PDOT reveals potential route, details of Sunday Parkways
Posted by Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor) on September 6th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
The City of Portland’s Transportation Options division has taken a step forward in their quest to pull off a ciclovia-type event — which they call “Sunday Parkways” — in Portland by next summer.
The event is being modeled after a successful program in Bogota, Colombia which shuts down 113km of major roads to motorized vehicles and draws 1.5 million citizens into the streets every Sunday.
Yesterday, an options staffer sent an email sent to the Chairs of several neighborhood associations in North Portland to schedule a meeting to garner feedback about the idea.
The email — which went out to the Arbor Lodge, Piedmont, Humboldt, Boise, and Overlook neighborhoods — included a PDF of a potential route for the event and unveiled more about PDOT’s plans.
Here’s an excerpt from the email:
“Ideally The Portland Office of Transportation would like to schedule a Sunday Parkways event for Sunday, June 22, 2008, 8am- 2pm in conjunction with the International Carfree Conference to be held in Portland June 16-20.
…The draft plan we have submitted for a grant pilot project would start with a “circular” six mile, two-way route in North Portland that has many neighborhood parks but minimal space where families and neighbors can walk, bike and enjoy recreating in a car free environment. The idea is for “soft closures” allowing local access and using small barricades and volunteers at every intersection, with Police at the major/signalized intersections.”
So far, no major US city has implemented an event comparable to the ciclovias in Bogota and several other South American countries.
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