(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
Portland’s Broadway Bridge turns 100 this year. It officially opened on April 22nd, 1913. There’s a big celebration planned on April 21st as part of the PDX Bridge Festival.
The Broadway is one of Portland’s five bicycle-friendly bridges into downtown and it has the second highest bike traffic (behind the Hawthorne) at an estimated (as per PBOT) average weekday bicycle trip count of 4,335. But numbers seem like a rather impersonal way of estimating this bridges impact on our city. It’s just plain beautiful. Not only is it pleasing to the eye, its paths on either side afford us the pleasure of taking in fantastic views.
I ride this bridge almost every day to and from my office downtown. It provides a physical and mental break that helps me prep for the day ahead and put the work day behind. It’s no surprise this bridge is adored by so many people.
PBOT Bike Coordinator Roger Geller says it wasn’t always such a nice bridge to bike over. “For years, the sidewalk material was bare wooden planks,” he shared today. Geller said someone even slipped while bicycling on the planks, crashed, and broke a hip many years ago. Thankfully there have been many improvements since then including a new bicycle signal on the west end, lights on the bridge, a new deck surface, and more.
As for the bicycling and walking path, Geller is pretty sure that’s been there all along. “In our data, we show the Broadway bridge path as being a bikeway since… well, since before we began keeping records. I’m guessing the sidewalk was part of the original construction and has always been used by people bicycling across the bridge.”
Speaking of people bicycling, I went through my archives recently and pulled out a few of my favorite Broadway Bridge photos:
What do you love about the Broadway? Make sure to wish it happy birthday on the 22nd.