Bikeway gaps really get on Portlanders’ nerves. That much is clear.
The week after Jonathan and I suggested that people enter their least favorite gaps on a Google Map, the map has 120 items scattered around the Portland area.
Gap Week
Gap Week Roundup: Your gaps and what we learned
Map of our four gaps and a selection of reader submissions. Feel free to add your own.
What a week! In addition to all our regular news and feature stories we shined a light on bikeway gaps. Places where — for maddening and often inexplicable reasons — a perfectly fine bike lane vanishes for just a few short blocks.
Because if we want to fill these bikeway gaps we must first fill the knowledge gap.
Before I share your submissions and some thoughts on this topic, I want to say thanks to our business sponsors and subscribers. We need your continued financial support to keep doing this work. If you haven’t stepped up to subscribe or to become an advertising partner, please sign up (and join 200+ fellow readers!) or drop me a line today.
Gap Week: Cully, Columbia and Alderwood to Portland Airport
Portland is already tantalizingly close to providing a really solid biking connection from Northeast Portland’s working-class Cully neighborhood to the airport area.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)
This post is part of Gap Week, a special series made possible by our sponsors and subscribers.
Portland has a problem: like most U.S. cities, it’s been losing middle-wage jobs, especially the kind you can get without a fancy degree.
Many of the middle-wage, blue-collar jobs that remain are spread in industrial centers along the rivers with limited public transit access. And one of the most important clusters is one in Northeast Portland that many Portlanders know well: Portland International Airport.
Gap Week: SW Terwilliger between Chestnut and 7th
Gap? Check. Curve? Check. Narrow road? Check. Dangerous driving? Check. This one has it all (unfortunately).
(Photo: J Maus/BikePortland)
(Photo: J Maus/BikePortland)
Part of Gap Week.
So far this week we’ve covered a gap in downtown, one out east, and now we’ll travel over to southwest. Today’s gap is one that I had the displeasure of discovering during our Southwest Portland Week last February: southbound Terwilliger between Chestnut and 7th/Caldew (map).
Gap Week: 82nd Avenue and Burnside
East Burnside’s extremely important bike lane vanishes right where an “interested but concerned” biker might want it most.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)
Part of Gap Week.
Every morning and afternoon on East Burnside at 82nd Avenue, 10 cars at a time queue up in what ought to be a great advertisement for finding some other way to get around the city.
People on bikes, meanwhile, squeeze past to their right. They’re riding one of the city’s very few continuous bikeways connecting inner and outer East Portland.
Gap Week: Westbound Burnside Bridge between Naito and 3rd
The person cycling in the upper part of this image is in a bike lane, but not for long.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)
Welcome to Gap Week! This is our first in a series of posts where we’ll take a closer look at those annoying places where the bike lane ends.
Comment of the Week: ‘Right on red validates impatience’