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From The Portland (Oregon) Tribune - July 20, 2007
The unexpected downpour this week didn't throw Eva Frazier for a loop at
all.
The 54-year-old snapped on her bike fenders, zipped up her blue jacket
and rode her bike over the Hawthorne Bridge into downtown, the route she
takes nearly every day.
Hundreds of cyclists throughout town also were unfazed by the weather,
pedaling furiously in a bike lane or along with cars, trucks and buses
in the rush of midmorning traffic.
This is Portland, after all, where there certainly is an abundance of
fair-weather riders but also a serious collective of bike commuters who
don't let a little precipitation get in their way.
If the city has its way, that number of regular riders will grow
exponentially, building on the momentum that already exists.
"We want to make Portland a world-class cycling city," says the city's
bicycle coordinator, Roger Geller, who's leading the effort to update
Portland's 9-year-old Bicycle Master Plan.
"If you look at what other cities have done – the investments they've
made, the quality of their facilities and way they've integrated it into
all forms of transportation and land-use planning – we still have a
pretty good ways to go."
A lot of people, however, feel excluded by this line of thought and
think the city shouldn't be in the business of funding bike
infrastructure improvements.
"If people want special amenities for bikes, they need to find a way to
fund them," says Craig Flynn, a Rose City resident who ran for Metro
Council in 2002 and speaks around town on transportation and density
issues. "If bikes are getting more than their fair share, they need to
find a way to fund it through their user fees. We need money for cars."
Flynn doesn't support bike lanes or bike boulevards, which are
low-traffic side streets marked with "sharrows" to indicate shared use
between bikes and other vehicles. Stretches of Southeast Lincoln and
Ankeny and Northeast Tillamook streets, for example, are designated as
bike boulevards.
He thinks city transportation funds should go toward relieving
congestion on freeways and other main roads, specifically adding lanes
or building new freeways. Bike lanes, he says, make the vehicle lanes
even narrower and take up more space on the crowded roadway.
When he does occasionally ride his bike for fun, Flynn says, he avoids
bike lanes because he fears getting hit by car doors. He prefers to stay
on neighborhood streets – yet he doesn't see the point of creating
bike boulevards since he says they don't connect him to where he wants
to go.
Surveys point to local streets
Flynn's sentiments aren't shared by anyone working on the city's bike
master plan update. Geller now is midway through the process of
gathering information to update the plan, which includes holding monthly
"bike master plan network rides" to solicit public input on existing
conditions and desired routes.
The rides are held the first Friday of each month, starting at Terry
Schrunk Plaza at 5:30 p.m. They span all parts of the city; next month's
ride heads to Southwest.
According to the Portland Office of Transportation, bike boulevards will
go a long way toward attracting the 30,000 or so people (about 6 percent
of the city's population) who are dubbed "interested but concerned"
about riding on the city streets.
They would ride more if there were more safe, quiet networks around
town, the city has found through various surveys. Since funding sources
are scarce, the expansions would take place little by little, over time,
mostly through state or federal money with limited city investment.
Such initiatives would make a seasoned rider like Frazier worry a lot
less about getting killed, she says.
"There's definitely close calls, all the time," she says. "It's buses
mostly – they're so wide, they creep into the bike lane. I've had them
brush my shoulder."
Other groups plan rides
Another series of bike boulevard rides is being held in Southwest
Portland, sponsored by a group called SWTrails – a volunteer
pedestrian advocate committee that's part of Southwest Neighborhoods
Inc.
The group will hold its next ride Saturday to map out potential routes
to recommend as part of the master plan update. It starts at 2 p.m. at
the Gabriel Park Community Center parking lot.
Southwest has lagged behind Northeast and Southeast Portland in bike
amenities because of its geographic challenges: sloped terrains, winding
roads and blind curves, as well as more storm-water runoff due to the
clay soil.
While there are bike lanes on some major roads in Southwest, the need
for safer facilities is there, says Keith Liden, one of the organizers.
"A lot of people are not comfortable on busy streets, and in a lot of
cases not even busy streets with bike lanes," he says. "If the local
streets are available but you don't know where they go, you just don't
do it."
The nonprofit Bicycle Transportation Alliance sponsors a separate bike
boulevard ride set for Thursday. It will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Alberta
Park and wind through identified gaps in North and Northeast Portland to
see what street features riders like and don't like.
The BTA also will get community feedback, advocate for the supported
features in the city's master plan process and help the city secure
grant money for their construction.
Some question speed bumps
Scott Bricker, the BTA's director of policy and education, said his
group has an internal working list of 212 miles of potential bike
boulevards which would cost only $45 million to implement.
"We already have low-traffic neighborhood streets," he said. "We just
need small improvements such as on-street pavement markings like the
sharrows, speed traffic calming; they could even go through some
neighborhood parks."
Currently, low-traffic bike boulevards have no more than 1,500 cars per
day, but that threshold might be highered in the new bike master plan,
Geller says.
The city also adds speed bumps and other devices to slow vehicle
traffic, which seems like a waste to Flynn, the former Metro candidate.
"When you put them on one street, it pushes everyone else to the next
street," Flynn says. "I feel like honking my horn going over a speed
bump to irritate the people who want them there. They're just unintended
consequences of not having more capacity on the roads – cars stay off
main roads and cut through neighborhoods."
Rod Glisan, a University of Portland instructor who commutes daily by
bike, thinks everyone on the road will benefit more by slowing down a
bit. To pit cars against bikes is "a false dichotomy," he says. "It's a
problem between good travelers and bad travelers. It's disrespectful of
people of all types."
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