The Providence Bridge Pedal, formerly known as the Portland Bridge Pedal is an annual recreational cycling and walking event across several Willamette River crossings in Portland, Oregon. Oregon State Representative Rick Bauman is credited with conceiving the event while watching the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens on the Marquam Bridge. By 2007 it became the world's third largest annual recreational cycling event behind the Five Boro Bike Tour in New York City, New York and Tour de l'Île in Montreal, Quebec. [1]
The first event was held in 1996 and attracted 7,500 cyclists and walkers. The name was changed from the Portland Bridge Pedal to the Providence Bridge Pedal in 1997 after Providence Health and Services became the event's main sponsor. There are several routes with varying lengths in the event, which averages 20,000 participants per year. [1] [2] The longest route in 2013 spanned 10 crossings. [3] The 2015 event was also the public preview of Tilikum Crossing, the first major bridge in the U.S. that was designed to allow access to transit vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians but not cars, with an estimated 40,000–50,000 people crossing the bridge during the day. [4]
Portland is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated in the northwestern area of the state at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous county in Oregon. As of 2020, Portland had a population of 652,503, making it the 26th-most populated city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle. Approximately 2.5 million people live in the Portland–Vancouver–Hillsboro, OR–WA metropolitan statistical area, making it the 25th most populous in the United States. About half of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.
The Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) is a light rail system serving the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. Owned and operated by TriMet, it consists of five lines that together connect the six sections of Portland; the communities of Beaverton, Clackamas, Gresham, Hillsboro, Milwaukie, and Oak Grove; and Portland International Airport to Portland City Center. Trains run seven days a week with headways of between 30 minutes off-peak and three minutes during rush hours. In 2019, MAX had an average daily ridership of 120,900, or 38.8 million annually. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted public transit use globally, annual ridership plummeted, with only 14.8 million riders recorded in 2021.
The Hawthorne Bridge is a truss bridge with a vertical lift that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, joining Hawthorne Boulevard and Madison Street. It is the oldest vertical-lift bridge in operation in the United States and the oldest highway bridge in Portland. It is also the busiest bicycle and transit bridge in Oregon, with over 8,000 cyclists and 800 TriMet buses daily. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2012.
Interstate 405 (I-405), also known as the Stadium Freeway No. 61, is a short north–south Interstate Highway in Portland, Oregon. It forms a loop that travels around the west side of Downtown Portland, between two junctions with I-5 on the Willamette River near the Marquam Bridge to the south and Fremont Bridge to the north.
Like transportation in the rest of the United States, the primary mode of local transportation in Portland, Oregon is the automobile. Metro, the metropolitan area's regional government, has a regional master plan in which transit-oriented development plays a major role. This approach, part of the new urbanism, promotes mixed-use and high-density development around light rail stops and transit centers, and the investment of the metropolitan area's share of federal tax dollars into multiple modes of transportation. In the United States, this focus is atypical in an era when automobile use led many areas to neglect their core cities in favor of development along interstate highways, in suburbs, and satellite cities.
Portland is "an international pioneer in transit orientated developments."
The MAX Orange Line is a light rail service in Portland, Oregon, United States, operated by TriMet as part of the MAX Light Rail system. It connects Portland City Center, Portland State University (PSU), Southeast Portland, Milwaukie, and Oak Grove. The line serves 17 stations from Union Station/Northwest 5th & Glisan to Southeast Park Avenue and runs for 201⁄2 hours daily with a minimum headway of 15 minutes during most of the day. It averaged 3,480 daily weekday riders in September 2020.
The South Waterfront is a high-rise district under construction on former brownfield industrial land in the South Portland neighborhood south of downtown Portland, Oregon, U.S. It is one of the largest urban redevelopment projects in the United States. It is connected to downtown Portland by the Portland Streetcar and MAX Orange Line, and to the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) main campus atop Marquam Hill by the Portland Aerial Tram, as well as roads to Interstate 5 and Oregon Route 43.
Hood To Coast is a long distance relay race that starts at Mount Hood and continues nearly 200 miles to the Oregon Coast. Known as "the mother of all relays", it is the largest running and walking relay in the world, with 12,600 runners in the Hood To Coast relay and 19,000 total participants, including events like the Portland To Coast Walk. Founded in 1982, Hood To Coast is extremely popular and has filled its team limit for the past 36 years, most of the time on opening day of the entrance lottery.
Interstate 5 (I-5) in the U.S. state of Oregon is a major Interstate Highway that traverses the state from north to south. It travels to the west of the Cascade Mountains, connecting Portland to Salem, Eugene, Medford, and other major cities in the Willamette Valley and across the northern Siskiyou Mountains. The highway runs 308 miles (496 km) from the California state line near Ashland to the Washington state line in northern Portland, forming the central part of Interstate 5's route between Mexico and Canada.
The Street Trust is a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy organization based in Portland, Oregon, United States. The Street Trust advocates for the safety and ease of biking, walking and riding public transit in communities. The organization does legislative work at the statewide and national levels and endorses legislation and ballot measures. It successfully lobbied Portland's mass transit company, TriMet, to accommodate bicycles on buses and prevailed in a lawsuit to uphold Oregon's Bicycle Bill.
Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People is a cable-stayed bridge across the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was designed by TriMet, the Portland metropolitan area's regional transit authority, for its MAX Orange Line light rail passenger trains. The bridge also serves city buses and the Portland Streetcar, as well as bicycles, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles. Private cars and trucks are not permitted on the bridge. It is the first major bridge in the U.S. that was designed to allow access to transit vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians but not cars.
Richard H. "Rick" Bauman is a former American Democratic politician from the US state of Oregon who served in the Oregon House of Representatives and on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners in the 1980s. He was also the Democratic nominee for United States Senator from Oregon in 1986. After retiring from politics in 1992, Bauman began organizing bicycle tours and was a founder of Portland Bridge Pedal, an annual bicycle tour crossing all the bridges in Portland.
Bicycle use in Portland, Oregon has been growing rapidly, having nearly tripled since 2001; for example, bicycle traffic on four of the Willamette River bridges has increased from 2,855 before 1992 to over 16,000 in 2008, partly due to improved facilities. The Portland Bureau of Transportation says 6% of commuters bike to work in Portland, the highest proportion of any major U.S. city and about 10 times the national average.
The Worst Day of the Year Ride is the annual cycling event held in Portland, Oregon, in the United States.
The A and B Loop is a streetcar circle route of the Portland Streetcar system in Portland, Oregon, United States. Operated by Portland Streetcar, Inc. and TriMet, it is made up of two separate services: the 6.1-mile (9.8 km) A Loop, which runs clockwise, and the 6.6-mile (10.6 km) B Loop, which runs counterclockwise. The route travels a loop between the east and west sides of the Willamette River by crossing the Broadway Bridge in the north and Tilikum Crossing in the south.
Tri It is an outdoor 2015 mural by Blaine Fontana, painted outside the TriMet Bus Maintenance Facility in Portland, Oregon, in the United States.
We Have Always Lived Here is a 2015 public art installation by Greg A. Robinson, installed at Tilikum Crossing in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. The work consists of two traditional Chinook basalt carvings sited at both ends of the bridge, plus a bronze medallion on the northeast side of the bridge.
Biketown, also known as Biketown PDX, is a bicycle-sharing system in Portland, Oregon, that began operation on July 19, 2016. The system is owned by Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and operated by Lyft, with Nike, Inc. as the title sponsor. At launch, the system had 100 stations and 1,000 bicycles serving the city's central and eastside neighborhoods, with hopes to expand outward.
Cycling in Penang Island refers to the use of bicycles in the city of George Town and elsewhere on Penang Island, Malaysia, either for recreational, touring or transportation purposes. While bicycles have long been in use in Penang, with rickshaws becoming a unique application of the pedal-driven vehicle in the state, the usage of bicycles has noticeably declined since the late 20th century due to the proliferation of cars as the main transportation mode.
Third Eye Shoppe, commonly known as The Third Eye, was a head shop in Portland, Oregon's Hawthorne district and Richmond neighborhood, in the United States. The shop was founded in 1987 and owned by cannabis and counterculture activist Jack Herer. His son, Mark Herer, took over as the shop's owner in 2001. The Third Eye closed on March 31, 2017, as a result of declining sales, development of the surrounding neighborhood, increasing health care costs, and increased competition. The shop was associated with Portland's cannabis culture and recreational drug tourism, and was included in Willamette Week's annual "Best of Portland" reader's poll several times.