If all goes as planned, SE Belmont Street between 33rd and 34th will gain two new on-street bike parking facilities. The facilities would be similar to ones already in place in the Mississippi St. neighborhood near the Fresh Pot and Amnesia Brewery (in photo, above).
bike parking on SE Belmont.]
Sunnyside neighborhood resident Bill Stites (owner of Stites Design) is spearheading the effort and has turned in an application for a $5,000 business improvement grant offered by the Alliance of Portland N’hood Business Associations.
Stites is confident about the application, citing unanimous approval from both the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association and the Belmont Area Business Association.
“We have absolutely no opposition in the neighborhood to this idea and with Stumptown Coffee, Laughing Planet and several other businesses that attract lots of bikes, we really need this solution.”
The facilities will have 11 staples each (giving the street 44 additional bike parking spots) and will be placed on the south side of the street.
A decision on the grant is expected by March 13. If the grant is approved, funds would be distributed by April 12th and the project would be completed no later than September 30, 2007.
You can read more about this in an article by Bill Stites in the March edition of the Sunnyside neighborhood newsletter.
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I have always LOVED the installation on Mississippi & Shaver. The number of bikes parked there at all hours is a very concrete example of how building bike facilities encourages the kind of short-trip cycling the city claims to promote. Sad that it remains an experiment, because the results are in.
It also seems SMART, because it moves bikes off the sidewalk, makes intersection visibility better for drivers and cyclists, and it seems FAIR, because providing such a space where so many people can park seems a much better use of space than another spot for one car.
Way to go Bill! Much needed!
The closer to 34th the better! I have noticed very little parking availability next to Avalon.
this is going to be awesome!
Nice work Bill!!!!!!
Holy cow, that’s amazing. The bike parking in front of Amnesia is rad and I hope that other businesses/neighborhoods choose to follow suit. Building parking facilities like this really seems like a no-brainer considering that sacrificing 1 or 2 spots for cars can produce 44 spots for bikes.
This will be very welcome! It is often a hard to find lock space when I visit Stumptown, and they have three racks.
This is really great news. I hope more places do this. The side walks in that area are usually crammed with bikes. It is a much more practical use of space, as so many more cyclists can fit. Yay!
More inner SE locations where this is needed: SE 26th and Clinton, SE 28th @ Ankeny/Burnside, SE 28th @ Couch/Davis.
It’s also better for the sidewalk environment. The project should consider removing nearby bike racks on these narrow sidewalks to increase access to walkers and bicyclists that want to drink coffee and stretch their legs on outdoor chairs.
Awesome! We really need it there.
Not to be a nit-picker, but will it be possible to design something a little more permanent looking than those vertical orange tubes? They look cheap and flimsy, and are pulled straight out of the auto toolkit. More to the point, they are too easy to remove if the day comes when an unsympathetic PDOT decides to reverse course and turn that back into a car parking space. Any industrial designers out there need a pro bono project?
Hell yeah, make bikes more visible. Now we just need to get and awning over it and we’ll be set.
benschon,
You’ll be happy to know that the Fresh Pot facility is not the city-approved design.
The city design is the Amnesia Brewing facility on N. Beech,
which does not have the orange poles and looks like this:update: I just learned that the city is planning to add reflectors and orange plastic bollards (poles) to the Amnesia facility (below) and all subsequent facilities.
There also is opportunity to add more artistic elements, but that would require additional time and pushing the City. Don’t give up the dream.
The bike racks on Mississippi were paid for with funds from the Interstate Urban Renewal Area.
Tup tup! I’ve been frequenting Amnesia because of the on-street parking, just because I can 🙂
I live in NE but my daughter goes to sunnyside. Not only is this good for bikes and business it is good for cars. The on street bike parking will make visibility at that intersection much better. No more vans parked across the sidewalk and better safety for children on the way to school and other pedestrians. I try to ride most of the time but when I do drive I hate coming onto Belmont from 34th. Great job Sunnyside community.
I just inquired about the possibility of this yesterday for my neighborhood. Freemont and 14th seems ripe for this as a safety measure and for business. I think the business on Freemont will be reseptive. Even if some of it gets used as trike and stroller parking for all our young neighborhood familys.
JayS.
way to go, Bill! & thanks to all the forward-thinking Belmont businesses that supported this.
Yahoo! Belmont needs less cars, more bikes, and solar charging stations for electric scooters. Scooters and cars on gas tend to pollute.
I wish the Ash Street Saloon would get one of these, there is never any space on the bike staples in the evenings.
Bjorn
How do you park four bikes at one staple? I wouldn’t park at a staple that already had only one bike unless I was there with the owner of the other bike.
2 facilities *11 staples *2 bikes per staple =44
It’s so easy. Businesses + secured bike parking area = bike rider $. Whether it’s directly in front of the building, or down the way a bit, it amazes me to see so few bike staples (or the like) in any given retail area.
Especially because there free for the asking. All people have to do is call 823-cycl to ask for the city to put in a bike rack somewhere.
Bjorn,
great idea, but i seem to recall the city’s policy for these on-street spots said they were not permitted in the central city…presumably because they would lose meter revenue
The best part of this trend is that it establishes the viability of short-term bike parking on the street, instead of having peds and bikes fight over diminishing sidewalk space. That’s a big shift in thinking.
I think there are low-cost design options that would make a big difference in making it look permanent. How about using stone or metal bollards with a reflective band around the top of them? Or a poured concrete curb, instead of the cheap-o wheel stops?
This project in Corvallis is a little bit overkill, I think, but it shows what could be done:
http://www.walkinginfo.org/pedsafe/casestudy.cfm?CS_NUM=51
Don’t get me wrong–I understand it’s important to start somewhere, then build from there. Getting the city and the neighbors to trade a one car parking space for bikes is a huge victory.
benschon,
Metal and concrete are a bad idea for facilities that are at street level.
The City will never install them due to the danger they would pose to motorcyclists running into them.
The Corvallis example is on a curb extension (not at street level)… which is a different story.
And just FYI, the planned “bike oases” coming to Hawthorne Blvd. might look a lot like that Corvallis facility.
If you can’t wait until the Hawthorne Blvd. “bike oases” get installed, there’s also going to be one on Sandy Blvd. that uses the Hawthorne design.
Martha,
Where on Sandy?
Having been a resident of Corvallis when the bulb outs were put in I can say that there was initially a huge backlash against them. The city got a grant for most of the project but the total cost was known and many people thought far too much money was being spent on it at the time. Also the project caused the entire downtown to be torn up for some time. I think it is difficult for people to understand why some of these traffic calming projects cost so much, largely because they don’t have a context to compare what other road projects cost.
Once the project was complete though you stopped hearing anything bad about it. The bulbs make crossing the streets much safer because pedestrians are in the street for less distance, and are much more visible when entering the street. Previously it was very easy for a shorter person to suddenly appear from behind a parked car. I think corvallis installed somewhere between 10-20 bulbs at high pedestrian traffic intersections, a few of which also got covered bike parking. The more these types of installations are put in the more people will start to see the benefits in my opinion.
Bjorn
Re: comment #17 by JayS
That is a brilliant idea and I totally agree. Strategically placed bikerack installations would greatly improve traffic visibility by preventing SUV’s from parking at corners.
Martha, I also want to know where on Sandy the bike oasis is going in. Is there a web site for these Hollywood neighborhood improvements?