(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)
This time last year, it looked as if Portland’s city council was about to grit its teeth and start addressing two problems that Mayor Charlie Hales rode into office pledging to fix: the twin facts that our roads are both consistently unsafe and disintegrating beneath us.
Now, as Portland’s leaders get ready to file back in from vacation, all available signs point to both of those cans being kicked further down the road.
Meanwhile, as BikePortland reader Alex wrote in a comment on Tuesday, bike trips through this town keep getting bumpier.
This seems like good news but being a “new” rider to Portland my first thought is ” we need another North/South greenway? What about improving the existing greenways? I could see the need for a greenway further east and I suppose there is the thought that a lower “stress” route then Vancouver needs to exist but I am not sure I agree with that either (especially after the improvements to Vancouver). I don’t know, my first impression of Portland biking is that there is a big push to boost our miles of greenways and some of the infrastructure while the roads crumble. Take Michigan as an example, yet another N/S route, you have the time and money spent to build the median buffer at Rosa Parks onto Michigan but Michigan is horrible to ride, the road is in horrible shape. We have a ped/bike bridge over I5 at Bryant st but again Bryant is horrible to ride. The list goes on and on… I find myself searching out the greenways and bike lanes that have roads that aren’t completely riddled with gaping cracks and falling apart and honestly, they are getting harder to find. We certainly won’t be a platinum city with roads in the condition they are now. I know I am getting off topic and this truly seems like a great win but I just look at all the other issues and the cities intent to add sharrows wherever they can to boost the amount of bike routes on the books while 60% of those routes are only suitable to ride if you are on a fat tire bike with full suspension.
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Under Hales and Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick, the city is planning to start throwing large amounts of general-fund money into transportation for the first time in order to make some safety fixes and continue repaving (or at least resealing) 100 miles of streets next year. And thanks to advocacy from Transportation Director Leah Treat, we’re told, neighborhood greenways will be treated as streets that are important enough to be on the repaving list. (This echoes similar plans under Treat’s predecessor, Tom Miller.) So that’s something.
One of the less useful parts of last year’s big street fee fight was the idea that “safety” projects were code for “walking and biking stuff” while “maintenance” projects were code for “car stuff.” Though biking and walking advocates fought hard to prevent a street fee from going overwhelmingly toward new asphalt (that was the subject of a separate, also interesting, mini-thread this week) the fact is that maintenance projects can also be safety projects — and in any case, there wouldn’t be much biking if most of our roads don’t remain paved. After all, that’s why we paved them in the first place.
Yes, we pay for good comments. We’ll be sending $5 and a little goodie bag to Alex in thanks for this great one. Watch your email!
Motor vehicle users of all kinds need to start paying for this stuff. The truck road/mileage fee covers only about 10 to 30 percent of the real cost of damage trucks do to roads. Then there’s studs….
We need a huge increase in taxes on large vehicles. Extra penalties for articulating trailers and vehicles without underride protection.
Me, I prefer bumpy, cracked, disintegrating pavement over the alternatives. Smooth pavement is a subsidy to people driving, an encouragement to drive faster.
Nope. There are a few short lengths in some of my rides that go over busted pavement. I stand up just for these parts when I go down the slope and just suck it up on the climb.
One of them there are no real drivers here because it’s a deadend only good for parking, (Near Moodly, around the side of the athletic club) but “Drivers might drive” is a terrible reason to defend poorly maintained streets.
I grant that biking on smooth pavement is nice, especially when pulling a loaded trailer. But the point I was trying to make was that in most cases (in this town) when someone makes the point that repaving a street benefits everyone it is smoke and mirrors; a way to represent something that we don’t need, and at some point will no longer be able to afford, as a universal good. The standards to which we build and maintain streets vastly exceed what would be required to accommodate us on bikes.
http://bikeportland.org/2012/07/12/portland-biz-journal-op-ed-bicycling-serves-as-economic-tool-74670#comment-3065850
I totally agree. Some of the streets I’ve biked on recently have actually been physically painful. I’ve even had my rear bike rack snap a weld because of how rutted and cracked some of the streets are.
At least there is some person spray painting potholes in inner SE/Sellwood, for what its worth. But christ, I’m going to have to start biking on the middle yellow lines just to get around soon.
Yep. Bad pavement is no-cost traffic calming. +1 to 700 x 35, 38 or even wider. If gravel-grinding on logging roads and such is fun on the weekends, why not as part of the commute?
Try keeping a baby asleep at 16th and Going.
Nope.
MANY of the people I see riding by my house on Davis St I would venture a guess would not be happy with beat-up streets, and maybe wouldn’t ride on them at all. I’d prefer good streets with lower, enforced speed limits.
-1 to having to purchase a new bicycle to accommodate wider tires.
Skinny tired bicycle requires smooth asphalt.
I bought a skinny tired bicycle.
Therefore the city should provide me smooth asphalt wherever I wish to bike, forevermore.
At what point do we recognize that these kinds of demands are anachronistic? That the prevalent logics that suggested skinny tires and asphalt for everyone have been superseded?
Just think how resentful someone who bought the auto-equivalent of a skinny tired bicycle is going to feel when he learns that the same is true for him, that his past purchase is now a stranded asset?
It also keeps property values down and may discourage more people from moving here, right?
(said with tongue firmly in cheek)
I got tired of the bad roads and converted my bike to 650b. It went from 25mm tires to 38mm and is much more comfortable now. Portland’s unimproved roads and dirt/gravel paths can easily be passed as well.
I have absolutely no problem riding our more “crumbly” greenways on high-pressure skinny tires. In fact, I kind of enjoy it. That being said, at one point PBOT was going to investigate repaving strips on greenways so that they could remain unimproved and have smoother pavement for people cycling. I think this would be a far better solution than making our greenways even more attractive to cut-through commuters.
I also believe we have far too many residential roads and that many residential roads would work well as car-free trails and/or dirt/gravel roads. The amount of money we spend endlessly repaving low-traffic roads is absurd.
Letting the streets go to hell isn’t exactly the way to win hearts and minds and encourage more riders.
I get it…you’re probably an experienced rider and can dodge anything on 100PSI 700×25 tires.
But the first time a new rider goes out and eats sh*t on one of these streets they are probably going to say “screw this” and get right back in a car.
“But the first time a new rider goes out and eats sh*t on one of these streets they are probably going to say “screw this” and get right back in a car.”
This is an interesting take. I hear it a lot here. I wonder. Is this a fair caricature of our fellow riders? This just reeks of privilege: I have a car. I am going to dip my toe in the bikey waters and if it is the least bit cold I will never go near the water again. Eek!
If our fellow bipeds are really this fussy, we have bigger problems than whether our roads are smooth and flat. When you stub your toe or trip and fall do you vow never to walk again?!
“When you stub your toe or trip and fall do you vow never to walk again?!”
Well, that’s not quite the same thing. Sure I’ll get up and walk to the fridge, but I’m not going to walk to the store or to work. I might drive the kids’ bikes over to Sunriver or somewhere, but there’s no way I’m riding my bike around town.
I know a few folks who were going to give biking to work a try, but the sore, um, seat after the first ride took them out for the count (“I don’t know how you do it! Doesn’t your butt hurt??”). They don’t know that it takes a few rides (or they do, but aren’t willing to persevere) to acclimate to sitting on a saddle. I also know people who have switched from MAX back to driving after witnessing one too many assaults or near-assaults on the train. The bus smells, etc. The sad truth seems to be that as long as driving is easy and relatively cheap, that’s what everyone [with a car] will fall back on. Although it is interesting that, along the lines of your point, folks can total a car and be back driving their rental the next day. Also to your point, I think we do have much bigger problems than bumpy roads.
“Well, that’s not quite the same thing. Sure I’ll get up and walk to the fridge, but I’m not going to walk to the store or to work. I might drive the kids’ bikes over to Sunriver or somewhere, but there’s no way I’m riding my bike around town.”
I get that this is probably how some people make decisions as weighty as how they are going to get around. But the fragility of these peoples’ commitments, their proneness to latch onto any reason not to bike, strikes me as portentous. I think we would do well to push back against this kind of privileged, entitled, disdainful attitude, not reify it by clamoring for more paved roads.
You’re under the assumption everyone enjoys riding a bicycle as much as you do. That’s pretty flawed thinking don’t you think?
I make no assumption about degrees of enjoyment. I’m saying that to the extent there are people whose levels of commitment to bicycling are feeble, people easily scared away from engaging in this form of mobility, let’s not reify this skittishness, but problematize it, figure out what it will take to shrink or eliminate it. Never underestimate the power of suggestion.
In an oblique way, this almost sounds like the same kind of argument as the safety-through-visibility debate, i.e., whether drivers would see cyclists/peds and drive more carefully if only those cyclists/peds would “be more visible”—or is the problem that drivers just don’t look, regardless of cyclist/pedestrian attire?
The smooth road debate question seems to be whether more riders would give up on other excuses and decide they would commit to riding if only the roads were smoother—or would some other excuse merely bubble up to prevent those afraid of a little discomfort from riding anyway?
Wow, bikeportland sure is good for thinking. I’m going to have to ponder that comparison for about 36 hours. Thanks, El Biciclero.
Portland/Vancouver streets might as well be polished granite slabs compared to Seattle’s–it doesn’t surprise me at all that the US’s biggest proponent of fat 650b-tired road bikes, Jan Heine, lives in metro Seattle.
And, no, those tire/wheel combinations aren’t the least bit slow rolling!
Speaking of improving existing greenways, this is on the City Council agenda for Wednesday next week:
“877 TIME CERTAIN: 9:45 AM – Accept Portland’s Neighborhood Greenways Assessment Report (Resolution introduced by Commissioner Novick) 30 minutes requested”
If the report is to be found anywhere online it’s beyond my abilities to find it. I tried asking PBOT on twitter where it was but have not gotten a response.
Yeah, what happened to community input on this? I’m not sure it’s even appeared at the BAC. From what I hear, I’m happy that the neighborhood greenways report includes mitigation for higher-traffic greenways. But, I haven’t heard that the greenways report includes speeding up slow/circuitous/stop-sign-ridden greenways like Tillamook/Hancock and 41st/42nd/43rd, which is also important.
Timur Ender is listed as the contact
The PDX Reporter App works! Use it. I’ve literally reported dozens of potholes. All fixed.
Again, where is the conversation to hold these folks accountable to manage the money they already have or are supposed to collect? The 5K Novick’s staff blew on that stupid PBOT logo, the fact that Novick did not know about $30 million in uncollectd parking fees, the $500K spent on the Portland Vision Project, etc. Why trust them with a new fee?
Thanks Michael and Bike Portland for keeping up the drum beat that “maintenance” vs “safety” was a losing frame. Whoever suggested it to Mark Lear will probably not get the benefit of the doubt next time.
I didn’t want to just leave that there with no suggestion of a better frame. The best I can come up with is to have a unified approach to prioritizing work, based on return on investment. By calculating ROI using the city’s Green Hierarchy we’ll quickly see that greenways and traffic calming pay for themselves many times over, while throwing money down the induced demand blackhole doesn’t pay off. If you have any doubt that an ROI based approach would benefit active transportation, go read Strong Towns.
PS maybe someone can help me remember the official long Orwellian name they gave the Green Hierarchy. Something like “Strategy for People Movement…”
Everyone needs a mountain bike!
One more vote for bumpy roads–anything that discourages/slows drivers.
Nope. So settle for inferior infrastructure? That exactly what the city would prefer you do.
I am tired with the bad roads too, i think i need to optimize my bike for portland’s bumpy unimproved subcontient like roads to travel with comfort and ease.
I’m with Alex on this one. I live west of Skyline but work next to the airport. Switching to slow fat tires for my bike commute really isn’t an option for me, there just aren’t enough hours in the day for that kind of slowdown, not to mention it’d make climbing up over the west hills both directions an absolute nightmare. When I’m riding down Cornell it’s really nice to be able to go traffic speed.
While many of the routes through NE are absolutely lovely from a low-traffic standpoint the roads many of them take you on are terrible. It almost seems like the city intentionally picked the very worst ones to take cyclists over. Now the traffic calming effect is great BUT if I were a new rider who had yet to develop much of any skills on the bike it’d be a nightmare. While admittedly someone is far less likely to get killed by wiping out on a pothole or crack in the pavement than by getting hit by a car, dealing with those potholes and cracks make it a lot more likely to get hit by a car. When folks (like Was Carless) start talking about riding on the centerline to deal with the roads I cringe. That’s one of the most dangerous things you can do yet a not surprising workaround (I have often seen) for people dealing with crumbling roads.
It seems to me that if we want to encourage people to start commuting by bike for the first time it would help if the roads didn’t require expert level skills to ride. Remember, wiping out once due to a nasty pothole or crack, while it might not discourage a seasoned bike commuter, would be more than enough to scare off many newbies.
I only do that on residential streets, FWIW. On the flip side, I’ve noticed that most bike lanes don’t suffer from this type of catastrophic degradation, as buses and heavy trucks are what typically cause it. So maybe we should be delineating more bike lanes and paving them with nice smooth asphalt.
Me too. I think the middle is safer from cross street stop sign runners. Do you ever ride Going? We should high five!
Not sure I totally agree about most bike lanes on arterials being decent. Although some are smooth, it seems that these bike lanes are disproportionately cut into by folks doing utility work: sewer repair/connections, etc. relative to the main car travel lanes. And, the gutter bike lane has all of the storm drains and water valve covers which rarely seem to be at grade. After utility cuts, these roads are never the same. On N. Willamette Blvd, the city even re-paved the section of road N of Portsmouth a few years back, and they only paved the road between the bike lanes – leaving the bike lanes themselves unimproved, so the accumulation of crappy utility cuts never got re-set. Why did they only re-pave part of the road, leaving the bikers in the lurch?
And, I couldn’t agree more with the original post about greenways in terrible shape. I have a long commute and don’t want to sacrifice time for fat tires. As I am getting older, these poor shape bikeways and roads are more of a problem for my aging body, and I consider driving as an alternative. Invest in the unsexy basic work of improving the high-travel existing bikeways. It doesn’t take a huge budget of civic engineers to design this work.
Cars are big, lumbering, fragile beasts that require wide roads, frequent gas stations, repair shops, a worldwide parts infrastructure, diagnostic computers, and gobs of money to keep running. Bikes, in principle and often in actuality, are light, cheap, simple, robust devices that need none of that.
Smooth asphalt has become a symbol, an entitlement, a metric of both local wealth and municipal priorities, and of the state’s ability to deliver the goods, an ideological litmus test of government. The choice between a smooth and a bumpy road is an easy one.
Just like high heeled shoes, some types of bikes have been designed around the assumption that smooth asphalt will be found everywhere. Similarly, the suit and tie became standardized as standard office wear the world over because air conditioning made it possible to wear climatically inappropriate clothing for eight or nine hours a day, year round. Fossil fuels enabled us to build infrastructure, buildings, and adopt habits that, we can now see, are tightly coupled. The fragility of these arrangements only appears when we discover that we can no longer, for reasons of money or physical limits, continue down these paths. Smooth asphalt is fun, and I dodge the potholes as automatically as the next person, but one of these days this stance is going to seem outdated. Didn’t the head of Iowa’s DOT recently concede that the state could no longer afford to maintain their inventory of paved roads? That the time had come to put some of them back into gravel?
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/7/6/iowa-dot-chief-the-system-is-going-to-shrink?utm_content=buffer4d90c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Roads are dependent upon fossil fuels.
Roads predate fossil fuels by millennia. The roads we have grown accustomed to (asphalt and concrete) are heavily dependent on fossil fuels not only for the materials they’re made of but also their method of construction, but we can and many civilizations did have roads built entirely without fossil fuels. Heck, even the original Columbia River Highwas was built with horses.
I agree. But let’s go even farther. A road’s damage is inflicted largely by heavy users. F350/F250’s, large SUV’s, trucks, delivery trucks..etc. My van weighs about 5K. Yeah, it’s a beast. But…a F150, the most popular truck of all time? 5960-6950. Not too mention, they typically run LT tires further pressing the road down when bouncing.
Motorcycles, Prius, Honda Fit…not much damage.
Let’s tax vehicles purely by weight..and watch the money roll in and the cars shrink. Oh wait, Oregon doesn’t really tax cars at all.
I propose a fee of 1 dollar per 100lbs of vehicle. Every year..for as long as you own it.
That’s really an unfair comparison, and you can say the same of bikes;
-Bikes are slow, unstable, fragile machines that require lanes 3 times their own width to ride safely, require tedious maintenance, even the smallest part breaking can render it useless, require bike repair shops, a worldwide parts and accessories infrastructure and require gobs of money to be ridden with even the basic of necessities like rain gear, bags, tool kits and accessories required by law that are not included when purchasing the bike.
-Cars are engineered to last longer than most humans, can cover great distances allowing people to see more of their world at their own pace, allow for people to travel greater distances for work so they don’t have to live in a city, can carry more people than a bike and offer safety from the elements and other road users.
No matter how you slice it Cars are a wonderful form of transportation, but the culture that surrounds the car is what has tainted it’s existence. As with all forms of transportation, over use is the issue not the vehicle itself. Consider every form of transportation in history and every single one has been over used and selfishly taken advantage of.
Bikes just like high heeled shoes are American’s entitlements of power and greed, national wealth and status over less fortunate nations. Bikes are just as wasteful and disposable as the latest fashionable shoe, both are made in countries that have no regard for their environment or their own peoples well being. Bikes are just another tool of the irresponsible American entitlement.
Your not going to change that by not maintaining public roads.
the real issue at hand is American’s safety and the only way to make our roads safer is to change the people’s attitudes, educate them, change their perception which in turn will change how our government runs the country… It all starts with the people first.
“Consider every form of transportation in history and every single one has been over used and selfishly taken advantage of.”
This doesn’t describe my bike or my shoes or my uncle’s kayak.
My much longer response was eaten by the moderator monster.
Enforced speed limits? That is a joke. I live on a bike boulevard/neighborhood greenway in N Portland. There are people driving 30+ MPH all the time in a 20 MPH zone. In a perfect world, people would always drive at or below the speed limit, come to a complete stop at stop signs & not use their cell phone while driving. This is definitely not a perfect world.
The streets are terrible and not going to stop at some happy conclusion. They will require a massive rebuilding investment unless we make slight maintenance improvements. I for one have had many close calls and flat tires as a result of poor roads.
There are many ruts, bumps, dirt-packed storm grates, and potholes on the bike lanes of SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway in Portland city limits.
Resealing (fogcoat) is just eyewash. It supposedly extends real maintenance by one year. Why bother.
Even just a run with a street sweeper every once in a while would be nice. Barbur is frequently littered with rocks, broken glass, and shards of metal.
And, please, OR and WA governments, a big huge tax on those rotary concrete cutting bits called studded tires!
Check out the road surface at the run-up to a new key piece of cycle infrastructure coming on line next month: the new Lafayette Ped Bridge crossing over the UPRR train yard between Powell and Holgate. This bridge will connect up the SE feeders of Steele/Gladstone to the new Orange line MUP and allow all users to simply skip over any type of SE Powell intersection by using the new MUP flyover. It has great potential to attract a lot of regular cyclists.
But, this shiny new $Million TriMet project is butted on the East side by some of the worst pavement you can find on SE 21st and SE Lafayette (not to mention SE Gladstone West of 26th). City has been unresponsive to me about their plans for this area, so I have assumed they have none. And, as a safe route to school (and only decent E-W crossing of UPRR for a mile) for three local schools, this area needs some improvement and safety treatments as cyclists and peds mix with speeding drivers and heavy trucks.
All of my bikes are now mountain bikes with 26″/559 wheels.
If I’m commuting, then I’m not racing, and I can take as long as I like to get somewhere if I leave early enough.
I have little trouble with potholed streets, especially those marked “Roadway Not Improved”.
I say let’s not give City Council any more License To Spend cards until they can account for the money they can’t currently keep track of.
And let’s not be in a hurry to fix all those little side streets, either, unless they’re exposing sewer pipes or otherwise posting a real danger to residents.
Because, while my tongue is still in my cheek as I type, I actually wouldn’t mind allowing Portland to become a little more down-at-heel if it results in fewer car-dependent folks moving here and buying up every acre in sight. Maybe that’s a pipe-dream, but I’m with 9watts –let’s reconsider all the ways in which car-dependency has built a veritable house of cards and maybe leave space for some of the corners to fall down under their own weight.
Well it just reeks of privilege that you can go out and either buy or convert all your bikes!
Yep Beth, I put my mountain bike on grocery-getting detail this summer and riding around on 2″ tires has been glorious. I’m happy to give up some speed for comfort and fewer flats.
bad roads for motor vehicle traffic calming?!
nope, opposite effect… bad roads never slow me down in a car… I’ve got big tires and full suspension…
bad roads only slow me down on my bike…
and they don’t have to be that bad… in a car the roads have to be horrible to slow you down, potholes big enough to eat a wheel…
Ha. Bad roads here are like good roads in Michigan. I find much humor that North MICHIGAN Ave is one of, if not the worst roads in north Portland (of those that are paved). Most roads here are in pretty good shape. Yes, Bryant between Williams and Albina and Michigan Ave are both pretty bad. But I think our frame of reference is skewed.
“When you stub your toe or trip and fall do you vow never to walk again?!”
Well, that’s not quite the same thing. Sure I’ll get up and walk to the fridge, but I’m not going to walk to the store or to work. I might drive the kids’ bikes over to Sunriver or somewhere, but there’s no way I’m riding my bike around town.
I know a few folks who were going to give biking to work a try, but the sore, um, seat after the first ride took them out for the count (“I don’t know how you do it! Doesn’t your butt hurt??”). They don’t know that it takes a few rides (or they do, but aren’t willing to persevere) to acclimate to sitting on a saddle. I also know people who have switched from MAX back to driving after witnessing one too many assaults or near-assaults on the train. The bus smells, etc. The sad truth seems to be that as long as driving is easy and relatively cheap, that’s what everyone [with a car] will fall back on. Although it is interesting that, along the lines of your point, folks can total a car and be back driving their rental the next day. Also to your point, I think we do have much bigger problems than bumpy roads.
Farg. This was a reply to 9watts
As for the lead photo of the pavement condition of North Michigan Avenue…this concrete street looks to have reached past its planned lifespan of 100 years.* Additionally, many of north Portland’s asphalt streets have this under layer of concrete. It is time for the Mayor to include in his efforts a plan to reconstruct the City’s “Century” Infrastructure…local streets and sidewalks.
This is the high return on investment of roadway surfaces should seek other than asphalt which lasts much less (10 to ~40 years) before reconstruction/ periodic resurfacing…vs. concrete and belgian block (>150 years before reconstruction). (Portland has some roadway surfaces that likely date back to the end of the first bicycle craze.)
[*The lifespans of all roadway surfaces can be shortened depending on traffic conditions (volumes and weight), utility cuts, foundation quality and poor maintenance.]
Cars are great at one thing, killing others and the occupants inside. They are useful tools for traversing distances in some form of safety
Still…the vehicle requires almost train level of infrastructure without the train benefit.
I have seen 40 year old bikes with original components still getting the job done. Car fondling is old hat