Last Friday’s post about District 1 candidate Terrence Hayes’s ‘War on Cars’ campaign email racked up many good comments.
A lot of them fell into my “do you want this home-run over center or right field?” category. The post was an easy pitch for readers who can make a case for cycling, and those comments were rewarded with lots of thumb-ups and COTW nominations. A couple of them were quite insightful (and popular, like this one from “dw”).
The one I decided to choose this week, however, surprised and provoked me.
Readers might remember Rob Galanakis from a BP post and video earlier this year about a road-rage incident which happened as he was leading a bike-bus of school children. So Rob is an experienced cyclist who walks the talk.
His comment this week about “war on cars” broaches a few thorny issues: the incompleteness of PBOT’s bike network; the fact that most of the city’s high crash intersections and roads are in a part of town that often rejects attempts to calm driving; how much say should neighborhoods have over city-initiated roadway projects.
Here’s Rob:
I somewhat agree with him. PBOT will refuse to install bike lanes, school streets, or modal filters/diverters in areas of SE that have a massive latent demand for biking (and many advocates). The size of, say, the Abernethy Bike Bus is a good example of what the minimum bike mode share would be when it’s safe. Instead, PBOT is spending tons of time and energy adding bike infrastructure in communities that don’t want it, with no plans to complete a network that would make it viable. The Outer Division change is a good example – good bike infrastructure that connects to an unusable bike gutter west of 82nd.
PBOT’s message cannot be “wait 30 years for us to complete a bike network that makes biking viable.” It’s ineffective and unjust. And counterproductive as it directly produces and feeds into (somewhat true!) narratives like this.
That said, he’s wrong about certain things like road capacity, which induce demand and only make traffic worse. And the cost of the actual car infrastructure that he says is needed to support drivers in East Portland, is impossible for East Portland to afford without massive, unsustainable subsidy from the rest of the city: the bike lanes aren’t making any of these big road projects expensive, it’s because the extensive surface damage, and complex crossings needed to support pedestrians across a river of high-speed cars.
Thank you Rob. You can read Rob’s comment, and some powerful home-runs, under the original post.
