by Larry Lagarde

Great news! As of yesterday, it is now possible to ride a bike from Downtown Portland, Oregon all the way to Portland International Airport.

Portland is truly a great place to go bicycling. There are bike routes, trails and paths throughout the city as well as long distance rides to beautifully scenic areas nearby. Additionally, Portland is an Amtrak stop and Amtrak's Cascades high speed train has bike hooks so you can bring your bike aboard and visit Tacoma, Seattle, etc.

The new paved path from the airport connects to the bike trail on the levee parallel to Marine Drive, which is a fun ride because of the sweeping views of the Columbia River (on clear days, you can even see Mt. Hood & Mt. St. Helens in the distance). From the bike path on Marine Dr, it's an easy ride to the Jantzen Beach Campground on Hayden Island too.

Following is a link to the shortest routing from Portland International to Pioneer Place in downtown Portland. This routing is courtesy of the new & experimental interactive trip planner available on byCycle.org, a service that is planning to offer bike maps for destinations across the USA. To create the route map, I entered the addresses for the starting and ending points for the ride and clicked the "safer route" option.

Hopefully, byCycle.org will soon offer the option to select off road routes because it is possible to ride most of the way from the airport to downtown on paved bike paths (the ride is a lot longer but it's scenic and you'll arrive more relaxed).

By the way, Portland's mass transit system (TriMet) can be very handy for cyclists (bicycles on TriMet info). TriMet's streetcars, buses and MAX light rail all accept bicycles.

Labels: bicycling-to-the-airport, Portland-Oregon