“Where are the downtown protected bike lanes? I was surprised by how disconnected it all was.”
– Tom Fucoloro
Tom Fucoloro has tracked Seattle’s cycling politics, projects, and people very closely since he launched Seattle Bike Blog in 2010. Last year his book, Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from Behind the Handlebars was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.
Suffice it to say, Fucoloro knows a bit about what it takes to create a good urban bike network in a Pacific Northwest city. And after a recent visit to Portland it’s clear he doesn’t think our city is up to snuff.
To be clear, Fucoloro and his young daughter had a wonderful time. A recap of their trip on Fucoloro’s blog shares much of the magic that makes Portland such a cool place: bombing downtown from the Zoo in Washington Park, discovering public art, playing in our parks, and riding bike-friendly bridges across the Willamette River.
But when it came to riding downtown with his soon-to-be first grader, Fucoloro was not impressed. “Where are the downtown protected bike lanes?” he wondered. Since his last visit to Portland seven years ago, Fucoloro wrote that, “I had assumed the city would have built some proper protected bike lanes through the downtown core in those years.” He added that in the past decade, planners and advocates from Seattle were inspired by Portland and used that inspiration to build a network of protected bike lanes through their downtown core. “Has Portland forgotten its own lessons?” he asked.
He gave us kudos for NW Naito’s protected bike lane. But as we all know, one great facility does not a network make. Our wide, green bike lane couplet on SW Harvey Milk and Oak are nice, Fucoloro found, but they have no physical protection and therefore, “there was pretty much always someone parked in the bike lane,” he noted. Even SW Broadway only provides protection in one direction.
“I was surprised by how disconnected it all was, and we ended up biking in mixed traffic or walking the bike on the sidewalk at some point on nearly every trip we took around downtown,” Fucoloro wrote.
A few commenters on our Monday Roundup (where we shared a link to his blog post) agreed.
“I largely agree with Tom’s assessment,” wrote commenter dw. “Where are the protected bike lanes? Every street downtown should have nice, two-way protected bike lanes to make getting around by bike as easy as walking or driving.”
And Anomalee added, “As a working class person who can’t really afford a car, it’s really disheartening and infuriating to see how bad downtown is for biking. I guess it’s just one example of the broader problem we’re up against, a handful of good infrastructure projects here and there but no connected network.”
As I processed all this, I recalled an opinion piece I wrote in January 2013. Here’s the lede:
“The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is prepping a $10.2 million list of active transportation projects they hope to get funded through a federal grant. According to sources at PBOT, conversations have already begun to focus all that money on a package of projects that would focus specifically on downtown bike access in the form of protected bike lanes and cycle tracks.
This is a golden opportunity we should not pass up.”
And we didn’t pass it up. A year later advocates jumped on board with a lobbying campaign from The Street Trust (then known as the Bicycle Transportation Alliance). By 2016 PBOT had support from City Council, strong backing from the community, and a bucket of funding filled with $8.4 million to implement what would eventually become known as the Central City in Motion plan. And according to PBOT CCIM Project Manager Gabe Graff, that money was set aside to, “preserve and enhance the pedestrian environment, preserve and enhance the transit access, at the same time we fill in a more comfortable and protected bicycling network.”
In 2016, Graff said downtown Portland was doing fine when it came to transit access, walkability, and driving convenience. “But cyclists coming across the bridges from the east side into downtown Portland feel like the infrastructure is not as intuitive, is not as comfortable,” Graff said.
Eight years ago, Graff shared a similar assessment about bicycling downtown that Fucoloro experienced a few weeks ago.
So what happened?
As Portland loves to do, we first formed a committee and then created a plan before we could spend $8.4 million on new bikeways. That took time. In fact, it took nearly six years from the time PBOT first began working on the concept in earnest to when City Council adopted the CCIM Plan in November 2018. (A staffing problem with the original project manager likely hurt the timeline.)
It’s important to note that around this time there were two approaches to reforming our streets being forged simultaneously by PBOT planning staff: protected bike lanes and dedicated bus lanes. While I always felt Central City in Motion was intended to be bike-centric, it ended up with several priority bus lane projects on its final list. But bus lanes also had a plan of their own, Enhanced Transit Corridors, which was adopted by council in June 2018.
Then politics shifted even more in the favor of bus lanes two months later when Chloe Eudaly began her turn as commissioner-in-charge of transportation.
Eudaly and her staff looked at PBOT and saw two plans, both of which were fully baked and ready-to-go: one was bike-centric, the other was bus-centric. They chose buses. Why? Because, in the words of Eudaly’s policy director Jamey Duhamel, “[Transit] was the issue that was most complementary and intersectional with our social, environmental and economic justice issues; and so we really went big and bold for increasing transit service.”
Eudaly went all-in on the Rose Lane Project in late 2019 with an intentional focus on using buses to combat racial disparities, and it was adopted by city council a few months later.
It wasn’t until February 2020 that Eudaly began to focus on cycling. But then Covid happened and later that year Eudaly lost her council seat to Mingus Mapps.
With a pandemic raging, nightly protests following the murder of George Floyd, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and a stark increase in unsheltered homeless on the streets; it’s easy to understand why building a safe and convenient network of protected bike lanes downtown hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. But a lack of priority doesn’t explain everything. The CCIM plan itself simply isn’t building the type of protected bike lanes some of us hoped it would because it includes all types of treatments and projects.
Of the eight completed projects listed on PBOT’s website out of the 18 total projects recommended in the plan, just two are protected bike lanes (Better Naito and NW/SW Broadway). CCIM projects include traffic signal timing and upgrades, bus lanes, neighborhood greenways, crossing treatments, paint-only bike lanes, and so on. Those are important things, but each one of them means less focus on a connected network of protected bike lanes. And keep in mind, CCIM was passed just two years after we detailed the myriad reasons PBOT has had trouble building physically protected bikeways in constrained environments like downtown.
But there are reasons for optimism! After the huge success of Better Naito and the rescue of SW Broadway’s protected bike lane from the jaws of PBOT Director Millicent Williams and her former boss Mingus Mapps, PBOT is now working hard on the SW 4th Avenue protected bike lane project. SW 4th was always meant as the northbound couplet of Broadway and it’s addition to the network will create important connections. I hope that project creates urgency for protected bike lanes on W Burnside leading onto the bridge, a project that’s in the plan but remains unbuilt.
We need as many protected lanes for bicycle riders as possible. Because Fucoloro is right. The combination of our huge investment and decades-long focus on the neighborhood bikeway network and our legacy of a strong cycling culture, means a high-quality protected network downtown would be “an instant success.”
“It feels like Portland has done all the hardest parts,” Fucoloro writes. “And then has failed to actualize that previous work by plugging it into a network of routes people can use… Come on, Portland. Stop resisting your city’s bike successes and choose to embrace it instead.”
Thanks for reading.
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I’m excited for the 4th Ave bike lane, despite the extremely suboptimal left side alignment. But we should have multiple similar projects underway at once. Implementation of ccim is too little too late.
Build out of PBOT projects is painfully slow for reasons I don’t understand. Funding for the repaving of SW 4th was included in Fix Our Streets 1 in 2016. CCIM passed in 2018, with SW 4th identified as a Year 1 to 5 plan. SW 4th should be finished by late 2025. A lot of the other Year 1 to 5 projects have yet to start design, and only a handful of the Years 6 to 10 projects have a chance of being complete during this timeframe. The incredibly slow process has real impacts; the 2018 costs associated with these projects now seem laughably low. Had we prioritized moving these forward sooner we’d be in a better position to afford them.
Because…Idea/Brainstorming Committee >>> Development/Planning Committee >>> Environmental Concerns/Impact sub-committee >>> DEI sub-committee >>> Legal, State, and Federal compliance sub-committee >>> Lobbyists seeking federal and state money >>> All committee/sub-committee members fact finding trips to Europe and lobbyist travel to DC/Salem >>> [Wildcard! Pandemic or economic recession pushes project back two years] >>> Repeat all above as “the world has changed”.
10-12 years later, PBOT cuts the ribbon on an entire FOUR CITY BLOCKS of car-free protected path/green paint while bike advocates swoon over this “game changer” and now PBOT can do nothing while riding 2-3 years of goodwill thanks to this triumph.
I’m glad Portland doesn’t have any downtown bike lanes as dysfunctional as the protected 2nd through Seattle, though I fear we’re going to build one on SW 4th north of the Hawthorne Bridge.
I’ve always felt that downtown is a great place to ride because the traffic moves slowly and you can just take a lane and easily keep up.
Traffic doesn’t slowly outside of rush hour. Hang out on SW Market or SW Clay at 10pm and tell me that’s a great place to ride.
Those aren’t necessarily the best streets to ride on at any time of day. Maybe we should put protected bike lanes there rather than on the good riding streets like SW 2nd and 4th north of the Hawthorne Bridge.
i agree with you (re: riding in slow downtown traffic) but I have a feeling a lot of people don’t feel safe doing that.
Awesome carmen! And that is the major difference between a lot of people here and people like Watts. The understanding that it’s not just you (and your personal preferences) on the road, and that the overwhelming majority of people who would ride if it were safe, are not going to without that basic shift in understanding, and development of empathy toward others.
Our culture is finally shifting from the “But I feel fine with cars! You and your 12 year old should too.” to “Oh, yeah, there’s kids and people with disabilities and old people who want to ride too.”
In places like NYC and Montreal, these sentiments are well defined, and the vehicular cycling debate well dead. Here, not so much.
Respectfully, I think that’s only true for confident bicyclists like yourself and many others. I have a lot of bicyclists in my life who don’t feel comfortable biking with traffic downtown. Not to mention, every time I try it I seem to have a negative interaction with a driver, whether it’s the driver cutting me off, zooming too close around me, or yelling at me through the window. If we want people from 8-80 to be riding downtown, we need more protected bike lanes and separated paths to make it happen.
I like riding my bike downtown too, and don’t have an issue sharing the streets with cars… It’s mellow because traffic goes slow and there are usually 2-3 lanes. I do it all the time and haven’t had a bad experience (yet). It’s one of my favorite places to ride. Cars / drivers are pretty accommodating. That said, I wouldn’t want my kids to do it. But for an adult with a license who understands the rules of the road, it’s chill.
The primary advantage of bike lanes is that it lets motor vehicles go faster.I think every street within the freeway loop should be safely shared with bicycles. Drivers should just expect to travel at bike speeds. It would make it safer for everybody, including pedestrians.
While the cars should go at slower speeds, would this be a bike network you would trust your 12 year old to bike on? Bike routes should be safe for everyone – not just capable cyclists
In an environment where drivers are going slow, why would you expect a 12 year old to be at greater risk than a more experienced cyclist?
in what environment would a 12 year old not be at greater risk than a more experienced cyclist?
I would not expect a 12 year old to be at appreciably greater risk from drivers on SE Clinton, to pick one example among hundreds. I suppose they might be more likely to crash into a tree.
Well, in my experience, Seattle’s rush hour traffic is so bad that walking is faster – so bike lanes there would be nice because they would let bikes go faster.
(Also, why does anyone there drive to downtown when any other mode of transportation would be faster?)
For Seattle residents driving alone is quite rare compared to Portland. Not so from , anywhere in Snohomish, Peirce or East King counties etc where driving downtown is WAY faster than anything else..
But the Seattle region for decades, now, is investing heavily in rail that, unlike Tri-met, goes to the center of each population center.
Portland isn’t keeping up in so many areas, not just bikes.
Our rail has always been designed for cheap land procurement and the envisioned increases in density around the stops have not materialized due to our glacial permitting process burdened with onerous rules crammed in for various social justice reasons.
IMO it is this obsession with social justice which just saps the energy, focus and practicality of proposed solutions, as can be seen in Eudaly’s behavior in this article.
Name one. Come on, lets not beat around the bush.
How about the unwritten rule that allows one family from a sufficiently oppressed class to force already installed bike lanes to be removed?
This is so laughably wrong, I don’t even know where to begin. Yes, there are huge reasons as to why Sound Transit’s system is better than Portland’s, but it’s a freeway running parking oriented system with an astronomical budget that diverts in a few locations to major centers (almost always employment rather than residential). The primary thing Seattle has going for it is the downtown transit tunnel, and the choice to serve Cap Hill + U District heading north from downtown. Most other choices line up more closely with Portland’s choices to put the trunk line along I-84, or lines along US 26/OR 217, and along Interstate Ave. How can anyone look at the plan for Sound Transit into Pierce County and think they are serving each population center? Or between UW and Everett? I think the plans are pretty good, but be real about them – they are a huge compromise too.
Line 1’s initial segment opened in 2009. Does Seattle get credit for waiting 30 years to open a similar-ish system to Portland? If they are building a lot now, some of that needs to be contextualized in what hasn’t happened historically.
Downtown transit tunnel: Portland desperately needs one. It shouldn’t take 30 minutes to cross downtown.
PS. With the result of Portlands foolish virtue signalling approach that it is harder than ever for minorities and poor people to get around without a car.
Uhh, I ride 40-50mi loops from SW-SE-NE-N-NW-SW all on bike lanes, greenways and car free zones. This guy should maybe look at Ride With GPS or something. I would say, for out of towners, so many of signs are missing or spray painted over that it’s easy to get confused. Speaking of spray paint, hey graffiti artists, isn’t the code “don’t tag over someone else’s art”? Why am I riding under Tillikum bridge and seeing a shitty tag on a permanent art display built by a local artist. Know the code!
or better yet, become a real artist instead of a pretend one.
There’s no codes among vandals as they have no honor
The story is about downtown, not a 40 mile loop around the city.
Our bike infrastructure also got a terrible review from a guy from Copenhagen back in 2015.
Historically I remember Portland having a better bike network than Seattle, though I think Seattle is catching up or even surpassing with their semi-recent protected bike lanes downtown (though isn’t there only like 2 of them?), and they have the nice waterfront bike paths.
Though at least as of 2019, they seemed to be a bit deficient in downtown bike lanes, meaning I had to just take the lane in many directions (like heading east from downtown), which would be fine I guess, except the rush hour traffic was so bad that walking is faster. Would’ve been nice to have a bike lane so I could bike at normal speed without all the cars in the way.
I don’t understand the complaint about our Broadway bike lane only being in one direction – Broadway is a one-way street? It’s a nice improvement, though too late for myself and a couple of my friends (all of whom have been hit in that bike lane on the way into work).
What major US city is now considered “state of the art” in bicycle infrastructure and connectivity?
At one point that was Portland, but now there are so many others that are far better. I see lots of write ups of tiny university towns like Boulder, Charlottesville, Davis, and so on, but they are all small potatoes. Canadian cities are interesting, but they aren’t actually in the USA and federal oversight in Canada is virtually nil.
Boston feels like it’s rapidly closing the gaps in its network. Downtown Boston is pretty well covered with protected bike lanes.
I appreciated the tone of Fucoloro’s post. Not mean, just pointing out observations. Obviously he and his kid had a lot of fun. It was encouraging, which is something we can use.
I would love to see an end to new striping for unprotected lanes. All that green paint takes labor – which should be redirected as much as possible to protective infrastructure. Not to mention, it reeks.
If we can only get 1/10 as much, that’s fine, we would still be building valuable assets for cycling. As other people like to point out, we can ride on almost any street already. There are lots of sharrows and unbuffered lanes that act as window dressing and mask the reality that they do nothing to improve safety.
What do you all think is a minimum level of protective equipment?
the green paint smells so bad esp in the hot sun. when naito got repainted this summer, i was so bummed. what a waste of time and money — i can’t believe the condition it was in (really great) warranted a repaint.
PBOT stated on their Instagram post about the Naito repainting that it was done at no cost to the city under warranty by the original installer. Apparently the installer did not paint it correctly the first time and it had worn away faster than expected.
I think they were missing that “new bike lane smell” that we all like so much.
Agreed csghor. That’s a difficult question to answer in general. To be frugal with limited funds and to actually add to the functional, all-ages network, I’d hope that PBOT would prioritize hardening intersections first. One thing that I found effective in NYC were there phased approaches. First put in paint and plastic bollards and/or boulders (yes actual boulders), to make the space clearly separate from where cars can go (as well as narrow crossings for peds). Then, tweak those designs until they make sense and the capital project money comes in. I very much wish PBOT felt more comfortable using ad hoc objects such as boulders more often.
Fucoloro is spot on, lack of a connected, protected downtown network was a big disappointment during my first visit to Portland. Even when/if Central City in Motion was fully built out, it does not go far enough. A few years ago, I listened to Vancouver BC’s staff talk about while they built out a network of greenways and other projects outside of downtown, it was only after they built a protected bike lane network there that ridership doubled. Appreciate Maus laying out what happened though and how things got derailed.
I worked in Seattle during the summer of 2009, and rode my bike all over town. I found it an interesting comparison to Portland. I think I might have written a post on the forum about it.
It seemed to me that Seattle had relatively fewer bike lanes, which I found to be inconvenient.
There were a number of bike paths, though, including one famous long one that was well-used and pretty useful, though kinda crowded and slow.
Seattle had several of what I guess we now call Neighborhood Greenways. They didn’t really go where I needed, but were low stress.
So at the time, I thought it was interesting that the two cities had prioritized different kinds of cycling facilities:
Seattle favored multi-use paths and Portland favored bike lanes.
Both cities had a wide variety of quality of path, but Seattle’s seemed less useful to me: if my destination was near the Burke-Gilman Trail, it was a chill ride. If my destination wasn’t, I was going to have to be creative, and likely ride on a busy street.
Portland had a better baseline: even if the best facilities nearby were just bike lanes, I could just about always count on finding a bike lane nearby. That bike lane network had a critical amount of interconnection that allowed a lot of different kinds of trips, while Seattle’s system was better for a few kinds of trips and way worse for a lot of other trips.
I haven’t ridden there in a long time, so I can’t update my comparison.
I moved from Portland to Seattle in 2001 and commuted by bike in Seattle through 2008. Portland was much better then. Based on a recent trip, I think Seattle is catching up. The 2nd ave protected lane is a bit a head scratcher for me, because 2nd was always a pretty nice street to ride (IIRC, it had a paint bike lane all the way from lower Queen Anne to the stadiums from the time I moved there).
My complaint with 2nd is every time I ride on it I catch a lot of red lights, and with all the phasing required to make the bike lane work, it takes an awful long time for that green light to come back around. So riding on what should be a pleasant downhill cruise is instead a maddening series of starts and stops.
That and all the drunk people stepping into the bike lane at night and no way to evade.
Yeah, 2nd Ave wasn’t at all a head-scratcher for those of us still living here.
https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2014/08/30/mother-killed-on-2nd-ave-was-attorney-who-helped-bring-down-dont-ask-dont-tell/
Thanks for the context, Eli. Whatever ones opinion of the 2nd Ave. lane in particular (I’ve only seen it from my car) I’m glad to see significant improvements all over town.
Being in Los Angeles, I hate protected lanes. Personally, I feel like a secondary road user pushed off the main thoroughfares because of bully’s and fear mongers. I’m sorry we are scared for our lives, but letting the terrorists win… Isn’t actually a victory for cyclists. Heck, cyclists out here are expected to literally go out of our way to use a bike infrastructure that is anything but convenient for commuting. It’s time to claim our rightful place on the roads, and not pushed off of them, even if it is our own little bike lane separated from the main thoroughfare.
The existence of a bike lane does not prevent you from using other parts of the street. A lot of people prefer protected bike lanes. The diversity of opinion illustrates the difficulty of designing a bike network.
Actually, legally it does, with some exceptions. That law should change, so protected lanes can be built for people who want to use them, without forcing those who don’t into them.
I did not know this. Seems nuts to me — the law should be changed.
Here’s another Oregon law that needs changing:
814.430 Improper use of lanes; exceptions; penalty. (1) A person commits the offense of improper use of lanes by a bicycle if the person is operating a bicycle on a roadway at less than the normal speed of traffic using the roadway at that time and place under the existing conditions and the person does not ride as close as practicable to the right curb or edge of the roadway.
Thanks for the info! What is the penalty for improper use of lanes by bicycle? How are sharrows envisioned in relation to this law? From the Oregon Bicyclist Manual:
Frequently it is eminently practicable to ride significantly to the right of sharrows….
In Oregon, if there’s a bike lane, bike riders are required to use it.
Tell this to the tens of thousands of advocates building people protected bike lanes across the country. Your specific view is that of “vehicular cycling,” most personified by John Forester and a few people here including Watts below.
“We should all claim our rightful place on the roads!” works only for a few percent of the small number of people currently cycling, and in so proposing such an ideology assumes that others should wake up and just do the same. It’s similar to saying, “We should all just stop doing crimes!” without actually examining the cause of why crime exists.
The “I hate protected lanes” and “Stop bossing cyclists around!” philosophy is one that sounds liberating on the surface, and in reality just makes it harder for almost everyone else (e.g., people with disabilities, people that are young/old etc.) that wants to have space on the roads to get to work, and the store.
I think this is a really interesting conversation: what type of bike infrastructure to prioritize. Paint is better than nothing, but separated and protected is best. If we have to start with the minimum and increase protections, I think that’s a reasonable compromise, but there has to be follow-through on a schedule. That’s where electing the right people comes into play.
I’m also really fascinated by all the folks who prefer unprotected lanes or no lanes at all. I appreciate the perspective, even though I strongly disagree. Is there a better place to bike downtown than Better Naito, even with its minor flaws? Plenty of space to pass slower riders, no need to stop at a million lights, and best of all, no need to tangle with car traffic. The older I get, the more I value the peace offered in separate bike facilities.
But I want to offer some real talk to the anti-bike lane people: the infrastructure cannot be built for the fastest, most capable bike riders. It must be built with the median user in mind, and for a range of ages and abilities. The youngest, toughest, fastest riders should be able to safely pass slower riders, BUT I also want to see kids – packs of them – riding on streets together, and I want our aging parents to continue riding. I want to see parents toting their babies, I want to see couples out on dates riding side by side. That is the kind of environment I want the infrastructure to foster.
I got a look at the Seattle protected bike lanes in their downtown about a month ago, but I didn’t get to bike in them. They were incredibly inviting, though. I actually couldn’t believe how much road space they had, and I loved all the planters on the concrete barriers. That’s what I want for Naito, and for all future protected bike lanes in Portland.
Doesn’t that depend on the type of street? A small side street, or even a street like Clinton or Ladd’s is best with no paint or lane delineation at all. In my opinion, the same is true for downtown streets like 2nd and 4th north of Hawthorne, especially when they have a slight downhill gradient, or Madison leading to the Hawthorne Bridge (though a bike lane letting you slip past traffic during rush hour might be nice there). A street like SW Broadway that is slow but uphill (so bikes are slower) needs something (paint is probably sufficient given traffic speeds), and facilities with heavy and fast traffic like the St John’s Bridge would benefit from physically separated lanes (ideally at half-sidewalk level).
The reason Naito works so well is there are no cross streets to contend with, along with just a few other streets in the city. You could not replicate the Naito treatment along, say, SE 82nd. Naito is also great because there’s plenty of space and not many riders. It’s a little less pleasant when zippy e-bike riders coming in the oncoming direction are using your lane to pass a slower rider and you’ve got nowhere to go if they misjudge.
I think I have an unpopular opinion but even on side streets I think our current approach is lacking. Most neighborhood greenways in Portland have car parking on both sides and about 1.2 car widths worth of space in the middle. In practice you’re frequently getting vehicles coming at you that want you to get out of the way, or vehicles coming up behind you that want you to get out of the way.
Removing one or both parking lanes to install a painted bike facility would make the greenways less stressful and works great in other cities that give safety treatments to side streets, but I don’t anticipate PBOT or Portland cycling activists trying to go for that when there are still so many basics that need to be improved.
Of course we could actually keep those cars from cutting through the greenways as traffic bypasses but that would require installing way more diverters which also seems to be off the table, and that’s why cities like Seattle are now (in my opinion) more comfortable to bike in for transportation.
It would also increase traffic speeds, making the routes more dangerous, and with bikes over to the side, hooks would become a much greater problem, as would vehicles exiting driveways. And there will always be the need for delivery vehicles to stop, so the bike lanes would be frequently blocked, requiring cyclists to enter the traffic lane to go around them.
Requiring folks to do a little negotiation keeps everyone alert, and in my experience, at least, drivers are just as likely to pull over for me if I’m on my bike or in my car.
Perceived safety for some is not worth increased danger for all.
Today drivers on greenways constantly ignore the 20mph speed limit today and force their way past cyclists at speed when there isn’t enough space to do so safely. A well designed street with protected bike lanes on both side and narrow car lanes would still encourage drivers to stay slow and alert, but would put less confident riders in their own space from which cars (including delivery drivers) can be blocked with a curb. A well designed bike lane will force delivery drivers to stop in the car lane if they’re going to illegally park.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that replacing the sharrows on greenways with actual infrastructure would automatically be done with the worst possible design and dismiss the idea outright because of that. It should enable safety for all and not just “perceived safety for some” for the same reason that actual separated and protected bike lanes improve safety average riders everywhere else they’re implemented. I did say in my previous comment that painted bike lanes would be an improvement (I still think that’s true), but obviously protected would be better and I think still appropriate for greenways. Also, even if it’s just paint why can’t part of the design upgrade include enforcement against cars parking in the bike lanes? Or are we just giving up before we even get started on that too? Are the new paint-only (for now) lanes on N Willamette just giving perceived safety for some and increased danger for all?
If sharrows and “requiring a little negotiation” made it safe for everyone then this article about our lack of protected lanes wouldn’t even be a topic. Unfortunately that “negotiation” is usually aggressive SUV drivers shoving their way into wherever they want to be and intimidated cyclists deferring to them. Just because you’re a strong and fearless rider doesn’t mean that what works for you will get the “interested but concerned” people to feel comfortable and safe riding a bike for transportation.
N Willamette is a pretty heavy/fast traffic street that does merit bike lanes, perhaps even protected ones. Streets with light traffic and slow speeds simply don’t merit that treatment.
It’s not a topic for greenways; that’s your idea. I don’t think you need to be “strong and fearless” to ride on the side streets, at least not in SE and inner NE.
PBOT’s reluctance to supply diverters results in greenways that are attractive to cut through drivers. If car traffic were more strictly local speed wouldn’t be such an issue and we could dispense with the bumps.
I concede the point re small side streets. The neighborhood greenway system is generally good. I think they offer great connections to larger bikeways. Lowering side street speed limits and making it clearer that bikes have priority over cars on these streets would make them better. I’ll concede the point (mostly) on SE 82nd also, but only in its current iteration. In 10 years, it may be ready for actual bike infrastructure, and could have been ready for it now if the Rose lanes/bus priority hadn’t been the main focus.
But Tom Fucoloro’s point was about the central city’s lack of protected bike infrastructure. I strongly disagree with your assessment that Naito-esque protected bike lanes wouldn’t work downtown. In fact, painted lanes are proof of concept that a concrete-protected lane works there, and would work better than paint. The downtown Seattle protected bike lanes take up a LOT of space, and run down streets with intersections at every block, just like every painted bike lane downtown, and just like SW Broadway. It worked fine! I actually complained about the SW Broadway bike lane vs Naito in the summer because of the constant stopping/starting and weaving with cars, so to that end, you have a point, but the SW Broadway bike lane could and should be concrete protected a la Seattle, even with all the conflict points and intersections, and be better for it.
I will also disagree with you that 2nd ave downtown is fine to bike on in traffic before the bike lane appears after Alder. It may be fine for you and me, but it’s a relief to get in the bike lane, despite the fact that it’s on the left side and poorly maintained. And if it’s a relief to get into a crappy bike lane for me, I can see the lack of bike lane making most of 2nd a no-go for a lot of people (i.e. the median user).
So much of the bike infrastructure requires a lot of comfort with letting moving 1,000+ pound metal boxes get close to our soft bodies, you know? It would be nice to fully commit to making it pleasant and accessible to bike downtown for all ages/abilities.
We have at least one: SW 2nd. My complaint about that facility is that it requires me to ride in the left lane where I’m very nervous about being hooked. That’s never happened to me, but I’ve had at least one close call.
I realize some people love that facility, but in my opinion, from an actual safety standpoint, riding in the center lane is safer than being in the bike lane, at least until you get close to Burnside. I understand that makes some cyclists nervous, but, as with all things, experience helps.
We also have SW Oak/Milk that have a dedicated bike lane, and those are great. But they work specifically because they’re not Naito-like — the reserved lane is in the middle of the street, where drivers can clearly see you.
My experience in Seattle on 2nd has been that (drunk bar patrons aside) the lanes felt safe but the riding felt astoundingly frustrating (the opposite of our 2nd).
I do support physical barriers downtown in hotspots — coming off the Hawthorne Bridge, for example, or the shared bike/bus lane on the approach. Spot treatments tend to work better in the downtown environment than continuous facilities in my opinion.
Absolutely. People feel the same way when they learn to drive.
And it sounds like, outside of downtown, we generally agree on the level of bike infrastructure needed.
I appreciate your POV and others’ re not needing protected facilities, and that they feel like they slow you down. Spot treatment facilities would be better than nothing, if we’re talking about prioritization. I would hope that they would eventually extend to the entire lane through downtown though.
I like SW Oak/Milk lanes also, but they leave way more to be desired to me than the SW Broadway lane. I actually strongly dislike how having the Oak/Milk lanes in the center causes vehicles to weave around the bike lane, and I run into box trucks in the lanes way too often. It’s the same thing I dislike about Vancouver/Williams, honestly. Funny, I think we love/hate the same facilities for the opposite reasons. Fair!
Pros and cons for everything, but I would prefer downtown bike lanes that prioritized comfort over speed (as John pointed out below, Naito is zippy enough to be used as the “highway”) and logical connections.
I’m actually not a huge fan of Vancouver/Williams (they work for me, but feel overly chaotic), and I recognize that loading vehicles block the lane on Oak/Milk. If they instead stopped in the car lane, cars would be dipping into the bike lane to pass them, which would be worse. Car traffic is generally light there, and I’d prefer to choose when to merge rather than a driver who might not be thinking about me.
To clarify, my complaint about speed is with Seattle’s 2nd; ours moves at the same speed as all other downtown streets which I think is comfortable for most riders (especially where there is a downhill gradient). My concern about Portland’s 2nd is I think the lanes screen riders behind a line of parked cars, increasing the danger of being hooked by drivers making a left turn. I think they trade a perception of safety (protection from ramming from behind, a common fear but rare occurrence) for actual safety (new riders might not think about hooks, but they’re comparatively common).
I think a lot of the complaints about wanting another route parallel to Better Naito are coming from people who don’t understand that on a city grid, it doesn’t matter what route you take (in terms of distance) so long as you’re going closer to your destination. The distance is the same. So take the route that is longest/fastest/fewest interruptions. Nothing existing or in the works is going to beat Better Naito in that regard, so it will remain the most direct north/south route through the city, unless you happen to live somewhere in downtown. The thing that may be lacking is east/west routes from Better Naito. I’ve not really had trouble going east/west into downtown, although I’m not the elusive interested but concerned demo.
(There are other reasons to want routes parallel to Naito, such as having bike routes that let you ride near destinations, shopping, restaurants, whatever.)
Let me clarify my point: I’m not as interested in replicating the speed of Naito as I am the comfort of Naito. Every painted bike lane downtown would be more comfortable to use and just plain better with Naito-level protection. Fucoloro’s point was that the user experience was not as great in painted lanes, and I wanted to say that prioritizing infrastructure that doesn’t just serve regular commuters who are comfortable in traffic would make downtown way more livable and downright pleasant to ride to.
Taxi-cab (L^1) norm FTW!
I agree with how disconnected & illogical most of the dedicated bike lanes are. They don’t make sense to me as a cyclist, pedestrian, & definitely not a driver. As a driver, I have had to travel over an additional half mile to navigate around streets that are half bike lane & half one directional traffic the other way.. particularly in areas where bikes aren’t heavily ridden.. & these 1 way sections are often just one block long.. & once you throw all the construction blocking other streets.. why are they all getting permitted to block streets at the same time. Many improvements over the last several years have made little sense & sometimes significantly less safe.
As far as one directional bike lane use on sw Broadway downtown.. that makes plenty of sense to me.. it’s a 1 WAY STREET. I have seen way too many close calls due to cyclists going the wrong way on one way streets, not looking or paying attention.. often riding the wrong away, not even in the designated bike lane.
As for 2 way bike lanes Naito is pretty good but it’s all for not if the drivers on the road are speeding (regularly) & driving frustratedly & behind which may have something to do with the terrible changes they have made in recent years. With reduced amount of parking available, building new dwelling with insufficient parking, significantly piling on to the issues of transportation especially around the downtown core.
& I’m sorry to say, to ask us cyclists, this is Portland, with it’s rain & it’s hills, trying to force people on to bikes by limiting parking and routes won’t work.. not everyone wants to, or can change their clothes & or shower, or the additional time in their day to make cycling their go to mode of transportation.
.. it’s an add on.
“I have seen way too many close calls due to cyclists going the wrong way on one way streets, not looking or paying attention.. often riding the wrong away, not even in the designated bike lane.”
Why do you think this might be the case? If you were scared of being next to cars, where would you ride a bike?
“As for 2 way bike lanes Naito is pretty good but it’s all for not if the drivers on the road are speeding (regularly) & driving frustratedly & behind which may have something to do with the terrible changes they have made in recent years.”
Do you think people using shopping carts in the grocery store should act the same? Why are people in cars different? How do the changes to the road cause people in cars to speed and drive recklessly? Could there be other reasons?
“With reduced amount of parking available, building new dwelling with insufficient parking, significantly piling on to the issues of transportation especially around the downtown core.”
Why should developers (and taxpayers) fund free storage for private property?
“I’m sorry to say, to ask us cyclists, this is Portland, with it’s rain & it’s hills, trying to force people on to bikes by limiting parking and routes won’t work..”
I’m confused how anyone is forcing you to bike. Did someone say you had to use a bike somewhere or force you out of your car? When we build a street for cars solely, or a path for only pedestrians, could I say to someone, “They are trying to force me off my bike?”
I have a real hard time believing this was written by someone that has spent any time riding a bike in Portland or in any city.
Even though they speak of themselves as if they are a”cyclist,” it sounds like they really just want to make it easier to drive around in cars without being bothered with pesky two wheeled nuisances getting in their way.
And they touch on classic nimby Portland grievances: stop taking away my free street parking in places that I want to drive, stop building houses without excessive numbers of parking spaces, make it easier for me to drive my car downtown, bike commutting is elitist and doesn’t work for my specific circumstances, therefore no accommodations should be made for anyone that gets around by bicycle….
Are all of these types of comments written by the same person?
For those of us who bike just about everywhere, it’s good to have confirmation of the sense that the promise of Portland as a truly first class bike city has been lost.
Pointing figures won’t help, I tell myself. Direct action might. Like others, I keep riding anyway, a little less joyfully than I have elsewhere. I’m constantly reminded while riding and walking in this city that we are an American city, and that the automobile is the ragged king of the land here.
Disconcerting in light of the imperative climate change poses with greater persuasion every day.