For five days of the week, the recently installed protected bike lane on Naito Parkway serves as an efficient, safe route for people on bikes and scooters to travel downtown without having to navigate around cars. But every weekend, a section of the bikeway turns into a loading zone for Saturday Market vendors, and drivers take up valuable real estate inside the cozy confines of the otherwise carfree space.
When Better Naito launched this past spring, people immediately took to Twitter to voice concerns about this. The Portland Bureau of Transportation responded by pointing to an agreement that the City of Portland and the Saturday Market have had for years to allow vendors to use Naito as a loading and unloading zone during market hours. This agreement has been in place since long before the Better Naito bikeway was installed – PBOT Interim Director of Communications Hannah Schafer told BikePortland it was inked back in the 1970s, and was last re-upped in 2018.
It took years of hard work from advocates to make Better Naito a permanent part of Portland’s downtown landscape. The project started out as a seasonal, temporary pilot installation led by tactical urbanist group Better Block PDX. Once Portlanders experienced the bikeway’s benefits, they called on the city to keep it around all year.
As project leader Timur Ender wrote in a BikePortland comment when Better Naito officially launched this past May, the success of this project is a huge feat that speaks to the potential of collaboration between the City of Portland and its activists.
“Better Naito is a success story on a number of fronts: accessible government, tactical urbanism as a way of urban planning, partnerships, data, and imagination,” Ender wrote.
Interestingly, this project was able to get off the ground at the start because Better Naito were able to take advantage of a Rose Festival loading zone that closed off a portion of Naito Pkwy, “glorifying it into a premier walking and biking space.” People on bikes were okay temporarily sharing the space with cars because it was better than the alternative of having no protected bikeway at all.
“The fact that there were occasional trucks there didn’t bother us at first because the loading is what gave us the political cover to do this trial in the first place,” Ender wrote.
But now that the project is more than just a pop-up, the loading vehicles are less welcome. Cars parked in the bike lane cut the bikeway in half, making it hard for people to travel both north and southbound. While it may be technically possible to move around the vehicles, it’s unpleasant and hazardous. People open and shut their car doors and drive in and out of the bike lanes without much concern for the people biking on the path.
Vendors are allowed to park in the bike lane for 10 minutes maximum from 6-10:00 am and 5-7:00 pm Saturday, and from 6-10:00 am and 4:30-6:30 pm on Sunday. They also must display a permit in their windshield.
I went over to the market last week to check out the scene. I was there well after 10:00 am and saw many cars using the bike lanes. I spoke to a vendor who was in a hurry to get his car off Better Naito because he said the city is strict about enforcing the 10-minute limit.
Many of the cars parked in the bikeway didn’t appear to have required permits, and I saw several customers using it as a drop-off and pick-up site. When I asked a woman working in the Saturday Market help desk about this, she said there was nothing they could do about the unauthorized use.
The Saturday Market website encourages people to bike there, saying “Go Native! Bike Like a Local!” But this rings hollow when the bikeway adjacent to the market is filled with cars every Saturday.
In my opinion, this situation is a failure to use the imagination that created Better Naito in the first place. The Saturday Market is a beloved weekly institution precisely because it’s a space that prioritizes people before cars. It’s a place where people can roam through carfree plazas and browse through the fare of goods created by local craftspeople that exemplify this city’s DIY ethos and artistry. Organizers should be able to use this creative spirit to figure out how to keep its adjacent bikeway safe and clear. But until then, keep your head up and watch out for those drivers in the bike lane near the Burnside Bridge.
Update: According to Schafer, the agreement between the City of Portland and the Saturday Market has expired and they will likely be re-entering talks in the future, possibly changing the terms of the permit agreement. As of right now, that’s all the information PBOT can provide.
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Better Naito
ForeverMonday-FridayI don’t think it is actually that big of a safety issue, but this whole parking situation just makes me so mad because essentially what is being communicated is that no matter how nice the bike infrastructure is, the needs of cyclists will always be deprioritized to accommodate people in cars. (fwiw I think even outside of the saturday market, there has only been one time I biked on Naito without their being a city of portland vehicle of some sort parked in the bike lane)
I agree with you Bill. It’s a principles thing more than safety thing. It just erodes the strength of the bike lane concept.
I mean also can you imagine if once a week half the lanes on Powell, or 82nd, or I5 or any car-centric infrastructure were completely taken over for event parking? Obviously that would be an intolerable situation if you genuinely take the needs of the users of that infrastructure seriously.
Wouldn’t that be awesome if half the car infrastructure in the city was repurposed every Saturday?
There’s a simple solution, they can just close Naito to car traffic, except for the cars that need to park at the market. #problemsolved
I wonder why bicycling mode share is decreasing in Portland? Could it be related to cars being allowed on nearly every bike lane and path in town? Maybe some people don’t want to be hyper vigilant and confrontational just to get from point A to B. Naito, Greeley, Going, Rosa Parks, Springwater, Hawthorne, Madison, SW and NW Broadway: this is a partial list of places that are designed to be bike-only where I have encountered cars in just the last couple months. Bad design and worse maintenance and enforcement.
NE 16th between Irving and Sandy tends to have anywhere from 2-4 SUVs/trucks/(cars) blocking the bike lane southbound in the PM. (Mostly parents waiting for their kids playing field sports.) And a decade after it was installed, I still have to veer out to avoid a parked SUV/truck/(car) in the NE Multnomah “protected” bike lane every 2 commutes or so.
Not quite a headline, but I still feel Betteridge’s law applies.
This is a pretty lazy take that attempts to link the article to a genuinely interesting trend and discussion on mode share (Why is it slipping? How important is a slippage in commute mode share that captures a small fraction of all trips? What to do about it?). Except there just really isn’t a link.
This is an article about car operators mostly doing as they are supposed to do and have always done on weekends on a newly much-widened protected bike facility.
Looking at the peak of Portland’s bike mode share in 2014 and now, it’s certainly not the case folks weren’t parking and driving in bike lanes with enough frequency to make everyone wary in 2014. Naito, Greeley, Rosa Parks, Hawthorne, Madison, and most of Broadway didn’t even exist in anything resembling the biking form they do today—all of which were much more car-exposed and -dominated in 2014.
Work a little harder.
I am too harsh here, maxD; I apologize. What I mean to say is actually that I’m interested in hearing new ideas about why we might be seeing this slippage—ideas that have enough surface-level explanatory power to be worth some digging and ground truthing (to validate or overturn). To me, cars in bike lanes doesn’t really pass the sniff test.
A symbol of the decline in the prioritization of cycling by the City of Portland.
I already addressed this as it was the core of the original comment, but again: How are cars in bike lanes a symbol of decline when at peak mode share (and at every point before and since) Portland also had plenty of cars in bike lanes—and on a bike network that was less-extensive and less-protected than today’s? How does a timeless baseline of cars in bike facilities but a growing and increasingly protected bike network comport with a narrative of declining bicycle priority? This is another low-effort, high-reward (comment section likes!) take that doesn’t enrich conversation or understanding—which isn’t the only aim of a comment section, but this exchange has already been had once in this very thread and here we are again.
Biking was fashionable in 2010; it is less so today. I think it’s that simple.
We’ve definitively demonstrated that better facilities don’t drive ridership except, perhaps, at the margins. Our pitiful surrender on the rule of (traffic) law probably doesn’t help either, but that came after cycling rates slipped and fell.
“We’ve definitively demonstrated that better facilities don’t drive ridership except, perhaps, at the margins. ”
I’d say we haven’t really shown that at all. Research shows that outside of young, fit, white men safety is the highest priority for potential bike riders. The infrastructure they need to feel safe is more substantial than that needed by the aforementioned YFWM demographic, and is typically at the level of protection we see on Naito. Without a continuous network built to that level of safety, we aren’t going to see widespread adoption of biking. Portland is nowhere near having that sort of network in place, and in it’s absence the best that can be hoped for is about 7-9% commute mode share.
I agree with most of what you wrote, and don’t argue that good infrastructure will make people feel safer and more confident riding bikes around town.
But it should be clear that there are larger trends depressing bike riding (or, perhaps, no longer sustaining it), and even rapidly improving infrastructure cannot overwhelm those forces. We see this in the numbers — ridership has fallen off a cliff, and not because infrastructure suddenly got worse. For all its faults, our infrastructure is better than it’s ever been.
Addressing the forcing issues should be the primary concern for those of us who want to reverse the fall in ridership and help build back our numbers.
Infrastructure is the fun and easy issue, but it isn’t the important one.
Infrastructure is absolutely the important. We can drive serious mode shift with a well connected network of safe cycling infrastructure. But in it’s absence, we aren’t going to reach out goals. We seemingly don’t know what’s caused the current decline in ridership. Soren speculates in displacement of riders to the city fringes, I’ve seen others speculate that bike riders are over represented in the shift to WFH, or that the increase in camping has made riding feel less safe, or that the increase in vehicular violence during the pandemic has made riding less safe, or that there’s just been a vibe shift. Any and all of those could be true, and certainly need to be addressed. But we aren’t going to get beyond 10% mode share without a well connected network of truly safe infrastructure.
Will, enough with your negativity. Visualize 25% by 2030.
I personally like to wake up, look in the mirror, and chant 25% by 2030. This helps me visualize the bikelove in great cycling cities, like Amsterdam
Cynicism isn’t wisdom, it’s a lazy way to say that you’ve been burned.
Gentrification — younger/poorer people moving out of Portland
Older and/or more affluent people moving into Portland have less interest in cycling
Chronic lack of infra funding and lack of well-thought-out bike network connectivity
Ongoing civic crises have made cycling less politically important
Bikelash — cycling advocacy being put on the back burner at city hall
Bikelove — reluctance of cycling advocates/enthusiasts to engage in loud actvism/actions for fear of offending drivers/the establishment
Bike passivity — the erroneous belief that PBOT/Roger is our friend and has us covered
Cheap gas and subsidized SUVs/trucks
Soren, you’re the master of data… is there actual evidence that older people (regardless of interest in cycling) are moving into the inner core neighborhoods?
Many of my new neighbors (including renters) are youngish, certainly in prime cycling age. Many drive, whereas many of my longtime neighbors who used to bike still do.
There is no evidence for it as older people and more affluent are moving out of the city currently.
Don’t have time to look at individual census tracts but here is a rough picture:
Census ACS 1 YR – Table S0701
Median age of all people living in Portland:
2010 – 35.9
2014 – 36.8
2019 – 37.8
2021 – 38.5
This is a massive shift and is likely explained by both migration patterns and birth rate.
Median age of people moving to Portland from out of state:
2010 – 27.6
2014- 27.8
2019 – 30.3
2021 – 30.2
It’s my guess that inner city census tracts with a high-percentage of SFHs would show an even larger demographic shift.
I’ve given up biking and a lot of walking around my neighborhood because of the lawless behavior of people out on the streets, cars, scooters, bikes, etc.
Even before COVID I was cutting way back on biking.
So for me, and I can only speak for myself, I use the streets less because of the a-holes that are on the streets that don’t care about anyone but themselves.
No this doesn’t answer your question but there you have it.
ITOTS, thanks for the reply- I think you make a fair criticism. Let me try to work a little harder. I am likelong bike commuter and I ride quite a bit recreationally, so I am pretty comfortable on a bike ona wide variety of roads. I am also married with a kid and community of families and neighbors. Within this circle, there is wide range of bike ridership that I have observed over the years. I also have worked as a consultant on many transporation jobs for PBOT and ODOT. So, I am not an expert, but I have an informed opinion.
As the neighborhood kids have gotten older and more capable, I have witnessed a decrease in ridership among them and their families. I had quite a few conversations about selecting routes, scary experiences on a bike/bus/train, and complaints about bikes getting vandalized/stolen. I as a part of a group of parents who raised money and donated time to improve bike parking. I help witha bike bus when my kid was in elementary school. But now, very few kids, parents and neighbors ride much. The predominant reason is that it does not feel safe. Specifically, there is one or 2 sketchy spots, or experiences that sour the whole trip, so they take the car the next time.
Is it just cars parked in bike lanes? Nope. But cars in bike lanes is emblematic of PBOT and City’s approach to bike infrastructure. PBOT used to do a much more thorough job of planning and design. It has since been restructured, and had significant cuts to the maintenance. There is also a City-wide lack of response to scooters/biketown bikes being left in bike lanes. And allowing tents to be installed in bike lanes. Also, cars are allowed to drive and park MUPs- they are not ticketed or towed and the bollards are not replaced.
This is getting too long, sorry. To summarize: cars parking in the bike is an example of a City-wide culture that is developing of not protecting and maintaining our bike and pedestrian infrastructure from selfish drivers, from gig workers, from campers, or from nature (leaves/snow/gravel). THis is coupled witha design culture of predominantly doing opportunitic improvments for bike rather than intentional- this leaves the network disconnected and not very useful. The result is that ny given trip is liable to result in a negative encounter with something in the bike lane, or a part of the route that is missing or substandard.
This is lovely; thank you so much for sharing your longitudinal perspective and that of your friends and loved ones. I’m sorry you’ve seen and felt your sense of safety traveling by bike decline.
I totally agree there is a sense of something getting away and biking maybe feeling relevant to fewer and fewer people—even as new projects are coming online. And it’s reflected in the data out there. It’s just not clear how much it’s death by 1000 cuts and how much it’s something global—and what to do and advocate for.
Thank you again for sharing!
With all due respect, describing the cratering of cycling mode share in Portland as “slipping” smacks of cognitive dissonance.
Census mode share data where “worked from home” has been subtracted out to reflect commute-only data:
Seattle 2014 Census ACS 1 yr
Car, truck, or van: 60%
Public transportation: 22.6%
Bicycle: 4.3%
Walked: 11.5%
Seattle 2021 Census ACS 1 yr
Car, truck, or van: 68.5%
Public transportation: 12%
Bicycle: 3.9%
Walked: 12.8%
Portland 2014 Census ACS 1 yr
Car, truck, or van: 72.2%
Public transportation: 12.8%
Bicycle: 7.8%
Walked: 5.8%
Portland 2021 Census ACS 1 yr
Car, truck, or van: 81.4%
Public transportation: 6.7%
Bicycle: 4.4%
Walked: 5.7%
Note: I left out minor mode share components, such as, “taxicab, motorcycle, or other”.
Seattle ~9% drop in bicycle commutes in 2021 vs 2014.
Portland ~44% drop in bicycle commutes in 2021 vs 2014
If I’m remembering correctly, prior to the ~2009 construction of the pavilion in Waterfront Park, the Saturday Market used to use the parking lot under the Burnside Bridge approaches. I don’t think that’s used for the market any more, at least west of Naito. Surely there’s some kind of opportunity there?
That parking lot is several hundred feet away from the market. You couldn’t possibly expect vendors to park there and cart their goods such a long distance. Imagine the inconvenience /s.
There are all kinds of vendors with all kinds of different health conditions and physical abilities that sometimes have to load many hundreds of pounds of stuff, but yeah sarcasm is productive to discussions here /s
So you can make special accommodations for those that have a demonstrated need instead of a general policy that favors those that choose to travel in motor vehicles over those that choose to utilize bicycle infrastructure.
Sounds like an open air market with questionable parking access may not be their best sales opportunity, then. There are shopping malls, online sales, etc. I’m so tired of the argument that we have to hand over our city to cars because disabled people exist.
The Saturday Market was there long before the bike project; perhaps Better Naito should have accommodated a pre-existing (and perfectly reasonable) requirement for a loading zone.
But the reality is that, as someone pointed out, this doesn’t seem to be a significant safety issue, so what I’m really hearing is complaints about optics.
Naito was 4 vehicle lanes with bike lanes before the project. There was never parallel parking directly in front of Saturday Market.
https://www.vegantravel.com/activities/united-states/oregon/portland/shopping/portland-saturday-market/
From the article:
“I’m so tired of the argument that we have to hand over our city to cars because disabled people exist.”
A main, valid tenet of accessibility is people with disabilities should be able to use the same places that others use. And in this case, we’re talking about some pretty minor loading and parking provisions. While the current solution has problems, even if no better ones can be found, it’s far from an example of “handing over our city to cars”.
It also sounds a lot like the “I’m so tired of the argument that we have to hand our city over to bikes because bicycle riders exist” and “an open air market (or street, or commuting route, or whatever) with questionable bicycling access may not be their (bicycle riders’) best shopping (or commuting, or recreational, or whatever) opportunity”.
I guess we have different standards, but I consider allowing people to park vehicles in a separated, marked “platinum” bikeway is a perfect example of handing our city over to cars. I guess that makes me an extremist.
I think the part that’s most extreme is saying “…because disabled people exist”, accompanied with saying they should go to other places better suited for them.
There should be a solution that works better than what’s there now. I’m guessing people who need to park close due to disabilities would also prefer an option that doesn’t open them up to being lumped in and criticized with people who park in bike lanes out of laziness or disregard for the law or for bike lane users.
A more charitable reading of this comment (and what I think Chris I meant) is the need to provide disabled folks motorized access to an area should not be used as a reason to allow non-disabled folks that same access.
Sometimes its hard to assume good intentions with those we’re debating with, but I think it’s important to try.
As a cyclist and former member of Saturday Market, I have some information on this. Vendors should have permits on their mirror. Vendors are generally not the abusers of the parking, it’s citizens dropping and picking people up. However vendors definitely abuse the situation. The City doesn’t respect Saturday Market much with how the permit mass start runs etc that often start/end in the loading zone. The Market does its best to get cars out of the lane and onto the plaza but there is not enough room. The Market was once or maybe still is one of the top 3 tourist destinations in Oregon, so it should get some respect and if you want vendors to be there, they need a place to load. On a weird side note, as a cyclist, I don’t really like Better Naito and prefer riding in the street.
One thing that could definitely be improved is that Market could do a lot better with the closure signage. I’d just prefer they close the whole northbound street during Market loading.
Michael, thanks for sharing your perspective. Hypthetically, lets say Naito was closed from SW Pine to NW Davis (cars detoured on 1st or 2nd) and vendors were allowed to use southbound Naito for parking and loading during market hours. Would that be adequate access/parking for vendors? Would cutting off the market from drive-by car traffic help or hurt market visibility?
That would be long enough I think. There should be no loading or parking during Market hours so there’s no need to have parking or any blockage of drive-by traffic. The other issue is the distance of the load (my other comment). I mean I did that thing for like 14 years and loading at the end of a long hot or cold weekend is as hard as anything I’ve done on a bike. It is such a cluster down there, I don’t think there’s a decent solution other than closing it during load. I bet the fire department wouldn’t go for that.
>On a weird side note, as a cyclist, I don’t really like Better Naito and prefer riding in the street.
That option is only for the strong and fearless. It doesn’t work for the 8-80 crowd.
Given that there existed bike lanes on BOTH sides of the street (was part of the “improvement” to remove the one on the west/southbound side? Not sure why they would given the large divider between N & S traffic they didn’t re-do to shift travel lands…etc, etc). I still do not understand how this is “better”. I rode to work that way for several years & never felt I needed protection… But then I stop at red lights. so…
It seems like a marginally decent idea, inadequately thought-out, & not entirely well implemented….
You ride in the street on Naito, even after the project? How fast are you going, and have you had issues with cars behind you, as they now have no way to go around?
There’s an empty parking lot under the bridge directly across from the market. Surely the city can install a signaled crosswalk, and Saturday Market can provide vendors with hand carts to get stuff across the street. It would only take ten years and three or four community engagement meetings to accomplish!
That lot is owned by OSU and they occasionally let Market use it during special event and maybe Xmas. I always got the impression that it’s an OSU flex / red tape sort of issue as you seem to have figured out already. Market has lots of carts already.
It sure feels like people riding bikes are at the bottom of the bike lane user priority list.
I’m so over this attitude that bicycle infrastructure can be “temporary”. I was riding thru this summer and various vendors were spilling out into the entire better naito space making it entirely impassible.
we can and should expect much much better. I want a “better” Better Naito
It’s really simple. Park 100 bikes there on Saturday and Sunday morning. Just like demonstrating why Idaho stops make sense.
I love bike paths AND saturday market… And I think they can coexist peacefully, but I’d have some improvement suggestions.
1) Enforce the current agreement. Tow if blocking. Ticket if outside the times.
2) While you are there enforcing.. proactively steward safety, halting bike traffic for people backing in and out of those areas because holy crap is that scary at times.
3) Mark a green lane on the waterfront (or bike/walk stickers like on Tilikum) so that bikes can maybe coexist more peacefully on the non-loading side during high traffic times like the market
4) Signage and bike protection on a path like Ash to 2nd/3rd to Couch to redirect bike traffic during load in times (this one really would suck for the better naito project to have to close/redirect during those times)
Why don’t cars block the car lane?
This reminds me of that situation at PIR a couple of months ago when cars were exiting the racetrack on the Columbia Slough pathway. Even though its a pedestrian walkway/cyclelane cars can still use it if its convenient and everyone else just has to deal with it. At the very least there needs to be signs informing cyclist that there are vehicles loading and/or unloading so be careful.
Vehicles in the bikeway = increased chance of getting doored. I’ve been doored, and it’s no picnic, although I survived okay. Another rider I know who get doored didn’t fare so well: he died from it indirectly (heart attack while in the hospital). Just sayin’.
Going to be honest, this comes off as petty and entitled.
I can understand how people might think that vendors should just drag their goods in from a parking lot, but those people need to understand that vendors at these markets work HARD. Packing and loading their goods, arriving by 7:35 (Saturday Market allocates spots morning of), unloading the goods, setting up a tent, standing on concrete for 7 hours, tearing down, loading the goods, driving home.
They’re at the market for 10+ hours. In all kinds of weather, wind, rain, extreme heat.
But heaven forbid they take up part of the all mighty bike lane for 10 minutes.
Why didn’t Better Naito negotiate alternative arrangements?
The problem as mentioned in the article is that they are parked there outside of loading times, staying longer than 10 minutes, and are being occupied by non-vendors. This would be a much less of an issue if it was only being used by vendors only and for loading/unloading purposes only.
Pure hyperbole. Ten minutes? It’s all day long.
There are hard-working people all over this city. Some of them ride bikes to get to their hard-work jobs. We can’t all get by selling artisanal crafts.
I agree to the extent that is another design failure from PBOT. This absolutely could have and should have been considered and included in the design. PBOT design seems so amateurish the last couple of years! On this same project- they extended the concrete from the sidewalk to the concrete ped refuge. It is difficult to install asphlat well in those tight areas against the concrete, and it shows- there are jarring bumps all along the brand new naito bikeway. For no good reason- they are painted green! It would have been cheaper and easier to build and maintain and better experience if the asphalt ran through- it is just sloppy design. There was aslo no management of the adjacent vegetation- much of it looks like hell after an extended construction period and it blocks sightlines! No QC from PBOT! The most amusing gaffe: The ramp on the southside of Hawthorne connecting to Naito is maybe 8′ wide, yet it is marked witha ped zone, a southbound bike zone and a northbound bike zone- why??! You can barely fit a bike and ped within that space- what a waste of thrmoplastic- it is ugly and misleading and potentially unsafe. There are alos puddles in the bike lane- ona brand new, from the base up transportation corridor! That work should have never been accepted. There was a PBOT employee dedicated to reviewing and accepting the quality of that work, and they failed miserably. From design through construction, this is bad job. It would naot take any more money to this well or correct, it just takes care and intention.
I don’t blame the vendors for parking in the bike lane to set up their stuff: they’ve done it for 50 years at this point and there’s no other good zone to do so.
I also don’t blame cyclists for getting annoyed at this: we shouldn’t have to deal with regular blockages on our transportation arteries.
Rather, I direct my annoyance to PBOT. Either they knew or didn’t know about this arrangement beforehand, and neither option is a good look for them. If they didn’t know, then that’s a stunning lack of competence and due diligence on their part before spending all this money on the Better Naito project. If they did know, then it speaks volumes about how much the people there actually care about encouraging alternative transportation; they should have added both a loading zone and a bike lane with the project to alleviate the conflict.
The proper spelling:
Bike* infrastructure.
Since this decision, it seems like nearly 30 bollards at this location are no longer in place – compared to approximately four missing bollards across the rest of Naito.