Commissioner Sam Adams and the Bicycle Safety Committee that we convened a few weeks ago will meet on Wednesday to take public testimony on how to increase bicycle safety.
PUBLIC TESTIMONY – BIKE SAFETY COMMITTEE
7 P.M. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2007
PORTLAND BUILDING, ROOM C . (2ND FLOOR, SW 5TH & JEFFERSON ST.)
Commissioner Adams and the committee came up with the following recommendations, please attend to comment:
1. Fast-tracking and moving forward with immediate bike safety engineering fixes for SW Burnside and 14th and N Greeley and Interstate.
2. Closing off the right southbound turn onto N Greeley from N Interstate to traffic until permanent safety redesigns are identified and installed.
3. Convening a nearly 25 member stakeholder group with people from the bicycling community, PDOT’s safety engineering team, freight haulers, Portland Police Bureau, Multnomah County, bicycle lawyers, and others, who have tackled the bike safety issue from multiple angles.
4. Requesting that Portland City Council immediately fund $200,000 worth of new bike safety improvements.
5. Authorizing and unrolling a new pilot program for “bike boxes” – an innovative bike safety improvement used in many other parts of the world, but not yet in our neck of the woods – which would get bicycles in front of auto traffic at stop lights (instead of next to or to the right of automobiles) and prevent vehicular right turns on red.
ODOT should not approve vehicles for off-highway use if they are designed in such a way as to keep their drivers from seeing bikes. Period. People should not be able to walk away from a deadly accident scot-free because we as a collective society look at the (garbage truck, cement mixer,….) that they were driving and agree that it was a tragic accident, no one’s fault, of COURSE they couldn’t see that cyclist, look at the rig they were driving….if they can’t see a cyclist under their wheels, they should not be driving the vehicle in areas where cyclists can legally ride. Seems pretty simple.