Cycling News & Blog Articles

Jason’s bike in a photo taken on the Smith and Bybee path, April 2023. (Right) Jason and his dog, Eddie Spaghetti. (Photos via Jason’s Facebook page)

Four months after 43-year-old Rose City Park neighborhood resident Jason Ruhmshottel was killed in a traffic collision, his family is still searching for closure and answers. 

According to his sister, Christina Cuanalo, Jason spent his free time playing video games, collecting Funko Pops, and reading. He loved 80’s horror villains such as Freddy Kruger and his favorite author was Stephen King. He ate healthy, but had a weakness for See’s Candy and ice cream. He loved coffee and would rave about a new ground he tried. 

Jason lived in Portland his entire life. He attended Jefferson High School and moved to an apartment near NE 53rd and I-84 in 2016. With a degree in Criminal Justice from Portland Community College, Ruhmshottel worked for the Transportation Security Administration at the Portland Airport before switching jobs in to work as a security officer at the Columbia Sportswear warehouse off of North Marine Drive. 

Jason worked the graveyard shift at the warehouse, which is located adjacent to the Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area. When he began that job, he commuted via TriMet bus and walking — a journey Google Maps says takes one hour and 37 minutes. But four years ago, a close family friend gave Jason a bicycle and he began to ride it every day.

Slide shown by PBOT right-of-way manager at City Council this morning.

“This will increase the walkability of the Central City Plan District and decrease the need for auto-oriented transportation.”

Portland City Council voted unanimously at their meeting this morning to green light a new pilot program that will bring more mobile food trucks to the the central city. The program is expected to help revitalize downtown, the Lloyd, and the Central Eastside, by allowing food truck operators to park adjacent to sidewalks and do business in the public right-of-way — a practice current city code prohibits.

The program will be operated by the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) as an expansion of their Healthy Business permit program that was launched during the pandemic as a way to help businesses expand operations into the street. That program also began as a pilot and was recently made permanent.

The ordinance means PBOT receives a nearly two-year waiver from having to comply with existing city code 14A.50.040 which states, “It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or attempt to sell any merchandise or services in or upon any sidewalk, street, alley, lane, public right of way, or under any bridgeway or viaduct within the Central City Plan District.”

(Photo of a 2023 WLF ride by Dylan Evanston.)

After several days holed up at home and frozen, the thought of biking through the city with friends, gazing at creative light displays, and being entertained by people holding fire sounds mighty fine right about now.

If that sounds cool, you’ll be happy to know that the program for the annual Portland Winter Light Festival (PDXWLF) was announced today. What is PDXWLF? The nonprofit Willamette Light Brigade, the organization that hosts the event, puts it like this:

“PDXWLF brings art, technology, and inclusivity together, invigorating Portland in the winter. With free admission, the festival fosters community and showcases captivating light installations, projections, and interactive displays, creating an immersive experience for all attendees.”

The event is a collection of over 200 illuminated art displays throughout the city — and a bicycle is the best way to see them all! In fact, cycling is such a good match for this festival that organizers have released seven routes curated specifically for riders, put together by ride leader and BikePortland contributor Tom Howe.

A trail near Boiler Bay on the Oregon Coast. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

A law that was created to shield land managers and property owners from liability claims is under fire and public trail access — including bike trails — across Oregon could be in jeopardy. That’s the state-of-play due to a decision in July 2023 by the Oregon Court of Appeals in a case that hinged on the legal concept of, “recreational immunity.”

Oregon’s recreational immunity law (ORS 105.682) states, “an owner of land is not liable in contract or tort for any personal injury, death or property damage that arises out of the use of the land for recreational purposes.” The idea behind this law is to encourage landowners (government entities or private companies/individuals) to keep trails open to the public without fear of being sued if someone is hurt using them.

Challenges to this law have happened before, but one if its biggest tests yet began when a woman slipped on a trail and broke her leg while walking near Agate Beach on the Oregon Coast in 2019 and sued the City of Newport for damages, saying the law shouldn’t apply because she wasn’t recreating at the time of her fall. Nicole Fields claimed the city was negligent because they failed to maintain a footbridge on a trail that led to the beach. Her lawyers argued their client was using the trail as an access route to her recreation — and was not technically recreating —  when she fell. A local judge didn’t accept that argument and ruled in favor of the City of Newport. But last summer, the decision was reversed by the Court of Appeals. When the Oregon Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to the case in October, it raised questions about how to apply this important law.

Some cities and land managers are confused and worried that they will no longer be shielded from lawsuits if they keep trails open. According to the Salem Statesman Journal, several coastal cities have already closed trails and paused trail projects already. The Journal also reports that some legal experts feel closures are an overreaction, spurred by insurance industry scare tactics.

Readers Emily (left) Bradley (center) and Josh are making the most of the snow.

How are you doing with this wild weather?

What started as a dusting of snow, high winds, and record-setting cold temps Saturday has turned into a major weather event in Portland. There have been several deaths, lots of damaged property, school and business closures, and thousands are still without power. Folks who rely on TriMet have had a rough go as closures of the light rail system have wreaked havoc on some commutes.

As I type this Tuesday morning a possible ice storm is due to bear down on our city before the day is done. 

I’ve seen many posts of people bicycling and most roads are relatively rideable; but I haven’t been out much since Sunday morning. The photos I’ve seen of Mt. Tabor are heartbreaking! So many beautiful trees are gone, but even worse is the destruction of the big, covered picnic area near the start/finish of the Mt. Tabor series races. 

A bike bus crosses Calle Cesar Chavez in Portland. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

A university based in Barcelona, Spain has released the first-ever report on bike bus efforts around the globe.

The report, from the City Lab Barcelona research group at Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), summarizes key findings from interviews with 22 bike bus leaders in eight countries. 

Bike buses took off in 2021 when a Barcelona effort went viral online. But, according to this new report, the organized bike bus took place in Brecht, Belgium in 1998. “Today, Bike Bus has evolved from a set of isolated initiatives into a global movement that aspires to influence city policy and participate in the global conversation about building child-friendly cities.”

Timeline graphic from the report.

Welcome to the week.

Here are the most notable stories our community came across in the past seven days…

This week’s must-read: Just about everything you need to know about the current state of dysfunction in America’s traffic culture is included in this stellar article. Now, if only everyone who read it would change their behavior and/or tell others they should — we might actually make the situation a bit better! (NY Times)

MLK’s transportation dream: “His advocacy extended to various forms of transportation from buses to trains and his speeches and interviews helped to raise awareness of how transportation equity was a substantial part of the civil rights movement.” (Forbes)

Nothing stings like satire. Writing in response to our StreetsPDX and southest Portland’s sidewalk problem post, “Young SW Advocate-in-Training” brought some comic relief, and maybe even thrust a dagger or two into the heart of some zombie tropes about southwest that just won’t die. In training as an advocate? I’d say sitting on the knee of Jonathan Swift.

Here’s what Young SW Advocate-in-Training had to say:

As a parent and a resident of SW Portland, I was heartened to read about PBOT’s new Safer In Cars Initiative. Formerly the Safe Streets Initiative, this new direction will be better aligned with our existing infrastructure, our current transportation investments, and our society’s values.

Let’s face it, in SW Portland, it’s not safe to have your children walk or bike anywhere. Our kids belong in the back seat of our car. The benefits are immense. First, driving in a car is a much healthier option than walking or biking once you consider SW Portland’s lack of sidewalks and the inertial difference between a four-year old and an Amazon delivery truck. Second, sidewalk infill projects that encourage active transportation are not good for the environment due to the negative impacts of increased storm water. Third, the future is digital, getting kids outside could mean an awkward face to face social interaction. This only slows their progress in developing digital relationships from the safety of their own homes (or back seats of our cars!). And finally, reducing or altogether eliminating sidewalk infill projects can help bridge the $500M funding gap for critical and more beneficial projects like the I-5 Rose Quarter project so we can get people back to their Southwest Washington tax havens 5 minutes quicker.

Man walks dog on an unimproved shoulder of SW Sunset Blvd (Photo: Lisa Caballero/BikePortland)

In Wednesday’s StreetsPDX post, I covered the features of its new website, its flow, tools, and the information about city code and policies it brings together in one location. StreetsPDX project manager Mathew Berkow presented the project last month to the transportation committee of southwest Portland’s soon-to-be-defunct coalition of neighborhood associations, SWNI (Southwest Neighborhoods Inc).

Today, I want to follow up on that post and share a bit of the conversation that happened after Berkow’s presentation, between Kurt Kruger, Portland’s new public works permitting czar, and a few experienced transportation advocates. Kruger’s group decides what public works, like sidewalks or bike lanes, the city will require a new development to build in the right-of-way.

Why is this exchange important? Because it got to the heart of what I’m hearing from every transportation advocate in the region, including most BikePortland commenters. Folks do not want same ol’ same ol’. The status quo is not acceptable. And the SWNI committee was no different, it seemed like they were expecting something more or different from StreetsPDX.

One participant asked, “I know that your goal is to create this comprehensive thing that makes decision-making clear and transparent for people. But, what’s the larger goal, is the larger goal to make the city better? Is there not a larger goal?”

Brentwood-Darlington resident Meesa Long lobbied for this project at Metro in 2016. (Photo: Metro)

Maria Schur loves the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood just fine the way it is; but even she was excited last week when the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) announced they’d finally break ground on a project that’s been eight years in the making.

“I’m biased. I think it’s a very special neighborhood. That’s maybe because I’ve lived here for 20 years,” Schur shared in a phone call Thursday. “But yes, I’m thrilled.”

Schur said walking to the store on SE Flavel and having to choose between mud and overgrown blackberries, or the street, makes the area feel like “The wild west… err, the wild south!”

The Brentwood-Darlington Multimodal Improvements project will spend $7.8 million ($4.6 from a federal grant awarded by Metro in 2017 and $3.2 from local Transportation System Development Charge funds) to fill gaps in sidewalks on both sides of SE Duke and SE Flavel streets between 52nd and 82nd avenues. The project will also build a new neighborhood greenway on SE Knapp and SE Ogden between 52nd and 87th, including a new signalized crossing of SE 82nd Avenue at SE Knapp and an enhanced crossing of 72nd Avenue at SE Ogden. According to a PBOT map of improvements coming to this neighborhood on Portland’s southern border that’s cradled by the Springwater Corridor path, a total of nine new crosswalks will complement the new greenway and sidewalks.

We got hammered with the fluffy white stuff in 2021. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

They say we might be in for some wild weather the next few days, so get your bikes ready for interesting times. If you head out in snow, lower your tire pressure a bit, watch those turns, and try to stay toasty! We’ve shared loads of wintry weather riding tips over the years and this post is a good place to start.

If you’re looking for community support and inspiration, and don’t feel like heading out on your own, check out the rides below.

But wait: Did you know Portland-based Bike Tires Direct has a huge warehouse sale coming up January 20th?! It’s true. And you can save up to 70% on hundreds of items. There will be doorbuster deals, an e-bike sweepstakes, and more. Get the info here.

Wake Gregg, owner of The E-Bike Store in north Portland, rides a Specialized Haul e-bike. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

A bill set to make its way into the short session of the Oregon Legislature that begins next month would create a new statewide task force on electric bikes, scooters, and other small, motorized vehicles.

Currently in draft form as LC 164 (“LC” stands for legislative council, where bills go for final edits and drafting before being given an official bill number), the bill was shared with advocates in Portland this week and was the topic of discussion at the monthly meeting of Electric Bikes For All, a coalition of e-bike advocates that meets monthly via Zoom.

According to minutes from that meeting, this bill will be sponsored by Rep. Hoa Nguyen, a Democrat who represents District 48 (outer southeast). You might remember Rep. Nguyen as the force behind the successful “Bike Bus Bill” that was signed into law last session.

LC 164 is considered a bill that will help lay educational and political groundwork for a more substantive electric bicycle bill that will be floated in the 2025 session. That bill will likely be some version of Eugene House Rep. Emerson Levy’s “Trenton’s Law” that we covered late last year. I’ve reached to both Nguyen and Levy for more background and comment on LC 164 but haven’t heard back.

Looking northwest on NE 33rd where PBOT has installed a new, two-way bikeway between Mason (on the left) and Skidmore (upper right) along Wilshire Park. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Over the weekend I finally got a chance to take a closer look at the new protected bike crossing and bike lanes on the Mason-Skidmore Greenway. It’s a welcome addition that makes getting across Northeast 33rd much easier and helps make an important connection in the bike network.

To refresh your memory, the Portland Bureau of Transportation took advantage of a repaving project on NE 33rd over the summer (the same one that led to the big bike lane removal controversy about one mile north) to make improvements for bicycling. With an east-west neighborhood greenway route planned on NE Mason and Skidmore, PBOT needed to do something about the offset crossing of Mason where it dead-ends into Wilshire Park at 33rd and they wanted to create a stronger connection between existing greenways on 32nd and 37th. Their solution was to put two separate projects together and do the 33rd crossing and the Skidmore bike lanes at the same time.

For the crossing, PBOT has installed a mix of signal upgrades, colored bike lanes, and concrete medians and curbs to create a short section of two-way protected bike lanes on the east side of 33rd between Mason and Skidmore. PBOT then continued the two-way bike lanes one block on Skidmore to 34th, where they dump back into a shared-street environment via a sharrow marking.

PBOT still needs to install some sort of signal actuators for bike riders to cross 33rd, but otherwise the new infrastructure worked well during my short visit. It was intuitive and I felt relatively safe.

PBOT Director Millicent Williams outside City Hall in August 2023. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is facing three of its most daunting challenges ever, and they’re all happening at the same time: the bureau’s budget is structurally unsound and they face major cuts and layoffs if nothing changes; their reputation (and resulting staff morale) is in the toilet as distrust of government continues to grow and PBOT has alienated many of its allies due to various avoidable controversies, and PBOT faces hard questions about the record number of people who continue to be killed on our roads year after year — despite a much-ballyhooed commitment to Vision Zero.

So when the current PBOT Director Millicent Williams gets interviewed on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud show, we should all pay attention.

Williams joined venerable host Dave Miller on Monday’s program and he asked her questions about all three of the aforementioned challenges. You can listen to the entire interview on OPB’s website, or check my edited version of the main takeaways:

Dave Miller, OPB:

Graphic from the StreetsPDX website.

StreetsPDX is up and running! And to be honest, I’ve got mixed feelings.

All that information I spent years and hundreds of hours poking around internet for—street classifications, the public works review process, early assistance, required development improvements—is now conveniently and attractively packaged in one location. Hey, I had to earn that knowledge the hard way! Now, any Joe Blow can easily access it.

Joking aside, StreetsPDX (formerly called Streets 2035) is great. A web page for people who wonder how decisions about using the right-of-way are made. Why no street trees here? Can’t a sidewalk go there? How about a median?

It’s a decision framework that establishes priorities for what goes in the right-of-way. It’s audience, the people who would care about any of this, are mainly city employees, developers and neighborhood advocates. But the site is so well-designed that I think it could be handy for a lot of people, even just as a nice map.

Perrin Smith in The Shed. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland) Inset map: Smith’s Strava heat map.

43-year-old North Portland resident Perrin Smith has done something extraordinary. In a quest that was part of his life for nearly three years, he walked every single street and alleyway in the City of Portland. That’s about 2,100 miles of pavement, gravel, grass, mud, and sidewalks.

Born and raised in rural New Jersey, he “escaped” the East Coast and came to Portland in 2006 after graduating from Northern Arizona University. A veteran of competitive running, Smith was geared up for a big season in 2020 when Covid hit and everything changed.

“I was bummed and really needed something to do,” he told me in an interview Monday for the BikePortland Podcast. “I started following people on Instagram who were running every single street and it looked like fun. And I thought, ‘Sure. Why not? I’ll do it’.” (Smith was inspired by Rickey Gates, an author and notable endurance runner who popularized the “Every Single Street” movement.)

Smith fired up his Strava app and, since he was still in competitive-mode, started his challenge running all the miles. When an injury struck, he switched to walking and the real journey began. “I started to realize that I liked walking even more, because I was going slower. I was stopping to take photos, I was looking at graffiti, or someone’s weird artwork in their front yard. And I just I kind of slowed down life and I looked around more, which is not something that I ever did. I was always so focused on running, but it became more about exploring and learning.”

Yes, the transformation of North Willamette Boulevard is something I’m very excited about. And yes, I’ll admit it’s partly because it’s a key bike street in my neighborhood and my family, friends, and I will be among the many people who use it.

I know I’ve done two posts about it in the past few months — one about newly released designs, the other about some project elements that will break ground this year — but it’s time for another. Why? Because at last night’s monthly meeting of the Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC), Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) Capital Project Manager David Backes shared a sneak peek of newer “60%” designs and overlayed them on a Google Map to give us a detailed look at what’s coming.

Backes (who happens to live in St. Johns and rides/walks/drives on Willamette a lot) said the designs and map he shared last night were completed a few weeks ago and haven’t been made public yet. I was watching the meeting and happened to record my screen while he explained the designs (and rationale behind them) to BAC members. Beyond the exciting changes Backes revealed, it’s a fascinating look at some of the thought processes PBOT goes through to arrive at design decisions.

What we see in the video above is Backes going through major elements of the project starting from the corner of N Willamette and Rosa Parks.

At Rosa Parks, he reveals PBOT will actually widen the road in order to make room for full concrete protection of the bikeway. Then he moves north to the expansive intersections of N Liberty/Oatman and N Vincent/Saratoga — both of which will be severely necked down as part of this project. Next stop is the intersection of Willamette and Bryant, where big changes are in store for the bus stops and the awkward diagonal connection with a major east-west greenway. Then we hear about changes at N Chautauqua, where PBOT will add curb extensions to shorten crossing distances and cut into the bluff for the bike lane. Further north, at N Olin and Harvard we learn about plans to close Olin to drivers. Backes also shares plans for the bike lane at the University of Portland entrance and N Ida just beyond the railroad cut.

Yes, it happens to kids on bikes too.

There was the usual anger and frustration when Rob Galanakis shared an incident of driver road rage with a group of bike advocates online last Wednesday. Portland bike riders have become numb to the bad behavior and disrespect shown to them by many drivers. But Rob’s story was different: He was not only raged at, but physically assaulted by a driver — and it happened as he led a weekly “bike bus” ride!

Bike buses are group bike rides to school where kids (and some parent leaders) meet at pre-determined spots and ride to school together. Rob leads the Glencoe Bike Bus, which swings by several schools in southeast Portland.

Last Wednesday Rob posted to the BikeLoud PDX Slack looking for advice. He wanted to know how best to follow up after experiencing road rage on his ride. “We had a driver tailing within a couple feet and honking… He was yelling he’s a special ed teacher and was late,” Rob wrote. “He got out of his car, grabbed my bike, threw it down, and tried to rush back into his car and drive past me.”

Rob, the kids, and a few other parents were riding north on SE 61st Avenue and were about to cross E Burnside when he first heard the honking from behind. He immediately swung into action and engaged the driver in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. Rob credits his experience doing “corking” (when riders stand in front of drivers at intersections to let large groups pass through intersections together) for giving him the training that led to a mostly positive outcome on Wednesday.

It was a short comment, but it had the urgency of an epiphany. And it was thought-provoking.

I spent a lot of minutes wondering if the comment was just simple, or if it crossed over into being simplistic. I mean, did these stroads ever work well? Maybe when they were first built? I ask because the neighborhood I grew up in, in another city, half a century ago, is silly with four-lane roads, and they were safe for a kid to walk and even bike on. I walked to school on them, crossing at the light was not a problem. Drivers stopped at red lights, driving like an idiot was unusual.

Here’s the comment that sent me down memory lane. Fred wrote it, in response to another commenter, under last week’s comment of the week:

What you’re missing here is how the street design affords – and actually rewards – aggressive driving behavior.

Because four-lane urban highways are ubiquitous in Portland and the USA generally, many drivers today expect to be able to speed around cars that are obeying the speed limit – and there are absolutely no repercussions for bad behavior. In fact, there are rewards: drive dangerously, with no regard for anyone outside of your vehicle, and you get where you’re going faster.