(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)
Another Sunday Parkways is in the books, and it was simply sublime. The weather, the people, the parks — it was Portland summer and community spirit at its finest.
As I rode the nine-mile loop with my family (going slower than usual to ride alongside my wife Juli who decided to jog the loop), I kept wondering why it only happens in my neighborhood for five hours a year.
Just five precious hours out of 8,766 hours every year.
PBOT says an estimated 30,000 people participated in the event yesterday. As I passed by a few thousand of them, I thought to myself: This wonderful diversity of ages, skin colors and body types is so inspiring! This is what cycling can be and should be every day!
But where are all these beautiful people the other 8,761 hours of the year? I never see them in the bike lanes I ride every day.
We all know the answer to that question. Many of them would never consider cycling (or allow their children to do it) because they are afraid. Afraid of riding bikes next to people driving cars.
The removal of cars from the traffic equation has a transformative impact on our minds and our neighborhoods. It allows us to make choices about how to move around without the fear of death or injury factoring into that choice.
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The street environment we all enjoy during Sunday Parkways shouldn’t be seen as a luxury item offered up as a special treat by the City of Portland only to be consumed by certain neighborhoods for a mere five hours a year. It should be seen as a basic service that everyone can access on a much more regular basis.
Everyone knows Sunday Parkways is an unqualified success by every measure (thank you PBOT!), so isn’t it time we started to do it more often? Let’s start by doing it five months a year in each neighborhood quadrant. Then let’s do it weekly throughout the summer just like they do in Bogotá, Colombia, the place that inspired us to do Parkways in the first place.
2018 will be the 10th anniversary of Sunday Parkways. I hope by then we have a lot more of it to celebrate.
Thanks for reading.
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Hear, hear! Along with Bike Sharing, Sunday Parkways is one of a few tools we have that is proven to get new people biking. We should be investing far more in it.
As an aside: if you love Sunday Parkways, consider volunteering and/or making a tax deductible donation!
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/sundayparkways/
In Cambridge (outside of Boston), they close Memorial Drive (a Powell Blvd.-scale highway running along the Charles River) to traffic every Sunday. If a city like Cambridge can do that, why not a platinum city like Portland?
http://www.bostoncentral.com/events/recreation-sunday-memorial-drive-cambridge/p2296.php
Does Seattle still do that on Lake Washington?
Love the Pie Chart.
The official answer, of course, will be “we can’t afford to do that, each event costs $XX,000 to coordinate, hire police, etc, etc.”
To which I say: The city has a big budget, and it doesn’t do MUCH else that has as many positive benefits as Sunday parkways, for so little money. (Exercise, social engagement, people considering the possibility of using non-motorized transportation for other needs….)
But… even if we take budget constraints as a real issue, I still think it’s a good idea. How about having one big highly choreographed event in every neighborhood (with all the sponsors, zumba classes, and bouncy castles,) but having additional weekend days when a loop of neighborhood greenways is officially closed to cars (using barricades but not thousands of volunteers), without quite so much hullabaloo? I suppose we still need extra port-a-potties, but I bet local businesses and roadside entrepreneurs would be happy to take care of our food and beverage needs.
barricades don’t stop people from driving on Sunday Parkways… only the presence of actual people deter drivers from breaking the law…
And even then, as a volunteer I’ve had to be accommodating to all sorts (the nicer ones who keep insisting that “my destination is right up there!” for four blocks, as well as the indignant “I have every right to drive as far on this road as I want!” types. And then there are the downright belligerent ones…) The police aren’t much help, they just tell folks “go slow” and let them through without an escort or any other explanation.
They are not actually breaking the law.
Cars are allowed on the route – they are just ‘highly encouraged’ to not be on the route unless they live there. It it were illegal, the barricades would not be moved at all – the volunteers are there to make sure everyone gets along safely.
Yes, I haven’t missed one in years (other than last years SW), but I do gotta admit changing up the routes would be nice. Kind of getting tired of the (pretty much) the same routes each year.
How but more action in middle east side (FOPO South Tabor) and outer SE (Gateway/Parkrose) etc or St. Johns.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love them. But shaking things up every now and then wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
How about another one in NW?
“But… even if we take budget constraints as a real issue…”
We had a conversation here a while back about how they do it in Bogota. If memory serves me they figured out how to do this all the time and for very little cost.
“Bogota uses volunteers for many intersections, and fewer police.
Also, instead of using neighborhood side-streets, Ciclovia uses the major expressways thru the city (as can be seen in the photo above), which have fewer intersections and are much wider than our routes.”
http://bikeportland.org/2014/06/27/guest-essay-portland-perspective-bogotas-ciclovia-107932#comment-5111765
Speaking of Willamette Blvd, I rode up to St Johns and back, first at rush hour, then at 10pm, and saw only a small handful of cars parked the entire way. But the city won’t re-stripe with larger buffered bike lanes…
That’s a high political pressure sacred cow there, Kyle. I imagine you are aware of the history, but this has been proposed multiple times. Each time, a vocal group of my neighbors has organized an opposition.
I wonder how many angry NIMBYs it takes to tear up the 2030 bike plan in a particular neighborhood. 2? 5? 7? 10?
when was the last time?
Much of that stretch of bike lane was expanded from 5 feet to 6 last year, and it’s a huge improvement. The nearby University of Portland is currently on summer break, which is why there are so few cars parked along Willamette right now. Usually the parking is mostly full.
Can we start by making each event longer? I was riding the route at 4pm when they opened everything back up, and it just seemed like there was so much of the day left.
Why not try 10am to 6pm? Everything is already in place, you just have the additional marginal cost of paying the crossing guards for a few more hours.
And getting volunteers for the extra 2 hrs. Volunteers only sign up for about 2-3hr shifts, so this would introduce a whole new rotation. Coordinators arrive before 9:30am, and don’t leave until close to 5 as is (=full day’s work). Plus traffic gets a lot worse around dinner time, and the neighbors will get antsy (the ones who left for the day will want to return to their homes, and the ones that were “stuck” in their homes will want to run to the grocery, etc.) Not saying it can’t be done, because 4pm is incredibly early in summer, but it would be rough on the folks behind the scenes.
Wouldn’t it be even sweeter to connect even more of North Portland during the Sunday Parkways with large, completed npGreenway trail segments?
Having to walk across the Bryant bridge makes you realize the 90 degree turns are not adequate if more people start using it.
Crossing moody at the tram took the relatively small “family ride” group 3 cycles when there was almost no cross traffic. The fenced turns west of the tilikum crossing, the hawthorne bridge, waterfront park, springwater corridor, better naito… None of this is correctly prioritized to take 30% of our future traffic via bike (and honestly, aiming for 30% mode share in 2030 is way too low.)
North Portland needs another ped / bike bridge over I-5 at North Winchell Street.
it’s great that you don’t read the comments of OregonLive articles, but you know better than to use the term “everyone” when talking about choices…
I said everyone KNOWS, not that everyone can express it.
Seriously… not liking Sunday Parkways IMO is like not liking Safe Routes to Schools or kittens. People might get angry in comment sections but I’m confident that deep down they really love it.
Oh… and you’ll note that this post is clearly marked “opinion.” Thanks.
Jonathan, I am calling “enough” on the Maus version of group think. I am providing the wikipedia discussion of group think (a good basic description). I have edited it for brevity.
“Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony in the group results in dysfunctional decision-making. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints, by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.
The dysfunctional group dynamics of the “ingroup” produces an “illusion of invulnerability” (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the “ingroup” significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making, and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the “outgroup”). ”
Your “group think” is equating Sunday Parkways with “kittens.” Kittens are a great meme, btw. But the traffic issues and inconvenience some neighbors
experience is real, and all civic bike displays in Portland circa 2015 involve politics.
I myself don’t do Sunday Parkways because I would rather be on a (non-poached) single-track trail. I did experience the SE Parkways as a passenger in a car. Traffic, as usual, was an unnecessary clusterpuck due to lack of planning. Proper signage, well in advance, would be helpful.
Before I a accused of kitten-hating by my BP “pals” I want to say that
Sunday Parkways is good. Sometimes a big public event does inconvenience a neighborhood, such as the lucky people who live by a town’s firework display.
What moved me to write is the way you, Mr. Maus, dismiss any point of view that acknowledges that Sunday Parkways may be a pain in the butt
for some people.
Then you equate your position with kittens.
You and your supporters aren’t kittens. And your dismissal of the Oregon Live blog as having zero value as an indicator- I call bullpucky on that too.
Classic group think.
I’m pretty sure it was little to no inconvenience to those who were not using automobiles for transportation. I wonder what the sum total of yearly inconvenience is between sunday parkways on a few streets vs the inconvenience to people biking and walking of having speeding motor traffic on all of the streets all of the rest of the time. And what if one person who attended decides they can commute by bike instead of by car? How many fewer cars would it take to break even? Granted, many will still sit in the traffic jam and selfishly fume about the delay rather than allowing themselves to think that we’re all in this city together and perhaps there isn’t enough space for each of us to drive a car all the time.
Sure, there are problems with “group think”, “us vs them”, etc. But does the anti-bike mindset come from something other than “me! me! me!”? And wouldn’t it have brightened your day if the car in front of you had a “kittens allowed full lane” bumper sticker?
Sorry to ruin your day by having a fun, safe fun day with the community!
I’m not sure if anyone commenting on Portland articles on O’live actually live in Portland. Half of the comments seem to be “This is why I don’t go downtown anymore.”
Nice example of the “No true Scotsman” fallacy.
Here’s how the classic fallacy goes: No true Scotsman would drink Kentucky bourbon. Angus Bruce Burns (born Edinbourough) drinks Kentucky bourbon.
Angus is not a “true” Scotsman.
Here’s BP version: all Portlanders agree with BP. The Portland paper is
overflowing with comments that are in stark opposition to BP positions.
The commentators must not be Portlanders.
Now check out the SW pie chart! Maybe we need Sunday Critical Mass rides?
How much of the expense is to minimize inconvenience for those who are driving cars and didn’t know about the closures? How much of that expense goes away if you do it weekly (ala the entertainment district?) or monthly?
“Just five precious hours out of 8,766 hours every year.”
Wait, it’s 5 hours per event and there are 5 Sunday Parkways per year. Doesn’t that means there are 25 precious hours out of 8,766 hours every year?…. which is still pretty sad.
Matt: Jonathan said five hours in HIS neighborhood. 🙂 not in the city as a whole. ;0)
I thought Critical Mass was reserved for Friday during rush hour to maximize the effect!?
I liked the PBOT signs that claimed that neighborhood greenways were like “Sunday Parkways every day!” Gosh, I sure wish that were true!
What about opening a loop one Sunday a month March – Oct. In NoPo: Marine drive to Lombard to Columbia to Portland Blvd. This is an industrial loop and is very quiet on Sundays. It has a relatively small number of streets the run into it or cross it (as opposed to trying to shut Division or Powell or MLK) so easier to barricade & staff. It also offers an area most Portlanders never see and views of the river or Mt. St. Helens, the railroad crossings, Smith and Byybee Lakes etc.
The feeling of making it down Ainsworth to where the SP route begins is one of relief. To pass through the barricades – “Road Closed” – you relax and smile, finally in “the safe zone”, not constantly listening for a car coming up behind you and your loved ones. We love SP and appreciate that they have made them longer. IAt first they were just 9-1 like they were in a hurry to get the roads open again. Now 11-4 is much better.
Still better than a total of 0 hours on the west side.
I think it would be nice to shut down every neighborhood greenway to people driving cars once a week/ month or something, and heavily promote it to people in the neighborhood. It seems to me that it might have a greater effect because people could imagine using them for their daily commutes, errands, hanging out, etc.
Even just putting two ‘local access only’ barricades on each side of every cross street with the greenway might prevent people from driving on it for more than a block or two, and would cost the city very little.
Volunteering on Sunday I thought a lot about how we treat auto transportation as opposed to bike transportation. For 5 hours, if you were driving a car, you needed to jog left two blocks to go straight to your destination, instead of going straight there. The entire test of the time, we make bike riders jog left/right multiple blocks to get to their destination. And yet we were all so apologetic to the vat drivers for the very short inconvenience.
When I lived in Cambridge, I would occasionally go down to the river to bike along Memorial Drive. You’d see people biking, walking, skateboarding and roller-blading. It was very popular and traffic never seemed to be an issue.
It is (literally) painfully obvious that practice of ‘Sharing the Road’ is not working. Drivers are too distracted and, like it or not, we live in a ‘might makes right’ society where our unprotected nature will lose everytime.
I favor the idea of closing thru traffic for automobiles on 5% of all residential streets.
If 5% of Portland’s population uses the bicycle (or ebike 🙂 as their primary form of transportation, then 5% of the roads should be reserved for them.
Sure, if you live on the street, you can still access your house by car, you just have to turn off to a side street before you can access the next block.
Maybe we could even cover some, so we could pedal across town in (driving) rain…
Portland’s demographics are unique for an American city, in the sense that the 8-80 crowd actually WANTS to bike. You wouldn’t need to convince many folks to bike around town if you just provided the right infrastructure; you’d just be enabling them to do what they already want to do.*
* At least when it’s not raining.
Justin, what is your source for Portland’s unique demographics? Why has an improvement in bike infrastructure over the past 8 years coincided with a flattening of bike commuting rates? The Eastside of Portland apparently doesn’t exist- bike commuting runs around 1% there.
Speaking purely off-hand – I’ve a met a large number of people who own bikes and use them sporadically for navigating to local destinations, or people that are physically active in general but for various reasons drive much more than bike. I think Sunday Parkways demonstrates what roads would look like if these folks saw biking as easier/safer, which stands in contrast to other cities I’ve lived which need to encourage bike purchase or more active lifestyles in addition to building infrastructure. But this is admittedly all conjecture!!
I pedal across town in the driving rain frequently, especially in the winter. Just part of commuting…