Cycling in Portland, Oregon

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.

Due to its urban bicycling efforts, Portland has earned multiple "bicycle-friendly city" awards, including being awarded platinum status by the League of American Bicyclists, and it ranks highly among the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world.

In July 2016, Portland launched a bike share program, named "Biketown" because of a naming rights deal with Nike, with 1,000 bikes and 100 stations. It is operated by Motivate. The new system logged more than 100,000 rides in its first two months of operation.

Portland's reputation as a bike-friendly City was enhanced by The Yellow Bike Project, a 1994 civic engagement action led by local activists Tom O'Keefe and Joe Keating. O'Keefe proposed painting donated bikes – repaired by at-risk-youth served by the Community Cycling Center – bright yellow, and deploying them for free use around Portland. O'Keefe cited the Provo movement's White Bicycle Plan in Amsterdam as inspiration after watching the documentary "Sex Drugs & Democracy". "Gratis Pedalis Feralvus" was a tongue-in-cheek slogan for the quirky eco-transportation project. About a dozen yellow bikes, painted for free by a local auto body shop were launched. Eventually 60 to 100 bicycles were part of the project. Ultimately the project failed after bikes were stolen, vandalized, or thrown into the Willamette River.

The bicycle revolution in Portland started taking off with the founding of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance in November 1990. The first project of the BTA was persuading TriMet, the regional transit agency, to carry bicycles on its buses and light rail trains. BTA gathered over 7000 signatures and the support of numerous local city councils, prompting TriMet to conduct a one-year trial on a few bus lines. After a year of no significant problems and an increase in transit ridership by cyclists, TriMet instituted the first 100% bicycle accessible major transit system in the U.S. The Bicycle Transportation Alliance grew into one of the most effective cycling advocacy organizations in the U.S. The BTA focused on making major streets safe for cycling by advocating bicycle lanes, improvements to all seven pedestrian-accessible Willamette River bridges linking the downtown to the rest of the city and for safe, secure bicycle parking. In 1992, BTA successfully sued the City of Portland under ORS 366.514, the Oregon "Bicycle Bill," forcing the City to provide bicycle facilities as part of all projects. The City appealed this to the Oregon Court of Appeals which upheld the BTA's position, solidifying the responsibility of all governments in Oregon to provide safe bicycle and pedestrian facilities in all projects.

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Wikipedia