Cycle Track After A Couple of Weeks

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Dave Feucht

It’s been nearly two weeks now since the first day I rode home on the SW Moody cycle track, and I thought I would share some thoughts and impressions over that time – plus I shot a quick video of part of my ride to work this morning, of course including the cycle track.

It’s been a bit strange, and definitely not the “finished” experience yet, as parts of the path are still intermittently blocked off as they do construction around it, so that I think is making it a little difficult to sort of settle in to who is supposed to be where on the path.

That being said, I haven’t witnessed any major conflicts – the only thing I’ve really seen is that, at the south end, south of where the pedestrian and bike paths cross, pedestrians tend to walk in the cycle path (since it’s up against the road there – this makes sense, since that’s usually where the sidewalk is). After that little crosswalk, though, I haven’t noticed any issues really, after the first day or two.

The construction workers were great about directing people where they should be on the first few days, and they’ve now left us to find our own way on and off of the cycle track.

At the crossing at the south end (the end of the video), they finally added the traffic signal, with a new bike signal (you can see it on a pole up to the right as I’m turning to cross the street) that lets you see, from the cycle track, whether the crossing light is green or not, since you’re turning around a corner, and if you’re continuing straight, you’re re-entering the road with traffic coming from behind.

In any case, after two weeks, I think this is fantastic – I can’t wait until it is really finished and people kind of settle into how to use it. This is the first piece of infrastructure in Portland that really makes me think someone was paying attention when they did those tours of European cities. It’s a small start, but a good one.

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  • Severin

    I’m pretty bummed that the cycle tracks are sooooo narrow! Portland got a blank canvas and settled with minimal space for cyclists. As we see the faster cyclist goes into the median to pass in the video. Sure it’s a good start but it won’t meet the 20% trips by bike goal if the cycle tracks are so narrow, or if 20% is reached the cycle tracks will have to be widened to accommodate the growth in cyclists!

    • http://pin-hole.tumblr.com Dave

      Here’s my take on the width issue, after having ridden on it. I agree, it could have been a bit wider. They aren’t huge, and it’s just wide enough for two people to ride side-by-side without hanging out into the median. Basically, the tracks are about the size of our widest currently-existing bike lanes (a subjective estimate without having measured either myself).

      However, part of the issue is behavioral – there is definitely room to pass within the cycle track if, for instance, that cyclist in my video simply rang his bell and waited a second for us to move over so he could pass, instead of just choosing to ride in the median.

      Another thing is, as opposed to bike lanes, these tracks are not adjacent to moving traffic, so if you are a bit outside the track, you’re not hanging out into moving traffic, so it’s a bit more flexible.

      Not all the cycle tracks in the Netherlands are 3 meters wide either, and the behavior observed there is what I described – if a person wants to go faster but can’t squeeze by, they ring their bell, wait a second for the person in front of them to move over, and then pass.

      This road doesn’t handle so much traffic that I think this path will be insufficient in the near future. If we, for instance, put the same size track on SE Hawthorne or NE Broadway, we might quite soon find it to be too small, but here I think it is adequate.

      In any case, we’ll see how it goes. I’m still feeling hopeful :)

  • Peter Koonce

    Nice comments and glad you like the bike signal. Still working on it a bit so expect some slight changes in the coming days.

    • http://pin-hole.tumblr.com Dave

      Thanks Peter, I’ll be looking for the changes, and I’ll let you know what I think. My only current suggestion would be to turn it slightly more to the left so it faces a bit further North, but I think it’s a great idea – it was one of those “oh, awesome!” moments when I realized what it was :) 

  • http://www.joyofbicyclecommuting.com Micheal Blue

    It’s great that you have at least that.   You still have some nice autumn colours.  What’s that big  gondola…where does it go?

    • http://pin-hole.tumblr.com Dave

      The gondola is the Portland Aerial Tram – there is a medical university campus (along with some residential, commercial and nature areas) up on a large hill at the South end of Portland’s downtown, and the tram connects the South Waterfront development (where the medical university also has a presence, as well as a lot of residential and commercial development) to the hill. It’s use is $4/person round-trip, but it is subsidized by the medical university for employees and patients of the university.

  • http://pin-hole.tumblr.com Dave

    Another thing I forgot to mention in either my first post about the cycle track, or in this post, is how the cycle track and sidewalk are continuous, and when there is an intersection with the street, cars turning off of the street have to go up a short ramp, as opposed to our normal roads/sidewalks, or the Cully ST cycle track, where the road is continuous, and the person on the sidewalk/cycle track has to come down off of the curb to cross.

    The design of the Moody St. cycle track is more like those we saw in the Netherlands, where by design, it is made clear that an automobile turning off of a main road is entering SOMEONE ELSE’S space (i.e. the sidewalk/cycle track), rather than it being the case that the people on bicycles or on foot felt like they had to avoid the space dedicated to automobiles. Rather the space for people on bicycles and on foot is continuous, and the space for automobiles is broken up.

    There won’t be many intersections on this cycle track section, but it’s nice to see them adopting that kind of design, I think that will also be important for future projects like this.