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dn t be a rat runner at all but a nice responsible somebody who lives on our street the barricade was too blunt an instrument i decided looking down the hill toward the big throughfare sandy blvd instead i created two tall snowmen right at the corner they re placed a couple feet out from the gutter so that they constrict the traffic but still allow cars to pass as such they re more like traffic calmers or maybe considering the materials traffic coolers at any rate i did notice that cars slowed down as they the came to the snowmen this was helped by the fact that a car was parked along the opposite sidewalk leaving a fairly narrow passage i think it s also due to the nature of portlanders they re just very appreciative and respectful of anything that might be considered temporary public art no more than five minutes into my little experiment a big obnoxious looking pickup with a lifted suspension approached the corner from 82nd unfamiliar vehicle and most probably a rat runner i judged the passenger window rolled down and i braced for vitriol then came a cheerful female voice hey those snowmen are amazing totally took the wind out of my sails thanks i said so the tenor of my political statement seems to have been lost on the rat runners snowmen are too cute i can see in retrospect however they do slow down traffic so that s something posted by greg spencer at 12 41 am 15 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels or snowfall traffic calming safe streets snowman portland thursday january 5 2017 bus bail out sequoia may not look it but in this week s cold weather she s much happier to ride a warm bus than to ride a half hour on the back of a cargo bike some unusually cold weather struck portland as school opened up after the holidays making the morning commute a bit of a trial normally i take our first grader sequoia to school on a cargo bike it s about a half hour journey and in good weather it s a pleasant way to start the day but the temperature on the first day of school this year was below freezing and the howling wind coming down the columbia brought the real feel down to the mid teens about 10 c sequoia was a trooper that first day on the bike but the next morning she was begging to go by bus and with the temperatures dropping rather than rising i could hardly say no my selfish hesitation was that the school commute is the only exercise i get all day but then i remembered that portland s buses have bike racks and that would allow me to take along my bike so i could cycle on the return trip home from sequoia s school when the rack is not in use it folds up and out of the way when you need to use it you unlatch the rack at the top it folds down you pop in your bike and then pull a spring loaded extendable arm over your front tire to secure the bike easy when you get the hang of it in budapest city buses are not equipped with bike racks and i was told this was because of a european regulation that forbids it for safety reasons despite this bike racks are a common feature on american public buses and portland is no exception the racks on trimet buses are mounted on the front and have capacity for two bikes they re quick and easy to use although the first time i tried it i couldn t figure it out and started panicking because i was holding up the bus the driver came out and did it for me and the lesson stuck precisely because it left a lasting scar on my delicate male ego one limitation with the racks of course is that they hold only two bikes in times of high demand like in a torrential downpour that coincides with rush hour these racks quickly fill up so you can t count on trimet to bail you out of a wet commute i ve also discovered that the racks are not big enough to accommodate my kona ute longtail cargo bike one reason i m using a regular sized bike this week but for this cold spell the bike racks have been very handy and there have been no capacity problems knock on wood until it warms up the plan for our school commute is to bus one way and bike the other posted by greg spencer at 7 43 pm 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday september 9 2016 goodbye bp hello pdx taking a page from budapest bike racks displace car parking on portland s trendy ne alberta street back to the us this summer our family made a big long debated move from hungary back to the us where both my wife and i are from we all loved budapest but for various reasons we d agreed some time ago that we would come back the question was when and how and to what city for a few years the issue hung up on such details but it has to be admitted that in the family discussions i was the lone foot dragger the kids were eager to permanently relocate to the land of grandma and cousins and awesome vacations my wife had been in hungary even longer than i had and she was ready for a change i on the other hand had serious doubts whether we could do better than budapest we had good jobs good day care and school lots of friends and a great centrally located flat in a gorgeous city upstairs from the bem mozi with a view of the duna and importantly everything was easy to access due to the compactness of budapest and its superb public transport system i lived in budapest for 20 years and never owned a car i loved not needing a car and the prospect of having to get one as most families do in the us was one of my biggest doubts about moving back but when kristin was offered a job in portland oregon world renowned as the american mecca of transport cycling that was it i d already given my qualified assent to a us move now the when how and where were sorted out in undeniably excellent fashion this was the time to jump lance joined me for a last budapest cycling demonstration in july in protest of mayor tarlos s unilateral rejection of the bike friendly elements of the reconstruction of bartók béla út kristin moved out ahead of us in may to begin work and scout out a home the kids and i joined her here on july 13 i ve been thinking of continuing with my blog just changing the city of focus from budapest to portland originally cycling solution was a fish out of water concept a look at budapest cycling and transport through the eyes of an american i think the idea still holds now in reverse i spent so many years working and living in europe that i practically went native at least with respect to my views on transport so the blog is still a fish out of water thing cycling and transport in portland through the eyes of a pseudo european i wanted to get a feel for the place before writing about it and now that we re going on two months it s time to start i ve already been cycling a bit and have spotted impressive infrastructure and other measures that promote everyday cycling e g an innovative bike share system neighborhood greenways buffered bike lanes with wide safety zones on either side to separate cyclist from moving traffic and parked vehicles and a cyclist friendly wayfinding system however it s taken time to appreciate this my first impressions of local cycling conditions weren t so good which surprised me because the press on portland cycling is generally super positive biketown is the name of portland s new public bike system it just debuted in july on portland s max light rail akin to budapest s hev you can take your bike at no extra charge as opposed to the hev where you re charged double fare neighborhood greenways are long stretches of secondary streets that prioritize cycling and discourage motorized through traffic on a greenway you can bike for kilometers on end without breaking stride while travelers on side streets are halted by stop signs topped with special bike emblems great cycling city by american standards although i have no doubt that portland deserves its place among the top rated cycling metros in the us apparently 6 of work and school trips are by bike here higher than in any other large city in the country portland is still an american city and not just american but west coast american meaning it s much newer more spread out and more car centric than virtually any european city portland has a small downtown core with taller buildings and apartment blocks but most of the city rises just one floor and the vast majority of residential development is single family detached homes like the one we re living in now we re about 6 miles 10 km from the city center in a 100 year old neighborhood that looks quite a lot like neighborhoods a half mile from the center there may be a duplex and multi level apartment unit here and there but most of it is detached homes with yards driveways and garages this low density means that almost anything you want to get to requires a bit of a journey for us for example the nearest grocery store is 7 miles 1 2 km nearest park 6 miles 9 km and nearest post office 1 8 miles 3 km we re by no means isolated in fact because we re near a major thoroughfare sandy boulevard we have a bunch of nearby restaurants bars and convenience stores also pot shops marijuana being legal in oregon but it s not nearly as walkable as a normal urban neighborhood in europe on the other hand it is bikeable our boy is biking to school we bike for groceries and to get pizza and to go to judo and soccer practice i bet with time i ll find myself logging more distance by bike than i did in budapest because all those trips i used to take by foot i now take by bike longer trips are more of a challenge due to the comparatively scarce public transport again we could do much worse than portland by west coast standards portland is quite advanced in terms of public transport along with the bus system which most cities in the us still have at least in some vestigial form portland has a light rail network connecting city to suburbs like budapest s hev as well as two streetcar lines trams the main public transport in our neighborhood are two bus lines along the nearest thoroughfares buses 12 on sandy blvd and 72 on ne 82nd street the service on these lines is every 10 15 minutes during peak times and every 15 20 minutes during weekends and holidays this service is categorised as frequent by the operator trimet the sparse public transport in our neighborhood is another reason we re biking so much kristin bikes about 9 miles to work each way and i take our daughter to a school across town that s more than 5 miles away two roundtrips a day i believe in both cases we save time over public transport for trips where bikes don t work we re relying on uber we ve actually used uber quite a lot including some trips where we ve hauled our bikes for an extra fee you can dial uber pedal and you get a car that can carry bicycles portland is certainly more of a car driving city than budapest you hear about more and more people going carless and the city has infrastructure and services that enable this if you re committed but they ll need lots of development before car free is the norm posted by greg spencer at 2 42 am 15 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday april 22 2016 cycling ban to be lifted on szentendre route 11 after years of being closed to cyclists route 11 in szentendre will get advisory bike lanes it sounds as if the ban on cycling on route 11 in szentendre will finally be lifted however the timeline is murky and public authorities have made no public announcement on the matter last week a technical plan for the changes was presented in a closed door meeting of stakeholders including the hungarian cyclists club mk as mk s staff engineer miklós radics explained in facebook post the ban will be lifted but the road will be given only minimal cycling accommodations they plan wide outside car lanes at least 4 25m or more with bike sharrows radics wrote radics explained that the szentendre section of route 11 is not wide enough to accommodate the existing cars lanes and proper bike lanes so the plan instead calls for sharrows otherwise known as advisory bike lanes which motorists can drive on legally an example of sharrows in budapest are on margit bridge they re marked with chevrons and cycling pictograms rather than a solid line separating cyclists from motor traffic it s not the best and most bike friendly solution but it s still a big step if we compare it with the nonsensical prohibition radics said moving the curbs and redesigning the whole road won t happen in the coming years the municipality and the road maintenance company magyar közút will co fund the budget for the repaint the plan was based on a study by the engineering consultancy tandem kft on a commission by szentendre city hall staff from tandem revealed the study s results and recommendations last week to a group of select stakeholders but neither city hall or magyar közút have make any public announcement on the subject a representative from the szentendre branch of the hungarian cyclists club said they would prepare their own announcement on the scheme in the coming days posted by greg spencer at 12 19 pm 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels 11 es főút hungarian cyclists club magyar kerékpárosklub magyar közút zrt miklós radics route 11 szentendre city hall szentendre önkormányzat thursday april 14 2016 mayor kicks the hornets nest what was he thinking the april 23 cycling demonstration formerly critical mass now i bike budapest is shaping up into a political showdown with mayor istván tarlós tarlós declared back in february that he believed cycling development in downtown had gone too far while also claiming budapest had become an extremely public transport oriented city in recent days activists circulated an official document showing tarlós s point by point plan of paring back pro cycling measures in it the mayor declares he would no longer prioritise the creation of bike routes that offer the shortest path from points a to b no longer paint yellow bicycle pictograms on streets that also have separate sidewalk bike paths revisit recently created bike contraflow lanes on one way streets about 120 such lanes in the city and remove them except in exceptional circumstances not allow bicycle traffic in bus lanes unless the lanes are at least 4 5 metres wide on streets with bike lanes prohibit cyclists from riding in bus lanes undoubtedly this applies to bajcsy zsilinszky although the bike accommodation there is technically a bike path not a lane afterwards index hu published a point by point response to the proposals explaining how all of them have improved the bikeability of the city and how tarlós s proposals would reverse this progress the index article follows a more exhaustive set of recommendations concerning the next 10 years of cycling development from the hungarian cyclists club both documents were written with care with all propositions backed with evidence and reasoned arguments the mayor s response could not be ...