Ride With Us to Council

Before every Medford City Council meeting, those who like an easy ride before participating in our local civics gather at the Hawthorne Park parking lot and ride over to City Hall together. We meet at the parking lot closest to Main St. It's a great event to meet other like-minded people and to keep letting our leaders know that we all want safe streets.

Something to remember, climate friendly areas

The council is actively discussing Climate Friendly Areas. In fact they discussed this during their last study session. Medford originally resisted designating these areas, but lost a lawsuit against the state. However, they are important for protected bicycle facilities, and Main St is right in the middle of Medford's current CFA.

Here is some background. Under Oregon's Climate Friendly rules, cities like Medford have to designate Climate Friendly Areas, places where people can live, work, and get around without depending on a car for every trip. The state's own Medford Climate Friendly Area Study evaluated Downtown as a candidate area, and when it scored Downtown's multimodal facilities it pointed to Main Street directly:

"West Main Street, the center of the potential CFA, was reconfigured a few months ago to create a 2-way cycle-track, buffered from travel lanes by on street parallel parking."

The question we need to ask council is this: how can they simultaneously comply with the state's requirement for a climate-friendly area yet remove our only protected bike lane?

This keeps happening until they hear us

Silence is consensus. Always send a comment. If you already sent one, that's ok, the clock starts over after each council meeting. At every meeting they announce how many people support bike lanes, so every email counts.

If you can't make it in person, send a comment to PublicComments@cityofmedford.org. Comments received by noon on the day of a meeting get entered into the official record. The easiest way is our Take Action form, which opens your email app with a pre-filled comment you can edit. It takes two minutes, and it's fine to email more than once.

Take Action