Portland, Ore. – Innovative Bicycle Signal

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Rex Burkholder: [00:06] Here’s a really cool innovation that the City of Portland has done. This intersection is right where you’re coming off a major recreational trail and transportation corridor that goes along both sides of the river. And then the cyclists that use it are going in two different directions, to North Portland and to North East Portland, so it’s kind of a bicycle scramble call it where the lights are triggered by bicyclists pavement signal loop and this allows the bicyclist to stop all the traffic by parking the bicycle on a signal that’s actually marked just like this on the ground, and then it stops traffic in all directions, so the bicyclist can leave from here and go in all directions, instead of having say if you want to go north you’d have to cross one time and then cross again which creates a lot of hazards for people and especially if you’re not a very experienced cyclist which we get a lot on the trail here. They’re less experienced and don’t know quite how to deal with traffic as well. So this is a major safety feature, convenience feature, it makes it easier and faster to get through if you’re a cyclist. And we have literally thousands of cyclists that use this facility everyday and so it helps to manage the traffic and makes it much safer. Another sign of innovation is something that has been used in other places, but the fact that it hasn’t swept the country until we started doing it here. Go Portland.

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