[Update from the BTA: They just got $1.8 of this money in part because of your phone calls!]
Just got an urgent action alert from the BTA:
URGENT ACTION: Call on Sam Adams to Support the 70s Bike Boulevard
We heard from you and hundreds of other cyclists that you strongly prefer cycling on low-traffic bicycle boulevards.
Here’s your first chance to help get a new Bike Boulevard funded!
The project is called the “70’s Bike Boulevard.”
The City of Portland has requested $3.8 million from Metro to fund a new 7.8-mile north-south route in Northeast and Southeast Portland along the streets in the 70’s (71st to 76th, depending on the area).
This project would run almost the whole length of the city, connecting the Springwater Corridor to NE Killingsworth.
A group of regional leaders is meeting TOMORROW MORNING to make some decisions on regional projects, including this project.
While one boulevard project in the East 50’s is likely to get funding, the 70’s Bike Boulevard project is slated to be cut – so we need YOUR help to get it back on the list for funding.
Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams and the City of Portland should be making sure this project gets funded – call his office and urge him to step up for bike boulevards!
ACTION
Call and email Commissioner Sam Adams TODAY (Thursday) and urge him to support the 70’s Bicycle Boulevard.Phone: (503) 823-1121
E-mail: samadams@ci.portland.or.us
Read more about bicycle boulevards on the BTA website.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
With all due respect, a bike boulevard all the way out there is pretty useless to the majority of Portland riders. I would rather see the money and effort go to something a bit more practical.
I’m sure there are some people who would use it, and I’m sure I’ll hear from them, but isn’t the point to make the most efficient use of our time and money?
One major goal of bicycle boulevards is to create more riders — people who are afraid or uncomfortable on high-traffic streets. Survey after survey show bicycle boulevards are key to getting people who aren’t biking to try it out.
I’d much rather see the money for the 70s bike boulevard going into building a bike path to LO or the Sullivan’s Gulch path (as was discussed recently here: http://portlandtransport.com/archives/2006/09/the_missing_lin.html)
These seem like higher priorities in my book.
tony, you may not be hearing from bikers who need a safe route out east because most of them are busy trying to earn a living and don’t have the luxury to spend time telling people that they need safer biking streets.
Whoa NYC, I’m being friendly and respectful here and would appreciate the same. If this were a East/West boulevard I’d totally support it. But I think a North/South out that far would not be as useful.
12 blocks from 82nd? Sounds like it will be a great place for Magna riders to trade that hot Cannondale they’ve been pushing around by the handlebars all day for some meth. My apologies to the people who live out there and earn an honest living. My suburban home gets bashed too.
How about fixing the Springwater Corridor first before diving into a new project. How about more bike racks, everywhere?
tony, yes you are. sorry if i sounded harsh.
Personally, I think the City should be concentrating on the inner east side, which has a much higher percentage of cyclists and still needs some serious work to make the arterials and arterial crossings safe, particularly near the bridge heads and with respect to river access in and through the southeast industrial district. The City, OTOH, seems to desire ‘geographic equity’, so they are looking to throw money at facilities in parts of the city where ridership is low and the facilities are unlikely to attract substantial new cyclists. I could be wrong, but then again I don’t hear a lot of cyclists who live out in this area clamoring for facilities.
Since the BTA is all moved in and back in action, maybe it’s time that they provide us with an update on the status of their negotiations with Jammin’ 95.
drop the boulevard goals and use the money to hire more traffic officers. i commute on numerous 25mph streets and am constantly being run over by speeding cars,tri-met buses,and city vehicles. just adding a boulevard designation won’t help and more visual bike infrastucture just irritates the anti-bike crowd
randy, i agree that you don’t hear much demand from residents who live further east. but again, it seems to me that people who live out there and cycle often do so for economic reasons, and don’t view themselves as bicycle advocates. they get on a bike and ride, simply because that’s what they have to do.
do outer-eastside residents want better bike boulevards? would they use them? i would hope this is what the city has already looked into. should we fault them for not speaking up and making their needs known? again, i don’t know.
i live on 74th + foster, and would love to have some sort of reasonable bike route out here. right now my only option for quick north-south riding is on 82nd, and i prefer to not die so i just crawl through the neighborhoods where the stops are set up horribly, oftentimes not existing all (i know, it’s bizarre. if you’ve ben out this way you know what i mean).
there are a lot of people out here who commute by bike, and just because they aren’t using this website doesn’t mean that they don’t care. i’m not saying that this would necessarily be the best use of resources, but if it’s being offered, why not take it? it sounds like everyone thinks it’s a bad idea just because they personally wouldn’t use it.
by the way, the phone number posted is sam’s house, not his office 😉
If we want more cyclists, we need to fund a few projects outside of the inner core. Right now, the only alternative east of Mt. Tabor for north-south travel is the I-205 bikepath. That’s 1-2 miles east of the proposed bike boulevard. While Sullivan’s Gulch could use a bike path, there are already bike boulevards less than a mile away both north and south of it. (the Gulch is unlikely to work anyway, due to the freeway, the MAX, and UP’s ROW)
I used to live in Montavilla, and I would have loved to have a safe route north & south out there.
In response to the notion that a north/south bike boulevard wouldn’t be as useful as an east/west one, I would beg to differ.
I remember taking the PSU/PDOT Traffic & Transportation Class last autumn, and asking a lady from Tri-Met what their most popular bus route was. She told me it actually wasn’t a hub line in and out of downtown, but rather the number 75, which runs north/south down 39th.
The implication here is that people need to get across town, as well as to and from downtown, and thus cross-routes are just as worthy.
We shouldn’t need to squabble for 3.8 million. Look at other infrastructure projects in the city and 3.8 million is steal for transportation. Thats the real issue. Our slice of the pie needs to be bigger.
Here’s my email to Sam:
Dear Sam,
Please lend your support to the project of making a north-south bike route in the east seventies block. This boulevard will encourage cycling in that area; it will greatly benefit cyclists in that area, many of whom cycle by necessity rather than choice and lack the resources to be politically active; and it will encourage people from other parts of the city to explore that area and vice versa. Also, bike boulevards provide improved safety and convenience for pedestrians and transit users — factors that are in alarmingly short supply out there.
Thanks for all your efforts on behalf of cycling in Portland,
Elly Blue
I strongly feel that three things are uneeded in Portland.
Bike Lanes.
Bike Boulevards.
And more bicyclists.
We already have more car/ bike crash related, and police related issues due to a 200 some percent increase in ridership in the last what? Ten years?
And, as nice as bike boulevards may be, the are not as effective as you may think.
We live in a town that has some hills, some flat roads, some of everything.
The way to cross this town is topographically, not straight across.
None rides straight across streets in this town. Not if they actually know how to get where they need to be.
We have drivers doing 60 miles an hour down neighbor hood streets.
We are still subsiding Amtrack (Oops, I mean TRI MET, same dam thing anyway!) who is spending 3 million dollars per car for trains we don’t want going through town.
3.8 million dollars, for bike boulevards?
Why do we want to spend 3.8 million dollars to gain new ridership?
Why not build a nice big homeless shelter for families on the street to live in? And maybe spend a little of it, and buy them bikes?
There is no way in hell that a 7.8 mile bicycle boulevard costs 3.8 million dollars.
Oh wait, due to beauracracy, survey’s, meetings, the years the city would spend hemming and hawwing about it, etc.
After looking at it in the manner our city works, I am suprised they do not want 5 million for it.
This is a horrible idea.
We already have fine and safe passage through these neighborhoods.
I know, because I live on 76th avenue, at Skidmore. These are the routes I ride. You can ride them fast. You can ride them slow.
They are already safe for cyclists. Possible 3 major intersections could be oriented a little more for bike crossing, but this is only needed for the sheepish cyclist.
Come on Portland, let’s TRY to do the right thing, and let this idea go by the wayside…..
I’m also a little curious as to why bike boulevards are so expensive. Isn’t it just a street with periodic little bike circle paint dealies in the middle of the road?
i like the bike boulevards.
while i might not take them the whole way,
i sure am happy when i get to take one at least part of the way…
i think they do alot for getting people that aren’t quite comfortable with riding to get on their bikes.
while i don’t think ALL of the city’s money should go to them, i think that partitioning some of the funds towards bike boulevards is a great idea.
at first i thought the 70’s would not be so useful, but the more i think about it, i think it would be a great investment.
not everybody has the luxery to live close in,
yet we all deserve a safe place to ride.
and 82nd sucks!
As usual, more money is potentially going to the eastside. Not surprising, but unfortunate for the neglected westside.
Randy said: “I think the City should be concentrating on the inner east side”. The City is already highly biased toward the inner eastside. The fact that they’re thinking beyond the inner eastside this time is quite miraculous.
Bike boulevards require more than dots on the roadway; they also require moving/installation of stop signs so that bikes have the right-of-way at most local unsignalized intersections and signalized bicycle crossings at major streets (such as HAWKs or half-signals).
Because these changes often make the route more attractive to motorists as well, treatments are needed to keep cars from using the bike boulevards as cut-through routes. These can be diverters of some sort (such as 20th/Ankeny or 39th/Lincoln) to prevent through movements by cars, or other traffic calming like speed bumps or traffic circles.
I live at 70th and Fremont, and ride north/south in the Seventies a lot — 3 or 4 times a week. A bike boulevard would be nice, but if it is a choice between that and the Sullivan’s gulch trail, I would go with Sullivan’s Gulch any day.
Besides, I don’t think Tram Adams is too terribly concerned with transportation matters East of the 40’s, judging from the general quality of the road surfaces out here.
“””Because these changes often make the route more attractive to motorists as well…”””
This is my main issue when considering the spending a bunch of money on something like this. I don’t want another Clinton-like “bike” boulevard.
On the other hand, if it’s (the 70s route or any other) is planned properly and doesn’t actually end up *encouraging* motor vehicle traffic (as Clinton seems to), I think it’s probably a good idea.
I want bike only streets and brigde(s). A floating bike bridge would be cheap and global (rising river level) ready.