Portland Bicycle Plan

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Dave Feucht

The Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 has unanimously passed a vote in city council, and Mayor Sam Adams has proposed an initial $20 million funding source to get actual implementation of the plan started as quickly as possible, perhaps in the next month (talk about quick creation of jobs!).

Here’s to a new era of transportation in Portland – new light rail line just added, new streetcar loop going in as we speak, new transit/bike/ped bridge in the works as well as restructuring bridges to accommodate bicycles and pedestrians, Oregon Department of Transportation allocating funds for calming of arterial streets in Portland, and now the bicycle plan. Hopefully this will make waves in the U.S. as a whole, and people will start to realize this kind of stuff is not only “green”, not only for special interest groups, but simply a good financial investment, and a good investment in the health of our cities and citizens.

We’re making our way to more pleasant, equitable and healthy public spaces, and I have to say, I’m excited.

Going green

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  • Emma J

    I was just reading where She Rides a Bike raises the point that plowing bike lanes costs cities money. Can you spell out how supporting bike infrastructure is financially wise for a city?

    (I agree, but maybe we need to put the reasons in words more often?)

  • Mark

    Making cities more pleasant, sustainable places to stay in as pedestrians and cyclists can only be a good thing – no one ever wanted to hang around a car-cluttered street. Introducing more bike lanes like the one above can help to set off the 'tipping point' whereby the road environment becomes a space in which everyone can start to feel they can safely participate which can lead to the 'critical mass' level needed for cyclists to become more than a minority. The budget involved in building 'painted lanes' is tiny in comparison, say, to a mile of freeway and will bring so many more benefits to communities.

    Sounds like Portland is on the get go again!

  • portlandize.com

    The Portland Bicycle Plan I guess is about 50% bicycle boulevard type treatments, with traffic calming and redirecting measures to give bicycles and pedestrians priority on those streets, and about 50% separate bicycle facilities such as cycle tracks and buffered bike lanes. It also includes parking and things like educational efforts, cyclist/pedestrian interaction measures, etc.

    Most of what currently exists in Portland currently is the work of the City of Portland in the 1970's, and the 1990's, so it's nice to see the current city government really making an ambitious effort to improve on what's been done in the past, and take our city to yet another level of livability. It will be exciting to see how it gets started.