BikePortland Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Brandon Mullen has spent 12 years working in city and regional government: Now he wants to enter the political ring. Mullen is running for Portland City Council District 3 (SE). His expansive platform reflects his urban planning and transportation experience, as well as stints managing projects for City of Portland and Metro.

Brandon rolled over to The Shed yesterday and we had an expansive conversation that touched on everything from basketball (we're both big fans) to budgets. If you live in D3 and want help figuring out how best to rank the 10 (so far) candidates, you need to listen to this episode.

Links:

• BikePortland Podcast archive https://bikeportland.org/cats/podcast
• Brandon Mullen campaign website
• Brandon Mullen campaign IG

*BikePortland - Community Journalism Since 2005*

• Latest news on our website (aka "blog"): https://bikeportland.org/
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• BikePortland Podcast: https://bikeportland.org/cats/podcast

A Simple Machine is more than just a film, it’s a deeply Portland project that brings our beautiful city and the humble bicycle to the big screen while presenting important and relevant themes that many of us can relate to.

I recently sat down in The Shed with Evan P. Schneider, who wrote the book, A Simple Machine, Like the Lever (Propeller Books) that inspired the film; and Mark Alan Hoffman, the film’s creator and director. We talked about the creative process, the film’s deeper meanings, how Evan’s story from 2011 still resonates in 2026, and much more. Evan even read a few passages from the book!

Pull up a chair or turn up the volume and join us for a chat in the Shed.

Links:

• A Simple Machine official website
• A Simple Machine: Like the Lever book (2011 Propeller Books)
• Oregon premiere screening at Panorama Film Festival 4/16

*BikePortland - Community Journalism Since 2005*

• Latest news on our website (aka "blog"): https://bikeportland.org/
• Subscribe and support: https://bikeportland.org/support
• BikePortland on IG: https://www.instagram.com/bikeportland/
• BikePortland on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bikeportland.bsky.social
• BikePortland Podcast: https://bikeportland.org/cats/podcast

Portland road safety advocate Sarah Risser (Bike Loud, PBOT Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Families for Safe Streets) and I talk about the pros and cons of blaming individuals over the system when it comes to traffic crashes.

This conversation was inspired by a social media post when I scolded a driver for causing a bad wreck. Sarah then suggested I watch a video about Safety Science from Transportation Alternatives and narrated by safety expert and There Are No Accidents author Jessie Singer.

We dive into the need for blame, the limits of systems thinking (when our systems are totally dysfunctional), and several related issues around why fixing our broken streets and associated traffic culture is so challenging in America.

In this episode, host Jonathan Maus shares clips from a recent meeting of the Metro Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT). He highlights an exchange between county commissioners that was spurred by the "reading the of the names" - an increasingly common practice at meetings where someone reads names of people killed in traffic crashes at the outset of a meeting in order to add urgency to road safety efforts.

Jonathan shares why he thinks this practice is so important — and how it can gain even more value when it spurs an exchange like the one between two commissioners and a Metro staff person in this episode.

Links:

• Nafisa Fai - Washington County Commission website
• Paul Savas - Clackamas County Commission website
• Juan Carlos Gonzalez - Metro Council website
• Metro JPACT home page
• Details on Metro's $2.4 million road safety planning grant (BikePortland)

This episode is all about the headlines I'm sure all of you've seen — that the number of people riding bikes in portland has fallen sharply in recent years. It's a decline that started long before Covid, and it's something we've been stewing about around here for many years now. But now we've got hard numbers from the City of Portland, so it's time to dig in and confront this unfortunate reality.

So sit back and hang out with BikePortland Editor Jonathan Maus and Staff Writer Taylor Griggs to hear their reactions to the news, reasons why it's happening, and what implications might be going forward. We'll also share a few reader comments and reactions from folks Taylor bumped into over the weekend.

Links from the episode:

• Something has gone wrong in Portland - May 2014 BikePortland article that nails the start of the decline.
• 2019 Bike Year in Review - PDF of presentation by PBOT Bike Coordinator Roger Geller where he makes the case that "hidden" neighborhood greenways" are partly to blame.
• City counts reveal data behind Portland’s precipitous drop in cycling - March 15th, 2023 BikePortland article on the PBOT Bike Counts report.

In this episode, host Jonathan Maus will take you on a tour and ride with Tegan Valo from B-Line Urban Delivery. B-Line is a Portland company that was founded in 2008 and they have carved out a great little niche for their innovative approach to last mile freight logistics.

If you're a BikePortland reader, you'll recall several stories we've written about them over the years because of this simple fact: they use pedal-powered electric cargo trikes for their delivery fleet.

B-Line has replaced well over 320,000 truck miles with these trikes in over 42,000 deliveries in the past 15 years. And while they're much smaller and safer than a truck or a van, B-Line trikes can still carry up to 700 pounds of cargo.

A few days ago, Jonathan met Tegan at their large warehouse in the Central Eastside to learn more about the company, get a rundown of what a typical day looks like. They then hit the road for a few deliveries.

For this episode, host Jonathan Maus rode down to City Hall and recorded an interview with Portland City Commissioner Mingus Mapps. Mapps has served as one of Portland's five council members since 2020, and was recently named the commissioner-in-charge of the transportation bureau.

Mapps is a graduate of Reed College, he has a PhD in government from Cornell and is a former political science professor. Prior to ousting former Commissioner Chloe Eudaly from her seat in 2019, Mapps worked for the City of Portland's office of civic life.

Jonathan and Commissioner Mapps covered a lot of ground in this interview. They talked about the type of person he's looking to hire as the next director of PBOT, how he thinks transportation policy and projects can help revitalize Portland, why he thinks the 2030 bike plan is outdated, his rationale for wanting more police officers patrolling Portland streets, his position on the I-5 Rose Quarter project, and much more.

LINKS:

• LA Times article on Portland's problems and progressivism
• November 2020 BikePortland interview with Mingus Mapps

As a veteran of Metro Council (our elected regional planning authority) — including a seven-year stint as president from 2003 to 2010 — David Bragdon has been around the block when it comes to Oregon transportation politics. And for the past decade he's been executive director of TransitCenter, a nonprofit foundation that funds and conducts research and advocacy to improve public transit across the U.S. Before that he led a planning office for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Suffice it to say, Bragdon has a mix of experiences in advocacy and government that I feel BikePortland readers could learn a lot from. So when I heard he was leaving his post at TransitCenter and was making a stop in Portland to visit family, I figured it was a perfect time to invite him into the Shed for an interview.

We ended up talking about a range of issues including: how advocates can influence government, what PBOT should look for in their hiring of a new director, PBOT's budget woes, why he doesn't trust ODOT (which he refers to as the Oregon State Highway Department), TriMet and transit governance, and more.

Links:

• David Bragdon Wikipedia entry
• ODOT suffers from incompetence and dishonesty at highest levels, former Metro President says (BikePortland, 2015)
• A People's History of Recent Urban Transportation Innovation (Transit Center, 2016)
• Winning Transit (TransitCenter, 2019)

In this episode, host Jonathan Maus (BikePortland's publisher and editor) sat down for a chat about the Portland Bureau of Transportation with Kiel Johnson, a Portland bike advocacy veteran and current chair of the nonprofit BikeLoud PDX.

PBOT is currently looking to hire a new director of the agency and Jonathan and Kiel have some thoughts about it! They share insights on the state of PBOT in general, why they feel this is a pivotal moment for the agency, what traits they'd like to see in a new director, and much more.

Links from the show:

• BikePortland story about departure of former PBOT Director Chris Warner
• On paving vs bike routes, The Oregonian got it wrong (2012 BikePortland story about former PBOT Director Tom Miller's controversial attempt to reduce the paving budget)

When it comes to the goal of safer streets and "Vision Zero," how much of a focus should we put on individual driver behaviors and infrastructure design? The "systems versus people" debate is raging as cities and advocates grapple with record traffic fatalities.

Tara Goddard, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Urban Planning at Texas A & M University. She earned her doctorate in urban planning from Portland State University and she's led several studies about car culture, "windshield bias" and more.

Host: Jonathan Maus, editor and publisher of BikePortland.

Links:

• Dr. Goddard Texas A & M Bio Page / @DrTaraGoddard on Twitter
• PSU Transportation Safety Culture Webinar with Dr. Goddard on February 16th
• That driving-centric KATU-TV story
• Book: There Are No Accidents, byJessie Singer (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
• Cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving (Article on Ian Walker's "motonormativity" research in The Verge)