6/20: Hello readers and friends. I am having my second (of two) total knee replacement surgeries today so I'll be out of commission for a bit while I recover. Please be patient while I get back to full health. I hope to be back to posting as soon as I can. I look forward to getting back out there. 🙏. - Jonathan Maus, BikePortland Publisher and Editor
Using tools available as commissioner of PBOT, Hardesty created a carfree plaza in a former slip lane at SE 72nd and Woodstock. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
“We’re just trying to bring all hands on deck to use every tool we have to to address the drivers for this kind of gun violence.”
– Stephanie Howard, Mayor Wheeler’s director of community safety
But not only did people who live in that neighborhood appreciate the approach (which included much more than traffic-related interventions and was a multi-bureau effort that included Portland Parks and the Police Bureau), it was also backed up by public health research.
Now Hardesty’s office must be feeling even more validated, because last week Mayor Ted Wheeler gave a serious nod to those tactics in his emergency declaration to combat gun violence:
“We will be expanding place-based interventions in neighborhoods that are caught in the crossfire of gun violence… these efforts will work with communities to identify environmental changes to interrupt gun violence. These interventions could include increased lighting, traffic diversion, or the use of non-law enforcement personnel to maintain positive environments in public spaces.”
In his Safer Summer PDX plan, Wheeler said his team will address gun violence with a three-pronged approach funded by $2.4 million that would include, “place-based investments… to address environmental factors conducive to gun violence.”
The best example in Portland of these “place-based interventions” is the new plaza that has bloomed in the place of a former slip lane on SE 72nd and Woodstock. In that project, Hardesty worked with the Portland Bureau of Transportation to reduce driving access in a location that had been the site of many speeders — who were all too often fleeing a violent act or in the midst of one.
This additional injection of political and financial capital from the Mayor’s office should raise urgency around the idea that the causes of — and solutions to — gun violence and traffic violence are often closely linked. Put another way, if we calm the streets, we calm the violence.
“In some areas it might be as simple as improving lighting at an intersection,” said Stephanie Howard, the director of community safety for Mayor Wheeler, in a phone conversation last week. Howard, a former trial attorney in the Denver, Colorado public defender’s office, said they’ll be looking to fund creative approaches to traffic-related interventions.
“This is a problem that requires all angles to find solutions to. There is no one approach that is the right approach,” Howard said. “It’s going to take every kind of intervention, and this really is about trying to find the most impactful interventions that we can.”
When asked specifically about Hardesty’s efforts in Mt. Scott-Arleta, Howard said,
“What we endorse wholeheartedly is collaboration to solve these problems. If bringing bureaus together that can play a role in this overarching problem is effective, which I think it is, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to bring all hands on deck to use every tool we have to to address the drivers for this kind of gun violence.”
We’ll watch this effort closely to see how/if street interventions materialize. For more on the gun violence plan and emergency declaration, see Mayor Wheeler’s website.
Cathy Tuttle and Bike Loud PDX Vice Chair Serenity Ebert talk with Heather Hilligoss, Rose Haven’s Program Director. (Photo: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)
Most of the Bike Loud PDX Portland ‘policy rides’ Cathy Tuttle has led so far this year have focused specifically on bike or transportation policy. Last month, for instance, Tuttle recruited Portland Bureau of Transportation’s signals manager Peter Koonce to lead a tour of Central City traffic signals, and the month before, the Parking Reform Network’s Tony Jordan gave riders the lowdown on Portland parking policy.
This month, however, Tuttle went in a new direction and tackled a subject transportation activists aren’t always directly involved in: homelessness and social services. It’s not as cut and dry as a ride looking at bike signals, but Tuttle thought it was just as important to show bike advocates what’s going on in this sector of Portland life.
Tuttle told me she wanted to connect the themes of homelessness and access to social services with transportation advocacy or city planning generally because cities are made up of more than just inanimate physical infrastructure. The network of social services and people working together to help each other make up the fabric of downtown Portland just as much as bike lanes, the Streetcar and MAX rails do.
“People are part of the city,” Tuttle said.
Portland’s Old Town has been a favored place for people to set up camps because it’s a hub for resources that aren’t available in other parts of the city. This became especially pertinent during the pandemic, when many social service organizations around Portland had to restructure and couldn’t provide the same services as they used to. Over the last few years, unhoused people have formed communities in Old Town and become a part of the neighborhood. This has become a hot button issue for people across the ideological spectrum, with some people using the prevalence of tents downtown as a sign of Portland’s rapid decay – a thought process I don’t find conducive to progress and thoughtful city planning.
Bike Loud aims to make Portland accessible without a car, which means acknowledging there are many people in the city who don’t drive whose needs can be overlooked in favor of accommodating car drivers. This group of people includes many homeless people, who – like all of us – should be able to access things they need without traveling very far.
The bike racks erected on NW Broadway to deter homeless people from camping on the sidewalk were unused.PBOT recently debuted the Couch Street Plaza in Old Town as a car-free space for the public to enjoy.
This is why it’s so painful for people when the city sweeps their camps and forces them to go elsewhere, cutting off access to services and a community they’ve grown familiar with.
Along with city-ordered encampment clean-ups, which have been revving up in Old Town in recent months, people living on the streets are subject to hostility from business and property owners. We rode past the unsanctioned bike racks erected on NW Broadway outside a building owned by Schnitzer Properties, which homeless advocates saw as hostile architecture intended to prevent people from setting up tents on the sidewalk (there isn’t demand for bike parking on that block). In contrast, PBOT’s new car-free plaza in Old Town, which we took a quick look at, provides a welcoming space for the public to enjoy. This is an example of how infrastructure can determine who is allowed to exist in a city – how public ‘public space’ really is.
At Rose Haven, an organization in the Northwest District a bit outside Old Town that serves women and children as a community center and day shelter, people who need some help getting around the city can get financial assistance for TriMet passes. They have a designated transportation assistance budget, which just shows how important transportation access is.
We spoke to people from Stone Soup and Sisters of the Road, both organizations that give people a chance to work in food service, which helps people with career training and allows for community connection. We also rode past service providers like Transition Projects, Blanchett House and a day storage facility, as well as P:ear, a program that offers homeless youth the very cool opportunity to learn professional skills including bike repair. Looking at all the programs that exist within about a 1.5 mile radius, I thought it was meaningful that all of them serve to fill some gap. People are in communication with one another, working together to ensure they’re able to serve the community the best they can.
“One organization can’t do it all,” said Lana Silsbe, the kitchen manager at Sisters of the Road. “We rely on everyone; we work together.”
DJs Slimkid Tre and DJKenoy kept the place rollin’. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
The bike racks at Irvington Elementary School overflowed last Thursday night while music from DJs soothed souls and a wonderful collection of human beings came together to dance in colorful outfits while enjoying a perfect summer evening.
And no, I’m not describing a Pedalpalooza ride. I’m describing Secret Roller Disco. Now in its second year, this weekly, free-fun phenomenon has boomed in popularity alongside a national surge in roller skating.
Started on a whim at the outset of the pandemic in spring 2020, Secret Roller Disco now has a large and loyal following that is ready to lace up skates and roll wherever organizers plant a pin on social media. After months of seeing Pedalpalooza and bike activism mainstay Ryan Hashagen (aka “Saul T. Scrapper“) roller skate on rides (he’s an amazing skater who can more than keep up with bike riders all types of terrain) I finally decided to take him up on the offer to see what was going on with this event.
It was so fun!
Just like many of the rides I’ve been on lately, Secret Roller Disco was able to breathe life into an otherwise underused public space (in this case, a school playground) by introducing tons of people moving together to music. Thursday’s event was their biggest turnout ever.
There were free skate rentals thanks to the Rose City Skatemobile and vendors selling treats and crafts. There was a photographer doing tintype portraits, a disco ball, absolutely slamming DJs, and even a porta-potty! People set up picnics and lawn-chairs to rest and watch kinetic visual feast. It was a very impressive spread for something that grew out of a text message between two friends two years ago.
Secret Roller Disco Accidental Co-founder Francesca Berrini.
“Accidental” co-founder of the event Francesca Berrini and her friend April Hasson are both well-known in the local roller derby scene. They’ve watched in awe as their desire to skate together for some healthy, socially distanced fun went from a “We should do this every week!” text, to an email list, and now to an Instagram account with almost 9,000 followers.
Lest you get the wrong idea, they didn’t want to keep it “secret” to exclude anyone, they were just being cautious due Covid concerns. But once vaccines came, concerns eased, and the secret trickled out.
Once that happened, “We were like, ‘OK everybody, come hang out with us!’ and it kept growing from there,” Berrini shared Thursday. “It’s been so joyful!”
Are you trying to make a statement? Is there any activism or larger message behind what you’re doing? I asked her. “No. This is just 100% a joyful, Portland thing. I wanted it to be a happy void, something good we could all experience.”
By that metric, they’ve definitely succeeded.
If you want to check out the next one, follow @secretrollerdisco on Instagram.
Tweens and Teens are embracing electric bikes for transportation, but it’s technically against the law.
By Hood River resident and cycling advocate Megan Ramey (@bikabout)
We are currently living through the next great transportation revolution. It may be difficult to see it while you’re in the midst of it, but the rapid development of the e-bike market – the development of the tech, the emergence of focused retailers, and finally widespread consumer adoption – is a market shift on the scale of the debut of the practical automobile a century ago.
Each of these major disruptions comes with promise, and with challenges.
From what I’ve seen, one of the most interesting new challenges with e-bikes are how teens and tweens have flocked to them. In the immediate sense, teens getting around town by e-bike instead of a car is a wonderful thing. Where we live in Hood River, Oregon, we see teens going to lacrosse practice, going to the waterfront to swim, going to school, and going to after-school jobs by e-bike every day. We lovingly call them “throttle kids” because they seem to prefer the Class 2 style bikes that can be powered via a throttle without any pedaling at all.
“All it’s going to take to have this conversation explode is a teen hitting a baby stroller or a senior citizen.”
Traditionally, all of those trips would’ve been in a car – either piloted by the teen, or their parents. I’m thrilled to see “one less car” each time these kids zoom by, and their parents will probably tell you how nice it is to get the time back from being a taxi driver. In the longer term, they represent a potential for a generation of kids to envision a life getting around in something other than single occupancy cars for short trips. A teen who grows up using an e-bike is much less likely to feel like an $800 monthly truck payment is 100% mandatory as an adult.
Now on to the challenges.
The short of it is that the legal system hasn’t yet caught up to the technology, so most people are just doing whatever feels right. Even in states like Oregon, where it’s illegal to ride an e-bike under 16 years old, there are no ordinances or fines for police to cite, making enforcement more or less impossible. In a practical sense, if teens are riding responsibly, there’s not actually a problem to “fix” here. But the teens who are handed an e-bike are not necessarily also trained how to ride in an urban environment, which means someone’s going to get hurt.
All it’s going to take to have this conversation explode is a teen hitting a baby stroller or a senior citizen, or just as bad, hitting a fixed object like a pole or parked car. Crashes like this unfortunately happen with non-electric bikes every year, but if it happens with someone who is under age riding an e-bike, the media frenzy would be harsh. We could see overly restrictive laws passed, police changing their enforcement stance, and a general public backlash that sets bike advocacy back decades. As always, it’s best to get ahead of the issue and create these laws in advance, and not in reaction to a tragedy.
In the long-term, Oregon’s e-bike-related laws should be modified to define the class system (we’re currently one of 15 states without the three class, tiered categorization system), as well as allow kids of all ages on e-bikes with some constraints. Luckily, we have a Washington law to copy-paste which allows kids and sidewalk biking for class 1 and 2 e-bikes.
For a shorter term solution, we need to educate our kids.
This fall, I’ll be coordinating an education and awareness campaign with the Hood River Valley School District and the Hood River Police, letting parents know about the existing law. The school district received the ODOT Safe Routes to School Education grant which funds a program manager at all eight schools. Through this program over the next two years, elementary and middle school students will learn how to bike and older students will learn empathy, etiquette and laws of walking and rolling for transportation. High schoolers will have the option to take an e-bike learners program and e-bike field trip. For any middle school students who pass a biking safety test and receive a “badge” for their bike , I would suggest cities adopt an ordinance to allow kids under 16 the privilege of lawfully riding an e-bike, which can be revoked.
Two weeks ago I had a meeting with Hood River Police Chief Neal Holste. He assured me his team will never pull over a suspected teen on an e-bike because officers want to be seen as allies and don’t want to cause trauma (and yes I’m aware he and I are both white and his assurances might not be as comforting to riders or parents of color). Chief Holste also acknowledged my fear that if anyone gets hurt (or worse) due to a teen on an e-bike, enforcement may get ratcheted up.
My daughter is 12 and rides our e-bike while we ride acoustic bikes. She can even pilot the heavy Urban Arrow cargo bike and loves the sense of accomplishment in hauling stuff that comes with it. She has been riding a bike for transportation since she was in kindergarten and I trust she will be ready to e-bike solo next year.
Parents, please spread the word to educate our e-biking teens and tweens so this amazing privilege continues.
A lone rider squeezed through an opening of the construction fencing on Saturday to cruise up the new bridge toward the Lloyd. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
“It’s really a dream come true for me,” Blumenauer said at the bridge this morning. (Photo: Taylor Griggs/BikePortland)
The opening of a carfree bridge across I-84 in Portland’s central city that’s named after a former city transportation commissioner and founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus is a very big deal.
The Lloyd and the Central Eastside will never be the same again!
And Congressman Blumenauer is ready. This morning, standing atop roaring freeway traffic he said, “It’s safe, it’s secure and it’s going to make a big difference for our community. This is going to be the next addition to a great network of non-motorized transportation. It’s really a dream come true for me.”
In addition to the standard photo-ops, smiling dignitaries and obscenely-sized scissors, there will also be a festival with 50+ booths, vendors, music, and all types of fun. And since this is Portland, there are several rides planned to and from the festivities.
Here’s a roundup of what’s going on:
Assorted event flyers.
Free Biketown
Biketown will offer a $20 ride credit for all trips within the boundary of NE Multnomah to SE Alder and 9th Ave to MLK.
Free Money
The City of Portland is working with Kuto to give away 1,000 $50 gift cards to anyone that shows up to support local businesses. All you have to do is download their app here.
B on B on the BB – 8:00 am
The wonderful Breakfast on the Bridge folks will kick things off by offering free coffee, donuts and welcoming vibes to all who pass (and are smart enough to stop and pull over). B on B has been slinging caffeine and conversation on Portland bridges for 20 years now and what better way to celebrate this big milestone?! More info here.
AfroVillage Bike Ride – 10:00 am from Biketown Station on NW Broadway and Everett
This ride will begin with a short (walkable) tour of Old Town to highlight Black history and share a hopeful vision for unhoused Black Portlanders. The ride will end at the bridge for the dedication ceremony. More info here.
Milagro Plaza Block Party – 10:00 am to 3:00 pm on SE Stark and 6th
The Street Trust and Milagro Theater will host a get together with drinks and music and decorations to get your bike ready for a parade to the bridge.
(Official event posters from PBOT)
Hassalo Plaza Block Party – 10:30 am to 3:00 pm Plaza at NE Hassalo and Eighth
Show up for coffee and snacks and get your bike decorated for a parade to the bridge for the opening ceremony. Then afterwards, come back to the plaza for a block party with a live jazz band and free bike repairs.
Aaron Appreciate Ride – 12:00 pm from south side of bridge
Friends of Aaron Proton Tarfman will meet and ride together to remember his life. Aaron was an ardent activist who wanted to live in a city free of cars. He would have been so excited to bike on this bridge! More info here.
Official Opening Ceremony – 12:00 to 12:30 pm at South Plaza
Hear remarks from Mr. Blumenauer himself, as well as PBOT Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty before they unveil the bronze plaque and cut the ribbon.
Bridge Architecture and Design Tour – 1:00 pm at North Plaza
If you are an urban planning and/or architecture nerd, you won’t want to miss this tour. Led by members of the design team, they’ll regale you with stories about the bridge design and its context in the urban setting.
Official PBOT Celebration Bike Ride – 1:30 to 3:30 at North Plaza
Learn everything you need to know about the future Green Loop on this 8-mile ride led by the City of Portland. More info here.
Depave Block Party – 3:00 pm to 10:00 pm at SE 7th and Sandy
As Taylor reported in her recap of the Complete Sandy Ride last week, Depave is planning a major green street project at the expansive SE Sandy/7th/Washington intersection. Come learn about what’s in store and take over your public space. There will be food, vendors, games, live music, and more. More info here.
Let us know if we missed anything and I’m happy to add it. And stay tuned for coverage from the opening.
View of the bridge from northeast looking southwest. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
“If you are looking to have a popular uprising against the bridge, Washington is probably the place to start it.“
Welcome to the Comment of the Week, where we highlight good comments in order to inspire more of them. You can help us choose our next one by replying with “comment of the week” to any comment you think deserves recognition.
BikePortland has run 14 “Comment of the Week” features since we recommitted to doing them earlier this year. Is it too soon to repeat a commenter?
No it is not, not when their comment is as good as Ross Williams’s.
We post a lot about the Interstate Bridge Replacement project, most recently last Friday with No one’s happy with the I-5 bridge project. And that’s a good thing? Your comments in response to the IBRP posts are an impressive show of knowledge and information—about bridge design, climate change, induced demand, and so on. But Williams’s comments keep jumping out to us because, well, he understands politics.
Here’s what Ross Williams had to say about the politics of winning:
I think [Metro Council President] Lynn Peterson’s list of “everyone” includes people whose support is necessary for the project to move forward and people who have the ability to prevent it from moving forward if they are unhappy enough with the proposal. She may believe, or at least hope, that the activists who oppose the design don’t fit into that second category. She needs to be proven wrong. That is not an issue of intellectual discussion but power.
Since most Oregonians rarely use the bridge the folks with the largest stake in the outcome are in Washington. So if you are looking to have a popular uprising against the bridge, Washington is probably the place to start it. Unfortunately opposition to tolls and light rail are far more likely to kill the project than concern about a climate change inducing highway expansion.
Thank you for that bit of realpolitik Ross! You can read Ross’s comment and the whole comment thread under the original post.
Free transit in Boston: Given how split Portlanders are on the idea of free public transit, I think it’s a good idea to read about how Boston is faring under the policy thanks to (relatively) newly elected Mayor Michelle Wu.
Bike thieves really suck: A Portland man who got an e-bike after suffering a traumatic brain injury only to have it stolen the first day he rode it (thieves cut through a pole!), is raising money via GoFundMe to buy a(nother) new bike.
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On Monday, July 25 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the northbound lanes of Southwest Naito Parkway between Southwest Morrison Street and Southwest Yamhill Street will temporarily close. A contractor working on the Morrison Bridge will need to put equipment in this section of the road while crews remove graffiti on the bridge. Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians will need to use alternative routes. The Morrison Bridge Paint Project began in January 2022 and will continue until fall 2023. For information: https://www.multco.us/morrisonpaint
On Thursday, Oregon approved the largest rollback to parking mandates in modern US history.
The unanimous vote by the state’s land use commission came through an unusual channel: an administrative action, ordered by the governor, that breathed new ambition into the broadly written land use laws that have gradually shaped Oregon for 50 years.
The law in question gives the state board the power to set land use rules that, among other things, “minimize adverse social, economic, and environmental impacts and costs.”
As Sightline has been arguing for decades, including in a new series over the last year, parking mandates create those costs. Lots of them.
Beginning January 1, 2023, Oregon is scheduled to do more to cut those costs than any other US state or Canadian province. In some situations—within a half-mile of relatively frequent transit, for homes of 750 square feet or less, and for homes meeting affordability targets—minimum parking mandates will no longer apply for jurisdictions within Oregon’s eight largest metro areas. This doesn’t prevent parking lots from being built, but it does remove the current prevailing requirements to construct a specific number of stalls: one stall per bedroom, for example, or three per 1,000 square feet of retail space.
Farther from transit, jurisdictions in the state’s eight largest metro areas will have more flexibility in how to gradually make driving less necessary. In all, 48 cities and 5 counties representing about two-thirds of the state’s population are subject to the reforms. By the end of June 2023, the affected cities and urbanized unincorporated areas will need to choose from a branching menu of options on how to manage parking. In every case, jurisdictions will be able to comply simply by making off-street parking fully optional.
The commission did decide to give the Portland metro area a bit of additional flexibility. Its regional government is allowed to come up with its own parking rules, but the state commission must sign off that they are at worst equivalent to the statewide rules.
After several rounds of delays to the reform timeline, the Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) unanimously voted Thursday for the sooner of two deadlines for putting the new rules in place.
“Science is dictating that we should be acting now,” said Barbara Boyer, an LCDC member and family farmer outside McMinnville, Oregon.
The proposal had drawn support from a coalition of 41 organizations that advocate for affordable housing, the environment, local businesses, and better transportation.
The new parking rules are part of a larger package called “Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities” that industry groups, including the Oregon Home Builders Association and Oregon Association of Realtors, oppose. Though those groups hadn’t singled out the parking reforms for much criticism, they objected to other parts of the package. Meanwhile, various cities have also objected, arguing that the new rules are too prescriptive and would take considerable resources to implement.
But assuming these new rules survive legal challenge, people looking to build new homes and businesses, or dreaming of renovating an older building, can look forward to deciding for themselves how much parking their property needs. In many cases, it will be the first time since the 1950s that property owners are able to do so.
What will this mean for other Oregonians? Probably not much, for a while. But as the years go by, here are five things they might start to notice.
1. Vacant buildings will come back into use
Employees celebrate the opening of Atlas the Restaurant in a newly renovated historic building in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Until Fayetteville removed commercial parking mandates in 2015, it would have been illegal to use the building as a restaurant without special permission. Photo: Atlas the Restaurant. Used with permission.
Employees celebrate the opening of Atlas the Restaurant in a newly renovated historic building in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Until Fayetteville removed commercial parking mandates in 2015, it would have been illegal to use the building as a restaurant without special permission. Photo: Atlas the Restaurant. Used with permission.
One of the most visible ways a passerby might notice the elimination of parking mandates is that formerly vacant buildings might quickly get a makeover. Even in small cities like Fayetteville, Arkansas, city leaders are keeping their local economy vibrant by eliminating parking requirements. Keep your eyes on these types of buildings:
Historic properties: Buildings constructed prior to parking requirements pose a particular problem for redevelopment. There is often no way these buildings can comply with modern parking mandates without a lengthy and expensive process to get an exception from the city. Oregon’s new parking rules bring these buildings back into play.
Change-of-use properties: What can someone do with an office building left vacant by a pandemic? Maybe not much, if the parking lot is too small. For decades, cities zoning codes have defined different parking ratios for nearly every type of business.Any time a property owner wants to change a building’s use, they have to check whether the existing parking lot meets the zoning code’s mandates for the intended new use. For example, a retail store might require more parking than an office, and a restaurant more than a retail store. With parking requirements out of the way, business owners who want to adapt will find many more properties available.
2. Businesses will start sharing underused parking lots
An unused parking lot managed by the Hollywood Vintage store in Portland, 2014. Photo: Michael Andersen for BikePortland.org.
How does eliminating parking mandates benefit the numerous half-empty parking lots that already exist? Now freed from parking requirements, owners of these lots can start renting out extra space, creating a virtuous cycle that keeps money in the local economy.
These arrangements are already happening in Ecorse, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, where parking mandates were eliminated in 2020. Nani Wolf, the planning and zoning administrator for the city, shared a recent example where a developer hoped to renovate a historic building as an event space. There was no parking on-site.
The town did not legally require any parking, but the developer didn’t want to create a nuisance for neighbors. So Wolf helped connect the developer with an adjacent business with a large parking lot the new event-space owners could rent. “That made turning the obsolete building into a functional building possible,” she said.
The cost-sharing helps on multiple levels. First, the new owner doesn’t have to pay to construct new parking, saving them anywhere between $10,000 to $60,000 per space. It also lets neighboring businesses turn unused parking spots into rental income. This new market for parking spaces keeps money local, explained Wolf. Supporting and attracting new businesses is a top priority for Ecorse, which adopted a new zoning code after the town’s top employer, US Steel, announced in late 2019 that its plant would cease operating.
3. Projects will start construction faster
Mixed-use construction in Portland. Photo: Truebeck Construction. (Creative Commons)
In a city with parking mandates, you’ll be sure to find city planners hunched over their desks calculating how many parking spots each new building proposal requires according to the latest zoning code, then comparing that to the number of spaces in submitted plans. If the proposed building comes up short, there are sure to be follow up meetings with the developer, paperwork for variances, and often appearances before the zoning board or city council. That’s if everything goes smoothly.
“Parking is always the first thing that comes up with people objecting to the project,” said Nick Sauvie, executive director of the Portland-based affordable housing developer ROSE Community Development. When new development is politically contentious, a project might take months or years to win approval from neighborhood groups and public bodies.
A lot of this work can simply disappear once cities decide to get out of the business of inspecting parking lots. This can save time and money for both city staff and developers alike. As Oregon works to double its housing construction over the coming decades to alleviate its severe shortage of homes, reducing delays for things like parking will help.
4. Cities will actually start doing something about crowded curbs
In the West End neighborhood of Vancouver, garage spaces sat empty despite chronic shortages of curb parking—until the city raised the price of street parking permits. Photo by Gordon Price of Viewpoint Vancouver.
Spending less time micromanaging private parking lots will still leave city planners plenty to do. Now, they’ll be able to focus on a truly public issue: on-street parking.
In most of the United States and Canada, curbside parking is currently a free-for-all. If you can afford to show up alongside almost any street with a $10,000+ machine, you’re allowed to occupy that real estate for almost as long as you like, free of charge—no matter if a nearby resident, worker, delivery van, or customer needs it more.
Parking mandates address this problem with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Annoyed by crowded curbs? No problem, parking mandates say. We’ll just make urbanization illegal.
In some crowded places, meters and permits will also raise public money that can be used to improve walking, biking, or transit.
Meanwhile, in less crowded areas, the current free-for-all will continue to work just fine.
Because buildings take a while to build, Oregon cities will have at least a few years before the new rules have any actual effect on curbside parking. In the meantime, hope and expect that cities will start considering their options. The state land use agency says it’s eager to help with both cash and technical information.
“This is where the real work really begins,” state planner Kevin Young told the land use commission Thursday. “We’re not going to be successful if local governments aren’t.”
5. More parking lots will get built
(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
You read that right.
Despite all this, the Oregon of 2032 will probably have more parking spaces than the Oregon of 2022. The new rules put a few new costs and limits on the size of new lots and garages but mostly just within designated “climate-friendly areas.” And because cars will remain extremely useful, parking spaces will keep getting built whether they’re mandatory or not.
“I applaud the flexibility that this provides to the private sector to provide the parking where it’s most needed,” LCDC Chair Anyeley Hallova said Thursday.
To those of us who dream of quieter, cleaner, greener, freer cities whose public spaces have been fully reclaimed from cars, it can seem inadequate to just make parking optional. Meanwhile, to those of us who would feel imprisoned without cars and enough parking to make them useful, it can be hard to envision a world where cars are truly less necessary.
But parking reforms like Oregon’s don’t actually presume that a better world is possible. Their work is deeper. They allow better worlds to be possible.
To reduce dependence on the car, Oregonians still need to make it pleasant to walk and bike, to fund mass transit, to start neighborhood businesses, and to create homes and jobs near one another. If they can’t, then today’s parking reforms will have little effect one way or another.
Instead, what these reforms do is give Oregonians a better chance to do all those things. They give Oregonians new opportunities to succeed.
On Tuesday, BikePortland reported about the third attempt to build a new ADA ramp at the corner of SW Spring and 16th Streets, July 2022. (Photo credits: Southwest Hills Residential League)
The next day that recently built ramp was demolished.
The ADA ramp at SW Spring and 16th Streets was torn down Wednesday and will be rebuilt a fourth time. We profiled this corner the day before as an example of ongoing construction problems with new ADA ramp requirements triggered by the Bureau of Environmental Service’s (BES) Goose Hollow Sewer Repair Project.
In addition to the Spring Street ramp (above), the newly built ramp at the corner of SW Montgomery Dr and Roswell Ave was also demolished this week.
Newly completed ramp at the corner of SW Montgomery Drive and Roswell Avenue, July 12, 2022. (Photo credit: Lisa Caballero/BikePortland)
Corner of SW Montgomery Drive and Roswell Ave on July 20th. (Photo credit: Lisa Caballero/BikePortland)
BikePortland reached out to BES for help in understanding why these builds have been so problematic. Aaron Abrams, the Community Outreach Program Manager at BES responded this morning:
Thanks for your article about the ADA ramp at SW 16th and Spring… Work at this location has proved to be challenging for the City and the contractor. The varying slopes at this corner have led to some struggles in meeting ADA specifications.
Ultimately, completing work at this location is the contractor’s responsibility; however, the City is working closely with the contractor to make sure the ramps meet ADA specifications according to PBOT standards… The contractor is required to meet design specifications that comply with federal requirements for the ramps. BES will only be paying the contractor for finished work that passes inspection. We will not be paying for attempts that don’t meet standards. Ultimately, BES ratepayers will only pay for a product that meets federal requirements and has been approved by the City. We understand how this work has disrupted that location and are confident that as we work with the contractor going forward, work will be completed successfully to restore that corner.
Yesterday I happened by the Roswell ramp pictured above while crews were completing the form for the new concrete pour. A PBOT employee was present as the group checked the slopes of each element of the form. There was a surveying tripod across the street. Clearly it was exacting work.
I also noticed at both the Roswell Avenue and Spring Street locations that the initial design of a single ramp on the diagonal had changed in subsequent builds to separate ramps for each street, in other words, two ramps per corner. A Directive from the City Engineer addresses the one versus two ramp design issue:
The City’s preference is to build two single curb ramps at a corner, rather than one diagonal ramp. However, FHWA provides for a variety of curb ramp types and configurations. Constructing one diagonal curb ramp at a corner instead of two single ramps at a corner constitutes a variance from the City’s criteria and requires approval of the PBOT ADA Technical Advisor.
Some local groups feel dedicated space for buses on this stretch of SW Capitol Highway will have unacceptable impacts on car users. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
It’s also one of the only bus priority projects that has faced organized and sustained pushback from the neighborhood it would serve. Several local community groups oppose the project as planned and want PBOT to delay its implementation. Before we get into that, here’s what I learned at Tuesday’s meeting…
Why is this project needed?
(Source: PBOT)A portion of the Hillsdale Rose Lane project as viewed in the Remix application.
Because of the topography of the west hills, westside bus routes funnel through a couple of key passes, one of which is the east end of Capitol Highway as it connects to Barbur Blvd. Falbo explained that bus lines 39, 44, 45, 54, 55, 56, 61, 64 and 92 all travel this segment. Pre-covid, more than 28 buses per hour passed through the area during peak times.
The purpose of the Rose Lane network is to prioritize buses and street cars so that transit users move more quickly and reliably through congestion. Falbo emphasized that the Rose Lanes are an “interconnected system, and that improvements on one part of the network can have really amazing impacts and benefits with users and lines on other parts of the system.” Riders of bus route 44, for example, pass through Hillsdale on their way to Williams Ave in northeast Portland nearly eight miles away.
In a detailed Monitoring and Mitigation Memo, PBOT explained that it will be rolling out the Hillsdale project using a four-step approach: pilot, monitor, modify and make permanent. The traffic monitoring portion will include locations on both major and local streets. Although post-covid traffic levels have dropped 50 to 80 percent, Falbo made the point that “this is a good time to do a project like this, where people will have time to adjust their behavior as that traffic returns.”
The Opposition
PBOT faces some pushback on the project, but it’s likely to move ahead regardless. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
“There are some trust or credibility issues toward PBOT”
Observers beyond southwest Portland might find it puzzling that SWT and SWNI, two groups which in the past have been quite supportive of walking and active transportation, are aligned with this requested delay.
To better understand what might be the dynamic of the situation, I spoke recently with HNA member and bike activist Eric Wilhelm who explained that, “There are some trust or credibility issues toward PBOT. Neighbors have been complaining for years about cut-through traffic—years before the Rose Lane plan was even started—yet PBOT has not responded to the issues on those narrow local streets with no sidewalks.” Wilhelm does not support the petition for delay.
Other points of discontent I have gleaned from various zoom calls and exchanges over the past year include underfunding of the Southwest in Motion plan relative to other “in motion” plans and a history unfulfilled infrastructure improvements going back decades (for example, a never-built sidewalk along Capitol Highway between Sunset and Terwilliger).
As Falbo and others have noted, criticism of the project is coming from an area focused on the Hillsdale Town Center (where many businesses have signs in their windows supporting a delay) but that support for the project is diffuse across the city.
Even near Hillsdale, though, there are prominent transportation activists who support the new Rose Lane. Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) member David Stein, for example, just commented on BikePortland that “the Rose Lane project proposed in the area would be a marked improvement.” And the BAC has written a letter in support of the project.
PBOT is well-girded to ride out local objections to the Rose Lane Project. Their online materials are extensive and informative. With the Hillsdale project in particular, their March 2022 PBOT memo in response to questions from the HNA and HBPA was impressive in its thoroughness and detail.
The Pedestrian Advisory Committee presentation is the last of an extensive outreach effort made over the past year and a half. Falbo ended the presentation by requesting a letter of support from the committee, which they seemed open to providing.
