What's Happening in Portland, OR…

It has recently been announced by the Portland Bureau of Transportation that Biketown is expanding its service to include an additional nine square miles partly in the city’s eastern neighborhoods and North Portland.

Biketown will now be covering the east Portland neighborhoods of Parkrose, Mill Park, Parkrose Heights and Hazelwood. In North Portland, the service will increase its reach to St. Johns and the campus of the University of Portland. The changes will put bike service into neighborhoods with less access to reliable public transportation and with higher concentrations of racial minorities.

This latest expansion is one of several efforts to grow Biketown’s ridership. In September 2021, Portland announced that any college student qualifying for federal financial aid in the city would be offered free Biketown membership.

Flyer printing services are an inexpensive way of informing groups within a population of changes to services or programs.

Another incentive was providing “Biketown for All” enrolees – which would be those receiving reduced rates by qualifying for unemployment assistance, affordable housing or other social services – a free hour of ride time each day.

The Biketown program is sponsored by Nike and owned by the Transportation Bureau. The city currently owns 1,500 bicycles that can be “checked-out” for one-way trips and then left for another rider to use once they have arrived at their destination.

Portland’s Biketown program was inaugurated in 2016 and was changed to an all-electric fleet in September 2020 when Lyft took charge of the program’s operations.