Just got some great news from ODOT Government Liaison Shelli Romero. She says the City of Portland will receive a $75,000 Transportation Growth Management Grant to be put towards our Bicycle Master Plan update.
According to Romero, the funds were awarded on a competitive basis and the City of Portland’s application was the highest ranked out of 27 applicants.
This will help bolster city bike coordinator Roger Geller’s ongoing effort on the update process. Congratulations Roger!
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.
This is great news! Thanks for letting us know, Jonathan.
Awesome! Things are indeed looking up for the plan. ^_^
It will be interesting to see what this means for the proposed City budget. Will Mayor Potter have the nerve to pull back some of the “found” $100,000 earmarked for the plan? Does the plan update process really benefit from a $175,000 budget? Will it speed up the process, or make a better plan?
Mr. Geller?
Wonderful news! It’s great to see ODOT and PDOT pulling together on more and more bicycle and various other wonderful traffic safety intiatives. Partnership is what it’s all about.
I’m frankly amazed that the City of Portland could pull off a plan update for so little. The budget is actually going to be $225,000, now, correct — counting funding years that contribute to the plan?
Berkeley, CA is spending $150,000 on an update to just their pedestrian plan. Portland is four to five times the size of Berkeley, and it has a lot more complexity with regards to its physical and built environments.
So, I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect that a Platinum Bicycle Master Plan might cost up to a quarter of a million.
Of course, it had better be deserving of its name, once it’s completed!!
Great news. I post on a Peak Oil chat room and lots of people all over the country bemoan the sorry state of bicycling in their towns and cities. We are truly ahead of the game. I can’t wait to see what all this planning yields for us.
Incidentally, I was predicting that Potter was playing close to his chest when he initially did not appropriate money for the master plan. I thought he was hoping that state or federal sources would cough up the dough. Looks like he could have waited a couple of weeks and saved some money.
-Ian