State Highway Dept employee sees cardboard cutout memorial to pedestrian who was killed in a crosswalk on their deadly #stroads:
“[a staffer] was driving home,” Hamilton explained, “And it startled him. It was alarming.”
“Another one [of the memorials] was on a sidewalk and it was facing right onto the street. That’s going to cause someone to stop. It can really cause confusion.”
The idea that you can get #CompleteStreets by giving money to the highway department is a complete failure. It's 2024 and ODOT is rebuilding #stroads with curb-tight sidewalks and painted bike lanes that run between a right turn lane and thru traffic, posted speed: 45mph. The focus needs to be on scrapping-together and then incrementally improving a connected low-stress bikeway network throughout the metro region, not repaving and updating disjoint segments to 1990's designs.
Is there a tool for mapping the range of trips-by-bike where you can compare the range limits imposed by avoiding high-stress intersections like #stroads? e.g. where can I get to in 15min at level-of-traffic-stress threshold of 5 vs 2? Like if you're planning a bike trip with your kids vs on your e-bike alone, but for whacking elected officials over the head with during public meetings #BikeTooter?
Going car-free for #EarthDay shouldn't be a difficult challenge for anyone. Nobody should be forced to drive to meet their daily needs. If you can't #LeaveTheCarAtHome due to your govt's misplaced priorities in #transportation spending, call your mayor and governor about it. It's not just land use and #parking policy that keeps people driving, it's the billions we spend maintaining deadly #stroads.
Short, moonlit ride up the hill to charge the e-bike a bit #30daysOfBiking got home just in time to rescue 10yo from a spider that was "literally" as big as her hand (if her hand was 1.5in across.) Sadly, was coerced into driving for over an hour today by the state highway dept and their drivers.
The idea that you can have transit extend the range of walking distance without embracing bikes as a transportation utility, in the sprawling american suburbs, is just delusional. But it's the delusion that most of our city budgets and plans are built on. Biking in Portland is faster than walking+transit for most values of A to B but I can nearly guarantee you need to elbow your way through car traffic somewhere on that trip. Land use and transit need bikes for glue.
I'm not saying everybody is going to ride 30mph down Barbur on any kind of protected infrastructure, but it definitely better be wider than 6ft between curbs, and if bikes aren't allowed to do 30 then why is the car lane posted so high? The infrastructure needs to adjust on both sides but we need e-bikes to be competitive with driving in terms of time and also comfort. Maybe velomobile/scooter as a design vehicle is the thing we need to aim for in this moment though, in recovering #stroads.
Which, if we re-purpose the outside lanes of all four-lane #stroads, as bus/turn-only lanes along a painted bike lane, the traffic is much calmer, you can photo-enforce with cameras already on the bus, you can ride pretty fast even in a velomobile and maybe never have a bus pass you, would need some floating bus stops to avoid that stop conflict. We could gradually get rid of stops too, eventually fully separated bikeway in some places, actually complete low-stress bike network in the meantime.
@meganL Where would you put disabled cyclists in Geller's typology? Interested-concerned? Or would they have their own category? I'm thinking about how to rate routes for each type.
@benfulton@meganL also LTS can be assigned per intersection or segment (possibly depends on if you need to turn left vs ride past turning right, at e.g. a big #stroads intersection.) Analysis of a route or trip then is basically "what's the max stress level encountered and is that below a user's tolerance?" Most trips are a "no" for most people biking for one or two "barrier" intersections or segments. Trike-specific LTS might include slightly different factors, but prob just changes the 3-5
final day to provide feedback about the 82nd Ave Major Maintenance Project. #PBOT’s current plans do not include improvements to a majority of sidewalks or any accommodations for people riding #pdxBikes along #SE82nd at all, no #BusLanes for the bus line with the highest ridership in #Oregon??
"In 2022, cars killed 7,508 pedestrians, the equivalent of 18 fully-loaded Boeing 747s crashing with zero survivors. That means a pedestrian died roughly every 70 minutes, with no breaks in the tide of fatalities for weekends or holidays."
@haraldkliems@TheWarOnCars Oregon leg. voted but it's currently just a planning activity & we're maintaining the deadly status quo throughout the process. Reluctance to make #busLanes/turn-only the existing curb lanes of all four-lane #stroads (including ones #PBOT fully controls) is the actual hold-up. Cowardly leaders + traffic Engineers afraid to actually change, even though adopted #VisionZero and #ClimateAction plans purport to value safety and mobility over car speed and volume counts.
But at least some separation there... Why don't more people bike from #Portland to #Beaverton? Could it be the way ODOT sits on this segment like a selfish old dragon, the way it does all of the deadly urban #stroads in our metro area? #Vision60or70something#ODOTGTFOpdx
Pavement being destroyed by speeding drivers, crumbling the foundation to sand before ODOT'll hand it over to local jurisdictions. Right lane is effectively bus-and-turn only, just paint it red some and let's go. #VisionZero
🤬 "the boy was in a crosswalk ... around 3 p.m. ... suffered a broken tibia as well as bruises and scrapes ... witnesses reported that the driver was going from northbound Cesar Chavez to eastbound Glisan ... 40 mph... reddish-brown early 1990s Volvo." #Portland#HitAndRun#drivers
I'm not sure about running the bus through the park so we can keep the six lanes of car traffic #stroads, but it's cool that we have a grassy busway in #Eugene, OR (and part of it is shared two-way, time-separated where they ran out of space because eight lanes for cars 😂). Now add wires so you can plug it in. 🚎