PBOT Has Unveiled A List of 305 Potential Biketown Stations

With the city suddenly rolling in sneaker cash, 1,000 bright-orange bikes are slated to pop up on Portland streets in just four short months. Biketown, we’re told, is nearly here.

But where will the system be situated? Portland had initially planned on a 750-bike system, which would have been limited largely to downtown and the inner eastside. Then, when no sponsors came calling, the city reduced those ambitions to a 600-bike program. But when Nike announced earlier this year it was in for $10 million over the course of five years, Portland’s ambitions rose. We’re anticipating 1,000 bikes, and that means the service area can be larger than expected.

So where should the bikes be clustered? The “smart bike” system the city plans to buy is different from bike share in many other cities. It’s not based on special docks—the bikes have locks and computers on board. But the city’s still planning to dot Portland with bike share stations that can serve has hubs of activity (and where it’ll be cheaper to lock up your lumbering orange rig). And, as it turns out, the city’s narrowed its options.

Documents posted to the PBOT website show the city’s considered 305 different locations for bike share stations, and scored them all on a host of factors—perceived demand, nearby transit, nearby affordable housing, an uncluttered streetscape, etc. After five open houses and more than a month of online comments, the bureau plans to narrow that number down to 100. Which is where you come in.

The possibilities span as far north as Killingsworth, and down to around SE Clinton and the South Waterfront. They go as far east as Cesar Chavez, and cover a wide swath of downtown and the fancier portions of Northwest Portland. It’s a larger range of possibilities than the city unveiled last year, when it was planning a 600-bike system, but really only in its southeasterly ambitions.

That’s largely because those are areas that a methodology by Portland firm Alta Planning and Design suggested would spur most demand in the system—obviously a key component if we’re going to avoid the issues Seattle’s seen recently.

“This is very much technically and demand-driven,” says Steve Hoyt-McBeth, who’s managing the project for PBOT. “That’s why we were very, very disciplined in growing a system that still allowed density.”

Here’s the interactive map where you can give feedback. And here are all the stations and their scores. Oh, and here’s a key for what those scores mean. Enjoy!