Category: Safety

  • Lessons from the Netherlands: Speed Kills

    One of the fascinating things about cycling here in Amsterdam and the rest of the country is that they have this incredible volume of cycling yet very low accident counts compared to our country. The planners believe there are several factors involved (wearing helmets is not one of them – nobody does for city riding).…

  • Burnside Transportation and Urban Design Plan

    Over at commissionersam.com the Commish is blogging about controversy over the Burnside Couplet plan. I urge readers to attend the Town Hall mentioned to learn more about the project and put your views on record. As neighborhood transportation chair in Northwest Portland I had the opportunity to participate in two year-plus-long planning processes around the…

  • Portland Transportation Safety Summit

    The Portland Office of Transportation held a Safety Summit yesterday, involving members of the community and officials from various bureaus and agencies responsible for transportation and safety. The headline was that our streets are getting safer. Crash injury rates for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers are all on a downward trend. Nonetheless Commissioner Adams and the…

  • Bicycle Safety

    Over at Bike Portland, Jonathan has what I think is an important post about action on bicycle safety. I would encourage you to read it and comment there.

  • Crosswalks: A Matter of Culture?

    Or, what I did on my vacation. As a neighborhood activist, I have frequently heard the question, “why don’t we stripe more crosswalks?” The stock-in-trade answer of the traffic engineers in Portland is that drivers are not sufficiently aware of crosswalks and they give pedestrians a false sense of security. This has always struck me…