11 years have passed since the first time I mentioned the Green Loop here on BikePortland. Since then, very little has happened in the way of official progress toward making the vision of a loop of paths around the central city a reality.
Yes, City Council adopted the Green Loop concept (as part of the Central City 2035 Plan) in 2018, then we added a key link in the route with the carfree Blumenauer Bridge in 2022, and we got an excellent view of what the future facility might look like in this video I shared back in March. But when you look at the official Green Loop webpage on the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s website, there’s not much there. In fact, when you go to sign up for email alerts, the city website jumps over to Friends of Green Loop, an independent nonprofit.
But I’ve noticed chatter from my various intelligence sources and it looks like the City of Portland is finally ready to push this project forward and make the Green Loop legit. With a big meeting for the project scheduled for tonight, I figured it was time to get everyone up to speed.
Last month the Portland Bureau of Transportation published a new Green Loop Concept Plan website. They’ve also released an “early engagement survey” and will hold the first-ever Green Loop Community Sounding Board meeting tonight (Wednesday, July 16th).
To refresh, the Green Loop was conceived in 2014 as a six-mile “linear park” around the central city. The idea is a series of low-stress walking and rolling paths connected by excellent public spaces. It’ll be sort of like a neighborhood greenway for the central city. Or, in the words of PBOT, a facility that will, “improve health outcomes, support business districts, expand inclusive access to regional destinations, and support the growth of Portland’s Central City.”
So, what has recently changed to spur all this activity?
When the Central City 2035 Plan was adopted by Portland City Council in 2018, one of the recommendations in the plan was to develop the Green Loop Concept Plan. In 2023, the Portland Bureau of Transportation won a state grant from the Transportation and Growth Management program to do that work. They finally kicked off the process this past spring.
According to PBOT, since 2018 there’s been a lot of visioning for the design and construction of individual blocks of the Green Loop. This new plan will refine the route, bring the design to a more granular level of detail, and nail down a phased implementation strategy.
In other words, PBOT and other bureau partners (Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, Portland Parks, Prosper Portland, and others) will look to mold what is now a relatively vague concept into something more tangible — something that could actually be built once funding and other opportunities present themselves. To do that, PBOT needs to understand what the public wants and needs out of the project. That’s where the survey comes in.
“We’re not building anything yet, but your input will directly shape how and where it happens,” reads one of the survey pages. Survey takers are asked to prioritize Green Loop objectives, rank design principles, share how they’re likely to use the facility, and more. The survey shows images of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail and the Miami Underline as comparable examples.
The 15-member Community Sounding Board (CSB) is expected to meet three times between now and winter 2026. Their job will be to provide feedback to city staff about the alignment and other elements of the plan. A presentation prepared by PBOT for tonight’s first CSB meeting lays out the existing conditions of the route alignment and the community and land use planning context. Ultimately, the CSB will make recommendations for designs and implementation strategies.
To learn more, check out the new website, take the survey, and consider attending the Sounding Board meeting tonight from 3:00 to 5:00 pm.