Roger Geller has been the City of Portland’s bicycle coordinator for over 30 years. For most of that time he worked for a city that was a leader in his field. That’s not the case anymore and Geller has a plan to put Portland back on top.
In 1997, early in Geller’s career, Portland was the first American city to add color (blue) to bike lanes. 11 years later Portland was still an innovator, becoming the first US city to install bike boxes in 2008. Then we layered something even greater on top of infrastructure accolades: the best bike culture in the world.
Between 2007 and 2014 Portland was one of the greatest cycling cities in the world. What we lacked in ridership and bikeway infrastructure compared to great northern European capitols, we made up for with a cultural milieu so steeped in cycling it was the envy of Dutch planners and its tendrils reached anyone who spent time here. Industry, events, political support, economic development, advocacy groups, racing, media — the influence of biking was everywhere!
As head bike planner for the the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Geller was a key architect of that golden age. So when things started to cool off in 2014 or so (following a few years of shaky politics for cycling), Geller felt the shift. In a new white paper released this week, Geller wrote, “Portland’s bicycling strategy has not been producing desired outcomes since 2016,” — a notable acknowledgement from the city staffer largely responsible for that strategy.
“I think it’s really important for the city to demonstrate its commitment to bicycling by taking potentially disruptive actions.”
After a decade or so of stagnation and decline, there are signs of life for cycling in Portland. And Geller thinks the time is right for a local cycling renaissance.
At the Tuesday night meeting of the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee (Geller has been PBOT staff liaison to that committee to for at least 20 years) Geller unveiled a 14-page plan he calls, “a comprehensive program to immediately focus on increasing ridership.”
After painting a picture of cycling’s political heyday for a new crop of BAC members, Geller said, “And here we are today. And I can’t remember the last time I heard any elected official say something positive about bicycling. It’s kind of dropped off the map.”
To get it back on the map, Geller wants to act fast — maybe even circumvent the city’s typical approach of incremental, politically-safe progress. Geller’s thesis is that how we get around is simply a rational choice people make. And right now, more people choose to drive than to bike.
“So how do we get people to choose to ride a bicycle rather than to drive a car? I think that is our challenge,” Geller said.
A typical response to this is to build more and better bike infrastructure. At a rally outside City Hall in 2010, before Portland City Council voted to adopt the Bike Plan for 2030, advocates held signs that said, “Built It!” as in, “built it and they will come.” Even today the “paint is not protection” mantra remains strong.
“You can’t watch anything on TV during the football season without seeing five Bud Light ads over the course of an hour right? That’s the level of campaigning that I want to do for biking. That’s what I think we need.”
Geller acknowledges that great cycling facilities matter, but those can take years to design and install. “We don’t have time to wait to build protected bike lanes on every roadway where we want them,” he said. Instead, Geller wants to go big on marketing, lean on existing advocates and early adopters, make bold yet inexpensive capital investments, and organize mass bike rides that will convince people to hop on a saddle.
Here’s an excerpt from the plan’s introduction:
Portland has strong policies and plans to reduce motor vehicle miles traveled. But, unless there is a dramatic shift in local politics and culture, Portland will be unable to rely on similarly strong driving reduction incentives to encourage increased bicycling. Portland will instead need to rely on persuasive tools to re-elevate the possibility of bicycling, on providing compelling reasons to do so and creating opportunities for a new generation of Portlanders to discover the joys and benefits of biking in the city.
Portland needs to re-awaken an awareness of bicycling and its many benefits. A reinvigoration of bicycle culture will create forums through which bicycling can re-enter Portlanders’ collective consciousness as a desired transportation choice. Through multiple polls and surveys, we have clear indication that Portlanders are interested in such a choice8 . Here is where we need to summon faith in our product (bicycling and what it creates) and our policies that elevate it as a tool toward achieving our desired outcomes.
Geller knows talk of marketing and communications will rub some infrastructure-first folks the wrong way. But in his calculation, Portland’s problem isn’t a lack of good bike infrastructure. Our problem is that not enough people are using it.
“This might be a controversial statement,” he said at the BAC meeting Tuesday night. “But I think there’s really not much we could do more immediately that would create safer conditions for biking than just getting more people out biking.”
That’s the “safety in numbers” philosophy. And it works in practice. I’ve experienced it in places like Amsterdam where there’s no bike-specific facility to ride on, but it feels safe because there are people on bikes all around me. It’s also why so many people love Sunday Parkways or mass group rides during Bike Summer. And Portland has already tasted this phenomenon when bike traffic would spike during peak hours on streets like N Williams and NW Lovejoy back before The Decline.
How does Geller think we can get a massive number of Portlanders on bikes as “quickly as possible” (his words)?
His plan outlines six categories of action:
- All actions are to be considered in the context of how they can contribute to messaging about bicycling and the city’s intent.
- Capital and programmatic elements to display bold steps to both demonstrate institutional / leadership commitment and to get people to pay attention.
- Undertake actions that will inspire and activate advocates for bicycling, including opportunities for volunteering, proposed capital improvements and campaigns.
- Create an organized framework of rides to provide easy access to multiple ride opportunities.
- Initiate and execute a professional marketing campaign to promote bicycling.
- Start immediately with inexpensive efforts that feature rides, home-grown messaging campaigns and capital improvements.
He wants to hire a professional firm to poll Portlanders and figure out effective messages — then put them on billboards, run ads on social media, infiltrate all City of Portland communications with pro-bike messaging, and so on. And he wants the city to stop dithering and start doing. While large-scale capital projects with lots of curb work and concrete aren’t part of this plan, Geller thinks striping bike lanes in certain places and re-allocating lane space away from parked cars could be done quickly with great effect.
“I think it’s really important for the city to demonstrate its commitment to bicycling by taking potentially disruptive actions,” Geller said, in response to a question from a member of the public about PBOT’s reluctance to make driving less convenient (something that’s politically difficult, but imperative to influence choices).
Stop and note: This is a city employee saying he feels it’s time for his own agency to take “potentially disruptive actions.”
What does he mean by that? Geller, like many of us, is tired of PBOT plans gathering dust on a shelf. He used the example of Central City in Motion — a plan now 11 years old that still hasn’t reached its promise.
“Central City in Motion for example,” Geller said on Tuesday, “calls for bike lanes on 11th and 12th through southeast and northeast Portland. If we striped those bike lanes, eliminated a travel lane, or eliminated on street parking — whatever we choose to do — that would gain people’s attention and demonstrate a commitment on the part of the city to follow its policies and achieve its goals.”
Read that again. This is a leader who works in the same agency that removed a newly-installed bike lane because a few neighbors said it was a hardship they weren’t given proper notice about (by the way, it’s been almost a year since they were removed and PBOT has made no announcement about putting them back).
Once a project is in the news and people are paying attention, Geller says that’s the moment to deliver the message. For Geller, the message (which would have been professionally crafted beforehand and city staff would have been trained to deliver with confidence) should be something like: “‘Yes, it is important to us to limit driving for these reasons, or to encourage bicycling for these reasons.'”
Before your cast stones at Geller’s plan because it relies mostly on words and intentions, keep in mind he’s operating from the very reasonable assumption that the power of marketing and trends is the best option at our immediate disposal. It’s a pragmatism forged from three decades working in government under a dysfunctional political system (that is thankfully gone in six weeks).
“We don’t have the tools Copenhagen has. We can’t make gas $8 a gallon. We’re reluctant to make parking very expensive. We can’t have the registration cost of a car be 100% the cost of the car,” Geller lamented at the meeting. “So we don’t really have those strong financial tools that help with the decision making in those other places. So we have to find something else that resonates with people and encourages them to choose [bicycling].”
If Geller had it his way, he’d fund this plan with a $40 million budget over a few years. That kind of money, he said half-jokingly, would allow him to “run the Bud Light campaign for biking.”
“You can’t watch anything on TV during the football season without seeing five Bud Light ads over the course of an hour right? That’s the level of campaigning that I want to do for biking — both at the grassroots and a high-end, professional level. That’s what I think we need.”
— Read Geller’s plan – Bicycle Transportation Strategic Implementation Plan: Creating a comprehensive program to immediately focus on increasing ridership
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Thank you Roger for saying some bold ideas. We need to shake things up. Jonathan, I was wondering what you thought. In some ways BikePortland is that mass media messaging machine. This summer, between bikeportland and bike summer social media, I was flooded with pictures and videos of people riding and looking happy in Portland. What media would be the most effective? I do love seeing billboards on streets.
I think it makes a lot of sense and it jibes with how I’ve been thinking and talking. People tend to scoff at marketing, but it’s actually way more influential and important than folks think… But only when it’s done well! And the part about getting more city staff and programs to center bicycling… umm yeah, I’ve been wanting that for a long time but kept quiet out of deference for other crises for years.
I’ve been saying PBOT is in some major political heat for investing all that money and making all those changes in east Portland — only to have very few people riding in them. Roger wants to focus this campaign first in inner n’hoods, which I think might spark some outcry if this actually got funding. But I think he’s right on that and it’s a debate we need to have. I’ve said forever that we need to demonstrate success of cycling somewhere first, before we will be able to spread it around the city. And our best chance to demonstrate success are the inner neighborhoods.
Now, can a firm hired by PBOT actually come up w the right messaging? I’m very skeptical. Will the polling they’re already doing (as per Roger) really capture the mood of Portland when it comes to biking? Hard to say.
What I absolutely love about this is Roger was willing to step out, risk possible stress and pushback from the public and from his bosses at PBOT. This is the type of leadership we’ve been missing! And I’m here for it.
I suspect this is partly in response to the backlash in East Portland from investing so much time and energy on protected bike lanes on major arterials in an area where the land use and built environment simply doesn’t support biking as a practical choice for most people. Sure, it’s an investment in East Portland, but it is what the people really want or find helpful? Is it equitable if it’s not what the local residents really feel would serve them?
Roger is correct, in my opinion, to refocus on the areas of Portland’s inner neighborhoods that have the right mix of dense housing, main streets and businesses in biking distance, and useful bikeway network to actually grow the popularity of biking as an everyday choice. As long as this is paired with things like the Portland Neighbors Welcome proposal for Inner Eastside For All, so that more people of all incomes can afford to live in those neighborhoods, I think it is an equitable approach.
And I think he’s correct that “build it and they will come” has a lot of limitations. It probably worked up until a certain point, and mainly only worked in the inner neighborhoods, and was more viable when paired with a growing city, growing traffic congestion, heavy office commuting to downtown, etc that get people to consider non-car choices. But these days, more people work from home, people in inner neighborhoods have higher income and can better afford to own and operate a car, traffic congestion is not nearly so bad, and is more spread out throughout the day, and you can drive pretty much anywhere in the city in 20 minutes or so. So there’s much less incentive to think about biking in the first place.
Anyway, I think the idea of focusing more on creating a culture around biking, seeing it as a fun and healthy thing, is a great one, and it’s true that 10 years ago it was normal to see tons of people biking home after a big event and that is way less true now. We are “joiners” and there is a natural tendency to want to do what we see others do, so this is worth a try. He doesn’t really mention the “bike bus” phenomenon, but that is a good example of this kind of thing and how powerful it can be.
You wrote: “…traffic congestion is not nearly so bad, and is more spread out throughout the day, and you can drive pretty much anywhere in the city in 20 minutes or so.”
Hmm. Anywhere in the city? Hoping you can back that up with some facts, as your assertion does not dovetail with many Portlanders’ real-world experience. Driven on I-5 lately between the Fremont and Hayden Island after 1pm M-F? How about the Sunset? I-205 just about any time? Tried to drive from St. John’s to Beaverton or Milwaukie in under 20 minutes on a weekday?
Feels like there’s way MORE incentive now to go by bike just about anywhere, any time. I can accept the argument about the increase in WFH, and that the inner neighborhoods are alright, alright, alright. But without eyes on the real prize–the activation of cycling en masse in the ENTIRE city/metro area–I maintain that any plans by Geller or anyone else to truly transform the culture are destined to die on the vine. Maybe we need an approach of working from the outside (outer neighborhoods) in, instead of inside–>out.
The suburbanization of our society–more cars, drive through everything, sit on your ass, minimal effort, sameness–are poison to wholesale acceptance of bile culture. Transform this thinking, or at very least, disrupt it, and you have a pathway to a city and regional area flush with safe and convenient bicycle transportation options.
Hayden Island is technically in Portland, but the congestion going up there is almost entirely due to people driving between Portland and Clark County, and due to the lack of a “local” bridge to Hayden Island. Beaverton and Milwaukie are not in Portland, they’re other cities.
I was saying people can drive anywhere in “the city” of Portland in about 20 minutes, and I think that is more or less true. Sure, it might take 30 minutes in rush hour, or maybe takes a bit longer based on the destination. But your examples are regional trips, not city trips. And it’s shorter trips inside the city that are replaceable by bike.
This same suggestion was made by Roger when the Bike Master Plan 2030 was presented to the public. The at-large City Council, nearly all of whom lived in inner Portland, in reply then ordered the creation of EPIM (or something like it), knowing full well that the recently-completed Portland Plan and related Comp Plan called for greater equity in city services and prioritized East Portland specifically. Now that Portland’s City Council is elected by wards or districts, I’d say this suggestion, in fall 2024, is politically tone-deaf and DOA.
I hear you David. I think we need to have a debate about this issue so we can finally come to some working resolution where both sides feel valued and heard. I don’t think the current way we talk about inner n’hoods vs east is helping us be great.
But it’s never been about “both sides”, it’s always been about downtown getting the lion’s share of PBOT resources versus Southwest getting nothing (now ironically in the same District 4) versus the inner east side who usually got their fair share (now divided into small parts of Districts 2, 3, & 4) versus the poorer outer parts of the city who also got nothing – St Johns, Kenton, Cully, Madison South, East Portland, and Brentwood-Darlington – now the greater part of District 2, all of District 1, and part of District 3. Essentially, only those councilors who live within downtown and the immediate inner neighborhoods might go for Roger’s proposal, but you can count on all the others to actually oppose the proposal, and likely wonder why, after 10+ years of lackluster performance, Roger hasn’t yet been replaced by someone else.
I like it, lets do it. As with many problems, it’s not just one thing. Yes we should keep improving infrastructure – as it is, it’s not an irrational fear to be worried about a car veering into a paint only bike lane. But also it’s true that it’s a kind of culture problem. People just aren’t riding because people aren’t riding and it isn’t talked about. Cycling right now is very easy to do in this city with a little coaxing to get started.
I agree especially with the safety in numbers thing. This is why I’m particularly fearful of like, big empty country roads where cars should have plenty of room to pass safely, yet they’re not looking for cyclists because they just don’t expect it. They’ll expect cyclists if they’re constantly passing and being passed and you just can’t ignore them.
If Portland and PBOT was at all serious about getting people to bike more, they have a long history of “doing the right thing”, they just need to learn from their past successes rather than forget them immediately after. It’s not rocket science, lots of other cities do it right all the time. As much as “positive re-enforcement” might help get more people to bike, we need to make it a lot harder and less convenient for people to drive and park their vehicles on public streets.
The city needs to ban parking on all arterial and collector streets, and put in a city-wide parking permit program for all residential streets. For the sake of equity, the city needs to make the city as inconvenient and unsafe to drive in as they already do for people walking, bicycling, or catching transit.
The city needs to put in wrecked cars along every high-crash corridor – paint them bright orange or pink if they have to. I remember visiting several communities that put obviously wrecked cars and trucks in the middle of intersections and roundabouts and on highway medians, long-term, to remind drivers to slow down.
For every bike, pedestrian, or street project in the 1-10 year TSP, the city needs to lay out traffic cones, chalk marks, and small piles of gravel all along the route, to delineate the project and get the public used to the changes beforehand, plus it might get PBOT to actually do the project on time rather than delay it for a decade or two.
Go take a look at 33rd sometime and note the recently (and quietly) installed median that was removed before paving. The reinstallation of that island, I believe, precludes a modified bike lane design there. It seems that the hope is that 33rd fades into the mist.
That’s incorrect. The median that was there previously was too wide to accommodate bike lanes, and the new one was designed specifically to enable the bike lanes to be added. It was always part of the paving and bike lane project to replace the older, wider island, with a new, skinnier island.
I stand corrected! Now let’s see what else, if anything, happens on 33rd…
City-sponsored Critical Mass rides.
Decline in enthusiasm for bikes in the community seems to coincide with the most obvious, recent tipping point for gentrification. I think demographics have shifted.
I feel like it is because so many “white collar” people who use to work downtown are now WFH. I know my office, which has a large % of riders with really nice bike facilities, we’re only in the office 1-2 days a week now, so we’re not seeing a lot of those huge bike numbers during commute times like in Jonathan’s lead pictures
“WFH”
That’s definitely a factor that suppresses all modes, but cycling rates collapsed years before COVID, so it’s not the main reason biking went off a cliff.
I love to shit on WFH. I think it’s strange and isolating and I’m honestly not sure why anyone would want to do it. I think a bigger thing is, and I’ve said this before, the people that move to Portland now, for a while, just do not care about cycling. They moved here because it was cheaper than San Diego or The Bay or Houston or wherever. Phoenix’s climate is increasingly hostile to life…move to the NW. But that person from Phoenix, they didn’t bike commute, ever, and they aren’t going to now just because we have all this time. They don’t care. They grew up in cars, now they’re adults in cars, that’s it.
This is my understanding as well. WFH professionals from HCOL places who bring their high salaries and culture. Different from young and young-at-heart people who moved here for the existing culture BITD.
Yes. This.
Demographics in both workplace/commuting patterns and an aging populace have influenced the drop in bicycling in Portland.
If this plan intends to lean on those already riding regularly to help spread the word, it will need to recruit a large number of younger, hardier riders to take the place of the number of older adults who have “aged out” of daily riding for health and other reasons.
How to recruit?
Go to high schools and colleges and table events. Use social media to attract younger riders to the FUN of bicycling everywhere, especially in a moderate climate like Portland’s.
Sell bicycling to teens approaching driving age and push not only the financial savings, but the freedom and flexibility of getting around under your own power.
Bike Happy Hour is great, but it’s largely an adult event for those with the time and flexibility to meet up at a brewpub.
Create some bike-centric events at places that aren’t depending on alcohol sales to reach teens.
I love what Roger has done over the years to promote, defend and sustain bicycle riding in Portland. But he can’t do it alone. If you’re someone who rides daily and wants to share why, reach out to Roger at PBOT and see how you can lend your energy to the effort.
“gentrification”
Gentrifiers like myself and my neighbors ride bikes. The folks who left when we moved in most decidedly did not.
Right. Look at Alberta, the people on track bikes, playing bike polo in the 00s were 1st or 2nd wave gentrifiers. Of course when they get priced out themselves, they too cry “gentrification!”
When I lived over there, the Black family across the street (who’d been in the neighborhood since the 50s) were genuinely puzzled why I owned a car but chose to ride my bike to work, the store, etc.
I get the same reaction from my Slavic neighbors in East Portland. They are mystified that someone with a car would choose to ride a bike.
“were genuinely puzzled”
”mystified”
Sure. We all swim in those waters.
But what did they say when you explained your decision?
How did you explain it?
It isn’t as if bikeportland commenters are the only ones who have heard of limits, climate change, overshoot, etc.
I don’t know… do you often “explain” things like that to your neighbors? I will say that I definitely do not.
You would say something like that.
I do all the time. If one punts as you are suggesting you do then no one ever learns anything; you pass up an opportunity for greater understanding. And why are you putting the word explain in scare quotes?
Mostly to demark it as a term we’re discussing, similar to italics.
That, and the neighborly chit-chat evoked by Scott does not seem like the kind of place for explaining big issues, which, as you suggest, they likely already know all about.
That’s the kind of thing socially awkward men are often stereotyped for doing at parties.
Lots of gentrifiers ride bikes. It’s become very trendy and popular. But it’s a different scene, and they also have a greater choice to not ride bikes since they are much more likely to WFH and own cars.
Not nearly as trendy and popular as it was a decade ago, sadly.
I think that Roger has some really good ideas – I mean, he is a pro at this – and look forward to seeing what get more people cycling in the coming months and years.
The things I’ve learned that have really ‘sold’ me on riding my bike most of the time were:
1) If you’re going 2-3 miles, it’s probably the same amount of time as driving. Maybe faster if parking is limited.
2) Learning how to use gears to get uphill.
3) Riding a bike is really fun.
4) Learning some key bike routes and how to orient myself on them.
5) It’s cool to bike in the rain! Getting a little wet is fine, and for when it’s pouring you can put on rain pants and a jacket / use a rain cape. “There is no bad weather, only bad gear”
6) Drivers are, by and large, pretty respectful. There are a few real jerks, but you can generally avoid them by choosing a calmer route (see #4)
7) I get over the “bleh, I don’t want to ride” feeling within a few blocks.
8) Riding a bike is really fun.
Good list, dw! I’d just add: Ability to carry groceries, etc. I live about a mile from New Seasons/Fred Meyer/QFC/Division Hardware and if you know #4, they’re all pretty easy to get to by bike. About as fast as driving (#1) and certainly a lot more pleasant (#3 & 8). And Yet! While I have often times seen my neighbors at the store (and I’ve lived here for 30 years so I know most of the people on my very long block) I have never seen a one of them there on a bike, And I know some of them ride recreationally…seems like such a promising source of increasing bike trips. But how?
I live < 1 mile from a large grocery store on 122nd. I would never bike it because
a. I’d never feel safe enough around drivers in my neighborhood leading up to and on 122nd, and
b. I’d never trust that my bike would be still there outside the store when I was done
I used to walk, but that doesn’t feel safe either since Covid non-traffic enforcement caused my neighbors to go bat-sh*t crazy on the streets.
Agreed, but look around at the comments, no one really cares about East Portland let alone understands why most people would not consider biking for errands there .
I’ve found that when I express my opinion about why I don’t bike or walk some basically say “well then you are a coward”.
Yeah, such welcoming attitudes.
So, I drive my car everywhere, even the short trips as I no longer feel safe on the streets of Portland walking or biking. I’ve had just too many close calls. But I’m sure for some, I’m just imagining it all.
I’m sure you’re not imagining EVERYTHING. But I’m also sure you are amplifying a lot of your real experiences in your own mind via confirmation bias, combined with your own professed recent inexperience as a bike rider. (Otherwise, you wouldn’t make a snarky joke about needing to counteract what you suppose to be a profusely sweaty activity of riding a bike in pancake flat inner Southeast Portland with a shower immediately afterwards. Which is an assumption that, yes, one could easily make, but only if, like you, they ride so infrequently to begin with that they fail to realize the importance of inflating their effing tires on the bike that’s been gathering dust in their garage for the part six months, before taking it out on the road for a spin again!)
“….amplifying a lot of your real experiences in your own mind via confirmation bias, combined with your own professed recent inexperience as a bike rider”
.Wow, that is condescending. Do you think that approach is going to encourage more Portlanders to get on a bike? I don’t.
Apologies for being “condescending”, but you can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to admit that you rarely ride bikes anymore for routine transportation purposes, then I am going to point out that your recent and admitted INEXPERIENCE bike riding doesn’t attest to your ability to speak very accurately on the subject. Again, the dead giveaway is your conceit that riding on pancake flat ground is liable to induce profuse sweating, the kind of [ed: deletion] belief that no one who regularly rides a minimally maintained bike with fully inflated tires would claim!
Ah, Guy, I see what you’re trying to say, but I reckon the tone might not be helping your case. If the goal is to encourage more Portlanders to get on bikes, maybe a bit more empathy and understanding could go further than focusing on someone’s inexperience.
Sure, the sweating comment might reflect a bit of unfamiliarity, but wouldn’t a more inviting approach—like sharing tips or positive stories—help bridge the gap? After all, we all start somewhere, and a little patience could go a long way in building a stronger biking community. Just a thought, mate.
Good list. I’d like to add a few of my own:
I live just a over a mile from 2 different New Seasons. If I ride to the one on Interstate, the bike lanes disappear at Willamette. If I ride to the one on Williams, the bike lane on Skidmore disappears at N. Michigan. I have been commuting since the late 80’s and I am used to this bullshit. I also know that for my family and my neighbors, this is dealbreaker. I can explain about other routes that involve steep climbs over bike bridges and complicated routes that double back or whatever. The point is, there are simple point a to point b routes for driving and the bike infrastructure for those routes is incomplete. It is just one example, but it repeated across the City, and Geller willfully and completely ignores it. THIS IS HIS EXACT JOB- to make sure these bike projects yield a connected network, and he has not done that. It may not be possible, but he has compromised on every bike project over that last 10-15 years and now our bike “network” is a disjointed mess
Man in my area bicycle parking is so hard to find that unfortunately even the short trips end up faster by car because of the time to find a suitable place to lock my bike up at, this one place I bike to sometimes I have to go a block down just to find a place to lock the bike at. Makes the car with keyless entry so much faster unfortunately.
Nevermind the motorcycle which is basically always faster and way way easier to park since I don’t lock it to anything.
There is safety in numbers. Motor vehicle operators look for bikes and pedestrians in places where they’ve seen them before. But, it’s a tough time to lure people out on bikes right now.
Maybe Geller’s timing is strategic in hopes of finding some political capital in the new council and mayor. The old five vote system got us only incremental infrastructure gains with Commissioners subject to pressure politics and ultimately the Mayor’s disposal. If you got out of line you lost your trucks.
It’s going to take some political will to take away lanes or parking spaces and who knows where that will come from? We’ll see what Mayor Wilson stands for besides housing people, his big promise. He still owns a trucking company, and neither the FAC nor the Fire Department want to give an inch. Maybe with professional management instead of a cozy Commissioner we can take a look at compact fire engines.
I’m curious to what degree the fire department pushback in Portland is real, significant, and widespread with regard to infra installs. Does anyone have a sense of that? Not just anecdotes from one project or another, but some inside baseball about discussions between PBOT and the fire department over the years.
Also: our fire department designs are so incredibly outdated. Most of what they respond to does not require a massive engine that costs loads to run and maintain. When will we get an innovator in that system to install much smaller and more responsive micro units for most calls and then have the big engines ready for an actual fire?
My sense is that pbot staff and leadership have been cowed by the fire bureau. They now assume that all designs must meet the demands of fire, and there’s no push back or negotiation. There are mapped fire response routes (I.e. every single arterial or collector), and all road designs on those routes have to meet the specifications that fire has dictated.
Emergency access is rather important, and I don’t think you’ll make much headway arguing it’s not.
Not saying that emergency access isn’t important. But most parts of the world manage to fight fires and provide emergency services using vehicles that are substantially smaller than those that are employed by PF&R.
There are two ways to ensure emergency vehicle access. One is design vehicles that fit the roads. The other is to design roads that fit the vehicles. Seems like we’re always looking at the latter option and ignoring the former.
We’ve already got the roads to fit our equipment, and Portland is not building a whole lot more roads of any size.
Before we can start rebuilding our existing streets to be smaller we need to begin the decades-long process of replacing all our existing emergency equipment.
I don’t object to that at all (at some point we’re going to need to electrify it), but it will be expensive. Is smaller but equally-capable emergency equipment even available in the US?
In any event, it’s not me you’ll have to convince, but the Fire Bureau. What arguments are likely to resonate with them?
This silly argument always comes up.
Is there no limit to how much access emergency responders need? They will always ALWAYS – truthfully – say that better access will improve response times. Because there is no limit to improvements besides a laser straight freeway from point A to point B that could make access faster.
The question is always how much is enough? What’s the point of diminishing returns? Because these supposed emergency responder needs cut into safety in other things. Freeway-like stroads mean deaths for people in and out of cars (not to mention all the non-death downsides). And for what? So an over sized fire truck can arrive 15 seconds sooner than if they had to go over a speedbump or 3?
This maximalist “nothing can impede emergency response” fear mongering has to stop. I know you didn’t say all that, but your comment acts like a rebuttal to Yut, so that’s what you implied.
“how much is enough?”
Here’s a crazy idea… We could ask the people who know.
It’s not a question that there are any “people who know”. It’s a political question. Because like I said, you can always make emergency response time just a bit faster by making speed limits higher, removing safety infrastructure, buldozing things that are in the way.
“It’s a political question.”
It’s mostly a technical question with a lesser political dimension.
But trust me on this: Arguing that we should spend money to diminish emergency response capability (“but only a little”) so we can rebuild streets to make driving more difficult is about the losingest political argument I could dream up, up there with raising taxes to fund free crack for kindergartners.
I think it’s part and parcel to the fact that to a certain extent, our collective imagination about what emergency services do is a little dramatized, and being honest about that means subtracting some of the automatic deference we give to them so as to right-size the resources we give.
You might charge your tune if you need EMS, fire or police and their response is slowed. Just sayin’
Nope. They use smaller vehicles in other countries, and their fatality rates aren’t any higher. Not Just Bikes has a whole video on this.
SO many more Americans need to start looking outside our borders, to face the reality that other rich countries have figured out a lot of stuff that we still seem to struggle with.
Pretty sure our collective imagination about what they do is not dramatic enough. You should go hang at the central downtown firehouse and hear about the calls they go on over the course of a night.
There are very few people in this city of abject softness who are willing to do what they do day in/night out, for what is really just a general middle class wage these days.
That said, what equipment do you think they shouldn’t carry on their trucks so that we can right-size their resources better, so that maybe somebody somewhere might ride their bike to work?
Most of what they respond to is not fires, there is documented evidence about that, no need for opinion. You look it up. So an ambulance-sized vehicle is appropriate for a lot of calls. Plus the size can be a hindrance in reaching some locations. Cities around the world use smaller trucks, why do we make it a big deal?
“why do we make it a big deal?”
We don’t make it a big deal. It’s really only a topic of conversation among a tiny number of people.
We’ve got the equipment we’ve got. Until we replace it all, we’ll need to accommodate it, and I’ve seen zero actual analysis showing that using smaller equipment would be in any way beneficial. We also have buses and trucks that require current lane widths.
I remember someone asking about that to our local fire chief here in Greensboro NC, as part of our City Academy program where we could learn about each public agency and ask direct questions to the heads of departments. Our fire chief basically said that they use far larger and more complicated machinery entirely for insurance and liability reasons. Liability – because US cities and municipalities are frequently sued by US lawyers for the dumbest of reasons, to get maximum payouts – and to keep insurance premiums low, not only for lawsuit insurance, but also city bond ratings – the higher the bond rating, the lower the borrowing costs (think Sim City) – and a highly-rated fire department goes a long way towards keeping insurance premiums low and bond ratings high – it pays off in the long run.
I’m not a firefighter, but I do work as a tech in an emergency department.
Just like general American public opinion of police departments, what fire departments do is overblown, quite literally dramatically, by what TV shows–including the kind that follow cops on the job–have led them to believe.
Most of the time, people aren’t putting out fires or catching actually-dangerous bad guys. Hell, we can’t even get half of the cops who bring people in on POH to help us search people for weapons prior to arrival, or apply restraints when appropriate; they’ll just stand and watch.
It would be nice if a little bit of critical thinking–which means specifically neither reflexively negative nor positive–was the norm, too.
“It would be nice if a little bit of critical thinking”
Why do you think you are the only one capable of critical thinking about this topic? What can you bring to the conversation about what E911 responders need beyond speculation?
Why not start this conversation from the position that the professionals aren’t complete idiots.
…My 2nd post in this thread was a reference to someone else (“Not Just Bikes has a whole video on this.”).
…I say again, I’m an emergency department tech. I interface with these people every working day, directly. It’s not speculation, it’s a long time working with people–e.g., Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue, AMR, MetroWest–knowing that at least a meaningful percentage of the calls they respond to would require no larger a roadway than can accommodate an F-250-based rescue vehicle.
We all–professionals and lay people alike, in relation to any field of expertise–bring pre-existant cognitive biases to our lives. Our responsibility is to be aware of those biases, and correct for them insofar as we can.
I’m not saying firetrucks should be no larger than a Ford Fiesta; I am saying that based on my experience working with the people who use them, they probably mostly don’t need to have that much larger a footprint than your average tow truck, instead of the borderline school bus-sized vehicles that are so often used to justify the scale and structure of our roads.
Why do you assume I’m making a facile argument, rather than one considered through years of experience, research, and thought about these things?
Thank you!!
How about Bike Buses for downtown commuters? We’ve seen the success for schools so let’s try some pilot projects.
Will there be Shower Buses provided too?
/s
Of course there are issues that some creative minds can solve, but the safety in numbers of bike buses seems to solve the legitimate traffic safety fears. As a downtown commuter for ten years I enjoyed showers and secured storage for my bike. I believe many buildings already offer those amenities and if not let’s find solutions. PCEF grants?
PBOT started doing a bike bus for city employees this past summer, or so I’ve heard. Not sure how successful it has been, but at least they’re trying.
So the plan to get the interested but concerned to bike is… to essentially ignore the research on why they don’t use bikes and instead try to persuade them via willpower and marketing?
Is this not what the plan has been for decades?
They might get a few people on bike via marketing, but as soon as they have a close encounter with a car coming to close the painted strip, they’ll likely quit.
Similar to what ZK said in here, want people to bike? Build safe biking infrastructure that isn’t just paint and plastic wands.
Agreed again–where is the mention of safety in this big long thing about why people don’t bike?
When I started, my boyfriend at the time was like “you just ride in the lane” and I was like “get out of town dude! no way I’m ever doing that.”
After a month of cajoling, I tried it and I was hooked. I loved riding downtown in the lane.
That was 2001, car volumes are way higher and our old-timey roads are the same width.
In the past 20 years, car volumes have increased, as has the size/power/speed of cars and SUVs and full-size “commuter pickups.” And, the drivers are ever-more distracted by phones and tech in the car. Meanwhile, our roads and people and bikes are still the same size. The balance of power has shifted too far to the auto/danger side, and not far enough to the pedestrian/safety side.
Honestly, even paint and plastic wands, while not ideal, does make most “interested but concerned” people feel subjectively safe. Even though the plastic wands can still technically be run over, the separation from cars is the important part. Very psychologically effective.
The really key thing is that they have to go EVERYWHERE. The network is the infrastructure.
In the Netherlands, people actually started bicycling in huge numbers before the great bike infrastructure was added, so the cause and effect are reversed from what you’re implying here. First came the people flooding the streets, with bikes, and then those people were enough of a force to demand good-quality bike infrastructure, and then it got even better to bike in a virtuous cycle. A lot of Portland’s best bike projects were a result of the same thing. Once a lot of people were biking on Clinton St, they pushed for it to get better and that created the political momentum to put in more speed bumps and diverters. Williams Avenue and Willamette Blvd are both examples where the reason they got upgraded was mainly that they were already popular bike routes and that helps justify removing parking and travel lanes.
So it is very important to get people out biking first, at least in some visibly noticeable numbers, and then upgrade over time. It’s hard to make the case for making driving way harder for a bike lane that nobody thinks will get used, just like it would be hard to remove a car lane or parking lane to put in a bus lane for a bus that only runs every 30 minutes.
> In the Netherlands, people actually started bicycling in huge numbers before the great bike infrastructure was added, so the cause and effect are reversed from what you’re implying here.
You’re not entirely wrong, but there’s a good deal more nuance when you get into the history of it. Here’s a great (very long) read: https://hembrow.eu/studytour/TheDutchBicycleMasterPlan1999.pdf
And a much shorter overview: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/02/disappearing-traffic-lights-how-second.html
TL;DR: Dutch cycling boomed in the 20s (the mode share was significantly higher than it is even today!) but declined from the 50s to 60s due to car culture/infrastructure taking over (much like Portland in the last decade). There was in fact a “second revolution” that began in the 1970s of taking back the streets from cars. That’s where Portland is today.
COTW
Marketing is nice but I suspect its effectiveness fades after a while. Investing in quick-build bike infrastructure where people want to ride is the way to get folks back long-term. If you look at a Strava heatmap of downtown, there are not many popular routes. Building out the downtown network helps boost the region. I live outside of Washington, DC and that city has done a great job over the past decade, going from 3 protected bike lanes to probably 40+ and the ridership has never been higher. DC has a formula of how to build infrastructure quickly and cheaply that few jurisdictions have matched.
DC and Atlanta have both made driving cars pure hell, which really helps support public transit use (particularly subways in both cities), something Portland really needs to do in a major way, with 90-second long bike/ped countdown signals.
Not really true here in Atlanta.
While, the Connector (and I-285) is still snail’s pace many times of the day (I can see 75/85 out my office window and on my bike commute.) and MARTA numbers, last I checked, are much lower than pre-pandemic, vehicle miles traveled in our metro are way up and bike-commute numbers are (subjectively from my commute) dismal.
The reason Amsterdam has “safety in numbers” isn’t because of a marketing campaign—it’s because they’ve been building subjectively safe (which is all that matters, people make decisions based on how they feel, not statistics) bike lanes since the 1960s. That’s why cycling in Manhattan has basically quadrupled since 2014—cheap, quick-build, highly visible protected bike lanes on the avenues attract ridership.
This is anecdotal, but while I obviously love biking—I even did advocacy for it!— you COULD NOT pay me to bike on an unprotected bike lane on an arterial street *anywhere.* Not Belmont Ave, not Hawthorne, nope, not doing it. Doesn’t feel safe. Almost all of my non-biking friends in Portland are the same way. Hell, even on greenways and neighborhood streets, I only feel comfortable on an e-bike because I can keep up with/maneuver around cars. On a regular bike, it’s just too stressful to be worthwhile. And while I know the difference between a PBL and a door zone lane, most people don’t, but they still sense a lack of safety, and so they don’t bike.
The best marketing is infrastructure that feels safe. You don’t get people to walk by advertising walking; you build sidewalks.
So you and your friends would never ride on N Williams Avenue, the most popular bike lane in all of Portland? Because it’s a wide buffered bike lane that is not protected? I don’t know…it seems pretty good to me, and lots of people agree. Could it be better? Sure. But it’s very popular and well-used, the most “bikey” street in Portland. And it’s a huge improvement on the narrow door-zone bike lane that used to be there. I think you are promoting a binary idea of bike lanes being either terrible or amazing, with nothing in between. Maybe the days of installing as many “okay” bike lanes as possible (the strategy in the 90s and 00s when bike ridership increased the most in Portland) was the right idea, rather than holding out for a much smaller number of more expensive protected bike lanes that require huge political fights. And part of the strategy those days was also the promotion of bike culture in the way Roger is describing.
> So you and your friends would never ride on N Williams Avenue, the most popular bike lane in all of Portland?
I would occasionally ride on N Williams because yeah, like you say, it is slightly better than the typical non-buffered bike lane. But there were some close calls and I definitely didn’t enjoy it. I also only felt comfortable riding on it with an e-bike, and many of my friends *definitely* wouldn’t feel comfortable riding in it on any sort of bike.
I agree it’s an improvement over what was previous there. And I agree that building shitty bike lanes in the 90s and 00s was definitely a better strategy than holding out.
All I’m saying is that the truth is—and this is backed up by Geller’s “interested but concerned report from like 15 years ago—that ~70% of the city simply doesn’t feel safe in like 80% of the city’s bike infrastructure.
Sure. But with a mode share in the single digits, I don’t think it actually makes sense right now to focus on that 70% of people you’re talking about who require the most perfect, amazing bike infrastructure. How about we try to get from 5% to 30% first, before worrying about the other 70%? Those, I think, are the people who are prepared to ride in “just okay” bike lanes if they just got some clear incentives, guidance, marketing, encouragement, etc. That seems to be the focus of this document.
“How about we try to get from 5% to 30%”
Even climbing to 8% would be (literally) unprecedented and a pretty big achievement given where we’re starting from.
Making everybody feel safe biking would result in a ~30% mode share because not everyone is going to bike all the time, even if they feel comfortable doing so. Even Amsterdam has “just” a 38% mode share, and it’s not for lack of safe infrastructure—some people just prefer to walk, take the tram, etc.
I live right off N. Williams near Fremont, and typically ride it at least five days per week. For me, with decades of riding experience, it’s okay but not great. My test for whether it’s truly safe is if I would let my kids ride it by themselves, and my answer to that is no f***ing way. Aggressive and dangerous driving is far too common. The stretch north of Russell, where cars speed in the left lane to get around stopped buses and other cars before darting back into the through lane on the right, is downright hazardous and I’m quite surprised nobody has been hit and killed there yet. I would not recommend riding that for entry level bike commuters, and would not expect them to feel safe if they did.
Before they waste millions on marketing, they should try maintaining the existing infrastructure first. The Terwilliger bike lanes haven’t been rideable for a week due to accumulated leaf litter. And there’s a block of Naito that hasn’t been swept in over a year (South end). No amount of marketing is gonna get someone out of their car and risking their neck in those bike lanes if they aren’t already doing so.
It’s bonkers that the city has no set program of sweeping leaves from bike lanes. Same thing, year after year.
It is possible to talk directly to the street maintenance dispatcher. Call 503-823-1700, click through one menu and they’re on the line. Tell them the street, travel direction, and end point cross streets.
The bike lane on SE Tacoma/SE Johnson Creek is very curvy, and has a lot of off-camber turns, so when it’s full of wet leaves it’s kinda scary!
It would be great if there was more budget to sweep that up!
Portland is the city that is complaint driven. Call it in.
Ah, Portland—where “equity” is the buzzword, but the city’s motto might as well be, “Speak up, or your bike lanes will stay full of trash and leaves forever.” Nothing says fairness like relying on overworked residents (disproportionately POC and low income) to spot the problems the city should already be fixing!
I’m well aware. I’m not sure why you assume I haven’t?
I use PDX Reporter regularly. I rarely see any action on any of the complaints I submit. Still, I submitted both of these. And others.
THIS. I’ll take seriously PDX’s “commitment” to biking the minute bike lanes stop being used as dustpans for all manner of gravel, glass, trash and leaves. The street sweepers quite literally sweep everything except the bike lanes.
also used as parking for PP&R staff, for delivery drivers, for Uber/Lyft drivers, etc.
So I live in Victoria, BC (Canada). Our mode-share is booming. But like Portland, we had flat or declining mode share prior to 2017, when our first protected bike lane opened downtown, part of what is now a 32 km network of AAA bikeways, mostly protected bike lanes, throughout our central city (we are several separate munis). But what we’ve also had is something called Go By Bike Week, formerly Bike to Work Week, which aimed at getting people to do exactly that. It has been around for 30 years now. Did it help? Absolutely, but its numbers plateaued in the late 2010s too, largely due to lack of infrastructure. And since then, numbers have been rising again (pandemic did odd things). It consistently shows a lot of new bike riders come out just for the week.
So yes, programs that support biking can help, but without infrastructure, you will hit a natural ceiling.
The operating assumption from Geller is that our ridership has gone down despite our network being built out.
As for a complete network, when I rode in Portland in summer of 2023 I didn’t see it. But,I did find his comment about greenways interesting about lack of visibility. I find some parallel with Vancouver (BC) which also focused on greenways/bikeways and has struggled too. Here in Victoria we lack a grid (well, we have several), so we’ve had to build our bike lanes on arterials – so much so that 1/2 of the total km of arterials have at least a bike lane on them in the region. I think this helped when the transition to protected happened.
The greenways are hidden making it tougher for cyclists to find them but they also hide cyclists from the public making it seem like there’s less cyclists on the road and thus less safety due to the seeming lack of numbers in the safety in numbers motto.
Absolutely. I was driving in Vancouver (BC) recently & realized that I basically saw no bikes save at a few crossings. Same issue with Portland
I’m guessing you also didn’t abolish your police traffic division in Victoria (like Portland did)?
Portland doesn’t have a bike network. We have a bunch of residential streets with way finding signs. There are a few scattered pieces of protected bike lanes here and there. But the idea that Portland’s bike network has been “built out” is laughable and demonstrably false.
I live in the heart of inner southeast, and I would have to ride a mile from my home to get to the nearest piece of physically separated bike infrastructure (which runs for a few blocks, is not connected to any other stretches of physically separated infrastructure, and which has been obstructed by building construction for the better part of a year).
I work downtown. When I bike to work, the only time I’m on a physically separated bike lane is while I’m on the Hawthorne bridge. Otherwise, I’m riding on a mix of residential streets and door zone bike lanes.
I’m saying that Geller’s report assumes that the network is good enough to sustain more bike traffic than it gets.
The city just “completed” separating the Hawthorne viaduct. That is now part of a network. The Broadway bridge path empties people out onto a 7 lane arterial with no separated infrastructure. That is the end of the network. The basic separated network simply to get to downtown doesn’t exist yet. Assuming otherwise and launching a marketing campaign that ignores this is demonstrating a deep denial concerning why the interested but concerned don’t bike.
Well, you have a point. East of the Broadway Bridge a rider encounters merging traffic in several places, at least one slip lane, stadium parking lots, high traffic entries from commercial businesses and an apartment building where the load out spot for tenants is the Weidler bike lane. The whole area is heavily influenced by I-5 ramp traffic. It’s ridable but I can see why a person wouldn’t love it.
The alternative is the Steel Bridge which is pretty far off line for NW/NE bike traffic, subject to boat lifts and sometimes closure for no apparent reason (I think there’s something fragile in the bridge controls and they don’t keep spares). One street crossing from Old Town towards the bridge dumps out on the grass, which is why you can see bike tire ruts across the park.
Every Willamette River bike crossing has something fishy about its access. Ironically the least conflicted East bound route over the Willamette just might be the shoulder of I 405 over the Fremont Bridge.
“Geller’s report assumes that the network is good enough to sustain more bike traffic than it gets.”
Again, no assumption necessary. The network easily supported considerably more bike traffic in 2015 than it does today.
Good enough to carry a lot more bike traffic, but not good enough to entice people to use it.
“the idea that Portland’s bike network has been “built out” is laughable and demonstrably false.”
And yet I can find good riding routes (often with several options) between almost any two points where I might want to ride.
So… please demonstrate why the idea is false.
Because most of your routes are all on local streets with no bike infrastructure other than sharrows and occasional way finding signs that are linked together by a few isolated stretches of hardened infrastructure and door zone bike lanes. I know you love biking on neighborhood streets with no infrastructure. You write about how much you love it and how easy it is for you several times a week. Clearly, that’s not enough for the majority of Portland residents.
“Clearly, that’s not enough for the majority of Portland residents.”
It’s not clear to me… It was enough for a lot of them until recently. Why do you assume infrastructure is the issue and not weather, effort, fitness, carrying capacity, hills, equipment, or stylishness?
And anyway, there’s simply no reasonable possibility that local streets will be augmented by a parallel network of dedicated bikeways in the next several decades, so the argument is somewhat academic.
Finally, someone mentions the weather! It’s actually a big deterrent and not talked about enough. So many people, even if they want to bike, are “fair-weather” cyclists and might always prefer riding when it’s nice out. So part of the puzzle, I think, is making sure we have a great bike network and a great transit network that work together to provide options for different types of weather. Plus part of the “education/encouragement” campaigns can be to teach people about wet-weather gear, and encourage them to give it a try.
We also need to accept that some people will always own cars and will drive when it’s super rainy out, and what we can hope to do is get people out of their cars when it’s nice out. And that’s okay, it’s still a big reduction in vehicle miles traveled. Sometimes it feels like bike advocates focus too much on an idealized car-free lifestyle, and it can be a bit like people who advocate for total veganism as a way to reduce one’s carbon footprint. It’s way less effective than advocating for everyone to reduce their meat consumption by giving up meat once a week, or a few days a week.
The greenways have never been completed! They almost all lack diverters. The wayfinding is barley present, and what is provided is too small and too inconsistent to be useful. Street light levels are all over the place and way too dark on many greenways to safely navigate or see street signs/bike signs even with a good Busch and Muller light. Stop sigs for cross streets are often missing or blocked by parked cars- Pbot could install stop bars, review and re-install stop signs, and paint curbs yellow for 20 feet on cross streets along greenways to daylight these intersections. Finally, the greenways often lack connectivity and/or safe crossing at arterials. The greenway network exists as a plan on a map, but PBOT has not even made a good effort at building it out- it is deficient in almost every way
I think he’s wrong on this one unfortunately. The network is much better than it was 10 years ago. However, nearly every ride of ~3 miles or more across the city will travel along or across something that will raise the hairs on the back of your neck. It’s those gaps in good infrastructure, I believe, that prevent more people from riding.
Yeah. I read once that if you build a six-mile bikeway with one nightmare crossing at the halfway point, you haven’t built a six-mile bikeway; you’ve built two three-mile bikeways. A lot of people simply won’t risk the nightmare crossing. If they can’t get where they want to go on either of the three-mile bikeways, they won’t bike at all.
Yes! I live in Maplewood in SW. Up until 1-1/2 years ago I would commute to inner SE Portland to work. I won’t do it anymore. There were too many close calls on the two bridges on Barbur on the way to work and down Capitol Highway through Hillsdale on the way home. There’s some nice infrastructure on Multnomah Blvd, and I like how it connects me to Multnomah Village, but not to downtown. I’d also love to see more emphasis on a few types of infrastructure that are proven to work rather than trying to uniquely engineer each new treatment. Keep it simple & proven.
“The operating assumption from Geller is that our ridership has gone down despite our network being built out.”
It’s more than an assumption, it’s an undisputed fact. We built it, and they left in droves.
they never built it. They just added lines to their map and signs and speed bumps. That is NOT the standard for a Greenway, and I think you know that. Greenways are supposed to have diverters to control the number of drivers and safe/protected crossing at busy streets. They are also supposed to be connected to forma network- the Portland “network” is full of gaps, full of cars, and bikes on their own to cross busy roads.
As the recent presidential election just demonstrated: It’s the economy stupid! Focus the message on the cost of car ownership. Money talks.
I do think that’s a substantially undervalued aspect of the discussion. We STILL don’t often phrase the question as, “did anyone ask you if you actually WANTED to only feel safe and comfortable to travel on public thoroughfares in a car”?
That people WOULD only feel safe and comfortable in a car is just the assumed position, when basically every other rich country has done better in providing actual choice in transportation.
People still (largely say they) value freedom of choice, especially if they feel like they can save money through having choices. Pointing out that cycling and transit should be the safe, convenient, and affordable alternatives they would be with equal public support is important.
I actually think a marketing campaign could be a great idea. Both for getting more people locally thinking about getting back on their bikes, but also to bring people that are attracted to an awesome way to explore our great town. We need more positivity around here. A positive national tourism campaign that puts Portland in a good light and shows a lot of biking could be big for us.
I have spent 45 years riding my bike everywhere, including over 35 years commuting and riding for fun in and around Portland. In my view, marketing ain’t gonna cut it.
For example, there’s a bike lane on Beaverton-Hilldale Highway, which is an important transportation corridor to the west. And even I hate riding on it. I used to ride my bike to meetings and events in downtown Portland, parking and locking it on the street. The idea of doing that now is laughable. People in cars have become more and more lawless, and the streets more dangerous. To really make bikes a meaningful part of our transportation system, here are a few ideas:
1) Step up enforcement of traffic laws — a lot.
2) Build more off-street bike paths. This includes both in town and long-distance bike paths to far-away places.
3) Create a secure, staffed bike parking facility downtown.
4) Improve and maintain existing bike infrastructure, including sweeping.
5) Tax gas and cars a lot more.
6) Close some streets downtown and in business hubs and create pedestrian areas.
7) Provide tax advantages for buying and using bikes and electric bikes.
8) Crack down on bike thefts and theft rings.
9) Dramatically increase civil and criminal penalties for drivers that hit, harass, or otherwise harm cyclists.
10) Elect leaders who think of cycling as a form of transportation at least equal in importance to all others, not just a niche segment to wink at now and then to be politically correct.
Many will dismiss most or all of these suggestions as unrealistic, and indeed perhaps they are in early 21st century America — even in a place that at least thinks of itself as progressive like Portland. But in other places in the world, all of these things are simply reality — and they work. Marketing is basically wishing something will happen. We need to do the hard work to try to make it actually happen. We get the society we collectively decide to make.
I like how you think!
“1) Step up enforcement of traffic laws — a lot.”
You did see who we just elected right? Law and order ain’t coming to Portland anytime soon.
Run for office on this platform please.
For $40 million I’ll hire myself and other people to hound any and every politician all day everyday until they give up and agree to take the billions lit on fire expanding freeways and instead build an actual connected network of protected bike lanes spanning the greater Portland area.
“…So we have to find something else that resonates with people and encourages them to choose [bicycling].”
How about make it fun, safe and clean? That would resonate with me.
Here’s a big idea!
Add a bike path alongside 99E/McLoughlin, from SE Tacoma, at the northbound entrance to 99E, all the way to the bike path that starts at SE Harold.
It’s all public land, from what I can tell, between the highway and the MAX tracks, and it’s undeveloped grass and trees the whole way up. I’ve ridden the highway north several times; it cuts off a lot of time from my commute, and the pavement is nice and smooth. On the other hand, if traffic isn’t backed up, the semi trucks speed by very close (the fog line shoulder is only like 3 feet wide). The route is like a red carpet to get into town… except you have to put your life into the hands of highway drivers.
A lot of people would love a stress free way to get north from that neighborhood into Brooklyn, and points further north.
The current way of doing so require me to take Milwaukie Blvd (traffic isn’t terrible but there’s no bike lane), or 17th (horrible pavement), or 19th (even worse pavement) north and then re-cross 99E at a long red light.
I’m guessing there’s no sidewalk along the straight, flat highway because it was an Olmsted style commuter highway when it was built many decades ago. It *is* a beautiful drive! But how has PBOT/ODOT failed to even put in a sidewalk here over the years???
I see big missed opportunities like this around town, and while marketing cycling is probably useful, I hope we don’t give up on physical priorities like maintenance (I don’t like to take SE 17th anymore because I broke my arm after hitting a pothole and crashing) and great new facilities.
We might get it built, but we’d never get it swept.
The route is sooooo straight and flat- it would not be as bad as Tacoma/JCB
Late to the party here, but I think the discussion about “infrastructure vs. culture” is a bit pointless. The only reason any place with great infrastructure has managed to build it has been because of a concerted political effort to create it. This had to come about via some kind of bike-oriented culture. It’s not enough to just build infrastructure, there needs to be both build the political will for said infrastructure and the social environment to get folks riding afterwards.
https://bikeportland.org/2015/05/08/friday-profile-boris-melissa-kaganovich-portlands-merry-pranksters-street-reinvention-142924
We still don’t know who put out the guerilla diverter planter boxes on SE Clinton.
Hey blum I think some people who bike tend to frame it that way, but it seems to miss the point a lot. People are social of course, and thus any behavior is within a specific culture. In that sense a culture, for example, that doesn’t stigmatize riding, might encourage it more. But there are a couple things that tend to get overlooked.
1) “Any infrastructure” = improvement: The idea (which Geller seems to assume) that any kind of project that gets built, regardless of the type, location etc. means that “things have gotten better.” This is the difference between a handful of darts randomly thrown at a map, and that handful pushed into the map deliberately. People like to say that we’ve had a lot of things built, so it can’t be infrastructure, right…. right!? It’s a circular argument assuming that any x amount that gets built means x improvement. Without measuring the increase in ridership on those projects (hint, there will be very little unless it is connected to the broader separated network and aimed at the “interested but concerned”), there is no way to know. There is evidence that when you build separated bike lanes, a lot more people tend to ride on them that would otherwise not ride at all (example).
2) “The Causation Fallacy”: People are really difficult to predict. Any social science/ideology that simplifies this (e.g., Marxism, vehicular cycling) tends to purposely overlook the reasons people decide stuff. People ride for various reasons. I ride to get muddy and travel. Maybe you ride because it’s cheaper or fun. It would be interesting to know why each person rides anecdotally, but it’s the wrong question to ask… and the wrong people to ask. We often throw our hands up and say, “it’s a very complicated process to get people to ride, so we just can’t know” is missing the point entirely.
The problem with that view is, even though we may not know why each person individually decides to ride, we do know how to get more people to ride. We have research on the group that we (and PBOT) should be asking: the “interested but concerned.” We have sooooo much info on them. Every time we ask them at a Sunday Parkways why that’s the only day they ride the answer is consistent: it’s not safe.
Regardless of what you think of the chicken or the egg type question we know how to consistently get everyday people to ride more, and it’s not through marketing. It is by building and expanding a basic separated network. When you have a lot of ordinary people riding, and recognize their value, that is when it becomes normalized.
You claim that by “building and expanding a basic separated biking network” we can get “everyday people” to ride consistently. This is simply not supported by the available evidence*. (To be clear, I am not saying it’s wrong, only, as with most religious beliefs, it is an argument based on faith rather than evidence, and is essentially unfalsifiable.)
Even if you assume bike projects like the Bluenauer Bridge, Greely, and Better Naito are of such low quality that they do not entice any new riders, that would still not explain the falling ridership we’ve experienced. It seems unlikely that people who were content to ride before Better Naito would be so put off by the project that they’d stop riding once it was built.
Even if you are right in your hypothesis that better infrastructure increases ridership, there is something else occurring at the same time that is depressing ridership even faster than we can increase it by building. Let’s call that Factor X.
If we care about increasing the number of people riding bikes, identifying and addressing Factor X should be our primary concern, and expending our limited poitical capital on infrastructure fights is counter-productive. If, on the other hand, we are primarily concerned with our personal bike riding experience then, by all means, let’s focus on building stuff, and let the ridership rates do what they will. Like everyone, I like new stuff, especially if I don’t have to share (crossing the Hawthorne Bridge is considerably more pleasant now than a decade ago when there was all the jockeying going on).
At the governance level, why would anyone make the massive investments** (political and financial) in building a new, separate bike network even if it did result in a return to ridership levels we had a decade ago? Could the return possibly justify the investment compared to other things we could do?
Bike riding is not a good unto itself — it is a means to an end, either reducing carbon emissions and/or traffic congestion (both of which would require new riders to stop driving rather than stop taking the bus, which might reduce availability of transit service, leading, ironically, to increased driving), increasing fitness, or whatever. Even if we could double bike ridership with a massive investment, what benefits can you point to that would justify the high cost and vast uncertainty of your proposal? Could we reduce emissions more, for example, by investing in EV chargers for apartment buildings?
*The only supporting evidence you cite is what I call “if only”. “If only” the network were perfect I would ride. That’s not revealed preference, or even stated preference; that’s more “hypothetical preference.” I’d do the virtuous thing if only the impossible condition were satisfied.
** Assuming you want a rapid build out, rather than the incremental process that is already happening.
But the point is that without any kind of marketing or cultural presence, there is no chance to create the political will to build and expand a good bike network. And you are saying “regardless of what you think about the chicken and the egg question, the answer is obviously the chicken”. I’m saying that you need both, and that they depend on each other.
Well yes and no. Again, I think it’s missing the point. Apologies if I was unclear. Let’s do what PBOT wants to do and take two marketing scenarios aimed at the “interested but concerned” to illustrate:
Marketing for Sunday Parkways, for example, gets people to ride it. My parents go ride about once or twice a year, usually at a Sunday parkway. They have fun, and I’m so glad they go. But the absence of cars (and dominance of people powered devices) is why they actually go do it and seem to enjoy it. That is at least a huge prerequisite.
Marketing to generally “get out and bike,” on the other hand assumes people will decide to ride more simply because it’s fun, or healthy etc. The question then is where? Where do most tourists and beginners ride? The waterfront path. Or sidewalks.
My point is we can market all we want. We can have as many protests or advocacy meetings, whatever. Portland has not had a lot of limitations on advocacy, not-for-profits, and social cycling movements (other than orgs like Transalt with financial backing). Nor has it historically had a dearth of marketing concerning its platinum rating for biking. But the absence of a basic, safe place to ride is precluding most people from riding (and it’s not being built because it’s not seen by advocates, cyclists and the city as a priority). Until that basic network as a prerequisite gets built, very few people of the “interested but concerned” are going to choose to cycle. I hope that was a little more clear? Anyway thanks for reading.
well said!
I broadly agree – but my point is that the sociopolitical basis for creating the change is having a cultural moment oriented around cycling. Marketing is a part of that, even if that isn’t a word I’d specifically choose for the sort of movement building that good advocacy work is.
But I would very strongly push back on the notion that advocates and cyclists aren’t focused on basic safety measures – they are at the nexus of caring about that almost by definition. They may have a different experience than the “non-riding, but would ride in Copenhagen” crowd, but better infrastructure and safety is a universal rallying cry from my experience. I’d agree that the city very much does not prioritize it though.
Agreed. I don’t want to downplay the role sociopolitical movements play, nor the efforts that people have put into this stuff (what we are doing now could loosely be considered part of that). I’ve spent a lot of my time doing safe streets advocacy work.
But without a well-funded, informed, and organized advocacy non-profit like Transalt, a lot of that advocacy unfortunately goes unsupported, leaderless, and remains unfocused. Just as ANY infrastructure may or may not be effective, ANY advocacy or marketing may or may not be effective, and a good measurement for both could be increasing the number of people riding within that beginner group. I think that is why people generally agree on the need for infrastructure, as you said, but don’t know what to prioritize.
Other than we need a general “shakeup,” one thing where Geller is spot on (and this is a difficult thing to say being from E Portland), is that the effectiveness of bringing in “interested but concerned” folks is likely incumbent on building close in, adjacent to where most people ride, or would ride (e.g., the CEID, IRQ, NE Bway). As much as I would have appreciated a safe space on SE 136th when I was a kid, and as much as I appreciate that now, I know the benefits of building separated space at the East end of the Bway bridge and E 7th, for example, would have benefits that outweigh 136th by many orders of magnitude. And focusing on that alone would be a huge policy shift at PBOT and a huge shift of priorities for groups such as BikeLoud.
I don’t know… We didn’t need a marketing campaign from PBOT to create our cultural presence in the past.
I mean they tried, but their efforts always felt clumsy and awkward and not particularly effective.
Watts,
Geller’s idea is not just about a “PBOT marketing campaign” in the traditional sense. What he’s talking about and what I agree with wholeheartedly is that around 2011 or so when PBOT got mud in their face on the N Williams Ave project that included claims that cycling was racist and caused gentrification, they began to treat “Bike” like a four letter word. They removed biking from the water… so of course no one could taste it anymore and it became a lost part of our local culture a few years later. There were a number of decisions they and City Hall made since that are based on lack of confidence in cycling because PBOT and others in gov’t believed the narratives in the wrong way and couldn’t communicate around them effectively. I’ve been yelling about this since then and ever since! It’s no wonder that our culture changed when one of the most powerful influencers of the culture – PBOT – all but lost confidence in cycling internally due to misplaced concerns of political correctness and/or communications incompetence.
What Geller is saying is that he wants PBOT to regain their footing around cycling and start injecting it as a policy solution wherever and whenever possible. And that starts with leadership and staff killing false narratives and focusing more “cycling” as a verb and less on “cycling” as a lifestyle.
Jonathan’s comment is more illuminating than mine will be, but I’d say that getting good infrastructure outcomes (and by extension future riders and a future bike culture) is dependent on PBOT at least to some extent. Without tacit PBOT buy-in, cycling movements will be prone to broader trends in society (gas prices, housing, etc.) rather than a truly permanent aspect of our city. I mean I do think cycling has been and always will be a permanent aspect of our city, but I think you get the general idea here.
Never trust what people say they prefer, or why they say they do something. What matters is what people do, not what they say. Humans are notoriously bad at articulating or identifying their own reasons for doing things.
Very well said, I totally agree. It’s a virtuous cycle, but you need both. And we’ve been lacking the bike culture piece recently.
I get excited about anything to make cycling better and persuade people to cycle, but I think there are some crucial points that shouldn’t be missed. I feel like everyone is screaming “We need multi-modal filters to protect greenways and we need better separation of bike lanes!” and Geller is like “So what you’re saying is we should have an advertising campaign convincing people that car sewers are fun.”
One line in your thoughtful post struck me:
One thing about food carts in Portland is their surge in popularity coincided with the City introducing System Development Charges for building permits. Because of the way SDCs were calculated, restaurants were hit harder than any other project type. There were horror stories about things like pizza places being charged SDCs of $20K or $30K (decades ago!) to move across the street.
So suddenly, opening a restaurant in a space not previously occupied by one became tremendously expensive, to the point of being impossible for many.
There are lots of reasons why food carts are popular, and they may have become popular without SDCs in the picture. But it’s reasonable to argue that one thing that really got them off the ground was the City making them a much less expensive alternative than building a standard restaurant, by making standard restaurants significantly more expensive to open.
So the success of food carts–which have become a positive part of urban life here–could be used as an argument for boosting bike use by making driving more expensive.
SDCs and other ridiculous permitting requirements is why Portland has well earned a reputation as being anti-business. Then our elected leaders wonder “why can’t we get businesses back downtown?” DUH
A Banfield bike path to Gateway Green and the Columbia Gorge? With better connections to PDX jobs and the I 205 bridge? That bridge is nobody’s favorite but it could be easier to reach.
I don’t think these days many people want another sketchy path down in a trench next to a freeway and railroad. The I-205 Path has been a disaster for so many years, but at least it was cheap to build as part of building the freeway. The cost of building a new path along the Banfield would be astronomical (huuuuge retaining walls) and it would be super sketchy down there and you’d be breathing in pollution the entire time. No thank you.
SD, I like them all but number 4 the most. Having at least ONE low-stress route across the city (aside from the Springwater) would be phenomenal.
Geller’s plan is nearly as disappointing and pessimism-inducing as was watching my fellow Portlanders vote for a slate of new leaders who will almost uniformly make every problem this city struggles with much, much worse.
This was the last Portland straw for me. Hope for a return to 2010-ish PDX, and its biking glory, is very much dead. Shooting to have the For Sale sign hanging in my front yard by January.
Ah, mate, it’s a bloody shame, isn’t it? Watching a city with so much potential spiral because the powers-that-be seem allergic to balance or practicality. The dream of 2010 Portland—the bikes, the breweries, the community—is now just that, a dream. Instead, you’ve got folks doubling down on policies that don’t work, while moderate voices are packing up and heading for the hills (or suburbs).
You’d think a city that prides itself on tolerance might tolerate a bit of introspection, but nah, the illiberal left seems content to call dissent “problematic” and carry on as if their ideals are above reproach. Tragic, really. You hate to see good people like Alex here forced out, but if no one’s willing to course-correct, can you blame him for pulling the pin?
Never doubt that a small government agency with a failed track record and an unreliable budget can change a transportation culture that’s been ingrained in Americans for generations; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Or something.
The one thing that would inspire me to ride as much as I did before the pandemic? No camping on the 205 MUP.
The 205 path was my jumping off point to get to the Springwater, Gateway Green, Marine Drive, Powell Butte, etc. For the last 5-6 years the city has let people just do whatever they like out there. It’s such an important piece of the puzzle, yet is treated as expendable like so much of East Portland. It wouldn’t take much to patrol the path daily and remove anyone trying to set up a tent, drive a vehicle on the path or drag trash onto it, but instead we let a few loud activists effectively had it over to drug addicts who vandalize it, booby-trap it, etc.
I don’t understand how anyone who’s serious about bike access in this town can continue to ignore this.
Well just look at this blog, theres an article about the Springwater through one of the richest neighborhoods in the world (Sellwood, Eastmoreland, Reed) which the rider cuts out before all the camps and then declares the bike paths good!
One thing I’ve learned owning a house in Lents is No One Cares About East Portland. Its just a thing. Its not changing. So you have a new voting system, pushed by the Inner East side scene, that just wiped out the East Portland vote by making a degree required to cast a vote, and no one cares.
Portland voters care in the abstract, as a sort of mental exercise but its a negligent form of care as they can’t see past ideology to see the way the real world interacts with their dream world.
They act as if they can just will Portlandia back into existence by good thoughts.
East Portland has its own city council district now, what are you talking about? And you do not need a degree to understand how to rank candidates, it’s really not very complicated.
I have a technical degree and it is overly complicated. It was a lousy system that is trying to solve for a problem that doesn’t exist.
All people had to do was vote for 3. All votes tabulated. Top 3 winners win. See how easy that is? No transferring votes, no waiting more than a week for the final winners.
Having my vote transferred to someone else that I did NOT want to get my vote is STEALING. It’s bad enough the MAGA’s do that crap, I sure didn’t think voting in Portland would do the same.
1) The wait for a week is due to Oregon statute which allows ballots post-marked the day of the election to be counted. They arrive when they arrive, it has nothing to do with vote transfers.
2) The vote tabulation program probably takes under a minute to run — not that big a deal. The data set is relatively small compared to “big data” applications.
3) We’ve already been over this: your vote did not transfer to someone you didn’t rank.
Wow, you really don’t get how ranked-choice voting works, do you?
Top 3 winners would be TERRIBLE without vote transferring. It really is not a “problem that doesn’t exist”. If it was just top 3, we would inevitably have cases where one frontrunner candidate takes far more than their “share” of the votes. Say the most well known, popular candidate gets 75% of the vote. Because a lot of people want to make sure they win. With your suggestion, that means the remaining 25% of the voters get to pick 2/3 of the candidates. That is extreme minority rule. Alternatively, the top 3 candidates would be at a pretty similar level to many others (e.g. no obvious front runner), and you’d get cases where the winners had like 11%, 8%, 9% of the vote. And how are you going to do a runoff with that? Who would you choose to have in the runoff?
These aren’t weird edge cases. It is absolutely what would happen. You haven’t thought this through.
Furthermore, you’re spreading lies about vote stealing. Ironic talking about MAGA, you’re doing extremely their thing. And I think this has been explained to you before when you made this egregious error but I’ll say it again:
Your votes will never ever be transferred to someone you do not want.
It’s not that they probably won’t, or maybe won’t. The system does not transfer votes to someone you don’t want.
“you do not need a degree to understand how to rank candidates”
If the complexity wasn’t the problem why were almost as third of the ballots returned without filing in the ranked choice part?
is one third significant at all relative to other major election cycle ballots? do you have a source? Lots of places I’ve lived have had middling local turnout when there’s a big national race.
It seems like it to me. The Oregonian article about it suggested it was. I’m sure there’ll be further analysis on this issue as time passes.
Speaking only for myself I only ranked 2 candidates for Mayor because I felt the remaining candidates were unacceptable. It is possible people understood how to vote using the rank choice options but they only supported one candidate. Also, I have a Masters Degree and it did not prepare me in any way for ranked choice voting and I may have done it wrong!
I’m sure there are a good number of people completely tuned out of the election and had no idea who any of the candidates were. If they really didn’t know who they were I’m glad they left it blank. All we get when we give someone a false choice between primary winners is noise. People who have an opinion will vote. We should be working to make sure more people have an opinion, not give people a busy box to pretend they have done a democracy.
I think the real problem was simply the number of candidates. This won’t be a problem next time since there won’t be as many seats to fill, right?
It’s not like the vote was decided by some tiny minority. Most people who voted filled out the rankings.
No. I live in D3, and didn’t need to worry about D1, D2, or D4 candidates. Same will be true next time — it won’t matter if D1 and D2 are voting or not. I’ll have the same number of seats to consider.
Ahh, I see it’s just the district elections that are staggered. Two districts in midterm elections, two districts on presidential election years. I guess there are pros and cons to that.
Even so, in the various media I was aware of and seeing passively, I was getting information about candidates from all the districts. It will be easier to find out about just your candidates when only half the districts are running at a time.
Reducing the number of irrelevant races would not make voting easier. What would make things easier would be a primary to cull the herd, even if not everyone chose to participate. Give voters in the general election a manageable list to work from.
Yes it would. I already explained why. Voting isn’t the hard part. Ranked choice is easy and everyone understands the process. If anything is hard, it’s being informed about some candidates. If there are half the number of races, you’re not going to be hearing so many irrelevant names from whatever news sources you may be consuming.
A primary to cull the herd works but it just means a smaller minority gets to choose the candidates. “culling the herd” isn’t a politically neutral or objective choice. So you’re either having people vote once and maybe some people don’t want to be involved (the new much better system), or you’re having people vote twice, and some people don’t want to be involved. Same thing. Except the new way gives you the objectively better outcome that you don’t have to let group think or The Oregonian make your choices for you by giving the impression they know who is going to win.
I think the number of candidates was the problem. But there still could be as many in each district. Just fewer districts will be voting at a time.
Primaries allow for names to get out there in the mix, floating around, ideas form.
This was information overload.
OMG, ranking a vote doesn’t require a degree or that much intelligence to be honest. Ask a kid who’s your favorite, second favorite, etc. There you go. We all have what it takes to vote.
But to find out who is your favorite is alot of work since no one had ever heard of most of them. Reading, reading, reading, not easy for people who didn’t have the reading skills to go to college or whose first language is not English.
I hear you and agree. However given who we just elected (status quo homeless advocates like Avalos, Green, Morillo, Koyama Lane, Kanal, Moyer and Singleton) I wouldn’t expect any changes for the better.
Well if you’re bummed out about all that do not visit the 205/Springwater zone right now. Also, do not look under Flavel. Or the old Bel Air Court apartments just before you hit Foster headed east on the Springwater. Wow.
Thanks to Roger for presenting an interesting thesis. I believe it is largely on the right track, but I feel it needs to acknowledge the following:
“…this campaign could end like the presidential election where the Democrats assumed they knew what was important to the electorate.”
Given the many ideologic zealots we just elected in Portland I’m guessing this is exactly what will happen. They only listen to their “bubble” and their own dogma.
Angus! Angus, Angus. You are an ideologic zealot. Look at this thread, and any other really. It’s absolutely covered in you fanatically spouting the same ideological talking points to no end. You’re going to have to get more specific, maybe “zealots who believe something other than me”? I don’t know. Pot, kettle, etc.
John,
You make me laugh. Only in Portland would comments from a moderate Democrat trigger someone enough to call them an “ideological zealot”. Thanks for the chuckle.
Cheers.
There is no better word to describe your zealous and prolific comments calling for more cops, law and order, etc. If you think the people we just elected are zealots, you are just as much a zealot as them.
Well said Keith! They should start with a marketing campaign WITHIN PBOT to get their planners, designers, project managers and maintenance staff to consider people walking and biking a part of their job
“But I think there’s really not much we could do more immediately that would create safer conditions for biking than just getting more people out biking.” <- Been saying that for years.
We have sooo many “utilitarian” cyclists not supporting either mountain biking in general, and more specifically in Forest Park, or Road cycling. The mountain biking community has grown huge since 2016 and remains pretty much 100% untapped by the city. Getting people on bikes, regardless of how they are used should be the #1 priority and we shouldn’t have curmudgeons use “environmentalism” for banishing cycling from Forest Park – a park in a major city, with one whole side bordering an industrial wasteland. Highway 30 should have robust cycling lanes for road riding. Skyline should have traffic cameras for people speeding, and better signage supporting cyclists. If you want to support commuting/utilitarian cycling only, then you are doing it wrong. You can’t keep picking on “cycling enthusiasts”, roadies, and mtbers, and dividing people who actually enjoy riding bikes; you are the problem – not them.
We are in the process of moving out Portland literally because I don’t feel like cycling is safe and since we WFH, most of our miles are recreational riding now. I commuted year-round for all the time I worked in an office for 20 years in Portland and use bikes to get around town on a regular basis. I honestly feel like focusing solely on bike commuting and basically nothing for recreational cyclists has ruined cycling in this city. I want to ride bikes more, but I basically have to drive anywhere that feels remotely safe since the change in driving patterns during the pandemic and the lack of mountain biking close to the city.
COTW!
Seems odd to me that there’s been no mention that I can find of PBoT’s SmartTrips program, which has been running for close to 20 years. It connects people who are interested in biking/walking/transit to available resources. So while it is a promotional approach, there’s no splashy “Budweasel-style” advertising campaign – and that’s fine by me.
People with school-aged children were statistically more likely to be riding more often than those without school-aged children
I would also point out that PBOT’s surveys often don’t ask if you live with <18 yo people in your house
At least for me, as I was a bike rider when my child was born, it only seemed natural for me to get them bikes throughout childhood. So yes, I rode more because we would ride around the neighborhood together.
They didn’t pick up the bicycling “bug” so it didn’t last, but I did ride more with them than I would have on my own.
For me, it’s because I work from home now, but still do daycare. So I’ll be biking to that until I’m biking him to kindergarten and then he eventually bikes himself to school.
And bikes are a natural fit to take your kid to the park on, which I do frequently.
Without that daily commute, I wouldn’t have any commute so I’d have to be more self motivated to get out every day (and would probably fail).
“People with school-aged children were statistically more likely to be riding more often than those without school-aged children”
I don’t know where this factoid came from, but it would be interesting to compare demographically equivalent populations where the only difference is children vs no children, and perhaps families with different aged children.
Wow that surprises me as well. I have two kids under 8 and if I need go somewhere and bring one – or even harder both I’m much less likely to bike than if it was just me going.
However I do maybe bicycle a little more recreationally because of them so maybe that is more than making up for it? Still if we are thinking of bicycling as transportation – not a recreational activity then having kids makes it much harder in my experience.
100 dedicated traffic cops on motorcycles writing dozens of tickets a day for speeding, running stop signs and stop lights, and driving while using a phone would likely have the greatest impact in reducing citizen’s hesitancy to ride more often. As a 6-day a week cyclist in and around Portland, the number of unsafe conditions I see on a weekly basis is scary. Perhaps spending all that promotion money on traffic enforcement would create roads that are safe enough for more citizens to ride.
Bike lanes are great, but they are not everywhere. Unsafe drivers are everywhere, and they deter many people from riding outside of a formal event like Sunday Parkways. And I don’t blame them.
Marketing and messaging won’t solve the problems most portlanders experience on our streets today. It’s lipstick on a pig, as has been said before.
The streets and multi-use paths in Portland still suffer from the scourge of excess trash, tents blocking corridors, unsafe places (as in criminal behavior) and plenty of people driving stolen cars and cars that have expired tags (and likely lack insurance). In sum, there are plenty enough people on our streets who don’t have any skin in the game to feel safer than we did in 2016, let alone 2019. They don’t have anything to lose for irresponsible behavior that has been allowed to flourish due to the lack of basic rules enforcement.
Honestly, one of the few positive changes I feel has happened in the last few years is that new bicycle infrastructure isn’t questioned as much as it used to because the elephant in the street is all the bad stuff going on. I’d rather bike infrastructure fly under the political radar than spend millions on advertising something that’s probably not real for most of us, depending on where we bike. So, maybe we should take this opportunity to build more bike infrastructure while the electeds attempt to rectify decades of unsuccessful policy about our homeless and drug problems.