Month: June 2013

  • Portland BRT: How open should it be?

    Bus Rapid Transit has been getting a lot of attention in the Portland metro area recently. North of the Columbia, C-TRAN has been planning its Fourth Plain BRT project. Here in Oregon, the Powell/Division Transit Project, widely expected to be BRT of some sort, is getting ready to start. (You might be interested in this…

  • The Best Bicycle Tax: A Street Utility Fee

    I suppose it was entirely predictable… City Club issued its report last week “No Turning Back: A City Club Report on Bicycle Transportation in Portland” – basically concluding that bicycles are now part of the urban transportation fabric and need to be thoroughly integrated into our transportation planning process, with a focus on education and…

  • TriMet Does Some Things Very Well

    We spend a fair amount of time on this site being critical of TriMet. But fair is fair. They had a significant announcement last week that deserves some attention. The Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project has generated more than $100M ($110M in fact) in contracts to minority and women-owned subcontractors. In fact, TriMet’s contracting efforts to…

  • Skateboarding Gets Some Respect

    Oops… I meant to publish this last week – but you can still catch the online archive. Skateboarding as Transportation: Findings from Exploratory Research Speaker: Tessa Walker, MUS Student, PSU Topic: Skateboarding as Transportation: Findings from Exploratory Research Tessa Walker is currently completing her thesis on non-motorized transportation and qualitative research methods with supervision from…

  • June 2013 Open Thread

    A few tidbits: The US Coast Guard will hold a public meeting in Vancouver on the subject of the Columbia River Crossing, specifically whether the CRC should be granted a bridge permit by the Coast Guard, a necessary precondition for construction to start. Metro is engaging in public outreach on the under-development Active Transportation Plan,…