Bikes
September 1, 2010
KBOO Bike Show: Lose The Training Wheels
Listen to the show (mp3, 25.9MB)
Learn about Bike First, a program that works with youngsters and adults who experience difficulty getting past training wheels and onto conventional two-wheelers.
And in the second half hour, we talk with Johnny Olivan of Rejuiced
Bikes, a Portland-based business that builds pedal-powered vehicles of
the most incredible kind.
Posted by Chris Smith at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 27, 2010
Bicycles IN Airports
We all know that PDX has made it manageable (I won't quite say easy, yet) to take a bike to or from the airport.
But I'm now returning from an extended trip to the east coast (if you've noticed my post volume is down a bit, now you know why) and on this trip I've been somewhat intrigued to see security personally tooling around the terminals (inside, on the carpet) on bicycles in multiple airports, including PDX.
Is this a new trend, or am I just noticing it?
Posted by Chris Smith at 2:41 PM | Comments (7) | Permalink
August 23, 2010
Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet
That's the subtitle of Mia Birk's new book "Joyride".
Mia is CEO of Alta Planning and was Bicycle Coordinator for the City of Portland during the period when much of today's bicycle network was conceived and initially implemented.
The book is constructed as autobiography, but in fact serves as a very insightful history of how Portland became the cycling city that it is. It's easy to take what we have today for granted, but as Mia documents, each improvement was a hard-won victory.
Ride on, Mia.
Posted by Chris Smith at 8:22 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 5, 2010
Outside Perspective on our Bike Plans
Last week, I had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation (PDF, 1.7M) by Dr. Eric France, the director of preventative medicine for Kaiser in Colorado. Dr. France spent much of the summer here in Portland learning about our bicycle efforts.
The whole presentation was great, and Dr. France's observations about the health benefits of active transportation are very compelling.
But the point I want to emphasize is his observations about how we're going about implementing the Bicycle Master Plan. Here are a few questions and suggestions from the presentation we should give careful thought to:
- Do all businesses, city institutions, residents know and support this vision?
- Is there a clear communication strategy to align everyone with this vision?
- Who is the leadership team that oversees executing on the strategy? The city? The chamber of commerce?
- Should we have a "Bike Summit for the 2030 Plan" involving all players?
- Role of Health?
- Is there an organizing body for all bicycle transit efforts in Portland?
- If business owns and pushes this agenda, the battle is won
- What is Portland‟s Brand regarding active transportation?
- One easy website to get me started?
He goes on to suggest that the way to sell the Bicycle Plan to the business community is on the basis of health and health care cost reductions. I couldn't agree more!
Posted by Chris Smith at 4:09 AM | Comments (7) | Permalink
August 4, 2010
KBOO Bike Show: Racing and Differently Abled Cyclists
Listen to the show (mp3, 25.7MB)
This month host Tori Bortman visits the first half hour with Kenji Sugahara, Director of the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association (OBRA) and Lindsay Kandra, Portland Coordinator for the OBRA High School Cyclocross Program to talk about this exciting piolot program and how it plans to make Oregon's young adults happier, healthier and more muddy.
In the second half host Lindsay Caron looks at a part of the cycling community... often overlooked: the disabled. She's joined by Oregon Disability Sports executive director and some other abled cyclists to talk about their riding experiences and life on wheels from a different perspective.
Posted by Chris Smith at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 1, 2010
Coming Up on the KBOO Bike Show: Racing and Differently Abled Cyclists
This month host Tori Bortman visits the first half hour with Kenji Sugahara, Director of the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association (OBRA) and Lindsay Kandra, Portland Coordinator for the OBRA High School Cyclocross Program to talk about this exciting piolot program and how it plans to make Oregon's young adults happier, healthier and more muddy.
In the second half host Lindsay Caron will take a look at a part of the cycling community... often overlooked: the disabled. She'll be joined by Oregon Disability Sports executive director and some other abled cyclists to talk about their riding experiences and life on wheels from a different perspective.
11AM-Noon, Wednesday, August 4th
KBOO FM 90.7
Streamed live at KBOO.fm
Podcast here later that day
Posted by Chris Smith at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
July 16, 2010
Bikeability About More Than Bike Lanes
Via Pricetags:
A paper by PSU MURP candidate Nathan McNeil (PDF) analyzes "bikeability" and develops a Walkscore-style scoring system.
He specifically compares East Portland with more central parts of the City and gives East Portland an average score of 76 compared to 96 for more central neighborhoods. Among the points of comparison:
- East Portland has a comparable density of bike lanes with other parts of the City
- East Portland has a significantly lower density of bike boulevards than the rest of the City
- Because the street grid is more disjointed in East Portland, someone willing to travel a mile by bike can only reach an area about 75% of the size of the area someone in central Portland could reach
- Perhaps most tellingly, the density of destinations - places to bike to - in East Portland is about a quarter of that in the center of the City.
The title of the paper is a pretty clear pointer to the solution: "Bikeability and the Twenty-Minute Neighborhood". Portland is going to need to develop some neighborhood centers in East Portland before cycling can possibly be as strong as in other parts of the City.
Posted by Chris Smith at 12:04 AM | Comments (5) | Permalink
July 7, 2010
KBOO Bike Show: Cycling in Italy, Bikes and Sewers
Listen to the show (mp3, 26.3MB)
Elle Thalheimer (Lonely Planet Cycling in Italy) and Daniel Sharp discuss cycling in Italy and the Giro d'Italia.
Evan Ross and Alex Phillips talk about summer recreational riding in Portland and Oregon.
Mark Lear and Catherine Ciarlo from the City of Portland and Sarah Mirk of the Mercury overview the confluence of bioswales to treat storm water with bike boulevards.
Posted by Chris Smith at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
June 23, 2010
Modal Smack-down at JPACT
Freight interests are making a play for flexible Federal dollars that have in recent years been allocated to active transportation.
Excellent coverage at the BTA blog.
Posted by Chris Smith at 9:28 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
June 15, 2010
Two Paradigms for Transit Parking
Last month I had the chance to sit in on a brown bag session about the new bike parking facility under construction at the Sunset Transit Center.
Currently, the main way to get secure bike parking at a transit center is to rent a locker for a monthly fee. This has never worked for me, because my bike/transit use is not on a daily basis, but rather on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Reserving a locker would be economically inefficient and would also leave that valuable locker vacant and unusable for other folks.
So I was excited that the new facility will use a card-lock system (you pay for what you use) and will also use a form of dynamic pricing: you'll pay about 3 cents per hour during the day, but only a penny per hour overnight (both seem pretty cheap).
In part, this supports the idea of 'station bikes', bikes stored at the work end of your commute trip and used to travel the final distance to your day-time destination. I was surprised to learn that TriMet believes that about 15% of paid bike storage at transit centers is in fact for station bikes. The phenomenon is common in Europe, but I did not realize it had become this popular here.
Dynamic pricing also allows for the possibility that if the new facility is regularly overflowing, TriMet could increase the prices to manage demand (and maybe fund more capacity).
But what struck me is the contrast with auto parking at Sunset. While TriMet is charging for bike parking and to some degree using pricing to ration capacity, auto parking is rationed on a different basis: it's free, and goes to the folks willing to show up earliest in the morning. We're rationing it on a convenience basis.
It seems slightly insane that we charge for parking for the mode that contributes to health and the environment and subsidize the parking for the polluting mode. But I understand why it happens. The Federal TSUB criteria require TriMet to project sufficient ridership to justify funding, and that means increasing the ridership capture area by making it easy to park.
What's a better way we could construct policy around this?
Posted by Chris Smith at 12:01 AM | Comments (9) | Permalink
