The mighty Eastbank Esplanade is showing its age and needs a maintenance funding boost.
(Photo: J. Maus)

The Portland Parks & Recreation bureau is bracing for budget cuts that could have a significant impact to marquee paths citywide.

The City Budget Office has recommended a reduction of $2.1 million from the Parks budget. “This level of cuts,” the Bureau said in a blog post last month, “will significantly impact our programs.”

There are two line items in the budget advocates are focusing on: One of them would slash funding for path maintenance; the other would offer a much-needed boost for the beloved Eastbank Esplanade.
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BES staffer Ronda Fast at Bike Advisory Committee meeting last night.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

“It’s going to be uncomfortable. We know that. No option will be as good as the Springwater. We know that. But it’s temporary, and at least we have options now.”

That’s how Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) Program Coordinator Ronda Fast described the upcoming four-month closure of the Springwater Corridor path that will impact many Portlanders this summer. Fast was at the BAC meeting to explain how BES will handle the diversion of thousands of daily bicycling trips that currently use the Springwater to get between Sellwood and downtown Portland.

The meeting came just a few days after we reported that BES rejected a detour proposal by the Sellwood Moreland Improvement League (SMILE, the neighborhood association). The disagreement stems from how best to handle thousands of bike trips per day that will be forced off the Springwater and onto other routes due to a major project to salmon habitat at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. BES wants to direct people either to the west side of the Willamette River (on a circuitous, narrow and poorly maintained greenway path), or onto the SE 19th Avenue Neighborhood Greenway — which is 10 blocks east of the Springwater. The neighborhood proposed what they feel is a more direct and safer route on 14th/15th and SE Milwaukie — where they asked for temporary bike lanes in space currently used for on-street auto parking.

BES says the neighborhood’s proposal is not feasible and is “out of scope” for the project.
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This section of SE Milwaukie near McLoughlin is high-stress for bicycle riders. There’s room for bike lanes — but only if the car parking is prohibited.

The Portland Bureau of Environmental Service (BES) has already broken ground on a major project to enhance the habitat of the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. It’s an exciting project for fish who swim in the Willamette; but for humans who ride bicycles it comes with a relatively high cost of convenience.
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(Map graphic: Portland BES)

A major project to improve wildlife habitat at the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge will come with a full closure of one the busiest biking corridors in Portland.

Starting this July, the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), Portland Parks and Recreation and the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, plans to close the Springwater Corridor path between Oaks Amusement Park and the Oaks Bottom Trail for up to 120 days. Contractors will use the path to stage construction vehicles and move material.

When this same project was first proposed back in 2010 (it was ultimately delayed), it raised major concerns with the City’s Bicycle Advisory Committee. Members of that committee urged BES to use the adjacent railroad right-of-way in order to keep the path open. This time around, the City and the Corps of Engineers incorporated feedback from the community and designed a plan that incorporates barge access and/or rail as a primary haul route. However, the Springwater closure is still necessary to safely complete the culvert and channel grading work in the refuge.

The latest City bike counts show that about 2,800 people ride this section of the path on an average weekday and that number more than doubles on the weekends. The closure is on the same section of path we recently highlighted as one of the top ten most popular Strava segments in the country.
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Riders on the Springwater at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge during the The Street Trust’s New Year’s Day ride in 2010.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

One of Portland’s most iconic paths has made it on the list of Strava’s all-time busiest bikeways. Referred to as “segments” by the popular ride-logging app, a 1.6 mile section of the Springwater Corridor between the Ross Island Bridge and Oaks Bottom Park in Westmoreland has been ridden 144,392 times by 11,878 people (as of this morning).
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The first 20 miles of this 30-mile route are on the Springwater Corridor. The final 10 miles includes a blissful descent into the campground at Dodge Park. Everett approves!
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

This is how easy bikecamping can be: Just 30 easy miles east of downtown Portland lies a campground at the edge of the forest nestled between two rivers.

And the best part? The first 20 miles are on the carfree Eastbank Esplanade and Springwater Corridor paths. And by the time you leave this safe riding sanctuary, you’re far enough into the country where you can often see more horses and pigs than cars.
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Section of the Springwater where the incident occurred.

While riding on the Springwater Corridor path in the early morning of May 10th, someone knocked Portland resident Vincent Rodarte off his bike. The impact caused him to lose consciousness. When he woke up, his custom-built mountain bike was gone.

“The details on that still elude me,” Rodarte wrote on the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association email list where he first reported the incident.

It happened between 12:30 and 3:00 am at the intersection where the Springwater passes SE Tacoma and 32nd streets (map).

Rodarte is appealing to the community to look out for his bike in hopes that it can be recovered. He’s filed a police report and has been in contact with a with PPB Bike Theft Task Force member who has already begun searching the area. Rodarte got a tip that his bike was spotted under I-405 and NW 19th, but so far police haven’t been able to get it back.
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It’s open! And it’s really nice!
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

A new path now connects Sellwood to Milwaukie, making the one-mile distance between them feel much shorter.
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Metro map with location of proposed trail and a concept drawing of how it might look near Kelly Creek in Gresham.

Filling a six-mile gap between Troutdale and Gresham would put a serious dent in the “40-mile Loop” — a trail concept that’s been in regional planning dreams for well over a century. And Metro is creating a plan to do just that.

But where some see an historic opportunity for a new, low-stress place to walk and roll, others see a perfect place for people who live outside to pitch tents and build encampments. [Read more…]

Concept drawing of SE Hawthorne upgrades. View is looking east from SE 6th Ave.
(Graphic: PBOT)

Three projects caught our eyes in PBOT’s official Fall Budget Monitoring process request (PDF here). Scroll down for details on each one of them…

Outer Halsey Safety Streetscape Project ($2,000,000)

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