BikeTown

In honor of Earth Day, we are learning the city of Portland is getting hundreds of new bikes and some of them are showing off local landmarks. That's right, city leaders are also unveiling a brand new bike town station partly made of recycled Nike shoes and manufacturing materials. Fox News Bonnie Silkman joins us live in studio with much more on this, Bonnie. Yeah, in honor of Earth Day, which is tomorrow by the way, the city of Portland says 500 new bike town bikes are coming town. 30 of them are the new Earth Day bikes. If you look closely, you can see little familiar landmarks in Portland decorated as part of that design for those 30 new Earth Day bikes. So a celebration in downtown Portland just wrapped up. That's where leaders unveiled the new bike station as well. That's partly made of recycled materials. So cool. So the bike town expansion event just wrapped up, as we said, at the urban Plaza at Portland State University right there. Transportation Commissioner Mingus Maps is leading the way there to celebrate this event and help to show off the brand new bike town station made in part with those recycled Nike materials. Leaders say that this new station features 25% of Nike grind rubber from its footwear manufacturing scraps. We also got to see those new Earth Day bikes. So 30 of those are being added to the fleet. And again, we now know that the bike town fleet is about to expand by more than 30% with 500 new bikes coming to the area. So that will bring the fleet up to a grand total of 2000 bikes. A bike town Portland's beloved bike share system is a partnership between the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Lyft and Nike. It launched in Portland in 2016 with about 1000 bikes for rent. Bike town is a key tool in helping us reach our climate challenges. I'll tell you here in Portland, the main contributor to carbon in our air are fossil fuel powered cars. It is truly an amazing experience. I will tell you, if you've never been on an electric assisted bike before, the first time you get one will be You will rediscover the joy of riding a bike the first time you get one of these machines. Those e-bikes are pretty fun if you haven'tried them out yet. Leaders add that they are determined to help downtown Portland recover from the pandemic and that the expansion into North Portland and East Portland will really help some of the hardest hit areas of our community post pandemic. So 200 of the new e-bikes will be immediately available and the fleet is expected to reach its full size over the s And again, Earth Day is tomorrow and to help celebrate, Bike Town is offering three rides with their bikes on Saturday. You might remember a recent Peabot study also found that the n So to help encourage and celebrate biking in Portland, a bike rally is being held tonight. This has nothing to do with Bike Town, the local non-profit Bike Loud PDX says if you want to show your support for cycling in the city and promote creating safe spaces for cycling, you can come to the bike rally tonight. It starts at 5. 30 at Portland's City Hall.