Town Hall meeting.
(Photo © Jonathan Maus)
With so many ideas and emotions about bikes, bike safety and sharing the road swirling around our city this week, I thought I’d share a conversation I had with City Commissioner and mayoral hopeful Sam Adams.
I sat down with him in his City Hall office on Wednesday.
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Once again, the whole bikes vs. cars thing is coming up in the community and the local media. You’ve been holding town hall meetings all over the city, what are you hearing from people about this issue?
“When we started the Transportation Town Halls, at every one there was an argument about bikes vs. cars. But the more we’ve gone out there, especially recently, I don’t hear that argument as much. What I do hear more about is much more of a heightened concern among non-bike riders that we need to fix this problem, we need to do better in reducing the conflicts between motor vehicles and bikes.”
Are you hearing this from would-be bike riders who are afraid to start? Or motorists who are afraid of hitting cyclists?
What I’m hearing is more of a genuine concern of not wanting this to continue in our city. It’s really been much more positive. Before, it was more of a battle, there were warring words between non-bikers and cyclists. Now even the non-bikers are saying, we don’t want people killed in our city. I’m seeing a heightened level of concern among non – cyclists, more so than I’ve ever seen before in the last three years. If there is any silver lining in this I would say that would be one.
And I’m sure some of those feelings have to do with the context of these fatalities, the fact that they were both young and riding in a bike lane…
“I think the fact that it was big vehicle/bike, I think really gets people’s attention. I think the fact that no one was blowing through a stop light, no one was doing anything illegal, it wasn’t in a far away place…the fact that these were in the middle of the city, on infrastructure, and no one was breaking the law [NOTE: he is referring to the cyclists involved.]
It’s got people’s attention and I’m going to do everything I can to use that attention in a positive way.”
Going back to infrastructure, because both of these happened when the person was in a bike lane, there’s been a lot of talk about the safety of bike lanes. I realize we’re not going to start ripping them up. But, is there any immediate thing that you can foresee being done? Without waiting for budgets or analysis, can we do something immediately at those two intersections?
“Oh absolutely. God yes. And along with these two intersections, I would like to figure out the top 20 most dangerous intersections and ask bikers, what are your ideas for this intersection that you ride through every week? I don’t care how wild or impractical the ideas are. The idea is that we come up with something at these two intersections and 18 others and we come up with some short-term fixes on the ground and then we ask the community, does this make sense, or could we do better?”
[NOTE: The Portland Mercury has started a community-generated database of dangerous intersections. Please add your input.]
What about longer term analysis of how we engineer bike lanes?
“What we’ve talked about on the staff level is that there’s the opportunity to put the same kind of signage we have where some of the blue bike lanes are [see photo]. It used to be the city policy to use that kind of signage only when you do the blue lanes, or only when something is really weird with the engineering. What we’ve talked about is that we’re now getting a higher volume of bike utilization at many intersection. That means we have to think about utilization rates, not just intersection weirdness [engineering].
Now, if I could just back up a little bit…there are a couple of bigger things going on here that we haven’t looked at in-depth to my satisfaction. We have freight traffic that has increased, depending on what stats you look at, 40-100%+ over the last six years, and a 137% increase in tonnage is expected on the West Coast in the next decade. We’re a trade city, so as a trade city we’re going to feel and experience that increase in freight traffic more than other cities.
Then you’ve got our awesome, double-digit increase in bike utilization, and what we’ve never done is look at this issue through the prism of big vehicle/bike. So what I’ve got staff doing is looking at, OK, where are freight routes? Let’s overlay those on the bike routes.
Then, we need to go back and think about those routes in terms of having more trucks and more bikes. And before, where there was a certain level of bike traffic and certain level of truck traffic, and they infrequently shared the right of way, in some cases now, they’re no longer infrequently sharing the right of way, they’re frequently sharing the right of way. What we need to do is go back and reconsider everything in terms of our bike lanes and our truck routes.
(Photo © Jonathan Maus)Also, in all of this is that we’re going to have, hopefully, out of our collective success [of getting people on bikes], a much wider range of bike riders out there in terms of skill level. That’s a huge factor.
We’ve got to go back and look at points of conflict especially between these big vehicles and bikes…because that’s the worst combination, trucks have more blind spots, are more difficult to maneuver and to stop…that’s the worst of the worst.
So, we’re looking at freight routes, bike routes, then we need to look at where our industrial areas are; places like access routes to Swan Island, northwest industrial area, rivergate. We also need to do a better job with traffic around construction projects. We’re going to have drivers who are not used to maneuvering in the big, downtown city environment and bikers that are surprised by the fact that, suddenly, there is this big cement truck where there used to not be.
We need to do a better job for the periodic truck/bike conflict…and do everything we can on the ground for signage, whether that’s on the pavement, or signage that warns both motorists and bikers and big truck drivers, “be aware” you’re entering into something that is different than other parts of the city… either because the engineering is weird, or the amount of utilization by trucks or bikes is higher.”
Going back to the freight question. In London, they’ve had major problems with fatal crashes involving large, commercial trucks and bikes. They’ve done campaigns and one of their solutions has been some sort of equipment requirement. What is the potential for thinking about a mandate for certain safety equipment on large vehicles?
“I think it’s essential. On the equipment side, I was really pleased when I made the call out to the freight leaders, they were absolutely mortified about the tragedies and eager to get to the table to see what they could do to prevent these types of situations from happening again. Clearly equipment that is safe in more rural and suburban areas with fewer peds and bikes is no adequate here in our mutli-modal city, so I look froward to the opportunity to sit down with them based on our scan of best practices of equipment including mirrors, turn signals in a place that are visible to cyclists and pedestrians…so I think there’s a variety of things we must do..and the city attorney is looking at, what can City Council require versus what are we’re pre-empted from doing by state government.
Whatever I can do locally I will, what I can’t, I’m not going to wait around for the state to act. I want that partnership at the table ASAP and I’m hopeful the response will be positive. “
And is there any potential within that partnership to talk about the education and behavior-change side of the equation? To me, that’s just as important as the equipment aspect.
“In terms of education, everything from when you get your regular driver’s license through a Class C license is…clearly the driver education and the driver testing is too scant, especially on the realities you face in the city of Portland. It [the education] is too thin on pedestrian, motorcycles, and bicycles.
I’ve put a call into the DMV saying, I want your agreement that when someone goes to get a driver’s license and the address says City of Portland then there’s a supplemental part of the magazine they give you, the driver’s guide, and the test that you take. I hope that they’re not going to require a change in state law for Portland to do that. So, at a minimum I will make that official request. If I can made it a demand I will.”
On that note, we also need more education for more bicyclists.
“Yes. Education is key. We have a lot of new people coming to this city with different levels of biking experience in a dense urban culture. I want to ramp up our partnerships on bike education as well. I’ve heard that we’ve got some money set aside in the Safe Sound and Greent Streets package for that.
We need to make the connection between these tragedies and the fact that we need more money to make things safer.”
I know that because of these recent fatalities and the converging factors surrounding them, that everybody with a heart has a sense of urgency about how we need to something. But, what can you say about the extent that this will have a lasting impact around official bureaucratic and political tables? Do you think it will have an impact with people that are in positions to make decisions?
“The honest answer is, only time will tell. Starting with our emergency meeting. That’s the blunt, honest answer.
I can also say that we have never had the funding opportunity that we have with Safe Sound and Green Streets in the history of this city, not just with bike boulevards, but with all the bike safety projects in the package. My hope is that these tragedies will add fuel for support behind doing something we’ve never done before, something that reflects the growing multi-modal use of the right of way. Safe and Sound is just catch up…it’s catching up with the reality that we have such a mutli-modal use of the system.
More investments in the safety of our system will lead to even more utilization.
If there’s anything good that comes out of these tragedies I hope it’s more support across the board from bikers and non-bikers that this is important…it’s not just about pavement and potholes, it’s also about flesh and bones.”
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Come and hear more about what Commissioner Adams and other city staff and leaders plan to do to increase bike safety in Portland at today’s press conference:
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Bike Safety Press Conference
City Hall (1221 SW 4th Ave) outside the Rose Room
Friday, October 26th
12:30 ~ 1:00