Cycling News & Blog Articles

A bike rider enters NE 72nd Drive at Tillamook, where they’ll be able to ride without worrying about drivers buzzing by. (Michael Mann)

Location of Jersey barriers. See close-up of section circled in white below. (BikePortland)

After incidents of extreme vandalism last month, Portland Bureau of Transportation crews returned to Rose City Golf Course over the weekend. They wanted to send a clear message that drivers are no longer allowed to drive northbound on Northeast 72nd Drive between Tillamook and Sacramento. And this time, they were not messing around.

In a bid to prioritize bicycling and walking on this section of the street that’s considered a lynchpin of the 70s Neighborhood Greenway, PBOT installed signs and poles late last month. But anti-PBOT local residents repeatedly destroyed the infrastructure and used power tools to saw off heavy-gauge traffic poles and signs.

PBOT spent weeks planning the new approach that was installed over the weekend, and the new infrastructure has significantly hardened the changes. There are now four concrete Jersey barriers at the site — one in northbound lane of 72nd at Tillamook, another about 300 feet north adjacent to the cafe and golf shop, and two more at the northeast corner of the golf course parking lot (to prevent drivers from exiting the lot onto 72nd, a movement that would endanger southbound bicycle riders). The signs are adorned with “Do Not Enter”, and “Road Closed: Except Bicycles” signs.

(Jonathan Maus)

Hi everyone. I’ve been out of town for the past two days, so I apologize for the tardiness of this post about tonight’s Bike Happy Hour (BHH).

I don’t think we’ll have any local political candidates in the room tonight, but you never know who might show up. What I do know is that we’ll save some time on the mic to highlight the great work of our friends at BikeLoud PDX. This scrappy-yet-mighty nonprofit has come a long way since their first meeting in August 2014 and I’ve never felt more confident in their trajectory.

Let’s come together and let BikeLoud know how much we appreciate their work!

If you’ve been to Bike Happy Hour there’s a good chance you’ve met a BikeLoud member or one of their leaders. They’ve supported the event since the start and I’ve really appreciated the ways we’ve leaned on each other to make our community stronger.

As two bills addressing e-bike regulation wind their way through the Oregon legislature, BikePortland readers responded with a slew of strong comments to last week’s article which focussed on one of them, House Bill 4103

Comments came in with a wide variety of opinion, commenter Eric even remarked, “I find it fascinating that I kind of agree with every perspective voiced so far in this comment thread.”

In her statement to BikePortland, Sarah Iannarone, director of The Street Trust, introduced the issue of transportation independence, “we have seen time and again how the transportation needs of teens in particular are regarded as a nuisance…”

Expanding on that thought, commenter Al Dimond got to the heart of what is really at stake — how auto-mobility has restricted the freedom and independence of teenagers. What you think is normal, or how things should be, is “both about when we grew up and where.”

Hi everyone, I’m starting the week being with family in Grants Pass (southern Oregon) today and tomorrow so this roundup will be a bit quick and short. I won’t be back in the Shed until Tuesday night, so please adjust your expectations as we settle into the week.

Here are the most notable items our community came across in the past seven days:

Pedestrian-less in Seattle: ” If I paid attention to drivers as well as they paid attention to me, I’d be dead by now.” (Seattle Times Opinion)

Feeling validated: I’ve long pointed to how the decline in cycling in Portland has tracked with the increase in road fatalities. Now there’s research that might back that up. It shows that in cities with high cycling rates, traffic safety for all users is generally better. (Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research)

With my usual co-host Eva Frazier on vacation (hope Italy is amazing Eva!), I welcomed a special guest into the shed this week: Stephen Green! Stephen is a multi-talented business advocate and community builder you should probably know about if you care about the future of Portland. Why?

For starters, Stephen is executive director of Business for a Better Portland, the nonprofit organization founded in 2017 as an antidote to the Portland Metro Chamber. In his role at BBPDX, Stephen helps 400 member businesses navigate everything from city politics to building social capital. Pitch Black, now in its eighth year, is an annual event that connects BIPOC entrepreneurs with funders. “It’s Shark Tank meets America’s Funniest Home Videos,” is how Stephen describes it. He also sits on all types of important advisory committees and boards, including the Governor’s Central City Task Force.

Stephen’s superpower is connecting people to information and resources and using his knowledge and experience to help others. That’s my kind of guy! We haven’t spent a lot of time together over the years, but I feel like we’ve both known about each other for a long time. I’ve watched him from afar with respect and knew that eventually our circles would cross. Now they have!

In this episode, Stephen and I chat about all sorts of stuff; but mostly local business and politics (especially our new form of government). He tells stories about Portland’s Black history (did you know “the Pearl” district was named after a Black woman?), we dish on what we think makes Portland tick, why bike riders tend to love Portland so much, how to talk to business owners about bicycling and transportation reform, and much more.

Thanks to Brock Dittus of Sprocket Podcast fame for our fantastic theme music.

What streets can look like. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

What do Better Naito, the Southwest 3rd and Ankeny plaza, Steel Bridge Skatepark, bus priority lanes, and several other important bits of non-car infrastructure around Portland have in common? They all started as tactical urbanism and pop-up demonstration projects through Portland State University’s partnership with Better Block.

Since 2016, the nonprofit Better Block has cemented their collaboration with Portland State to bring amazing ideas for better streets and public spaces from dream into reality. For everyday activists, or anyone with an idea, Better Block gives you a pathway to the brilliant planners and engineers-in-training at PSU. And now that PSU and the Portland Bureau of Transportation have worked successfully together on several projects, the route from your idea to your infrastructure has never been more direct.

Each year, the Better Block PSU program launches a citywide search for the best ideas. The ones they select, get vetted, designed, planned — and maybe even funded and implemented!

Consider the Steel Bridge Skatepark and the big announcement that it has received $15 million to be constructed. A team of PSU students played a huge role in making that happen. They provided the planning data and analysis that helped make the case at City Hall and ultimately convince local elected officials and policymakers that the project was worth investing in.

Keith Wilson, a candidate for Portland mayor, speaking at Bike Happy Hour on February 14th. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

As I listened to Keith Wilson give a speech at Bike Happy Hour last night it occurred to me his life has been sort of like Forrest Gump. He’s got an interesting and diverse background and set of life experiences you’d never expect from a trucking company CEO. If you knew that his company, Titan Freight Systems, runs and all-electric fleet and that just before coming to the event last night he gave invited testimony on decarbonization in the freight industry to the State of Washington Transportation Commission, or that he was once so poor he spent nights in LaGuardia Airport, or that he takes 12 at-risk Black youth camping once a year, you might begin to understand what I mean.

Wilson spoke to a rapt crowd last night about growing up poor in north Portland and being the first person in his family to go to college (Portland Community College), then moving from home to take a job as a sales intern at NBC in Manhattan. When he didn’t land a job, he ran out of money and spent nights in LaGuardia Airport. “I thought to myself, if you’re homeless, where do you go? You go to the place with carpet, because Newark Airport had tile.”

These days Wilson divides his time between his company and his nonprofit, Shelter Now PDX. He said he found himself pulled toward the homelessness problem because — despite building Titan Freight into a success and being named national “Innovator of the Year” two years in a row — “Six, seven years ago, I started looking around and I didn’t recognize my city anymore,” he shared last night. “If I’m operating in the backdrop of a community where my neighbors can’t live, where livability is compromised, we’ve got a problem.”

Bike Polo is a time-honored tradition at Alberta Park. Get over there and check it out. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

It’s Friday! Time to plan your weekend.

Here are some fun things to do for bike lovers this weekend…

Sorella Forte Intermediate Road Ride – 9:00 am at River City Bicycles (SE)
The Sorellas are a respected local bike club that offers an encouraging environment for women who love to pedal fast. Their intermediate rides average about 15-16 mph and Saturday’s route will be a flat one out to Gresham. More info here.

Participatory Budgeting Summit – 9:30 to 5:30 pm at PSU (SW)
Learn and get involved with a Participatory Budgeting Oregon, a group that’s working to, “shift the who and how of public budgeting and the allocation of public resources.” The folks behind this are legit, thoughtful, smart, dedicated advocates on the crest of a transformation in Oregon democracy. They just need you to make it happen. More info here.

Headlines this week from Willamette Week and KATU.

A truism I come back to often as I navigate frequent debates online and off is that multiple things — often conflicting things — can be true at the same time. In today’s world where public discussions are too often binary, having simultaneous multiple truths can be difficult for folks to accept.

Case in point: the Portland Bureau of Transportation is amazing. It has a proud legacy of national leadership, excellent programs, and is full of dedicated staff who want to do the rights things — even when it requires pushing back against bureaucratic inertia. At the same time, PBOT is failing miserably on its main job: to provide the basic service of safe streets for all Portlanders.

We all know the traffic death toll has scaled new heights in recent years. But from a street-level perspective, two stories in the local media this week stand as examples of PBOT’s failure, and they both involve unsafe conditions on the same street, less than two miles apart. In both cases, PBOT is well-aware of dangers drivers pose, yet they’ve failed to adequately address it. The result has been stress, repeated trauma, property damage, and even loss of life.

Remember the s-curves on Southeast Woodstock and 60th I reported on a year ago? Folks who live there reached out to me after drivers repeatedly failed to negotiate the curve. They shared several examples of drivers and their cars flying through front yards, slamming into porches, and careening into fences. The problem had been going on for years, and neighbors felt like PBOT wasn’t doing enough.

A person on an e-bike rolls on SE 148th on February 6th, 2024. (Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Biking was up in Portland in 2023 about 17% of riders were on e-bikes. Those are two findings of the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s latest bicycle counts.

PBOT has conducted manual counts of bicycle riders since at least 2000. The annual exercise has become an important and reliable bellwether of cycling’s overall health in the city. The 2022 counts, released last March, revealed a precipitous drop that led to countless headlines and soul-searching among many local policymakers and bike advocates. Last year’s numbers were expected but were nevertheless a difficult pill to swallow.

The 2023 counts were tallied during peak commute times for two-hour intervals at 272 locations citywide. 114 volunteers took part in the process between June and the end of September.

According to a preview of the report that will be made public for the first time at the PBOT Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting tonight, the number of people bicycling in Portland in 2023 was up 5% over last year. That’s still down 32% relative to 2019, but it’s still a notch in the right direction. The Northwest district saw an increase of 15% over 2022 and East Portland was up 12%.

These kids would be in violation of Oregon law if a bill in the legislature passed. (Photos: Megan Ramey)

“I am frustrated by the short-sightedness. HB 4103 is a one-sided, incomplete bill that will focus solely on rider enforcement as a deterrent”

A bill that would change the legal status of electric bicycles in Oregon is up for its first public hearing in Salem later today, and cycling and road safety advocates disagree on whether or not it’s the right path forward.

There are two e-bike bills up for consideration in the Oregon Legislature this session: House Bill 4067 and House Bill 4103. HB 4067 would create a task force on “electric micromobility,” a catch-all term that includes e-bikes and other small, battery-powered vehicles. That bill has broad support and is likely to pass.

But the more substantive of the two, HB 4103, has created a bit of a stir in advocacy circles. Some say it could hinder e-bike adoption, adds too much regulation too soon, and is overly punitive; while others say it’s a step forward for safety. Most notably, the bill is being opposed by Portland-based nonprofit, The Street Trust.

Caroline Fitchett calls the Salmonberry Trail “Oregon’s next big adventure” and considers it the most ambitious rail-to-trail project in the nation. Fitchett is executive director of the Salmonberry Trail Foundation, the nonprofit that’s leading a coalition of government agencies in development of an 82-mile trail that would connect Washington County to the city of Tillamook on the Oregon Coast.

Imagine biking or hiking through wild river valleys and across abandoned timber settlements along a historic railroad line.

I first wrote about the project 11 years ago and it has captured my imagination ever since. Now more than a decade into the planning process, the project has matured nicely. In the past year or so, volunteers have begun to rip out the old railroad tracks, cut back ivy and blackberries, and parts of the trail are even open for guided hikes. This past summer, US Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici hiked the trail and Fitchett says visits from Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley will happen this year.

In my interview with Fitchett, she shares the story about how the project first came about. I had no idea it began with one mom and dad in Tillamook who just wanted a safe place for their kids to ride bikes! We also talk about a few current projects in Rockaway Beach, Tillamook, and Buxton (north of Banks) that will result in the first official pieces of the Salmonberry that will be open for riding and hiking.

One notable moment in this interview is when I asked Fitchett how she talks about the trail in front of communities who might have some inherent skepticism about it. “I really let them talk about it,” she replied. “We listen… we also share information so they know what our plans are and they have a chance to change those plans.” Fitchett she sees the trail as a neighbor to the communities along it. “We are a neighbor to hundreds of people, to school districts, to watersheds, to the fish and the birds that are along the trail. And so we have to do the best we can to be a good neighbor.”

(Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

An arcane study first undertaken by the Oregon Department of Transportation in 1937 is suddenly the subject of unprecedented scrutiny. The 2023-2035 Highway Cost Allocation Study (HCAS), published last year for the 23rd time and authored by research firm ECOnorthwest, is completed every two years in order to determine if road users are paying their fair share of taxes based on what ODOT spends on highways. If the balance is off, lawmakers and a study review team can use HCAS findings to lobby for changes in vehicle taxes and fees.

ODOT slide

Its findings never made much news until now, because for the first time ever, it has revealed a significant imbalance.

ODOT splits vehicles into two main classes: light and heavy (over 10,000 pounds, which is essentially all large commercial freight trucks). The past two HCAS reports (completed in 2021 and 2023), have raised eyebrows because the numbers show light vehicle operators are not paying enough for what ODOT spends on them, and heavy vehicles operators are paying too much (see slide at right). “For the 2023-25 biennium, under the existing tax structure and rates,” reads page 45 of the study, “light vehicles are expected to underpay their fair share by 12% and heavy vehicles are expected to overpay by 32% relative to the projected distribution of project spending.”

Drawing of bridge over N Columbia Blvd shared by Portland Parks bureau at an open house in 2020.

(Mapp: PP&R)

I have some very good news for anyone Portland who breathes: the Parks bureau says they’re committed to building a bridge over North Columbia Blvd at Chimney Park — a key element of the 40-Mile Loop and link in the North Portland Greenway that will connect St. Johns to Kelly Point Park and beyond.

Back in November, trail advocates were dismayed to learn that Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) claimed a $3-4 million funding shortfall meant they could only build a standard, at-grade crossing to get trail users over the busy, high-speed, industrial truck traffic on Columbia Blvd. The bridge had been planned for years, much of the funding had been secured, and design was well underway when the announcement was made.

The official shift in stance came via the City of Portland’s Freight Advisory Committee meeting on Thursday, February 1st. Portland Bureau of Transportation Resources Manager Mark Lear told committee members he talked to PP&R Trail Planning Manager Brett Horner and learned that he was “feeling pretty positive about a grant they’re going to apply for.”

We can’t say it enough: comments are an integral part of BikePortland, and tending to our comments section is something we care deeply about.

Our goal is to provide a space that encourages expression of a range of opinions, where people feel they can discuss and disagree (or agree), but with guardrails in place that keep the threads from nose-diving into a lowest-common-denominator sewer, like has happened with comments on so many other news sites.

They are trying to flood the public sphere with a certain political stance to make it appear as if it is widespread.

We do this by moderating the comments. In other words, either Jonathan or I read and approve each comment before it gets published.

Business owner and nonprofit leader Keith Wilson has thrown his hat into the ring to become Portland’s next mayor.

I’ve seen Wilson operate in political, business, and advocacy spheres and have come away impressed. He not only has interesting ideas, he does the hard work it takes to give them legs. This is not an endorsement of Wilson, I’m just relaying my experience covering and working with him since 2020.

In 2020 he got a nice round of applause at a transportation-focused candidate forum when he answered a question about how to make streets safer by saying the number one problem is distracted driving. But he wasn’t just throwing out an answer, Wilson had proven results to back it up. As CEO of Titan Freight Systems (a company that operates 45 trucks and 120 trailers across three states), Wilson pioneered technology in his cabs that uses AI to track driver movements and then sent alerts back to the office. According to a trucking industry media outlet, “In 10 months of use, Titan reduced the number of daily unsafe events by 77% with the exterior cameras enabled.”

Wilson hosted the director of the Oregon Department of Transportation to his company for a close-up look at the technology and wants to help implement something similar in city and state fleets. “Call me and let me give you a run through,” he wrote in an email to me in 2020. “You will be amazed and walk away knowing that the solution to Vision Zero is near.”

Took the scenic route along Marine Drive, thanks to a suggestion from a friend. (Photos: Erin Bailie/BikePortland)

This is the second post in my “New to Portland” column. In my first post, I shared my thoughts as a visitor to town. Now that I’m here and settling in, I’m excited to share a few tales from my first few weeks as a Portlander. 

I moved to Portland at the end of January, and I would be remiss not to acknowledge that I’m lucky to have completely dodged the ice storm. It’s clear the storm has been a hardship on the city, and that residents, businesses, and infrastructure are recovering from its impacts. On my first day in town, I encountered bike lanes filled with gravel and thought about complaining about the inconvenience; but when street sweepers quickly cleaned the bike lanes in my neighborhood, I realized the disruption was only temporary.

In the few weeks I’ve been in Portland, I’ve prioritized bicycling as my form of transit as much as I can. The unseasonably warm and dry weather has made it easy to make this choice. My destinations have included the mundane — the gym, my office, the grocery store — as well as more unique trips like IKEA, several furniture stores, and Bike Happy Hour. When I can remember, I track my riding with a tool called wandrer.earth which lets me know if I’ve ridden any new-to-me stretches of road. According to Wandrer, I’ve ridden 54 new miles in the first week!

A clean energy advocate, bike lover, and fabricator in northeast Portland has launched something that will change Portland streets forever: the Boom Bike — a 100% human-powered mobile soundstage, pedaled behind a trike that can carry 500 pounds of cargo and broadcast live music to a massive audience.

Cully neighborhood resident Mike Cobb built the Boom Bike based on a design by Xtracycle co-founder and carfree musician Kipchoge Spencer. Cobb is no stranger to pedal-powered projects as you might recall his role as an organizer of the Disaster Relief Trials or how he hooked up pedal-powered generators for Dakota Access Pipeline protestors at the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016.

I got an up-close look at the Boom Bike during a visit to Cobb’s workshop last week.

Cobb has known Spencer for years and once worked as a mechanic on his global, bicycle-powered Pleasant Revolution music tour back in 2010. Cobb reconnected with Spencer in 2020 to build five Boom Bikes as part of a massive parade in support of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

Cobb says his latest creation is, “The pinnacle of bicycle powered sound.”