Some recent updates to a map of future bikeways in Portland’s central city have advocates talking.
A new market in downtown Portland without bike parking out front? Say it ain’t so!
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)
Downtown Portland’s most interesting new meal spot could be described as an indoor food cart pod, or maybe a slightly upmarket food court.
But whatever you want to call Pine Street Market, one thing it’s clearly short of is bike parking.
A few weeks ago, when I met a friend there, I resorted to something I’ve never had to do since moving to Portland: locking my bike to the plumbing outside a nearby building.
This is such an odd situation in Portland, which usually excels at commercial bike parking above all else, that it’s been drawing attention:
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The city says there’s no room for future bike lanes on the most direct street between Northwest Portland’s fast-growing residential area and the Central Eastside’s fast-growing job district.
Instead, inner Southwest Alder Street is slated to become a “trafficway” offering automobile and truck connections to the Morrison Bridge and interstate highways.
The latest piece of Portland’s ongoing effort to get people to realize that there are places to park cars downtown other than curbs is to offer free parking in its six public garages.
Here’s the word from tourism promotion group Travel Portland:
On three Sundays in December 2015 (Dec. 6, 13 and 20), parking at downtown SmartPark lots is free. Customers who park at SmartPark garages can visit the customer service kiosk at Pioneer Place (lower level near the Gap) or Boys’ Fort (902 S.W. Morrison St.) or PDX Pop-Up Shops (438 N.W. Broadway and 341 N.W. Fifth Ave.) any time between noon and 5 p.m. to show their eligible SmartPark ticket and receive one $5 parking voucher to cover parking for the day.
Though lovers of bikes, transit and walking hate to admit it, driving a car is often the most convenient way to get around Portland. Until we start reconfiguring our roads to give more space to bicycling and dedicated transit lines, that will likely remain the case years into the future.
An odd thing about driving is that not only is it usually convenient; it’s also usually pretty cheap.
The question is, why are we also going out of our way to make driving so cheap?
At least, that’s the question asked Sunday by Tony Jordan, a member of the committee that’s currently advising the city on whether it should raise its downtown parking rates from $1.60 to $2 per hour.
The project management gig that one local planning pro has referred to as the “job of the year” has been filled.
Rick Browning, an architect and urban designer with a long history in Portland, will start work May 28 on a federally funded project that’s widely expected to implement the first substantial protected bike lanes in downtown Portland — indeed, some of the only low-stress bike infrastructure in downtown, which has by far the city’s highest concentration of bike commuters.
The $6.6 million Central City Multimodal Safety Project might also look for ways to improve the awkward bike connections to bridges like the Burnside, Steel and Hawthorne or even crossings of Interstate 405 to the west.
As it has been in other U.S. cities over the last few years, the downtown protected bike lanes would be a companion project to a planned bike sharing system that the city continues to say will launch in 2016.
Click the two areas of the map above for information on each street closure.
To paraphrase the city’s official news release only slightly:
One of Portland’s top tourist attractions seems poised to become dramatically less car-oriented by the start of 2016.
A downtown consulting firm is hosting a conversation tomorrow morning about one of Portland’s most persistent ideas: a cap over the Interstate 405 freeway.
Two months after a three-day demo of a human-oriented 3rd Avenue captured many visitors’ imaginations, permanent changes are afoot.
The city is proposing to spend $10,000 next spring to add paint to 14 unmarked crosswalks on NW 2nd, 3rd and 4th between Burnside and Glisan. Several nearby properties have just changed hands. And Howard Weiner, chair of the Old Town Community Association, is working on plans that could bring much larger changes to the area.
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