Plans for the new south-facing mall entrance also include a row of sidewalk-facing storefronts and 34 covered bike parking spaces just inside the garage.
(Images: Waterleaf Architecture via City of Portland. Click to enlarge.)

After decades of keeping its shops (and Portland’s most famous skating rink) behind the bars of its parking garage, the Lloyd Center is planning a change.

As we reported last winter, the new owners of the mall have planned a new “grand entrance” that will slice away part of the rarely crowded garage in order to welcome foot and bike traffic from Multnomah Street, Holladay Park and the Lloyd Center MAX station.

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Dixie Tavern owner Dan Lenzen, right, with Boris Kaganovich of Better Block PDX.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Frustrated by city officials’ estimates that it’d take several years to even consider a major redesign of 3rd Avenue through Old Town, a group of neighborhood businesses is teaming up with a team of livable streets advocates to create their own three-day demo of what a better street could look like — two weeks from today.

Inspired in part by the “pop-up” street projects that have helped reshape New York City in the last five years, organizers say Old Town’s three-block project will be one of the country’s largest such projects ever.

It’ll use wooden planters in the street to create more than a thousand square feet of new pedestrianized space between NW Davis an SW Ash, a protected bike lane, a series of new sidewalk cafes, a marked crosswalk and a huge new public plaza in front of Voodoo Doughnut adjoining Old Town’s thriving Ankeny Alley.

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Four possible routes for north-south protected bike lanes through downtown.
(Graphic: BikePortland)

Third in a week-long series about the BTA’s five new advocacy campaigns.

With almost every street project that isn’t happening in Portland, the city’s stated reason is that it doesn’t have the money. A long-discussed couplet of north/south protected bike lanes through downtown is the exception.

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Vancouver’s three-year-old downtown bike lane network.
(Photos © M. Andersen.)

Lots of people know you can go to Copenhagen or Manhattan to see grids of protected bike lanes in action. But there’s another set of them 300 miles north of Portland — and they run right through a city so similar to Portland that they could be siblings.
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It’s open! A major renovation of SW Moody includes a two-way cycle track.
(Photos © J. Maus)

Yesterday, the SW Moody Project opened for business and I took my first ride on its cycle track.
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Artist rendering of SW Moody taken from project website.

Tomorrow, the Portland Bureau of Transportation will lift the lid on their SW Moody Project that includes what will be downtown’s first-ever cycle track. [Read more…]

“Working well” says PSU evaluation.
(Photos © J. Maus)

Researchers at Portland State University have completed an evaluation of Portland’s cycle track on SW Broadway and buffered bike lanes on SW Stark and Oak. The analysis, prepared for the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), shows that both of the bikeway types are “working well,” but PSU also laid out some recommendations on how to make them work even better.[Read more…]

Riding on SE 28th.

Two-way cycle track on NE 33rd. (Photos © J. Maus)

A new study from Dr. Anne Lusk at the Harvard School of Public Health published in the British Medical Journal yesterday came to the conclusion that bicycling in a cycle track — physically separated from motor vehicle traffic — is safer than riding in the street.[Read more…]

View of the cycle track (L) and the sidewalk (R) on the new NE Cully Blvd. Please note that the striping and signage is not complete.
(Photos © J. Maus)

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Happy Birthday cycle track!
(Photos © J. Maus)

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