(Photos © J. Maus)
With the Broadway Bridge re-opening to bike traffic next week, I thought it’d be fun to snap some photos of the increase in bike traffic on N. Vancouver Avenue that’s resulted from the detour. It’s been interesting to see how the bridge closure has impacted bike traffic patterns between the Steel Bridge and points north of the Broadway.
One street that has seen a huge bump in bike traffic is N. Vancouver Avenue. Instead of people heading west into downtown via the Broadway Bridge, many are staying on Vancouver and taking it south, all the way past the Rose Garden Arena and through the Rose Quarter Transit Center en route to the Steel Bridge.
What makes all this bike traffic even more interesting (at least for a bike nerd like myself), is that this stretch of Vancouver — where the bike lane drops in two different sections — is one of five projects PBOT is addressing through their recently announced slate of bikeway development projects.
A bit more traffic than the bike lane can handle.
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Looking south, as traffic crosses Weidler and heads toward Rose Garden.
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Vancouver was once named the city’s most beloved bike lane, but when it gets to Broadway, it unceremoniously ends on the block between Broadway and Weidler. People on bikes then pick up a bike lane again near the Rose Garden parking structure, but it drops again before the green bike lane oases through the Rose Quarter Transit Center.
It will be interesting to see what solutions are offered up to make a consistent, comfortable, and efficient bikeway that will forever close the Vancouver Gap. When that happens, this stretch of Vancouver will once again fill up with bike traffic.