Month / September 2013

by Adron

Portland, Let’s Take the Streets Back! Do More Have to Get Killed?

It seems, even though I understand a lot about the situation, that ODOT is in favor of maintaining roads as dangerous, anti-pedestrian, anti-cycling and anti-livability paths more reminiscent of 1950’s America than modern day realities. I’ve not been keeping track, because it’s damn depressing, but Bike Portland has been keeping track of one of ODOT’s points of disturbing embarrassment. Disturbing as in, ODOT has been extremely slow to act and thus more people have been killed or injured. Portland’s tax bills keep going up and up trying to manage these killings, wrecks and costs associated with roads ODOT is supposed to be responsible for. ODOT however has no motive or real interest based on their mission statement to work on actually improving these roads, were as the city has a distinctive reason to focus on them – the city’s citizens are being killed, maimed or injured in some serious way. For more information on this insanity…

So what’s the real solution here? Portland (that’s us yo) takes back its streets. That includes 26, 99, SW Barbur and more. We put these streets on a killing diet (street diet or whatever you want to call them). Let’s take Barbur and turn it into a BRT, cycle-track and pedestrian example of how awesome and livable Portland can truly be! Who wants to prospectively work up a proposal for this with me? Because seriously, the SW Corridor is up for a serious redesign and the effort has started, GET INVOLVED!

by Adron

#BBBBBX with Michael Anderson

So what’s #BBBBBX? It was the hash tag for the “Bicycle Brown Bag on Bicycle Blog eXplosion!”

I had mentioned this a multitude of days ago in the Bicycle Brown Bag blog entry notice. Right off I have to start with a kudoes to Michael for being a great presenter. The audience enjoyed the talk very much. So what did Micheal talk about? Here’s some photos and the lowdown on the Bicycle Brown Bag.

Bicycle Brown Bag

The brown bag is a lunch time presentation put on at Portland City Hall, that meets the third Thursday of every month except December. The topics range from media participation, to involvement and social equity issues with cycling in the city. The range is wide, but all focused around bicycling. So far I’ve only seen one presentation, Michael’s that is, but I intend to return to see some of the future presenters. Adonia Lugo is speaking at the next brown bag, an individual that has been heavily and passionately involved in cycling and organizing in Los Angeles among places! She also blogs at http://www.urbanadonia.com. If you’ve not attended before, this would make a great first brown bag, so maybe I’ll see you there!

Bicycling Blog Explosion!

Micheal came in to present on what he’s seen from the journalist perspective of the blog explosion around bicycling. Not just a growth in people actually blogging about bicycling, but an explosive growth in the number of people reading and subscribing to these blogs. Here’s a quick description of what he spoke about, included on the PBOT site, “Portland didn’t just show the country that bike-friendliness was possible in a big U.S. city — it showed the country that bike-friendly media are essential to biking’s growth. Following up on the Green Lane Project’s Sept. 16-18 summit in Portland, Michael Andersen of GreenLaneProject.org and BikePortland.org shared the latest practices from Seattle, San Diego, Saint Louis and other cities where independent journalists are following BikePortland’s lead (and discovering new tricks of their own).  Several local bloggers attended the session, enlivening the conversation in the second half of the hour.”

For a live recording of the presentation check out “Bicycle Blogging Explosion” and for the slide deck in PDF download here or view it below via the Slideshare embed.

by Adron

A West Side Re-Exploration of Orenco Station & Neighborhood

Paul Peterson @emptefilms & I @transitsleuth went out to Hillsboro to check out how Orenco Neighborhood (town?) has developed. You can read more about Orenco Station via the Wikipedia Page. As described on the wiki page, “is a neighborhood of the city of Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. The planned urban town center was designed as a pedestrian-friendly, high-density community built in conjunction with TriMet’s Westside light rail. It was built on land formerly owned by the Oregon Nursery Company, land home around the turn of the 20th century to Orenco, a company town. During the Great Depression, the company went out of business, and much of the nursery land became vacant until re-development began in 1997. Orenco Station is near the intersection of NW 231st/NW 229th Avenues and Cornell Road, centered on the Orenco Station MAX stop.”

There’s also a basic web presence at http://www.orencostation.net/ that provides some current commercial information about the neighborhood.

The stop that anchors the entire neighborhood is simply named the Orenco / Northwest 231st Avenue Stop. The station has a park-and-ride lot with 180 free parking spaces (for 24 hours at a time) and bus connection to line 47-Baseline/Evergreen. The station also includes bike lockers and bike racks. A block north is the site of the Hillsboro Farmer’s Market’s seasonal Sunday marketplace and the core of the Orenco Neighborhood.

Keep reading and subscribe to the blog (RSS) or the video channel, an upcoming episode of Transit Sleuth TV will have more about Orenco and the development there.

by Adron

Coverage of Transit Sleuth TV Episode 1 & The Precursor, That Launched Transit Sleuth TV

Al M @alyourpalster at his blog “Introducing Transit Sleuth TV“, Dogcaught “Transit Sleuth TV” care of @steveeshom and Portland Transport’s “Open Thread for the Week of 9/15/13“, thanks @ChrisSmithUS. Also I want to give a big shout out and thanks to Paul Peterson of @EmpteFilms for helping me conjure up the idea to start Transit Sleuth TV. Thanks and cheers Paul, we’ll have to have a beer again soon and plot out a new episode!

In other coverage here’s a few of the tweets. Thanks to everybody for getting the word out on the first episode!

Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail opened a number of years ago. Paul and a crew of friends, transit advocates all, joined forces for a tour of the light rail opening. This was, as you can see if you watch the video, the precursor of Transit Sleuth TV. Thanks to Paul for filming and lighting the fire of the idea to start a project around this. Finally, I’ve got myself in gear and put the first episode together here: “Transit Meet & How to Carry Wine and Gelato“. In the near future Paul and I will probably team up to bring you some more Transit Sleuth TV. Stay tuned, for now here’s the original, from the opening of the Link Light Rail in Seattle.