(Photo © J. Maus)
To accomodate what is probably Portland’s busiest bikeway through a commercial district (outside of downtown), the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation is set to install two more of their on-street bike corrals on N.Williams.
According to Sarah Figliozzi with PBOT, the new corrals will be on both sides of Williams at N. Failing Street. One of them will go in front of Pix Patisserie and the other will be right across the street in front of Lincoln Restaurant.
The new corrals are funded by the Portland Development Commission through their Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area.
N. Williams, which has seen a boom in development for several blocks near N. Failing Street, is a very busy bike traffic corridor. What makes it different than other popular commercial areas — like SE Hawthorne, N. Mississipi, SE Belmont, and NE Alberta — is that N. Williams has a bike lane (which, unfortunately, is not as wide as the one on N. Vancouver).
Back in January, even Sunset Magazine noticed Williams’ bike traffic. Lincoln Restaurant, whose roll-up windows will put customers just a few feet from the new bike corral, has started offering a “Commuter Corridor” happy hour.
impression on Sunset Magazine
back in January.
Restaurant owner David Welch is thrilled about the new bike parking. He told me this morning that the happy hour is an acknowledgment of the large amount of bike traffic. “We realized that, here we are, on this major artery for bike riders,” he said, “and we’re just trying to encourage folks to take a break and stop off on their ride home for a glass of wine, a beer, or something to eat.”
Figliozzi says they are putting two corrals in such close proximity because they’ve noted high demand at both locations; “We want to put the parking as close as possible to those demands.” It’s also likely the City did not want to put people in the position of having to cross the busy N. Williams Ave. just to find a bike parking space.
The new corrals will likely be installed over the weekend. Another corral is set to go up in front of Pambiche on NE Glisan at 28th. The means that by Monday, Portland will have a total of 18 on-street bike corrals with many more in the queue.
Check out a Google Map of all bike corral locations over at PDXStump.