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The City of Portland, Oregon

Portland Bureau of Transportation

Phone: 503-823-5185

Fax: 503-823-7576

1120 SW Fifth Ave, Suite 1331, Portland, OR 97204

More Contact Info

Media Relations

Dylan Rivera

Public Information Officer

503-823-3723

For breaking news from Portland Bureau of Transportation see our Twitter feed: @PBOTinfo

For breaking news on overall service disruptions in the Portland-Vancouver metro area, go to @publicalerts or see www.publicalerts.org 


Help us get $$$ for sidewalks to E. PDX schools

Safe Routes to School has submitted a $1.4 million dollar grant application to ODOT and we need your help.

 

Dear Friends,

 

As some of you may know, Safe Routes to School has submitted a $1.4 million dollar grant application to the Oregon Department of Transportation's (ODOT) Transportation Enhancement (TE) program to improve pedestrian and bicycle access and safety to Gilbert Park Elementary, Gilbert Heights Elementary and Alice Ott Middle School. These three East Portland schools serve 2,000 students but are situated in an incomplete grid of streets with significant gaps in curb, sidewalk, and bicycle infrastructure. This project will provide much needed sidewalk infill, traffic calming, storm water management and bicycle marking improvements on SE Holgate and SE Ramona from 122nd Avenue to 136th Avenue (see map below, the project area is indicated in red).

  

Our application has reached the public comment phase and we need your support. At this time, we’d appreciate you and your friends filling out this very brief online survey. The more supportive public comments we get, the better the chances this grant will be funded.

 

There are lots of proposed projects, our is #91 Portland Bureau of Transportation: Powellhurst-Gilbert Neighborhood: Ped Access to Schools.

 

Here’s a direct link to the survey: http://pdx.be/PBOT-TE

It's quick and you need only comment on our project if you wish. Deadline is January 28th, 2011. Please do it today!

  

Do let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for your continued support!

 

 

Best,

Gabe

PS - The list of all the applications statewide is available at http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/LGS/index.shtml.

 

 

Hundreds of Bike Maps in the Palm of Your Hand

I'm pretty late to the whole smart phone revolution.  But when I first got my fancy mobile device (oh, it's so much more than a phone friends) I blogged about TriMet's mobile app center.  Secretly I also longed for an app that would give me turn-by-turn directions...on my bike!  Well, that hasn't happened quite yet but in my search for real-time bicycling directions, I found Bike Map - by Maplets app.

Screen shots from the Bike Map - by Maplets app

This app takes the maps produced by esteemed public agencies such as PBOT, digitizes them, lines them up with GPS data, and makes them look good on a 2.5 inch screen.  While we've had our map available on-line as a pdf for a while, that format just didn't lend itself to tiny screens very well.  Bike Map app has all of the bicycling and neighborhood walking and biking maps that PBOT produces.  It also has maps for many other cities across the U.S. 

This is just one app for the iPhone (and iPad) that I've found.  Have you found others for iPhone or Android?  What are the latest transportation apps in general that you are using?

Consider the Commute

Looking to inject a little healthy activity

into your commute? Eating donuts with

a bike helmet on doesn't count.

Last year I posted a Top 10 list of non-resolutions for 2010 that would help me save a little money and incorporate more activity into my everyday life.  They were good guides for the year.  This year, I was thinking about my commute.  I find myself taking transit more often in the rainy months than I used to.  I was feeling guilty about not getting as much exercise but then the New York Times threw me a bone!


I came across an article discussing how much exercise we need in order to stay in good shape.  The research discussed found that exercising as little as once a week can help us maintain previous gains made when we were working out more regularly.  So, if you walked the three miles to work last summer and find yourself looking for a little motivation during winter think about this: you only need to do a little maintenance to keep up past health gains.  Then, when the weather turns good, you're right back where you were.  The walking shoes are ready for the longer amble.

The takeaway for your commute? You don't need to bike 20 miles a day, everyday in order to see healthy physical (and probably mental, but the researchers didn't go into that) impacts.  Once or twice a week biking or combining bicycling and transit, or getting off the bus a few stops early to increase your walking distance can help keep physical fitness levels at your peak summer-time active commuting levels!

So if your 2011 resolution is to lose a couple of pounds or get more exercise, consider the commute.  You don't need to bike everyday or walk the whole way from home to work.  But incorporating some physical activity into your commute can pay big dividends. 

Blog Promo: Extreme Winter Commuting

We were thisclose to the snowpocolypse loyal readers, and I for one was scared.  How would I get to work?  What happens to my bus route during the snow?  Can MAX still run in the ice?

We almost had this streetscape.

What will we do!!

 

We want to know your preferred winter weather commute mode.

While we lucked out this time, winter isn’t over yet.  There is still a chance for Snowmaggedon 2011 and we want to know how you’ll get around when it arrives.

Strap on the snowshoes or skis? Grab a thermos of coffee and wait for the bus?  Call in S.I.C.K (snow induced couch kamping)? What will you do?

To enter the contest, tell us your preferred winter weather commuting mode by leaving a comment or emailing us.  We're giving away FREE downloads of the Bike Map app for iPhone.  Three lucky winners will get a $15 iTunes gift card!

And don't forget for next time:

>>>PBOT's main page for snow and ice information.

>>>TriMet's Winter Weather info page.

>>>National Weather Service foreacast for 97204

Emerson School Awarded Safe Routes Mini-Grant!

Emerson School was one of 25 schools around the country awarded a $1,000 mini-grant to advance walking, biking and transit use to school.

The Emerson School, a K-5 charter school in downtown Portland, is one of 25 schools nationally to receive a $1000 minigrant from the National Center for Safe Routes to Schools to advance their walking and biking efforts.  With these funds, Emerson is establishing a weekly walking school bus, and is expanding their bike train program to include bike trains from Northeast, Southeast, North, and Southwest Portland neighborhoods. 

The grant will also help the school est
ablish “Emerson TriMet Trekkers”, public transit groups from different neighborhoods. One or more adults will chaperon a group of students to school from a convenient public transit stop in their respective neighborhoods, via walking, city bus, light rail, and/or streetcar.  Grant funds will be used to purchase transit tickets for participating students, and to increase the visibility and safety of students in the walking school bus and bike trains. 

 

Congratulations, Emerson!