Unlikely Advocate

BACK IN THE DAYS OF YESTERYEAR, Sam Adams was Portland’s
ballsy bike champion. But now that Adams is mayor the city needs a new
outsider activist. The next big bike advocate may be the city’s most
unlikely candidate: a 62-year-old inner-Eastside landlord named Randy
Miller.

While many in Miller’s position might prefer to ride around in
chauffeur-driven town cars to avoid a rumpled suit, “he has, in the
last year, become a fanatic about biking everywhere,” says Metro
Council President David Bragdon, who accompanied Miller on a “best
practices” trip to Copenhagen in June 2008, when the best bike city in
the world converted Miller to the cause.

“And I’m not talking about Lycra on the weekends,” Bragdon
continues. “But pedaling to work, between meetings, all the time.”

Miller is definitively a member of old Portland’s establishment:
Lithe for his age, Miller is always distinguished looking in smart
suits that complement his silver hair. While Mayor Sam Adams once
sought to forge links with the business community to pedal his
bicycling agenda forward, Miller is the business community.
Since selling his consumer electronics and telecommunications business,
Miller has focused on managing several inner-Eastside properties. And
sitting on 33 corporate boards in the city, he’s not short on
clout.

“Everybody in bicycling advocacy is really excited about him,
because he represents old business, and that’s what everyone wants to
infiltrate,” says Bikeportland.org Editor Jonathan Maus.
“The Portland Business Alliance [PBA] has always been this huge dragon
that fought against bikes, but here’s Randy Miller, and he knows all
those guys.”

When the PBA handed Miller its annual President’s Award this April,
Miller took the chance to preach a pro-bike message to the crowd of
Portland’s most influential business leaders.

“He gets up in front of 900 people and says, ‘I want you all to
start biking, that’s what makes this city great,'” says Bragdon. “And
everyone’s sitting up asking, ‘Is that the Randy Miller we know? He’s
gone crazy!'”

In Miller’s opinion, it’s not insanity, it’s pure business: Bike
industries are the best way for Portland to create wealth and family
wage jobs. “That’s been my focus all the way through for a zillion
different organizations,” he says.

Miller organized last year’s trip to Copenhagen for 50 local
business and civic leaders because he wanted them to see the impact
that sustainability could have on Portland.

“And I just fell in love with that culture,” he says. “The
relationship between bicyclists and motorists there is tremendous.”

After the trip, Miller began biking everywhere. Congressman Earl
Blumenauer invited him to join the 2009 National Bike Summit in
Washington, DC.

“I’m kind of a newbie to this,” Miller admits. “But I’m totally
convinced. Even in the last year I’ve seen a shift in Portland from
radical fanatical bicyclists to a much higher degree of conduct on the
roads, and the relationship with motorists has improved.”

“Randy is exactly the kind of convert who is making bicycling
mainstream in Portland,” says Bragdon. And mainstream support is
exactly what it’s going to take for Oregon cyclists to win funding and
respect in Salem.

More Bike Issue articles here!