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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (May 18, 2017)
NEWS • The Eugene Parks and Open Space Division is proposing park rule changes that it says “are aimed at increasing enjoyment of the parks and clarifying park use requirements.” Proposed changes include making all Eugene parks alcohol free “unless a special event permit is given for weddings, family reunions and other community activities” or unless allowed by the facility supervisor or the person in charge of parks and recreation facilities at 20 locations in Eugene such as the Amazon and Washington Park Community Centers. Expanding commercial photography opportunities to now include the popular Hendricks Park and Owen Rose Garden is on the docket, along with prohibiting the dismantling and distribution of bicycles or bicycle parts in parks without city permission (you can still make repairs such as fixing flat tires). They would require vehicles to park within the parking lines and only occupy one parking space, unless written permission is obtained from the city and cite unauthorized vehicles in parks after closure. Finally, the proposed changes would prohibit dogs weighing over 25 pounds from being in the “small dog” off-leash dog parks. Parks is seeking feedback from the public by Friday, May 19 via email at POS@ci.eugene. or.us or sent by snail mail to City of Eugene Public Works Department, Administration Division, 101 East Broadway, Suite 400, Eugene, Oregon 97401. • There will be a Divest Eugene Rally, 6:30pm, Monday, May 22 at Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza, 799 Oak Street. Join 350 Eugene in calling on the Eugene City Council to enact an ordinance for the city of Eugene to divest from US Bank because of its ties to oil pipelines. • At 7:30 pm, May 23 the University of Oregon LGBTQA3 (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer Alliance) brings Miss Major, a Black transgender elder and activist who has been fighting for the rights of trans women of color for over 50 years, to speak in the EMU Ballroom. Tickets are free for UO students and $8 for everyone else, and organizers say that there are a few free tickets available for queer and trans people of color outside the UO community. To reserve those, contact events. qa.uo@gmail.com. LGBTQA3 says that Miss Major is a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and recently served as the executive director of the San Francisco-based Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), a grassroots organization advocating for trans women of color in and outside of prison that is also led by trans women of color. • “The Space Between Us: Immigrants, Refugees and Oregon,” a talk by Manuel Padilla, is 5:30 pm Wednesday, May 24 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, 1430 Johnson Lane. Padilla will ask “participants to consider questions of uprootedness, hospitality, identity, perception, and integration and how we might build more informed, responsive, resilient, and vibrant communities.” • At 4 pm, Thursday, May 24, Rich Bartlett and Nati Lombardo from the Loomio team in New Zealand offer a workshop entitled “Tools and Culture for Participatory Organizing.” Loomio is an app for online decision-making built by a worker co-op. The workshop is at RAIN, 942 Olive Street. Organizers invite you to stay and bring a dish with its ingredients labeled for a potluck dinner to follow. Cost is $20 - $50. Go to goo.gl/oXUxKxc for event info. LANE COUNTY AREA SPRAY SCHEDULE Peter Kingzett, 541-686-4917, plans to spray 36.0 acres near Territorial and Hamm roads with Element 4 and MSO Concentrate as part of Oak restoration project. A waiver of the normal 15-day waiting period was requested and partially granted. See ODF notification 2017-781-05763, call Brian Peterson at 541-935-2283 with questions. Roseburg Resources, 541- 679-3311, plans to spray its roadsides near Vaughn Road and throughout Lane County with 2,4-D with amine, 2,4-D with ester, aminopyralid, glyphosate, imazapyr, triclopyr with ester, triclopyr with amine, Conquer, Crop Oil Concentrate, Forest Crop Oil and/or MSO Concentrate. See ODF notifications 2017-781-05651 and 2017-781-05652, call Dan Menk at 541-935-2283 with questions. Compiled by Gary Hale, Forestland Dwellers: 342-8332, forestlanddwellers. org 10 May 18, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com B Y K E L LY K E N O Y E R BIKETOWN, USA Protected bikeways and a bikeshare program are in the works I f Eugene’s City Council passes the new transpor- tation system plan (TSP), newer, safer bike paths could be built across the city. To add to Eugene’s bike-ability, plans are already in motion to install a bike-share program in Eugene. Some advocates, though, are concerned the TSP does not call for enough funding for the dedicated bikeways. The TSP includes plans for protected bikeways that will make biking safer and more accessible for more people. These bike paths would add a physical barrier between bicyclists and vehicular traffic, increasing safe- ty and creating a sense of comfort. The TSP currently dedicates only 18 percent of its budget to bike and pedestrian projects, despite the stat- ed goal of tripling trips by bike, foot and public transit by 2035. In the 20-year planning period, 9.85 miles of protected bike lanes are planned, though non-protected bike lanes are also in the plan. Sheila Lyons, pedestrian and bicycle program man- ager at the Oregon Department of Transportation, says the small percentage of funds may be misleading. “It is much cheaper to provide for bicycle and pedestrian traf- fic than road traffic,” she says, adding that a little money seems to go a long way with these projects. Lyons points to studies showing that only a small percentage of the population feels comfortable using bike lanes that share the road with vehicles. With pro- tected bikeways, she says, “you would tap into that 60 percent who would use bikes if they had protection.” The current plan would add a protected bike lane to High Street, connecting Amazon Park’s paths to the riv- er bike path. Another protected bikeway, scheduled for construction in 2019, would connect the University of Oregon campus to downtown via 13th. River Road may also see a significant protected bikeway project. Sarah Mazze is the Safe Routes to School program manager in Eugene. “The beauty of protected bikeways is that you can suddenly open up bikes as a method of transportation to the huge portion of the population that’s interested but concerned about traffic,” she says. Mazze says she expects that the planned protected bike- ways may make bicycling a more accessible mode of transportation for schoolchildren, who don’t know the rules of the road well enough to safely use unprotected bike lanes. Mazze says she hopes the planned projects will in- crease bike usage in Eugene. “There are great facilities planned, and I think there needs to be a dedication of funding to implement these plans, and more,” she adds. “It’s a matter of priorities. If it’s truly a priority for the city to increase the percentage of walking and bik- ing trips, then they’ll need to put their money where their mouth is and improve facilities for those users,” she says. One planned improvement is the bike share pro- gram, according to Reed Dunbar, Eugene’s associate transportation manager. He says the tech-savvy bike- share program, scheduled to launch Sept. 25, will boast 300 bicycles and be accessible through smartphones. “We’re crowdsourcing locations now for investigation,” Dunbar says. Citizens can offer opinions on possible bike hub locations at eugenebikeshare.com during the month of May. Lyons says, “Bike share programs across the U.S. have all been different, some have been wildly success- ful and some haven’t been used much at all.” A likely indicator for success, she adds, is a large urban popula- tion. The bike share program in hilly Seattle was recently cancelled, and Portland’s program was vandalized, de- spite boasting a success of 160,000 trips in half a year. But Eugene may fare better with its influx of visitors for game days and other events, Lyon says. Cities like New York and Chicago have had significant success with their bike share programs. Dunbar says he expects that many users of the bike share will be workers who commute by car to down- town but will use the bikes to go to lunch in the White- aker or to take a lunchtime bike ride in the park. “What a lot of cities have found is that when they start a bike share program it reinvigorates interest in biking for people who haven’t biked in a while,” Dun- bar says.
