It’s time to talk about the future of Better Naito.
(Photo: Jonathan Maus)

Now in its fourth year as a seasonal street oasis for vulnerable road users, the talks about making Better Naito permanent are heating up.

This past winter, the Portland Bureau of Transportation commissioned a private consulting firm to develop a report (below) with conceptual designs for a capital project that would replace the temporary plastic delineator wands and paint striping that exist today on Naito Parkway’s northbound lanes from SW Main to NW Couch with a permanent, 20-foot wide path for bicycling, walking, and other uses.

This is the first time the report has been made public. We received a copy of it from Mayor Ted Wheeler’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Communications Michael Cox after hearing about from various sources. Here’s the report:[Read more…]

Ceremonial parade loop on Better Naito this morning.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus)

“All through the long, dark winter, I eagerly await the day when bollards spring from the pavement and we know that Better Naito season is upon us again.”

With those words by Biketown General Manager Dorothy Mitchell, the City of Portland officially opened Better Naito this morning.

From now until the end of September, Naito Parkway will have more room for biking, walking and rolling between the Hawthorne and Steel Bridges. The re-allocation of road space was first made possible in 2015 by a group of volunteer activists from Better Block PDX in collaboration with planning students from Portland State University. Last year the project was taken over by the Portland Bureau of Transportation and they’ve now budgeted for a seasonal installation for the next four years.

Last year PBOT counted 500,000 trips in the Better Naito lane and it has been widely hailed as a success.
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(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland – Graphic: PBOT)

With just two months before they re-implement Better Naito, the City of Portland has released a 26 page report (PDF) touting its successful run last year.
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From PBOT’s 30% plans.

A project that offers a major update to SW Naito Parkway will get it first official public viewing this coming Wednesday (1/10).
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A quarter-mile of Portlanders lined Southwest Naito Parkway’s temporary protected bike lane Thursday evening to form bollards with their bodies and call for the next “Better Naito” to be permanent.

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This stretch of Naito has never had a bikeway. One could become a crucial connection if it were added, but it’d mean making at least part of “Better Naito,” the temporarily improved stretch of road immediately to the north, permanent.
(Image: Google Maps)

As Portland prepares to remove a temporary protected bike lane on Monday and biking advocates prepare to call for permanent improvements with a human-protected bike lane demonstration tonight, a separate discussion has been going on.

As part of last year’s voter-approved Fixing Our Streets program, the city has promised to reconstruct and repave Naito Boulevard between the Hawthorne Bridge and Interstate 405. But state law requires reconstructed roads to add bike facilities — and that stretch of Naito has never had bike lanes.

The result: The city has worked up a rough engineering concept that includes a bike path and protected two-way bike lanes between Salmon Street and Harrison Street, including on-street protected bike lanes beneath the Hawthorne Bridge onramp that would permanently repurpose one of Naito’s four auto traffic lanes for biking, at least at this crucial pinchpoint.

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A person-protected bike lane in New York City last month.
(Photo: Streetsblog NYC)

This is a subscriber post by Kiel Johnson of Go By Bike.

At 6 p.m. tonight, join me and your fellow bike enthusiasts for what could be, if we want it to be, the biggest bicycling demonstration in Portland’s history. Together we will stand against the complacency that has told us that more biking is inevitable if we only do nothing.

We all know how to get more people biking, but it will only happen when enough people in Portland stand and demand it as loudly and as often as they can.

Each bike lane that we add or take away tells a story about who we are and what kind of place we want to live in. Are we a city that fosters health, community, and environmental stewardship? Or are we a city that breathes the same polluted air and sits in the same traffic as most of the rest of the United States? Tonight, I choose to help make a city where biking is accessible and safe for all; where we prioritize people who move through our city in ways that make us appreciate one another; where we build bridges that connect communities instead of rivers of cars to separate us.

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A human-protected bike lane in San Francisco in May. A group of Portlanders are organizing a similar event on Naito Parkway next Thursday, before the protected bike lanes there are removed.
(Photo: Brandon Splane via Streetsblog SF)

As the City of Portland prepares to remove the temporary protected bike lane along its downtown waterfront, some Portlanders see a one-time chance to grab the public imagination.

A group of residents and others who support protected bike lanes in the central city and elsewhere are planning to line up along the soon-to-be removed Naito Parkway protected bike lanes at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 28, to touch arms and create a half-hour “human-protected bike lane,” complete with music, then capture the image for a crowdfunded advertising campaign in support of permanent bike lane protections.

“I think it’s gonna be awesome,” said Emily Guise, the co-chair of advocacy group BikeLoudPDX. “We’re taking inspiration from people who have done them around the globe: Dublin, San Francisco, New York. … It’s going to be a really positive event.”

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Portland commuters and business customers using Better Naito.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

(Publisher’s note: This article was submitted by BikePortland subscriber Joan. It comes the day after the Portland Business Alliance launched an email campaign against Better Naito. The campaign appears to have backfired as it has spurred dozens (if not hundreds) of emails to city council and social media comments in support of the project.

As Jonathan wrote in BikePortland last month, the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), which bills itself as the chamber of commerce for greater Portland, has an aggressive campaign against Better Naito, the temporary lane change to SW Naito Parkway along the Waterfront Park that makes bicycling and walking and visiting festivals safer and better during the summer months. As the Portland Mercury notes in the headline to a story about this very topic, the PBA ‘is weirdly obsessed with ‘Better Naito.'”

This campaign has taken several forms, including a misguided editorial in the Portland Tribune and multiple contacts with elected officials. The Mercury said, “PBA brings Better Naito up in meetings with elected officials, and earlier this month, the organization drafted a strongly worded letter to Transportation Commissioner Dan Saltzman attempting to bring its monied heft to bear on the issue.”
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This new path is just one sign of Naito’s emerging significance in the downtown bikeway network.
(Photos J. Maus/BikePortland)

Sorry Portland Business Alliance, but the evolution of downtown streets will continue with or without your approval.

The business lobbying group (known around here as “the PBA”) that used to have considerable sway over downtown decision-making, made their opposition to the Better Naito project clear last week. And while the PBA might feel better when the temporary biking and walking-only lane gets removed in September, they’ll soon realize it’s just one of many moves the Portland Bureau of Transportation is making to update downtown streets. And those updates are all aimed at doing the same thing as Better Naito: create more space for biking so it becomes safer and more convenient for more people.

With Better Naito, a new (permanent) path to connect to the Steel Bridge, and several other recent developments, the future of Portland’s downtown bike network is taking shape and Naito Parkway plays a leading role.

Here’s how just a few parts of this emerging bike network figure into that future…
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