When more people use cars on a street, it becomes less and less efficient. When more people use mass transit, it becomes more and more efficient.
(Image: Nick Falbo)

The City of Portland and the State of Oregon both say they want to free more of their constituents from traffic congestion and to reduce planet-killing pollution.

There’s no mystery at all about what this would look like on inner Powell Boulevard. Everyone with some measure of power who has considered the issue knows the answer. But for some reason, the millions of public dollars spent talking about that possible answer have never resulted in a street-level picture of it.

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(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

For today only you can feel what it’s like to ride on Southwest Broadway without the threat of someone opening a car door into you, or someone parking in the bike-only lane, or someone squeezing you into parked cars. (Sorry I can’t promise you won’t be right-hooked before you get there.) That’s because a trio of “tactical urbanists” have come together to create a temporary protected bike lane between Salmon and Taylor, just outside the doors of the Hilton Hotel where a smart growth conference is taking place.
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Mock-up of a bikeway that’s set to make a cameo on Broadway tomorrow.
(Image: Nick Falbo/Alta Planning + Design)

Tactical urbanism is about to make another imprint on Portland’s downtown streetscape. Tomorrow morning, a trio of planning and place-making groups are planning to create a temporary protected bike lane on one block of Southwest Broadway.
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West 3rd Avenue at Burnside Street.
(Images: Nick Falbo)

The local street planner who created the “protected intersection” concept has come up with six sketches of where it could be done in Portland.
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Fun on a better Naito, 2015.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

One of Portland’s most interesting annual traditions just got a little more official.

After three years of doing short-term demos themselves, the volunteer-led street reinvention group Better Block PDX has struck a formal partnership with Portland State University’s Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. With the help of PSU planning and engineering students, this new partnership means Better Block will constantly churn out a pipeline of projects that temporarily re-envision public spaces around Portland.

The new agreement will create one of the only academic programs in the country to integrate hands-on uses of “tactical urbanism,” as these lightweight, flexible projects are often called, directly into a student curriculum.

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Google Street View of Powell near 149th.

If the four-mile stretch of Powell Boulevard east of Interstate 205 is completely rebuilt in a few years, it could get some of Portland’s highest-quality bike lanes.

Some advocates say a meeting this Monday evening is the best chance yet to support Dutch-style raised bike lanes on outer Southeast Portland’s most important east-west arterial.

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A temporary “protected intersection” at Open Streets MPLS June 8.
(Photos courtesy Alta Planning and Design)

A Portland planner’s concept for a way to almost completely eliminate bike-car conflicts from American intersections got its first road test in Minneapolis this month.

“Bikeways for Everyone,” a Blue Cross Blue Shield-funded, Minneapolis-based advocacy coalition with a goal to build 30 miles of protected bike lanes by 2020, invited Nick Falbo of Alta Planning and Design to create a one-day demo at Open Streets MPLS, the city’s version of Sunday Parkways.

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The existing condition.
(Click to enlarge, or click here to play the spreadsheet-based game.)

The City of Portland’s official goal for 16 years from today is for one in four commutes to happen by bicycle, up from 6 percent today.

As many people have observed, that’s a tall order. But an ingenious new web game from two local planning pros lets you put your own hand to it.

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Portland-based urban planner and designer Nick Falbo’s latest project aims to expand the benefits of protected bike lanes — places where people can ride with physical separation from auto traffic — all the way to intersections. Falbo calls them “protected intersections” and he’s launched a website and new animated video to help spread the idea.[Read more…]

On FosterUnited.org

Citizen activist, transportation planner, and southeast Portland resident Nick Falbo has upped the ante in the grassroots effort to add a high-quality bikeway to SE Foster Road.

As we reported last month, the City of Portland and residents are currently working on an update to the Foster Road Streetscape Plan and a new bikeway on the street has figured largely into initial discussions. Those involved with the project are vying to influence exactly how the cross-section of SE Foster between SE 52nd and 90th ends up. With grant applications in the pipeline and some funding already in hand, the stakes are high. How the lines in the plan divide up Foster — and specifically, how much roadway space is devoted to bicycles — remains an open question.[Read more…]