Category / Bike Related

by Adron

Transit Sleuth TV : Episode 3 “Park(ing) Day, Cascadian Secession with Jocelyn and Kristen Hangs Her Fixie!

NOTE: If the video seems choppy, it might be set to HD. Turn that off and it should play seamlessly.

In this episode of Transit Sleuth TV we kick off with…

Adventure Segment

A montage of Park(ing) day staring Dan (revolutionary musician) and Katrina (organizer). The event was a total blast which is pretty evident from all the smiling faces and the great time everybody had!

Interview Segment

After that I travel to Cascadia to interview Jocelyn Gaudi about how she gets around Portland, where she plans to bike in Cascadia, what gorgeous rivers are good for jumping in naked and a whole slew of other questions. We then take a ride around the park, which gives some secrets to where to ride in Laurelhurst.

Something Useful

Finally the episode wraps up with Kristen Mozian teaching us something useful. She removes her fixie from merely sitting upon the ground in her efficiency apartment to hanging perpendicular. That way it gives her space for a butchers block. So after a bit of drilling, hacking and improvising … maybe her wall falls down totally? You’ll have to watch to find out!

by Adron

Metro Doing a Good Job on Los Angeles Transit

There’s a million reasons why I’ll likely never live in Los Angeles, but I do indeed like to visit. Whenever I visit I don’t stay in some hotel and do the tourist thing. I usually get an airbnb (even though I’ve heard that’s illegal in a number of cities like Los Angeles) or stay with friends in the area of my travels. It’s better, in my opinion, to stay where the heart, passion, art, music and life of a city are versus in some stoic and staid hotel that is disconnected and segmented from the people and life of a city. While amidst the heart of Los Angeles here’s a few observations, thoughts and general adventures from the last few days.

Where Did The Sleuthing Occur?

Some basic geographic context here…

  1.  – Los Angeles Union Station, more below the map.
  2.  – Where I resided in an artist’s loft for the weekend.
  3.  – The Spring Street & Main Street Bike Lanes. The location of the recent battle with the movie industry scouts (yes, they’re idiots and that out of touch with American cities these days) over the green in the green bike lane in the street ruining their shots! Here’s a few choice write ups and videos of the film industry whining away. Contrary to their nonsense, I guess they’ve missed the fact that green bike lanes exist in almost EVERY MAJOR CITY IN THE UNITED STATES NOW! I always knew hollywood was out of touch with the country, little things like this just further prove it.
Los Angeles, Click for actual Google Map.

Los Angeles, Click for actual Google Map.

Riding the Coast Starlight one arrives at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. This is a beautiful station located just across the street from the original old city of Los Angeles. This old city happens to be a public space and tourist attraction of sorts these days. Union Station is an amazing place, with a large waiting room, an underground tunnel that connects all of the track platforms and over 60,000 passengers a day through the station. It serves several Amtrak, Amtrak California and Metrolink trains along with light rail Gold Line Service with a subway connection to the Red and Purple Lines. The connections in Union Station are great. Being able to get almost anywhere in the Los Angeles area from the station with maybe one transfer.

Light Rail

The light rail of the Metro System is nice, the light rail vehicles (LRVs) are smooth riding, fast accelerating and decelerating, and have good visible for the ride. Beyond that they run most of the light rail lines at bout 10 minute headways, making it very easy to use to go back and forth for errands. Another thing I took note of, at least on the Gold line, is that the cars are well maintained and generally kept clean.

Buses

The metro buses are an extremely wide range of vehicles. From buses that look like they’re dated from the 60s or 70s to extremely modern buses, Metro has them all. Most are kept clean, and the modern sleek BRT style buses operate quickly and frequently. Overall, they’re pretty nice, the frequency is pretty solid and the BRT routes of the Orange and Silver line are exception. I will make the standard complaint about buses that, the ride quality even on these BRT lines isn’t very good compared to the light rail ride quality. I’d still be hard pressed to do anything on the bus besides listen to headphones. Contrary to the light rail, which I routinely read, work on a laptop, listen to headphones or even carry on with fellow passengers. All easier or possible on light rail while much more difficult to impossible while riding the bus.

That’s it for now. In just a few hours I’ll have episode 3 of Transit Sleuth TV up and live, so keep reading and watching. More to come!

References:

by Adron

Cycling, Transit and Sleuthing News and Updates

A few things going on with the sleuth activity as of late.  First and foremost I’ve setup a schedule I’ll be aiming for with Transit Sleuth TV. The idea will be to publish an episode every 3 weeks on Monday morning at 7:30am. This frequency is starting as of today, Monday the 7th. So the next episode I hope to publish on the 28th, parts are coming together already. For the latest episode, check out “To Orenco, Mobile Ticketing, Powell’s and Introducing Jonathan Scheff!“. Episode 1 is out too, check it out “Transit Meet n’ How to Carry Wine & Gelato“.

In upcoming episodes I’ll be covering PARK(ing) Day from a few weeks back, commentary included. I had a great ride out and met a number of excellent individuals; Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, Hart Noecker and many others, Cheers & great job on the event!  Interviews with more Portlanders and their ways of getting around; jumping the bus, rolling with the MAX, or how to know a bike boulevard from a bike lane while pedaling along at pace. I’ll also continue the frequent coverage of trip tips & tricks. The aim is to answer the questions like, “how do I get my beer, unbroken, from store to recliner for the big game?” or “how do I carry 40 lbs of groceries home without busting the eggs” and one of my all time favorites, “where are the best” If there is something you’d like to see, leave a comment or ping me directly I’m totally open to new segments, stunts or other bits.

Transit & Biking Round Up

I’ve been reading blogs in the Portland area for a while now, specifically around transit and bicycling. Here’s a collection of the top sites and blogs with some additional sites I’ve researched and collected together. This is similar, and maybe I can light off some similar posts by others in the city that outline other sites they use for their day to day transit, cycling and related lifestyle matters.

If you know of any other blogs, websites or others out there that provide event information, helpful tips or other information please post a comment and I’ll get a page put together that is dedicated on Portland resources for this.

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.