The Portland Department of Transportation has plans in the works for its first segregated bike path to be completed in 2010, along a section of road that is being completely reworked. The current plans include a bicycle path separated from the road by a curb, then a planter median between the cycle path and the pedestrian sidewalk. Because this street is being completely reconstructed anyway, they figured it was a perfect spot for testing this idea, which has been inspired by bicycle paths around the Netherlands and Denmark.

Rob Burchfield, who is head traffic engineer of the PDOT and was on the group of delegates who traveled to the Netherlands and Denmark this summer to study their bicycle infrastructure and programs, said there has been a lot of interest from within city planning and bicycle advocacy organizations surrounding this kind of project, but it’s been difficult to come up with situations where it could be easily implemented.

It’s exciting to see this kind of thing happening in Portland, as I’ve noticed from my own cycling around town that the few small areas where bicycles and pedestrians are completely separated from automotive traffic have a completely different feeling of relaxation and safety to them than even bicycle boulevard areas which simply have traffic-calming measures or diversions to keep traffic volumes down. It’s nice to see that the city government is willing to try these ideas. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that people like them and we can get a lot of motivation for new projects like this.

He’s about to embark on a ride with a date and his camera (I assume in that order ;-p), primarily aiming to tickle your cycle chic senses. He better succeed ;-p.

These days were quite cold on The Black Sea and I should admit that people still have not used to cycle at any weather. People in Sevastopol prefer to ride on mountain bikes, though these bikes can`t be called mountain in pure understanding of the term as they only have strong rims and frames of similar design. Other parts are not produced for hard driving conditions at all.

This is good, but makes bikes look - probably, not so elegant as Dutch city ones :-) The choice for “mountain” bikes is obvious, `cause the city doesn`t have quality bike lanes at all and we have to drive along the pavements with poor quality surface. This is the main reason for most of us to choose strengthened rims.

During the last years, the situation became to change to better.. More bikes appear on roads, more people cycle on a daily basis and not only for sport reasons. This brings hope and joy to our hearts :-) The center of the city is quite comfortable for driving a bike in sense of surface quality, though we still do not have special segragated bike lanes :-( and some helpful infrastructure. We think the city doesn`t have it yet :-) At least, we hope .. :-)

I took some photos of how it looks like in Sevastopol. We`ll send more after finishing some vital things :-)

Thank you so much, Denis! Mountain bikes or not, Sevastopolitans seem very practical in their attire to me. Of course you have all of our support, begging for more pictures! ;-p

Taking the nice downtown route to go home.

Last chat between friends before going separate ways.

Left: Going home, patiently. Right: People on bikes being one while waiting for the bridge to come down.

Pulling up.

Here, you’ll find that people are generally quite happy to leave their bikes secured just by the inbuilt lock which prevents the rear wheel from turning. They will leave what they’ve bought from one shop on their bike while they visit another, that removable lights / panniers / bike computers etc. are left on the bike and don’t go missing.

While there are very many cycle racks, there is never enough formal bicycle parking. What’s more, even though the racks are outside virtually every shop, people often want to park their bikes even closer to their destination than the bike racks. As a result, on busy days (which means pretty much every day except Sunday) there tend to be as many bikes parked “wild” as in racks.

There are no cars on any of the streets shown here, so there is plenty of room for bicycles and a relaxed atmosphere for cycling. It wasn’t always like this. The city centre was once dominated by motor vehicles. However, changes were made in the late 1970s / early 1980s to exclude cars from the city centre and the result is the vibrant city you see today.

We’ve many types of cycle parking here, and the most popular racks are those which support the bike by the front wheel. The problems with the inverted U shape “Sheffield” type racks is that they don’t stop the bike from falling over, they don’t allow bikes to be parked very densely (which is important when there are a lot of bikes) and they get in the way of one side of the bike. For people trying to pack large panniers on both sides with shopping they don’t work very well while racks which support the front wheel do.

I’m not talking about “wheel benders,” but racks which support a greater part of the radius of the wheel and actually work. When they also have a loop through which you can put a cable then the frame can be secured as well. Not that many people bother here.

Finally a view of a different kind of bicycle parking. There is a beach right on the edge of the city. We’re quite a way from the coast, so it is a lake surrounded by trees. I took this photo on a hot day in May this year. The cycle parking stands at the beach were of course overflowing, and many bikes were parked in with the trees instead.

Previously I’ve shown the cycle parking at Assen railway station as well as in Groningen.

Marc at Amsterdamize also covered cycle parking today.

Assen is a great place for a cycling holiday. Bring your swimming gear too. The Netherlands in general is very safe for people too.

In August I already posted something about this, but I was merely touching on the subject, really.

It’s all true, there are more bikes than people in Amsterdam. The same goes for the whole country. When so many people use their bikes on a daily basis, there’s a great need for facilities. One of which is parking.

The eye catchers are the big ass bicycle parking garages near major transportation hubs, such as Central Station, hosting thousands and thousands of people’s two-wheeled confidents. Less appealing to visitors, perhaps, but equally important are the regular street racks. There are many of those, but never enough.

Over the years these racks have evolved, new types were introduced, but some have found their place in bike parking history over the last decades. They’ve proven their worth: efficient, practical, economical, sturdy, stable, etc.

Recently, Mikael over at Copenhagenize was pleased to see (paraphrasing) ‘a Danish design win in the NYC bicycle rack competition’. The ‘Hoop’ is a nice design, I have to say, but…(yes, there’s a but), they didn’t nail the setup of this rack when they anticipated multiplying their purpose. You know, more people on bikes, more parking, more bikes in a small space, so need for more racks. See the pic on the right. (PS, Maarten De Greeve from Bettlelab is either Dutch or Belgium, so I give the Danes half the props ;-p)

Anyway, on with the show. As I promised Andy from Carbon Trace, I pointed my camera more closely at bicycle racks in Amsterdam. You’ll have to forgive me, but I don’t know any of their names, but realize there’s a need for reference. I opted for the easiest one.

Type 1: no thrills, easy execution, space efficient.

Type 2: one of the most common racks across the country, after decades still in use, very space-efficient.

Type 3: the ‘luxury’ edition of Type 2.

Here’s the whole set, more pictures of the 3 types and a few others: