The City of Portland has just released the results from their 15th annual “Citizen Survey”. This survey was sent to residents in all 95 neighborhoods with over 22,000 responses being tallied. The goal of the survey was to find out what residents think of a variety of city services; from trash collection to water quality.
There was only one bike-related question:
In general, how do you rate streets in your neighborhood on safety of bicyclists?
Here’s a quick look at the results:
- The Eastmoreland/Ardenwald neighborhood in SE was ranked safest with 75% of people saying bike safety is “good or very good”.
- Of the top 10, 4 were from SE and 3 were from North Portland.
- Surprisingly, in over half of the neighborhoods a majority of residents responded with indifference or a “bad or very bad” rating.
- At the bottom of the bunch was Arnold Creek/Marshall Park in SW which was the only neighborhood with a majority of residents giving bike safety a “bad or very bad” rating.
I think these results might be a bit misleading because many of this city’s cyclists are plugged-in and knowledgable about bike safety and would have a very high bar for giving a “good or very good” rating. Even so, it’s interesting to see the breakdowns by neighborhood and to know that despite some amazing efforts, we still have a lot of work to do.
On that note, if you have an idea on how your group can improve bike safety, check out the CCC’s bike safety grants program. And for more on safety, check out the charts and tips on my Bike Safety page.
Maybe the survey respondants aren’t knowledgeable, but after all they are the folks we’d like to have consider trying cycling, right? We need to worry about their perceptions!
Hey Chris, maybe I wasn’t clear, but I was trying to say just the opposite..that perhaps the respondents were so knowlegdeable that they had a high threshold for giving a “good” rating.
I agree with Jonathan,
I live in SE, and though it is probably one of the safest areas of town for bicyclists and the impovements have been fantastic, I still put “bad”. Indeed it is because I feel there is a level of safety/infrastructure that has yet to be attained.