The Portland Bureau of Transportation is working on a plan that could help remedy one of its most intractable problems: bike lane maintenance.
Portlanders have long lamented that bike lanes are so dirty that they endanger current riders and discourage would-be newcomers. From snow and gravel in winter, pools of water in spring, and leaves in fall, many of our city’s vaunted bikeways languish without attention from sweepers for many months of the year.
Despite PBOT efforts to address the numerous complaints, budgetary and personnel limitations have always constrained their response. And as the bike network has grown, PBOT’s budget has shrunk. Now that cycle might finally be broken thanks to a $10 million grant award from the Portland Clean Energy Benefits Fund (PCEF).
The funding will be spread across five years and will allow PBOT to staff up a dedicated team, buy two bike lane sweepers and a pair of electric backpack leaf blowers (for those hard-to-reach locations).
At a meeting of the Bicycle Advisory Committee last night, PBOT Maintenance Operations Division Manager Shaylee Robanske laid out how the bureau plans to tackle bike lane maintenance with this new influx of funds.
The PCEF award will allow the maintenance team to “really put a focus on cleaning bike lanes and vegetation overgrowth into bike lanes,” Robanske said. “I’m sure it’s very frustrating to bike the same area and see the same thing that you’ve already reported for multiple days.”
PBOT’s new Bike Lane Maintenance Program will consist of eight full-time employees that will be split evenly into two teams: one east of the river, one west of the river. These staff will be dedicated to handling bike lane maintenance requests and doing a systematic clearing of trouble spots. They will operate three electric sweepers and leaf-blowers to clean and maintain 50 miles of protected bike lanes and 325 miles of non protected/shared bike lanes in the coming year. Robanske said she’ll lean on BAC committee members to develop an initial list of top priority bike lane segments.
Robanske also revealed at Tuesday’s meeting that the Maintenance & Operations Division will soon shift to a new software platform (Zendesk) to handle all citizen complaints and clean-up requests with a new interface meant solely for bike lane issues. A new public-facing dashboard for the program is also in the works so everyone can see how many miles of bikeways have been swept and the exact locations that have been serviced by PBOT crews.
By 2027, Robanske says her goal is that, “You can go sit in the bike lane and you cook pancakes and they’ll be clean as a whistle.” “With a dedicated team and equipment that performs the way it’s supposed to, PBOT will become a highlight in the nation for what PCEF is doing for this program,” she added. “I’m super excited. I hope you take my enthusiasm as some hope and promise into how PBOT can show up for cleaning these bike lanes. Given the right dedicated funding and staff, we are capable of amazing things.”
The goal is to hit top priority bike lane segments six times per year and still have time to respond to individual requests and hot-spots. The plan is set to go into effect this summer.
