THINK.urban

“What we’re missing is a a truly game-changing bikeway that connects a Portland neighborhood to the city center“

Our challenge is set.  As one of the creative teams working on the GOOD Ideas for Cities, we are tasked with coming up with the future of bicycle transportation in Portland.  As envisioned by our local expert liason, Jonathan Maus of BikePortland.org the scenario is this:

TRANSPORTATION

When it comes to bicycle transportation, Portland is at a crossroads. We are known worldwide as a bike town; yet we have stalled when it comes to building a network of truly world-class bikeways in the central city. We have picked all the low-hanging fruit. Now it’s time to do the big projects that present a challenge to politicians and the status quo, but that also present an exciting opportunity for the health of our city. But what we’re missing is a a truly game-changing bikeway that connects a Portland neighborhood to the city center. How might we create a major new bikeway that helps make bicycling as visible, safe, convenient, and pleasant for as many people as possible?

Recent historical trends show that while auto use seems to have plateaued, bike use has skyrocketed and shows little sign of tapering off. The biggest risk to making even more significant jumps in bike use is that the vast majority of Portlanders simply feel afraid to ride a bike close to auto traffic. The City of Portland and other local agencies already know what to do and we have some great examples already deployed: the cycle tracks on SW Broadway near PSU and on SW Moody toward the South Waterfront district come to mind. However, those facilities lack connections to the rest of the network and in the case of PSU, they are woefully underdesigned. They are both islands of possibility amid a sea of reality.

The neat thing about this challenge is that in many ways we know what success could look like. Many of our local leaders have been to places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam where bicycling in dense urban environments isn’t just viable, it’s prioritized over auto access. The result is happy, healthy citizens, fewer transportation costs for everyone, and much more efficient and livable city. How do we help Portland move towards that same bicycle-centric reality?

One of the resources that Maus mentioned is the NACTO Urban Biking Design Guide (image excerpt above), of which included Portland transportation planners and traffic engineers were part of a major effort to bring cities across the country together to create a design manual that frees them from the shackles of outdated, state-run, auto-centric design guidelines.

We have until February 16th to prepare concepts, where they will be presented alongside the rest of the teams working on their specific issues.  Stay tuned for more info!