Most Portland neighborhoods would jump at the chance to upgrade their bike lanes. But the coalition that represents 32 neighborhoods in District 4 is different. At their meeting Wednesday night, the District 4 Coalition (D4C) plans to finalize a letter to Portland Bureau of Transportation Director Millicent Williams that outlines their opposition to $760,000 of planned bike lane projects in Southwest Portland.
These projects are part of the bike lane hardening effort I reported on in August 2024. With marching orders from a city traffic engineer directive, PBOT is going through a list of protected bike lanes citywide that were initially built with just paint and/or plastic wands and replacing them with concrete curbs. The idea is permanent curbs offer a more pleasing aesthetic, provide a stronger safety benefit, and will require less maintenance (the wands are frequently uprooted). PBOT is also responding to some bike advocates who see paint and plastic as a poor substitute for more robust materials.
In a draft version of the letter about the projects in Southwest, D4C Land Use and Transportation Co-Chair Nicole Zimmerman (who’s also a candidate for City Council District 3) says they oppose planned hardening projects at three locations: Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway between SW 39th and SW 65th, SW Capitol Hwy between SW Valona and Stephenson, and Bertha Blvd between Vermont and 13th.
Below is an excerpt from the letter that lays out the reasons for their objections (emphasis theirs):
- No practical value. B-H Hwy., the proposed segment of Capitol Hwy., and Bertha Blvd. are among the lowest performing bike routes in all of SW Portland. This can be attributed largely to their lack of connectivity with the fractured bike network in SW. Any cyclist using these facilities must be confident riding on busy streets in the travel lane to reach and leave these bike lane segments. Providing an A+ bike facility on these isolated sections will not entice more cyclists to use them. Progress must be measured not by the miles of protected bike lanes but by the number of people traveling by bike.
- This is not maintenance. Converting them into physically separated facilities is an improvement project – not simple maintenance. If maintenance is an issue, the wands could simply be removed or just not replaced. If removed, there would continue to be very good, painted buffered bike lanes, which could again be swept with conventional equipment. Reliance on the small bike lane sweeper has resulted in infrequent sweeping and B-H and Capitol Hwys. are typically plagued by gravel, glass, leaves, and weeds.
- Chronically inadequate funding. Funding for capital projects to enhance pedestrian and bicycle safety is severely constrained. For perspective, D4 can expect about $2.3 million from FOS3 for the next 4 years. Other pots of funding are available, but the cost of the B-H Highway project will make it among the most expensive projects proposed in D4 and SW over the next four years.
- Higher priority needs and lack of community support. Given all the high-priority network and safety improvements, many of which have languished for decades, PBOT should not spend $490,000 on this project followed by the Capitol Hwy. project totaling around $757,000 and an undetermined amount for Bertha Blvd. when the bike lane hardening lacks community support and The BH Hwy. and Capitol Hwy. projects are not identified in the TSP or SWIM. Until bike routes are completed and not disjointed, it is premature to spend scared funds for first-class facilities on random segments.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because BikePortland reported on a Southwest-based cycling advocate who shared many of these same concerns back in fall of 2024. I reached out to that person, former PBOT Bicycle Advisory Committee member and veteran bike advocate Keith Liden, and he confirmed he was the inspiration for the D4C position. “Yes, my fingerprints are all over it,” Liden shared with me via email last week.
“We feel it makes no sense to spend scarce dollars to ‘gold plate’ isolated sections on routes with serious gaps,” Liden said. “Hardening these bike lanes will do nothing to attract less confident/inexperienced riders, while the current users will still be fine with painted buffers.” Liden wants PBOT to offer a more complete route before spending money to improve isolated sections.
Kiel Johnson with nonprofit BikeLoud PDX disagrees with Liden and has sent a message of his own to PBOT, urging them to move forward. In an email sent Thursday, February 19th, Johnson wrote that Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway currently feels like a freeway due to its design, and changes are needed to attract more riders. “Paint and plastic wands are not protection,” Johnson wrote. “Physical barriers—concrete curbs, continuous raised protection, and median refuge islands—would reduce conflict points, prevent encroachment into bike space, and narrow the effective roadway in a way that calms traffic without eliminating access.”
The D4C coalition wants PBOT to allow them to help review and evaluate the projects to find, “an acceptable approach for improving and maintaining these facilities at reduced cost and to redirect the remaining funds to improvements that support more pressing priorities in District 4 and identified in our adopted plans.” Liden and others in Southwest feel PBOT’s project selections are too “top-down” and they want a more collaborative process to determine future bikeway investments.
Learn more about PBOT’s bike lane upgrades on their website.
The D4C Land Use and Transportation Committee meets tomorrow (Weds., 2/25) from 6:30 to 8:30 pm via Zoom.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Disjointed bikeway systems plague most US cities – it’s a very rare US city that has a coordinated system of connected bikeway facilities, let alone high-quality ones. And the trash, grit, glass, and other crap in the bike lanes does render most facilities so bad that many of us will choose to bike in the traffic lane instead. So yeah, I see their point.
Thanks for your great coverage, as always, Jonathan. I can think of no greater need for the local cycling advocacy community than to form consensus around infrastructure priorities. From my perspective, PBOT does try to faithfully serve us (bicyclists) as an important user group, but it’s a task far beyond their capability. This is partly because PBOT seems ineffective and clumsy, but, even if they were really firing on all cylinders, it’s not clear they could deliver services that we would be happy with because we don’t even agree among ourselves about what is needed. At all. My perspective is largely in line with what you have described of Liden’s and D4C’s positions, but I am more than happy to advocate for different priorities if there is a strong community consensus that those priorities are important.
In response to similar comment I made on a different article, eawriste pointed me to a ~decade old plan for bicycle improvements produced by the city (it’s title involved 2030, and I can locate the link if desired). It was really a great document, and I’m dismayed that this political discussion (fight?) is occurring with no reference to this or any other (extensive, existing) planning documents and need inventories. We as a community should use that document (or something better) to develop a robust set of projects to badger PBOT about when they try to do something jacked. If we let PBOT drive things like they have been, we are going to get unsatisfying results.
I commuted on Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy for 5+ years, taking it all the way from Hillsdale to downtown Beaverton, often at night.
I agree with Keith wholeheartedly. Until and unless there is a plan for that buffered, curbed bike lane to connect to SOMETHING once it reaches the Washington County line at Six Corners, it’s pointless to build up the infrastructure between SW 39th and SW 65th when the bike lane disappears entirely two blocks west.
There is literally no connector to anything else westbound at that point. Cyclists are dumped into 40mph traffic (marked 35mph, but lets be honest, no one drives 35) without warning or recourse.
Want to head south on Oleson? Have fun crossing two lanes of car traffic to reach the turn lane that routinely backs up with drivers who are trying to turn onto Scholls Ferry one light further down the road.
I also take issue with Kiel’s assertion that it’s like a freeway in it’s current state. That’s just hyperbolic nonsense that’s insulting to those of us who remember what riding on BHH used to be like before the concrete curbs and wands were installed. Is it ideal? Hell no. But it’s far, far more welcoming that it was before. And it would be even more welcoming for riders if PBOT was better at keeping the lanes clear of debris.
All that said, I do disagree with Keith about Bertha Blvd between Vermont and 13th. Adding better infrastructure around schools should be a priority.
Yeah tbh those bike lanes are not good at all and I do not think concrete curbs will actually solve the problems of “drivers are not looking for cyclists at all” and “the bike lanes abruptly end on a highway”. In theory they would be the most direct route to visit family in Beaverton but in practice I would go miles out of my way to avoid them and that would still be the case if their “protection” was upgraded.
Can I also just say, it annoys me a great deal when PBOT pretends that curbs that are explicitly designed so that emergency vehicles can drive over them are “protection” when i fact what I would like is protection from a drunk driver or similar driving into the bicycle lane. I was recently in Victoria BC and their protected lanes had quite tall curbs protecting them that would ruin a car’s undercarriage, which seemed much more genuinely protective than PBOT gaslighting us by calling a bike lane “protected” when it at best protects us from people parking in the bike lane quite as often. Also as far as I can tell Victoria BC’s emergency services were in fact able to carry about their business successfully, which makes me wonder if there is any attempt to validate PPB or the fire department’s concerns about emergency responses time by any sort of objective measure, beyond the fact that people who are car-brained don’t like it.