Last week’s post about PBOT bike coordinator Roger Geller’s plan to spur a Portland bike renaissance was a shoe-in for a lot of great comments.
I was drawn to Dan’s comment partly because of his writing “voice” — it goes down easy, and is unpretentious and authoritative at the same time. Like someone who knows what he is talking about, but parked the ego at the door.
Here are Dan’s ideas for sparking a resurgence in cycling:
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.
Thank you, Dan! You find Dan’s comment, and the rest of the top-notch thread, under the original post.
Thanks for reading.
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As the face of PBOT’s Bicycle network, I have been frustrated for many years. There has been a consistent approach to only go for the low-hanging fruit, and to focus on media hype. Success appeared to be measured in miles of protected lanes or miles of greenways, despite these getting built with dangerous gaps or design flaws. This marketing ploy may have some utility, but honestly I think Roger is still missing the point. PBOT needs to focus on the basics: Quality control designs, make sure the project managers are not skimping on the bike portions of their projects. The fact that the connection on the north side of the Blumenauer Bridge is so awkward and offset just to accommodate a dedicated southbound turn lane is preposterously bad design! If I was Earl Blumenauer, I would ask for the Federal money back and to have my name removed for that bridge! Next we need reasonable routes- not crazy routes that jump from one side of the street to the other, and from street to street. The wayfinding signage is terrible, and lacking and the lighting is abysmal on many routes. This is straightforward engineering stuff that can and should be done to establish a very basic level of safety and utility for a network, yet we don’t have it. Next up: Safety. Stop waffling and catering to drivers and add some stop signs and diverters. We have a pretty extensive greenway system that looks great if you are trying to sell the network as a story (or for an award), but in reality, the network cannot be sold to users because it is so poorly executed. The routes are plagued with fast-driving cars. The cross streets have no stop bars, and their stop signs are often blocked by cars/vans/ trailers parked right up to the corner meaning stop signs are being run continuously on our greenways. I agree with Dan about enforcement. Some of the biggest hazards should be the easiest for the City o influence: Amazon, FedEx, Uber/Lyft, food delivery, etcetera. Don’t these businesses need a license to operate in the City? The City should make it easy to report violations (send a photo) and then they could levy fines, or apply pressure, or simply harden the lanes in problem locations to preclude the offenders. When a van parks in a bike lane, the bike has to merge into a driving lane or swerve up on a sidewalk and then get back into the bike lane. It is dangerous and uncomfortable, and if you are an inexperienced rider, one or 2 of those experiences may be enough to just throw in the towel on bike commuting. It seems like keeping cars out of dedicated bike lanes and bike paths would be the mandate of PBOT, but they neglect to meaningful action- see Naito. Also, the details matter: The City has standard specifications for constructing asphalt and concrete and applying thermoplastic. The PBOT PM’s reviewing and approving these projects need some training. It doesn’t cost more to build things correctly, but it does take informed and motivated oversight. Finally, follow the City’s prioritization the puts pedestrians at the top, then cyclists, transit, freight and finally SOV drivers. I been commuting westbound over the Broadway bridge since August and this morning was the first time I didn’t have to wait for a minute or more for a green light. PBOT ran a bike lane through a curb extension (a protected pedestrian environment) on 7th/Tillamook to accommodate drivers. Stop pushing bikes out of the way and asking bikes to always wait- make it easier and nicer to walk and bike.
TLDR: safe, direct, connected routes through internal (within PBOT) QC and advocacy, focus on design basics: diverters, wayfinding, lighting, pavement, stop signs/stopbars, enforcement, especially keeping commercial vehicles out of the bike lanes and paths, make sure PBOT knows how to build things correctly to avoid puddles and bumps and dangerous jogs, stop prioritizing single occupancy vehicle drivers
All great points, maxD, and you didn’t even address what is for me the one simplest, biggest-bang-for-the-buck action the city could take, which is to CLEAN the bike lanes we currently have.
That action alone would say to cyclists, “We care enough to make this crappy infrastructure as good and safe as it can be.”
The current lack of action says “We don’t care – cycle at your own risk.” So people don’t, we hardy hobbyists excepted.
That is a great point, Fred! Geller is being too quick to abandon his job description. I think he could make massive strides if he is focused more intently within PBOT to improve the planning, design, construction and maintenance of bike infrastructure.
maxD and others.
Just because someone shares an idea about something, does not mean they cease to think about or care about everything else!
It’s frustrating how many people are critiquing this plan as if Geller doesn’t believe in infrastructure and all he’s focused on is a marketing campaign. We can and should do more than one thing at a time folks!!!!
I appreciate this, and I know Geller is smart and experienced and truly cares about cycling. I also think he has not been effective, or at least he could be more effective. And PBOT as a whole has been very bad for the last 5-10 years. It is frustrating to see a proposal to market cycling by the people who can and should have been doing more to build and maintain the system that is now suffering. Maybe is PBOT or Geller would acknowledge some of their failures, it would help observers have confidence in a proposal like this, but as it stands, this has the ring of shirking responsibility.
A few things maxD. Geller is “bike coordinator”. That is a relatively low position in the org structure of that big agency. So Geller is a small cog in the machine. Yes he’s widely respected, but at the end of the day what PBOT does or doesn’t do isn’t up to Geller in any way whatsoever. And I think if you listen and read closely, you’ll see that Geller and PBOT in general admit they haven’t done enough. We can argue about why that is, but they do admit it and they want to do more. If anything, Geller and others at PBOT might tend to blame structural issues too much, which can become self-defeating. But the fact is they do face a lot of structural forces pushing against them! From funding to culture and politics, it is a very very hard agency to work for and there are many forces out of their control. Knowing how/when to push them is really critical in moving things forward. I am very encouraged where they are right now FWIW and think the mistakes and lack of progress has gotten so bad it has forced somewhat of a reckoning internally… at least I hope that’s the case! I really should write an op-ed about all this.
I hope you are right!
Can a response to a COTW itself be a Comment of the Week?
Yes, it’s happened before. COTW-squared.
I am puzzled why someone who doesn’t own a bike would buy one and ride it because there was better law enforcement. I doubt a higher tax on gas is to get anyone on a bike who has or can afford a motor vehicle to begin with. Why someone who wants to ride to the grocery store needs a secure downtown bike facility. How increasing penalties for people who hit bicyclists is going to get more people on them,.
I think this is largely a list of things an existing cyclist wants fixed to make their experience better. There seems to be this belief that if we focus on those things and that is what is keeping everyone else from getting on a bike.
I don’t think that is the case. I think focusing on removing the barriers to a better bike experience is unlikely to get more people out on bikes. And the most important thing that we can do is create a culture that actively supports cycling as part of a multi-modal transportation system.
We need an campaign that tells motorists that they are responsible for the safety of vulnerable users whether on foot, cycle, skateboard or motor cycle. Or other motorists for that matter. Videos of families riding down the road, people crossing the street to get to a bus, teens walking along a highway, motorcyclists appearing out of a fog. BIkes on sharrows or downtown traffic with cars following behind. And include dangerous points like someone turning right with a bike lane next to them or a pedestrian in a crosswalk. And people who ride their bikes the wrong way down the street or at high speed on shared pedestrian paths.
The point is to include everyone as vulnerable so we are talking with people not lecturing them. We need a culture that says someone safe while driving a large dangerous vehicle needs to look out for everyone else and is responsible for creating a safe environment for them. And we need to do it without lecturing them or focusing on the needs of one set of users so it seems like a special pleading. Its a pretty simple message “Motorists, WE are responsible for their safety.”
If we want more bicycles out on the street we need to make it safe and inviting even for a six year old. We need to show group of kids casually riding down the street or leaving school.There are plenty of people who road a bike until they got their car keys and then never got on one again. But there are very few people who never road a bike before they got their car keys and then took up riding a bike as adults or even taught their kids to ride a bike. The only way we get there is to change the culture. Building more and better bike facilities isn’t going to get there. Not by itself.
Thing is, cultural change takes time. Usually, a long time. While we wait for it to happen–and attempt to expedite it with things to increase visibility, like bike buses, and ads, and PSAs, and whatever else–we can make it actually, physically safer.
I’m going to come across all Marxist about this, for good reason: physical reality determines culture, at least to a large extent. If we had every single thoroughfare include a wide sidewalk, a curb-protected bike lane, a camera-enforced bus-only lane, and/or a tunneled/elevated rail transit lane, and a physical-space-equivalent amount of roadway, I’m willing to bet our culture would say, “non-automotive transportation modes are just as important as automotive ones”.
Because the simple truth is that without apportioning our physical space equally between modes–without giving cars n+1 (or +2, or +3) amount of space, and hoping they share that +1 with everyone else–we’re not treating modes equally, and our culture will continue to reflect that +1 deference to the car, no matter how much we promote all other forms of transit.
What does this mean? Skateboards, scooters, wheel chairs, and one-wheelers each get equal space as bicyclists, pedestrians, transit users, motorcyclists, truck drivers, and car drivers? Obviously some groupings are in order — based on top speed, vehicle weight, energy source, maneuverability, or just something arbitrary? Motorcyclists face (and present) their own set of hazards so probably need their own space, and mixing cars with vehicles like heavy trucks that have high mass, limitations on visibility, and special turning requirements is also dangerous.
Or do you mean apportion space based on the number of users of each mode, giving bicyclists 3% of every facility (leaving room for a very narrow lane)?
I don’t think this formula — or any other — would work.
Portland doesn’t have enough physical space to provide separate infrastructure for each mode. Given the competing demands and room available, it is hard for me to justify giving any reserved space to bicyclists given our low numbers.
I agree. It sounds counterintuitive to most people who want to promote cycling, but sending the message that “bikes don’t belong on roads unless they are specially designated to serve cyclists” is a VERY BAD idea.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to strawman me or whatever else, but you’re being obtuse. I’ll say as I and many others do, everywhere: look at what other countries are doing that works, and copy that. It’s not that complicated; we don’t need to reinvent the roadways, just rebuild them so that each vehicle class by speed has its own space.
Oh, puh-leeze. If this argument had any soundness to it, we’d never have built infrastructure for anything beyond a horse and carriage.
And not enough space? Are you kidding me? We have so much space to rebuild and redevelop things that–and I mean this quite literally–we forget how much space we have. This isn’t Hong Kong (nor does it need to be). We just need to stop being so deeply, desperately inefficient and impractical with the space we have.
“Just” is doing a lot of work there. Rebuilding even a minor street with driveways so that it has a separated bike lane in the Dutch style would be very expensive. And how do you address intersections (which is where the vast majority of the danger is)? I think you’ve way oversimplified the difficulty of building separated infrastructure.
Let’s start with basics: how many vehicle classes are there? I listed a few candidates in my previous post. How many separate modes really make sense?
I realize you think this is all really easy and the solutions are completely obvious. In all seriousness, maybe you could connect with a PBOT engineer by calling 503-823-4000 and offer to take them out for a beer if they’ll listen to your ideas and give you some feedback.
This is great comment, thanks! I really appreciate “physical reality determines culture”. The City user prioritization officially has pedestrians at the top of the pyramid, and cyclist below that with people driving at the bottom. But in reality, so many new projects fail to deliver for people walking or biking. I think about recent PBOT failures like eliminating the sidewalk for SW Gibbs and screwing up the north end of the Blumenauer Bridge, and I think that if PBOT had been focused on providing for people an biking rather than being focused on SOV drivers, then we would have different results. Multiply this by dozens or hundreds of projects over that last 10-15 years and you can imagine our system being incredibly more safe and inviting for people walking and biking.
Yeah, I think about this a lot. It’s why Robert Moses and his colleagues from the 40s-60s is one of the most effective destructive forces in American History[citation needed]. They laid down the template for a physical reality that, once put in place, is just so hard to replace with a new paradigm.
Henri Lefebvre and Richard Sennett have lengthy and fascinating explanations of the effects of physical reality on human culture.
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, and ban parking on any city street. 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.
Less:
“Bikes are fun!”
“Biking is green!”
“Bikes are good for Portland and the planet!”
More:
“Roll coal? Six months of weekend corrections, revocation of license, loss of your precious truck!”
“T-bone a cyclist? Hit a pedestrian? Three hots and a cot in county lockup!”
“Hit-and-run? That’s a minimum 3-5 years in prison, son!”
Cyclists should also be held accountable for dumb stuff like red light/stop sign running, unsafe operation, and riding while intoxicated. Motorists cause more death/injury while often getting no more than a slap on the wrist. PBOT policies and law enforcement tell us who is more important and that must change. Geller should be pushing that internally rather than promoting more feelgood fluff and vaporware infrastructure projects that won’t get built until many of us are dead or too old to enjoy them, if ever.
Then lucky you, because you need not puzzle: People largely _do_ own bikes. It’s just that for most, they are archived intention artifacts, not items in use. But you are spot on about what the content of a campaign needs to be.
“archived intention artifacts”
I am adopting this into my vocabulary. Thank you for that.
So many garage ornaments out there. So many people telling me – “I used to ride.” or “I would like to ride, but can’t because (insert reason here).”
That’s a really great comment that I missed. Thanks, Lisa, for highlighting it.
Dan’s point #4 – maintain and sweep bike lanes – is the main thing for me, esp at this time of the year, when wet leaves make cycling so difficult and dangerous. Our current city gov’t just CANNOT address this situation: many of us have tried and tried to get them to do it, and they just can’t.
The day I see a bike lane in my neighborhood as actively maintained as the car-travel lane is, then I’ll know the city is really serious about making cycling a viable means of transportation for everybody and not just a niche activity for hobbyists.
I agree that PBOT has proven that they simply do not have the wherewithal to keep the streets swept, but one reason the car lanes seem to be better kept up is cars break down leaves and push debris out of the driving areas as they go, giving them the appearance of being better maintained.
I don’t think PBOT is doing much street sweeping anywhere, and I can show you the last remnants of decaying leaves in the middle of streets in March as evidence.
I have a theory that if a mayor would prioritize cleaning the streets and bike paths as one of the most important tenets of his or her administration, the result, even at the subconscious, would be that that mayor is doing a good job at managing the city.
I wish someday, somebody would try to test my theory, but even among my friends and acquaintances, the idea falls on deaf ears. I must be naïve.
These politicians want low hanging fruit? Then clean, hazard free bike lanes, greenways and MUPS would be a 100% improvement to what we have now with no additional lanes or assets needed. Unfortunately, that’s not what we have here, and has been noted above, is not even a serious part of the discussion. Pitiful. It’s a dereliction of duty in my mind.
(Next on the agenda; blocked sight lines at intersections. Vegetation, and vehicle removal.)
If Portland was in the Midwest, I’d agree with you, cleaning the leaves would be a priority, partly to make the city look great in such a conservative community and partly to help with the later melting of 4 months of snow and ice – but Portland isn’t in the Midwest, it isn’t very conservative at all, and snow is not really a big issue in Portland (not as much as the gravel residue anyway).
When I was a member of the PBOT Bureau Advisory Committee, I remember extensive discussions about the $900,000 leaf removal program, how it only applied to certain wealthier inner neighborhoods, skipping poorer inner neighborhoods and nearly all those in outer parts of town, who also incidentally got leaves – and how the sewers were actually better off by not having the leaves removed – clogged sewer grates actually helped control the flow of storm water – and the fallen leaves were more likely to biodegrade along the exposed curb than in a compost pile somewhere.
What it really boils down to is “opportunity costs” – do you prefer spending millions of dollars every year removing leaves citywide (the estimate I saw for cleaning the whole city, and not just select rich neighborhoods, annually, was over $4 million) – or do you prefer the city spending that money on bikeway and pedestrian improvements?
The Midwest is a big region with a lot of political diversity. The cities similar to Portland in size (Minneapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Indy, Columbus) all have different political landscapes and priorities. And most of these cities face much more contentious relationships with their respective state governments (especially Milwaukee, Indy, and St. Louis) and have a generally weaker recent economic outlook than Portland. So I find the idea that funding is uniquely constrained here to be hard to imagine. I also don’t think that Portland is meaningfully less conservative than any mid-to-large midwestern city (except for perhaps Columbus), it just takes on a different form out here. There’s widespread support for conservative policies and politicians if they register as Democrats (see: Ted Wheeler, Rene Gonzalez).
I do think the snow/ice removal requirements play a big role. I’d say that the only reason I could think of for leaf removal being a bigger deal in the Midwest because there are generally fewer conifers and thus more leaves.
I’m not from Portland so take my opinion with a grain of salt but here’s my assessment as someone who has visited Portland and followed Bike Portland for years as inspiration:
Portland has a lot to be proud of and when I visited most recently I was struck by how nice the City was for walking and biking and taking transit both in downtown and some of the neighborhoods east of the river. I felt safe and the transit was visitor friendly. Biking on the neighborhood greenway was a breeze and allowed me to go lots of places with little concern about whether I would find bike parking at my destination. The bike rush hour was also fascinating from a US context.
Now where could things be improved? The cute commercial streets east of the River were ok compared to my city (you don’t realize how calm and slow your drivers are) but I can see how these streets are a gap in the network coverage even if technically you can use nearby neighborhood greenways. Some of the streets with simple painted bike lanes looked old and due to be modernized with protection, even if it means further tradeoffs (removing parking or lanes) and in cases where the cute commercial streets are already a single lane, maybe speed tables and replacing signals with stop signs are in order to make even these streets feel like neighborhood greenways. I’ve also followed from afar your bruising battle around putting bike lanes on streets like Hawthorne and Williams. These things aren’t easy. Portland has an excellent foundation but you aren’t finished. Look to similar cities like Berkeley where they have turned their attention from the neighborhood greenways to the busier commercial streets (Adeline, Hearst, Bancroft, San Pablo, Telegraph). Even Berkeley has struggled (see their recent experience on Hopkins).
Close the gap on the Glisan bike lanes between 47th and 102nd, look at some of the elephants in the room like Cesar Chavez Bl, revisit Hathorne, look at any downtown street that has 3 lanes of traffic…
Anyway, count me among the marketing skeptics
I agree with the many good points about the value of continuing to build and improve the physical bike route network. However, after thinking about it for a while, I believe Geller has a point about marketing.
When I moved to Portland in 2007, I’d never ridden a bike for transportation, but was quickly convinced by new friends that Portland was best experienced on a bike.
The news of the era included the waning years of the Bush administration, Peak Oil, an intense war in Iraq, and An Inconvenient Truth. My new friends also complained about the increased traffic of the growing city. All of that constituted a *push* away from cars.
Meanwhile, Portland had a growing local food/arts/culture scene, rents were the cheapest on the west coast, and the city had added bike lanes all over. Businesses actively marketed themselves using bike imagery, and cities came to see bike facilities as a way to attract “creative class.”
All of this constituted a *pull* to bikes and the kind of people who ride them.
These cultural, technological, economic, and social factors act like a kind of marketing.
Bikes offered a solution to some of our most culturally salient problems, while socially signaling a certain kind of politics and character. This was before Fred Armisen’s “Bicycle rights” character, before “creative class” people like myself had driven up housing prices, before we woke from the dream of the ‘90’s.
Today we have different headline concerns. Cycling doesn’t offer very clear solutions to the global creep of authoritarianism, the lack of housing, or the abundance of cheap synthetic opioids. The creative class often works from home, traffic to downtown isn’t as bad, the cheapest housing is in areas with *less* bike connectivity.
That’s all history, and obviously we can’t turn back the clock. But we *should* attribute some of the growth in cycling to the dreads and excitements of those days.
If that’s true, then we might need some form of marketing to shape the future. Maybe that *includes* building splashy new bike paths/facilities, or making a very visible push to clean up MUPS around town, or increasing traffic enforcement in a way that increases safety and people’s perception of safety.
Maybe the marketing also includes brochures, billboards, and social media ads, but it’s hard to see Portland coughing up the kind of money needed to really make a dent in people’s feelings about bikes. A lot of the zeitgeist of the last bike boom was just news, social shifts, and economics- in retrospect, it seems to me that Portland spent very relatively on directly trying to convince people to ride bikes!