These are definitely all trouble spots, and I'm happy to see something or another will be done about them at some point.

I bike 4 out of the 5, all can get hairy. I avoid that Vancouver/Rose Garden shit and take Interstate all the way down. At least Williams has a lane. I find it the least troublesome of the bunch, although I get anxious about door openings around the restaurant cluster.

My pipe dream is to someday have a levitating lane above the street going from Interstate Ave. in Kenton Park all the way down past Kaiser so I don't have to stop at every damn light.

Really?! I use all of these quite frequently. Although picture number 2 deserves some attention, I would much rather this money be spent ADDING suitable biking routes than "fixing" the one's suggested above. I mean, c'mon people, THESE spots bother you that much?! Grow a pair!

And no mention of the NE Broadway / I5 on ramp clusterfuck?

We could just keep painting sharrows on every road until it confuses the fuck out of people.

MirK - were you going to let someone else point out the $65-$185 -AN HOUR rates for the "planners"?

I can't WAIT to get the hell out of this city (and I am sure most Blogtownies will agree (that they can't wait for me to get out of this city))

Not one of the above named areas are east of 82nd, "jake." In fact, not one of them is less than 4 miles *west* of 82nd. Apparently whatever institution was charged with teaching you how to use a map was also lucky to get scraps. However, with at least 3 different mapping programs available to anyone with an internet connection, you've no excuse for failing in the most basic fact-checking. Please make a minimal effort to learn something about the target of your comments *before commenting.*

Perhaps you should brush up on your reading comprehension skills there, nwspirit. Jake seems to be pointing out that the areas east of 82nd are given short shrift here. Which is at least alluded to, if not then brushed off, in the article.
Anyone who has lived here more than 20 minutes who isn't completely absorbed and gaga over inner-NE/SE as the apex of biketopia, to the exclusion of the rest of town, would realize this.

Sarah - are these the *only* five streets?

Because as much as I'm spending time on my bike now that I work in the Lloyd District... I have to *get* to the Lloyd District, and we have some problems here in outer southeast. Specifically, the lack of a real solid bikeway (or series of bikeways) to get from outer southeast to inner southeast.

Also, I certainly hope these outreaching outreachers will reach out to people who don't generally ride bikes. Attempting to get bike haters on board makes it a lot easier to implement strategies than just trying to steamroller over them (see SE Holgate for a textbook example of this)

These seem like decent ideas, though I will say I ride Vancouver to the Rose Garden and back on Williams all the time and the routes are quite cut and dry. Stay near the curb, follow the bike lane. I'm novice when it comes to bike commuting and both of these routes are suitable as is. Being "too close to cars" on Williams is like being too close to water when you're swimming.

Any chance we can get some critical reporting when it comes to anything pertaining to bikes? The O seems to be biased against, Ms. Mirk is even more biased in favor. There has to be someone willing to actually report, rather than being either a hater (the O) or a cheerleader (Mirk).

@ Chuck, admittedly, I've never even seen a close call on Williams between Fremont & Shaver, but I'm convinced that my first significant bike injury will happen on that stretch, and it will probably be set in motion by a car door.

Chuck, etc,
I'll be the first to tell you I support building more bike infrastructure and putting more funding into our bike system. No secret there. My job as a reporter for a paper that doesn't believe in objectivity is to ask critical questions of projects and people whether I support them or not—in this post I asked whether this is the right kind of bike investment for the city to me making with its resources.

Not believing in objectivity is a bit different than being a shill. There's got to be some middle ground between just being happy bike projects get more/any budget and honest critical analysis. We're not getting that from the city, the O and we're sure as hell not going to get it from Alta, which would seem fair considering they're going to make upwards of $200k to "consult." I would assume their report will be as closely scrutinized as a report from the CRC panel.

But aside from that, here's a question: you've written before that there are barriers when it comes to minorities biking. How do these 5 projects that serve to only make biking a bit easier for the predominately white and middle class who already bike help move the city toward that goal? 

I'm generally hostile to all this rah-rah bike crap. It's a niche transportation group that gets WAAAAAAYYYYY more attention then it deserves.

Having said that, what I do support is the creation of a reasonable amount of actual boring-old bike lanes ala Williams and Vancouver, to get people North and South, and East and West.

All this talk of bioswales, and curb extensions, and these "share-os" which suddenly seem to be every other street is nuts.

Let's just use a nice invention that is now decades old, and everyone understands: the bike lane. No we won't be able to get them onto every street, but let's get them onto as many as we can without taking away car lanes, or too much street parking.