On Monday, the City of Portland announced a new focus on cleaning sidewalks citywide. Utilizing contractors and a budget of about $2 million, the plan is to focus on sidewalks along major business corridors and commercial centers.
Among the new tools that will employed to do this cleanup work are pedal-powered cargo trikes. These trikes have already proven themselves as perfect vehicles for navigating tight spaces and still having room to cart sizable loads of garbage and debris back to a central location. Last year I profiled a downtown nonprofit that used the same style of trikes in their programs to great success.
Seven trikes were purchased for this program from Icicle Tricycles, a Portland-based company that sells trikes to businesses all over the world and recently moved into a 30,000 square-foot warehouse in Old Town.
In a statement about the new program, the City of Portland said the trikes will be accompanied by a truck and will, “visit Portland’s busiest locations on a regular basis to clean up trash and biohazards from the sidewalks that people rely on to go to school and work, go shopping, keep appointments, and enjoy their neighborhoods.”
Clear and clean sidewalks are important not just for walkers, but in many parts of the city they are a refuge for bicycle riders as well — especially in locations where the adjacent street has no safe space for cycling. (Note: bicycle riding on sidewalks is allowed in Portland, except for a small part of downtown, as described in City Code Chapter 16.70.320.)
Below is a list of streets the city will keep clean as part of this initiative:
District 1
- NE Sandy Boulevard
- SE 122nd
- E Burnside
- SE Division
- NE 82nd
- SE Powell
- NE Halsey
District 2
- N Lombard
- NE Killingsworth
- N Williams
- NE Alberta
- N Mississippi
- N Vancouver
- NE Broadway
- N Interstate
- North Ainsworth
- NE MLK
- NE Cully
District 3
- NE Sandy
- E Burnside
- NE 28th
- SE Hawthorne
- SE Division/Clinton
- SE Belmont
- SE Foster
- SE Woodstock
- NE & SE 82nd
- SE 79th
- SE 80th
- SE Milwaukie
- SE Powell
- SE 12th
- SE 7th
- SE MLK
- SE Grand
District 4
- NW 21st
- SE 13th (Sellwood)
- SW Beaverton Hillsdale Highway (Hillsdale)
- SW Capitol Highway (Multnomah Village)
- NW 23rd
- West Burnside
- NW Everett
- NW Glisan
- NW Lovejoy
- NW 10th
- NW 11th
- NW 18th
- NW 20th
Learn more via the official statement.
