Tens of millions in unused parks fees could boost bike-path projects

(Photos: J.Maus/BikePortland)
The Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation is rarely discussed as part of the answer to Portland’s transportation problems.
Instead of relying mostly on relatively costly off-street paths, which are the main channels for low-stress bike transportation in most of the United States, Portland generally prides itself on improving its actual streets for biking.
But the city’s parks bureau is currently facing a problem that many transportation advocates don’t know about: How to spend the tens of millions of dollars in fees from new development that have been pouring into city coffers for years now.