, would cost more than a bridge, and would have “significantly more environmental impacts.” Ortblad strongly disagrees and has accused IBRP staff of “manufacturing consent” for a bridge.

Photo of the model.

The Transportation Wallet program has reduced driving and parking in the bustling Central Eastside District. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

“It’s not a ‘screw-up’. It’s cutting our losses.”

The Willamette Week reported today that the Portland Bureau of Transportation has cancelled a contract with an app developer and the $299,000 they spent will not be recouped. The app, which was supposed to launch this year, was related to PBOT’s Transportation Wallet program, a successful initiative that provides thousands of Portlanders big discounts on services likes bike share rental and transit passes.

As we reported a year ago, the Wallet program has become so popular that it has been expanded and taken from a pilot (that launched in 2017) to a permanent program. PBOT manages three types of Wallets, one for low-income residents (“Access for All”), one for Portlanders who just moved to town (“New Movers”), and one for people who live or work in places where parking is regulated by permits. In these “Parking Districts,” individuals can swap a parking permit for a Transportation Wallet that gives them a collection of passes and credits on transit (TriMet), streetcar (Portland Streetcar), bike-share (Biketown), e-scooters (various companies), and car-share that are worth hundreds of dollars.

The contract in the Willamette Week story relates only to the parking district Wallet program.

Looking northwest.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation has added a lot of new bike-specific infrastructure to Northeast and Southeast 7th Avenue in the past several months. On Tuesday, I went out to take a closer look at some of it.

7th Ave has long been a key north-south street in Portland’s bike network. Then its value skyrocketed when the Blumenauer Bridge opened along its alignment in summer 2022. Now PBOT is trying to make good on a promise to create a low-stress cycling experience on 7th that’s befitting of its designation as a neighborhood greenway and as laid out in the Central City in Motion plan.

Since we last checked-in on the 7th Ave Neighborhood Greenway back in December 2022, PBOT has striped new bike lanes on the five blocks between NE Tillamook and NE Weidler. They’ve also added a few speed bumps south of Tillamook. This is a busy commercial/industrial section of 7th that has long been a troubling gap. The new bike lanes are unprotected, but they come with a generous buffer space that someday (hopefully?!) PBOT will fill with some sort of protective curb or other treatment. They’ve also added green cross-bike markings to reinforce the bikeway through the intersections. It’s notable that PBOT swapped space previously used for free, on-street car storage in order to fit the new bike lanes. More photos below the jump…

These are straightforward bike lanes that are a welcome addition to this section of 7th. Hopefully PBOT can prevent people from parking in them and keep the new lanes clear of leaves and gravel through winter.

At a press conference to celebrate the new cycling facilities on Naito Parkway in May 2022, then director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation Chris Warner was asked to address concerns about the increase in cars and dangerous drivers on the roads. “There might be more cars,” Warner replied. “We just have to keep pushing along and making the case and if the facilities aren’t safe, people aren’t going to ride. The safer the facilities are, the more ability we’ll have to really change the culture.”

Warner could be confident in that statement because a few minutes later he cut the ribbon on Better Naito Forever, a project that established 1.2 miles of bike lanes physically protected from auto traffic by concrete curbs, grade separation, street trees, and/or steel bollards.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for key parts of that protection to be wiped away due to a combination of political compromise, reckless driving, and suspected vandalism.

Almost immediately after Better Naito opened, we heard complaints from readers about people parking in a section of the bike lane between SE Ankeny and the Burnside Bridge. As we reported in October 2022, that violation of the protected space was sanctioned by PBOT as part of a deal they cut with Portland Saturday Market decades ago (Naito had a standard unprotected bike lane for years before it was updated in 2022) to allow vendors to use the bike lane for loading and unloading. According to a permit renewed by City Council ordinance this past March, vendors are allowed to park in the bike lane for 10 minutes at a time on weekends, before and after the market opens as long they display a permit on their windshield.

Teen girls cycling in Amsterdam in 2017. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

— By Jen Guzman, Portland resident

“When I ride in Portland, I feel like there’s a target on my back… Here, it’s just fun and easy.”

This summer I spent nine days in Amsterdam with my 18-year-old son, eager to explore the city on two wheels. So much is written on the city’s transformation into a biking mecca that it almost feels cliche to visit and write about Amsterdam. I wondered if there was anything new I could learn and share.

Despite years of biking in Portland, it took me a minute to adjust to Amsterdam’s critical mass of bikes. I wasn’t used to navigating in such tight packs of bikes and the rules of the road weren’t always obvious. I learned quickly that a bike-centric city, while a huge improvement over a car-centric city, is not a utopia. Jerks on bikes will cut you off and curse you, much like some drivers on I-84. And also like many cars, very few bikes stop at crosswalks for pedestrians. In Amsterdam, cars tended to drive passively and slowly, yielding to bicycle and pedestrian traffic. I was in The Upside-Down World.

View of NE 41st from Glisan, looking east.

Two young Portlanders were crossing Northeast Glisan Street afternoon when a driver sped by, hit one of them, then fled the scene.

In an email sent Monday to families who attend nearby Laurelhurst School, Principal Alyson Brant said two students were crossing NE Glisan at 41st around 3:00 pm when the collision occurred. Brant says the victim suffered a broken tibia in addition to bruises and scrapes. “We are incredibly lucky that the situation did not have a more dire outcome,” Brant wrote.

41st is a designated crossing of a neighborhood greenway. It has a striped crosswalk, a push-button activated overhead signal, and yellow caution signage meant to warn drivers of the presence of people crossing. A story in The Oregonian yesterday reported that, despite all this, witnesses said the driver was going about 40 mph, which is “extremely fast for the area.”

This section of Glisan is just three blocks from Laurelhurst School. It’s a school zone with a speed limit of 25 mph. It’s also just one block east of the large Coe Circle where two eastbound lanes merge into one.

In this episode, I’ll take you to the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims event that happened this past Sunday. You’ll hear interviews recorded with participants of the walk from Lloyd Center to a memorial demonstration at the plaza in front of Veterans Memorial Coliseum. You’ll also hear excerpts from the speeches made at the demonstration, and an interview about safe streets funding and policy with The Street Trust Executive Director Sarah Iannarone.

The event was organized by The Street Trust, Oregon Walks, and Families for Safe Streets OR/WA.

People in this episode (in order of appearance):

I think you’ll love this episode, particularly my interview with Iannarone. Here’s just one exchange:

BikePortland:

(From Free2Move 2021 press release announcing Portland service.)

A carsharing service many Portlanders relied on in lieu of owning a car of their own, has shut down. Free2Move, a company that began service in Portland in 2021, emailed customers Monday saying all their cars would be off the streets by November 30th.

Free2Move is one of four carsharing providers currently operating in Portland (the others are Getaround, Turo, and Zipcar); but it’s the only one that offers “free-floating” service where users can rent a car by-the-minute and return it anywhere within a designated area. When Free2Move launched in March 2021 they said 200 Jeep Renegades would be available in a market that has, “has consistently demonstrated its commitment to alternative mobility solutions.” In 2015 Portland was ranked 7th on a list of 70 U.S. cities for its plethora of non-driving mobility options.

BikePortland reader Craig Harlow, who doesn’t own a car of his own, was a dedicated customer. He used Free2Move cars for family trips to the Tacoma area and shuttling his kids around Portland. “Carsharing is what allowed me to sell my family vehicle so many years ago,” Harlow shared with us via email Monday. “That was the start of me bike commuting, which led to so much more.”

“Zipcar and Getaround each have their place,” Harlow added. “But neither satisfies the day-do-day, ad-hoc flexibility of a free-floating program.”

Some of the 60 sleeping bags laid out to represent traffic victims at Memorial Coliseum on Sunday. Full gallery below. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

“I wish more people could see this and recognize that these are real people.”

About three dozen Portlanders did something together on Sunday that far too often feels like a dangerous activity: they took a walk. And if the reason for it wasn’t clear in the short walk from Lloyd Center Mall to Veterans Memorial Coliseum, when they arrived at the plaza in front of the coliseum, there could be no doubt.

Upon arrival they walked past 60 sleeping bags laid out in rows to represent dead bodies of the people who’ve died using Portland streets so far this year. And in a sad irony, the display was two bags short of the actual total because two more people were killed since the event was organized. And as of this morning, it’s now three bags short as Portland’s annual traffic toll has shot up to 63 lives lost — on pace with 2021 which was the deadliest year we’ve had since 1990.

Dedicated bicycle advocate Jackie Yerby, who serves on boards of The Street Trust and Cycle Oregon (and is a former member of the Community Cycling Center board) told me she had a visceral reaction to walking past the bags. “To see those bags and those names… I got really choked up. It’s a really powerful image, and I wish more people could see this and recognize that these are real people.”

Corner of SW Montgomery Drive and Roswell Ave on July 20th, 2022, the day after the new ramp was demolished.

Readers might remember a couple of posts BikePortland published about a year and a half ago about a hapless ADA ramp in Portland Heights which had to be built four times (and torn out three) before it was finally able to pass inspection.

Well, it turns out that a neighborhood curmudgeon reported the fiasco to the city auditor’s Fraud Hotline. The auditor investigated, and indeed found that several ADA ramp installations were “inefficient and wasteful.” The auditor’s report came out a couple of weeks ago.

I’d like to revisit that episode, not just because the city auditor backed up BikePortland reporting, and not because KOIN’s Brandon Thompson put me on TV (and gave a shoutout to BikePortland reporting in his written article). That was all nice.

No, what’s really important about the saga is what it says about how our city government is currently organized, and what the city reorganization ushered in by charter reform is hoping to fix. Namely, the City of Portland employs a lot of hard-working, conscientious people who struggle to work within a dysfunctional organizational structure.

BikePortland regularly covers stories which are somewhat technical, and our readers benefit from the many pros who comment here. I certainly appreciate it when commenters I’ve grown to trust over the years share their expertise.

The City of Portland’s Housing Regulatory Reform program (HRR) is about as technical as it gets, and it is also an overwhelming subject because building code regulates so many different things. We’ve been focusing on bike parking; but even that one sliver, if you want to go deep, touches macroeconomics, finance, the micro economics of building in Portland, creating a resilient city … OK I’ll stop.

Commenter Todd/Boulanger knows a thing or two about parking bikes, and he has broad experience beyond Portland, so I’m always glad to see him weigh in. He tends to have a good view of the big picture.

Here’s Todd’s reaction to last week’s vote by the Planning Commission to recommend rolling back key requirements put in place in 2019:

Welcome to the week.

Here are the best stories we’ve come across in the past seven days — from sources you can trust.

Work in government? Please read this: The standard pedestrian safety messages that come from DOTs and other government agencies usually miss the mark because they don’t focus no root causes and tend to blame victims. (Route Fifty)

New acronym day: ISA is short for Intelligent Speed Assistance; technology that warns drivers when they’re speeding with messages, sounds or haptic cues. We should all add that to our quiver of talking points and knowledge bank because the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has finally called for it to be added to all new cars. (Fast Company)

Fresh kermit in Brooklyn. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

During my time in New York City last month, I soaked up a lot of different bike infrastructure. You might have seen it make cameos in some of my previous videos or photos. But there were a bunch of images that I hadn’t shared until now. This post has 60 or so photos of the various types of bikeways you’ll find in Manhattan (with a smattering of images from Brooklyn).

Overall, I was impressed at the quantity of bike infrastructure and the clear priority NYC’s DOT is giving bikes (and buses for that matter). But the quality of the bikeways was often unpredictable and navigating most parts of the network still demands a level of riding ability and risk-aversion that unfortunately puts a ceiling on the number (and demographics) of folks who will ride. As I look through the images below and think back to my time there, I think what’s hurting NYC from a cycling perspective is less about the quality and volume of bike-specific infrastructure and more about the fact that — despite laudable efforts at traffic calming, large-scale pedestrianization, transit priority lanes, daylighting, and so on — there are still simply way too many drivers and cars.

The big lesson from NYC (which holds true in Portland and every American city), is that until you reach a certain tipping point in street design and network permeability that forcibly keeps drivers and cars out of the system, almost no amount of bike infrastructure will feel safe for the majority of people.

Scroll down to see how bikeways are looking in NYC these days. I think you’ll be simultaneously jealous and appalled. (Read captions for more information about each image.)

World Day of Remembrance happens this Sunday. Don’t miss this important event. (Photo from 2016 edition by Jonathan Maus)

Welcome to the weekend!

Here are some ride and event ideas sure to please…

Friday Night Ride – 7:00 pm at Ladds Addition (SE)
Weekly social ride will get you connected to bike-minded folks in the community. Expect a fire and/or fun at an end spot. More info here.

Ride Westside Breakfast Club – 7:30 am at Ava Roasteria (Beaverton – Washington County)
Coffee, baked goods, socializing, 10-mile urban ride with some fall colors, breakfast burritoes… What’s not to love? More info here.

The “strike bus” rolls by picketers outside Glencoe Elementary School on Southeast Belmont this morning. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The bike bus became the “strike bus” this morning as hundreds of Portland Public School students and their families from five schools joined a ride to show support for teachers who’ve been on strike since November 1st.

Route map (Source: @crestoneaglesbikebus on Instagram)

While the massive, moving picket line stretched many city blocks and bolstered weary strikers at schools along the way, it was also for the kids. As schools across Portland have started bike buses to get kids to school, many of them have had to do without that fun, active, and social outlet for the past 10 school days.

“I miss my friends. PPS, do the right thing!” read a sign taped to the back of a bike trailer.