City council today unanimously voted to approve a $214,940 contract with local transportation consulting agency Alta Design to start the ball rolling on five big bike projects around town.
The money for the contract is coming from a state and city budget set aside for “affordable transportation” projects, which includes a pot funded by utility franchise fees. See the full contract here. Thanks to the 5-0 vote, Alta will start ASAP on the year-long public process to build or improve bike infrastructure at five Portland roads. What exactly is going to happen to these spots hasn’t been decided, that’s what the public process is for.
The places chosen for the revamping are major commuter hot spots—heavily-used, but unsafe connections all in inner Portland. It’s worth noting that the city could use its resources to branch the bike network into places that lack any sort of good bike, but is focusing on improving these existing routes. The key word at the transportation bureau these days is “equity” but these improvements exclusively focus on inner-Portland places that already have lots of riders. I’m a bit conflicted about whether it’s right to focus resources on improving what we already have versus setting up a solid bike network base out in the hinterlands past 82nd Ave, but one thing is for sure: As inner Portland routes get busier and busier with bike traffic, there are going to be a lot more crashes if glaringly unsafe connections aren’t fixed. And personally, I’ve felt unsafe while riding on all of the five spots that made the top of the list, so in my opinion, the need for improvement is clear.
Okay! So here’s snapshots of the five places the city is eyeing for bike lane rehab.
1. N Vancouver to Rose Quarter. Vancouver is the south-bound bike highway, but as it approaches the transit connections in the Rose Quarter, the bike lane devolves into this clusterfuck:
2. 12th Avenue crossing I-84. I ride through this intersection basically every day and I still have no idea what they hell I’m supposed to do. The bike lane disappears leading into the intersection, giving you three options: stay in the right hand lane and risk right-hooks, take the left lane and get honked at, be safe and ride on the sidewalk. In these pictures, you can see cyclists opting for all three:
3. North Williams. This is the backbone of south-north bike traffic, boasting not only thousands of daily bike commuters but a string of bike-themed businesses that cater to the hoards (including barf-worthy “bike centric eco-flats”). But for all the traffic, Williams has no more than a meager striped bike lane, leaving riders vulnerable to doorings, cars getting too close, and having to cut out of the lane into traffic to pass other riders. I’d expect to see some serious expansion of the bike lane here, making it maybe a buffered lane or cycletrack.
4. N Willamette between Woolsey and Rosa Parks. Cars go pretty quickly along this stretch and it’s got some heavy bike traffic, as the safest way for bike riders to get to far North Portland neighborhoods and University of Portland.
5.Holladay Ave from the Rose Quarter to Lloyd. The mantra for bikes has always been: “Avoid the Lloyd.” Bike connections around the mall’s area aren’t great and the current route, heading east up Multnomah Ave or Lloyd Ave from the Rose Quarter are both pretty hairy roads with lots of cars. Planners are thinking of turning Holladay (where the MAX runs) into a bike-only road. This photo is of where Holladay crosses 9th:
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.*
Nice, nothing on the Westside. Fucked again. Barbur Southbound needs serious work.
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)
aka – How to turn $750 into $214,940
155511,”Sam Adams for Mayor”,”Mia Birk”,$500
703620,”Nick Fish for City Council”,”Mia Birk”,$250
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, can you give examples of Mirk’s cheering to the point of Bias? Not saying it doesn’t exist but I appreciate her stories. You want Bias to the extreme go to BikePortland, FSMland forbid you suggest bikers take a chill pill over there.
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.
Bikes!
i am a NE girl who bike commutes (car free) and while that’s real nice and all what they suggest, i agree much more with the comment that they need to focus on ADDING more bike lanes and bike accessibility. williams is just fine as is rosa parks/willamette. no matter where you bike, car doors are an issue, deal with it. the rose quarter transit station is messy but at least there are lanes. seriously, how about some other cross town like barbur on the west side or hawthorne in SE, or lombard?