Welcome to being-pissed-off-about-leaves-in-bike-lanes season. Last night I sympathized with my former colleague (now Portland Mercury reporter) Taylor Griggs after learning she took a nasty spill on leaves while using the bike lane on Northeast 7th Avenue (see below). At the same time, I happened to be watching Portland’s bicycle coordinator share an update on bike lane maintenance.
Portland Bureau of Transportation Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller shared a brief presentation on this very popular topic at the monthly meeting of the Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) last night. He gave an update on the $10 million bike lane sweeping initiative PBOT has been working on. As I reported back in February, PBOT won a grant from the Portland Clean Energy Benefits Fund (PCEF) that gives them $2 million per year for five years to keep bike lanes clean.
That funding is being used to purchase two big-ticket items: a new bike lane cleaning team and tools to do the work. Specifically, those tools include: a new fleet of battery-powered, bike lane-sized sweepers and leaf blowers for those hard to reach places.
Last night Geller said PBOT has hired seven of the eight new staffers. And so far, two of the new e-sweepers — designed specifically to fit inside protected bike lanes — are already here. I’ve seen both of them parked in PBOT’s Stanton Yard, a maintenance vehicle facility on the corner of N Graham and N Mississippi. The cute little sweepers are dwarfed by a massive diesel generator (which I hope isn’t their final solution for charging these babies). According to a slide shown at the BAC meeting last night, in addition to those two e-sweepers, PBOT has purchased two Ford Lighting pickups for all the hand sweeping and more detailed clean-up work a mechanical sweeper can’t do (aka “bunching support”).
So far, the PCEF-funded team has been working on areas with heavy leaf canopy. A map of future sweeping routes is still in the works. A public-facing map and a leaf pick-up request dashboard is also being worked on, but not yet ready for launch. Another slide shown last night included a map of the latest spots that have been swept (see above)
None of these updates are likely to make many Portlanders feel better about the current state of bike lanes — and the vast volume of leaves that have overtaken many of them. “Appreciate your patience, the leaf drop was early this year,” the slide reads.
So for now, take extra caution through the leaves, don’t turn sharply in corners, and hope for the best. If there’s a particularly bad spot, you should report it to 311 so city crews get it on their list.
