Sorry to get this up a little late, but the Bike Master Plan is up for discussion on OPB RIGHT NOW! Listen live here over the next half hour to Bicycle Master Plan writers explain what the plan is and how the hell the city should pay for it.
It’s shaping up to be a good show! I’ll blog updates as it continues. My coverage of the plan is here.
9:40 AM
Emily Harris just asked BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus about paying for and building the 600 miles of bike lanes called for in the plan.
“How much should be resources taken away from cars?” asked Harris.
Replies Maus:
It’s not an issue of taking away from cars… It’s clear that there’s too much space in our city given over to the moving of large motor vehicles and the parking of large motor vehicles, to the detriment of people walking around, people shopping. It’s clear that we could vastly improve our bikeways if we reduced the amount of car parking in the city. Unfortunately, one of the issues of that is the bureau of transportation gets a lot of its revenue from parking meters.
Maus called out NE Alberta as an example — it’s a narrow road with parking on both sides that cyclists still try to squeeze onto. “We’re too reluctant on a city level to really take back some of our public space,” says Maus.
9:48 AM
Small business owner and Central Eastside Industrial Council chair Juliana Lukasik
Isn’t sold on the idea. “Some businesses would appreciate the business of bike riders, but the reality is that a very large percentage of business really need car parking for their customers,” says Lukasik. She does think that removing parking on somewhere that’s both bike-accessible and has a lot of pedestrian-friendly stores like NE Alberta could actually be a good idea.
OPB asked Bike Master Plan chief Ellen Vanderslice what she thinks of requiring bike licenses or registration. “From the city’s point of view, anything that’s a barrier to someone biking is a problem,” says Vanderslice. “We want, at this point in time, not to put up barriers.” Vanderslice does support, though, some sort of statewide or citywide maintenance fee road users would pay based on weight and distance traveled (an idea Rep. Jules Kopel Bailey suggested to the legislature last spring). “It’s the weight on the road that really does the damage,” says Vanderslice.
9:53 AM
- Cycletrack on Broadway: Uh… some signs, please?
Lukasik complains that the new bike facilities downtown (like the cycletrack and the whole lane given over the bikes on SW Oak) just showed up with no education for drivers or very good signage. “I think the city needs to do a better job of letting drivers know what to do in those new areas,” says Lukasik. YES! I think the markings on the cycletrack are terrible—I still have no idea how you’re supposed to turn left off that thing. Just painting the word “parking” in the poorly-marked parking spaces next to the track would be a lot of help.
10 AM
God, I hate “World Have Your Say.” They should bump this show to the middle of the night… or KBOO.
If NE Alberta is such a bad road for bikes, then why the hell do they ride there. Can’t they move one block over in either direction? I sometimes just don’t get this whole bicycle rider thing. If there is a dangerous road, then just DON’T ride on it. I will add that if there is a bike lane or path available and the bikers aren’t using them, they should be ticketed for riding in the roadway. I’m thinking Marine Drive and Portland road, fo instance. Now I will wait for the biker put downs on me.
F**k all cyclists. 90% of the population should change absolutely to accommodate the whining of 6% of the population. Nothing at all. Move to Copenhagen.
@Blabby: I say the same thing about gay rights. Move to Sweden if you want equal treatment.
F**k all Republicans. 90% of the population should change absolutely to accommodate the whining of 5% of the population. Nothing at all. Move to Kansas.
Graham, are we really going to start equating “cyclist rights” and gay rights in this town? (Wouldn’t surprise me one bit, actually.)
This post sums up the whole issue for me very nicely: Jon Maus, who someone annointed the king of something, and who lives god-knows-where in this town, openly preaching about getting rid of half the street parking on Alberta.
I live not even a block off of Alberta and we rely on street parking. Due to city code and an unfortunate power pole, we can’t put in a driveway. Parking is already bad. Ten times a year the businesses shut down the street, with zero vote from local residents, and the parking becomes atrocious.
Now here comes some “bike advocate” advocating something that directly fucks with my life, getting rid of half the street’s parking. And this is exactly the kind of bullcrap idea that is taken seriously in this town, because the goverment listens to cyclists WAAAAAAAY out of proportion to their actual numbers in the community.
Needless to say, the reason that parking is already bad on Alberta, is because PEOPLE WANT TO F**KING DRIVE THERE. Bike advocates, get this through your thick thick thick heads: a vast majority of people in this city DRIVE CARS. A VAST majority.
Please, for the love of God and love of your neighbors in this town, beyond painting bike lanes on streets where they actually fit, PLEASE STOP FUCKING WITH OUR ROADS! Please! I’m really asking. Please stop now.
I’m not even close to being a Republican, Stu. I’m just NORMAL. Only in this town would I be considered anything but a lefty myself. I just still apply some common sense, which I guess puts me too far out there in a town where an unchallenged left gets by with using no common sense at all.
I’m an actual born-and-bred Oregonian, who is increasingly distressed at what you crazy over-zealous newcomers are doing to my home.
Why can’t you guys just be freaking normal?
@Blabby: For all your pro-business rhetoric and bullshit, you are now getting all NIMBY about businesses doing things that benefit those same businesses. It’s stick-in-their-ass paleolithic-looking morans like yourself that are all bitchy about being personally inconvenienced about doing things that will benefit the city and the people who live in it. If you feel the need to make love to your automobile and the roadways, maybe you should move to Phoenix or Dallas or someplace that shares your love.
Yeah Blabby, quit being such a moran. It’s stuped for you be such a moran.
@GLV: http://moranswithsigns.files.wordpress.com… The internet is a race, and you’re FAR FAR behind everyone else.
Blabby says: “Only in this town would I be considered anything but a lefty myself. I just still apply some common sense, which I guess puts me too far out there in a town where an unchallenged left gets by with using no common sense at all.”
Blabs, I think you are lacking some perspective. Portland is in a lot of ways just like many many college towns throughout the country. “Only in Portland” is a pretty meaningless statement. But it’s easy to say!
Additionally, you insist on reframing (and redirecting) the discussion here by making it into “wacky liberals and their unchecked ideas vs. rational regular (local) folks.” The master plan is authored by urban planners and engineers, not liberals. The goals are to make some of the streets in town more multi-modal. Some access points, connections, and treatments in town were not – when designed and built – done so in a way that accommodates modes other than vehicles. Yet other modes still make use of them. It’s silly just to imply that the goal of this plan is create some bike utopia where we all flit around by pedal. The goal is to create more better-designed and well-rounded streets that are safe for everyone. (and, yeah, I would agree with you that removing on-street parking from Alberta would not be a good idea…. is that the entire master plan?)
Go to your Vernon Neighborhood Association meetings! That’s where the votes are happening. Right?
Point: I hate bicyclists!
Counterpoint: Then you must hate gays too!
Point: Bicyclists are not normal! And Portland is doomed!
Counterpoint: Love it or leave it! I’m better at internet!
<3 you merc commenters...really, from my heart...
ROM: “The master plan is authored by urban planners…, not liberals.”
HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Graham, you just hang around here all day being a sychophant. They aren’t going to give you a job. They can’t even stand you.
Sock Person, your point is taken.
Funny cuz it’s true?
My point was that you seem more concerned about people’s imagined political persuasions than about the actual details of the plan (save for the parts where you complain about not having control over your Alberta). Don’t you ever get tired of producing the same old “crazy leftists out of control” argument?
@Sock Person: With the news out of NYC involving KSM, I’m just waiting for Godwin’s Fatwah to come into play.
i asked my wife to marry me during ‘world have your say’ when we were both sick with flu-like symptoms because I thought our lives couldn’t get any worse. Sadly, I now have a soft spot for the radio show. For the record, I still think that radio show sucks.
And uh, bicycles are cool, screw parking citations, if there was a mean jeans fan club it might be the best club ever.
ROM, it’s funny because you obviously don’t know many planners. They’re all about as liberal as it gets, and into social engineering by definition. (Otherwise they wouldn’t believe in the government “planning” our lives for us, get it?)
I know because I have a masters in urban planning, and I was one for years. Believe me, Portlanders high regard for planners is very misplaced. And the belief that there is some sort of science behind it is very very misplaced.
Blabby – remember a few months back when they repaved Alberta? Remember the chaos that caused? That wouldn’t have been needed if more people were biking (or, even better, walking) around instead of driving. The roads would last longer.
But anyway, that’s tangential. Removing parking off Alberta isn’t in the Bike Masterplan, anywhere that I’ve noticed it at least. What is in the plan is ways to get the bikes off busy streets like Alberta and onto new parallel bike boulevards like NE Going. So I take it you’ll be supporting the plan then?
I know gobs of planners, and I work in planning (but I’m not a planner).
I don’t quite believe you that our (or, those other Portlanders’) high regard for planners is very misplaced. You can probably agree with me that not all planners are working from the same book; like, not all neighborhoods, housing projects, and business complexes are built alike. The more “innovative” urban planners these days are digging on mixed-use development (granted, “planning” and “developing” are technically two different things… but you get me), and re-engineering roadways to support, when viable, more modes than just cars (like transit! like at our wild bus mall; you don’t believe that some engineering/science was involved in the planning of those streets?). Did you get out of urban planning because you were convinced the work was complete? All the roads are built – nothing left now to do? Sometimes improvements can be made, and I hold in high regard the planners who are recognizing this and trying out new things…. ya know, livability, etc.
I would argue that development that is more single-use (say, like a swath of parking lot surrounding a mall, with no sidewalk around it, nor connections within it to the surrounding areas) has been planned somewhat “conservatively.” And that one with a more integrated usage of land – which usually ends up supporting multiple modes – is “liberal.” However, I don’t think this use of liberal/conservative – and your use (usage?) in the last comment – is along the same lines as you when it was used further up.
Anyway, please continue fucking with our roads, planners. Some of them can be improved.
I go to the CEID every few months by bicycle. Besides the bike shops, (which there are several,) I buy chicken food there from a place that gives a discount if you don’t come in a car. (I once came by bus. A fifty pound bag of chicken food on the bus doesn’t get you too many weird looks.)
Speaking of common sense, Blabby, have you heard of peak oil? See, it’s this idea that petroleum is a finite resource, which means we can’t depend on it forever to fuel cars, heat homes, or spray crops. City planners are making changes now in the hopes of an easier transition out of the oil age. In the mean time, there is a solution for your predicament—move to Beaverton. There you’ll find few cyclists, very large driveways, and double (even TRIPLE) car garages! Many normal people can be found there, normally entering and exiting Washington Square mall, heading (like a normal person) toward their large automobiles.
Let me guess: Blabby was summarily fired after inventing Cascade Station.
Graham, look up your picture in the dictionary. Next to it you’ll find the correct spelling of “moron.”