spare_wheel

Proof that some so-called cycling advocates in the USA are actively hostile to bike lane infrastructure:

https://bikeportland.org/2013/05/31/t...87573#comments

https://pdxcityclub.org/book/export/html/6520

"Alternative bicycle routes" is code word for portland's sub-par bike boulevards. So instead of direct routes on vibrant commerical roads we are encouraged to sit on special seats in the back of the short bus.

An example of this mentality in action:

https://bikeportland.org/2012/06/29/p...a-street-73999

Alberta is one of the most vibrant commercial strips in PDX and our local government is not only apparently upset that cyclists are riding on this road but actually put up signs directing cyclists to a "bike boulevard" 4 blocks away.

https://urbanhomespdx.com/files/2011/...-031-photo.jpg

skye

The day they start plowing the snow off the bike paths like they do the roads is the day I will start to take bike paths mildly seriously. Until then, forget it.

spare_wheel

Once they build "special routes" for cyclists and eliminate bike lanes you won't be legally allowed to take the lane, skye.

DNP

I'm new to Portland, been here a little over a year, but I didn't think that Portland's City Club was considered a cycling advocate group. From what I've gathered from other citizens here, City Club is just a dues-paying group of citizens that garners more ears because they have a title. Is their specific focus cycling or all things Portland?

B. Carfree

I visit Portland by bike a couple of times per year, but not often enough to have a complete map of decent routes through all areas of the city in my tiny head. So, when my wife and I picked up a new tandem in Seattle last year and rode home to Eugene, I relied on the bike maps the city prints and gives away for free to guide us through the city. What a mistake!

First, we entered the city on the route used by the STP ride, which happened to be happening that day (although we were a bit ahead of the first riders) and were "treated" to a long stretch of door-zone bike lane. Ugh! Then we veered off the STP route to try out a few "bike boulevards". Stopping at stop signs every block for cross traffic that didn't have a stop sign and couldn't be seen because of the long lines of parked cars demonstrated just how useless Portland's version of bike boulevards is.

We saw very few bikes being ridden, but one of them was doored by a mail carrier on one of these bike boulevards. Let's face it, if people were riding on these things in any appreciable numbers, then the mail carriers, who drive on them daily, would have learned to look before flinging their doors open.

Sadly, the least unpleasant part of the whole passage through Portland, other than the truly nice trip through the cemetery, was the Sellwood Bridge, and it's not exactly a grand piece of work. (Yes, I know it is being rebuilt.) I'll also give them props for the Springwater corridor. Although it was a bit narrow for its expected level of use, if one is going to ride on a bike path one is going to deal with that sort of thing and it was nice to see a few youngsters learning to ride on it.

Boy, don't I look forward to more crappy infrastructure that the traffic planners/engineers in PDX can advertise as the greatest thing since sliced bread for my next trip through.

Bekologist

the devils in the details, isn't it?

not sure a solution to get Portland more bikeable is to add bikelanes on "vibrant commercial roads"

The city's actually got a pretty good plan, beefing up the oma infrastructure and enhancing both separated paths, cycletracks AND bike boulevards. sorry, neighborhood greenways. nobody except the haters calls them "bike boulevards" anymore.

Get rid of a lane of traffic, put in a buffered, green bikelane with bollards where needed and a curb. If portland road dieted alberta street and a lot of other commercial streets, they could be quite bikeable for all classes of riders and citizen bikers.

I bet portlands got a goal of a bike friendly facility within a quarter mile of every domicile.

FBinNY 

I've been using the phrase "separate but not equal" for over 10 years, saying that the construction of bike lanes would ultimately lead to cyclists losing their rights to use public roads. I'm constantly accused of being alarmist. Let's give it another 10 years and see if I'm right. Unfortunately, if I'm even almost right, we'll never get back rights we're willingly trading away today.

B. Carfree

Be sure to send the memo to the Portland Bureau of Transportation so they can update their maps.

Please try to make your case without placing some hateful label on everyone who disagrees with you.

CB HI

Not alarmist regardless of claims of the bike lane folks. Portland has a mandatory use law as does NYC and the State of Hawaii. Others area politicians keep trying to pass similar laws for their areas.

Beks next claim is normally that those laws are not enforced, while he ignores the NYC and prior Portland ticketing.

B. Carfree

Davis, Ca was perhaps the first city in the nation to place multiple bike lanes and build bike paths, back in the '70s. In the late '80s, as the number of bikes fell below critical mass, we started being hassled for daring to ride on the streets that didn't have bike lanes. I think you have a valid point, but I think the relative number of people on bikes and their attitudes will make a difference in the outcome. Thus, I see a tension between attracting very casual riders who will ride less than 100 miles per year and don't really care if they are confined to sidewalk-like sidepaths versus risking not ever getting significant numbers of people to ride to ever improve our lot. Of course, if we give up our rights to ride, then there is only one possible outcome.

FBinNY 

The tension here comes partly from the identity politics involved.

We have self appointed advocates, who claim to speak for the class, but there is no single class in the first place. The only thing that cyclists have in common is their choice of vehicle.

Then there's a dichotomy of the objectives. We have long time cyclists who are most interested in preserving access to the network of public roads, and a newer class that I call Urbanists. They embrace the bicycle as a solution to problems such as urban congestion and pollution. They appreciate it's practicality for short trips and basically getting around town or campus. They're less interested in protecting rights to intercity roads, as they are in making the cityscape more welcoming and attractive to non bikers and thereby expanding the number of participants.

My problem is that the urbanist's justification for bike lanes is often based on safety, and I'm concerned that the safety argument will be used to justify pushing us off the roads "for our own good". So there's the issue in a nutshell (for me). I accept that separate bike lanes may lead to more bicycles, but I'm not so sure that's altogether a good thing, and in any case I consider bike lanes as a very poor bargain if it ultimately leads to restrictions on riding public roads.

wsbob

I think "...cycling advocate group..." was spare_wheel, probably being sarcastic. Here's a link to an article titled "City Club Research Report Strongly Endorses Biking", that bikeportland published Wednesday the 29th: https://bikeportland.org/2013/05/29/c...icycling-87446

Prominent in that article is the following excerpt from the study:


Do as you wish, but I think it's probably not smart to write off City Club lightly. 'Movers and Shakers' may in part, describe that Portland civic organization, but I think attendance and membership is fairly open...not like the town's exclusive athletic club, the MAC. It gets the city's, and many of the public's 'ear', because indications are, it's membership includes many very smart, well experienced, and industrious people that take their responsibility for the welfare of the city and its citizens very seriously. Over its many years of existence, of course, the civic organization has done some things that definitely has rubbed some people the wrong way.

I haven't read the study, but have read the bikeportland articles and some of the responding comments about it. From those articles, the study conclusions seem certainly questionable. In fairness though, I should read the study before saying much more about those conclusions.

Bekologist

What, you mean you didn't get the memo?

It's been three years, dude.

Bekologist

Yeah, portland doesn't really sound like a city that's going to People often resort to fearmongering, when the position has no merit. Like this: 'actively hostile' ....goodness, what histrionics.

spare_wheel

As wsbob noted, I was being somewhat cheeky in using that language. Nevertheless, the city club picked well-known corporate and government advocates including Mia Birk (ex PBOT bike coordinator, CEO of Alta Planning), Earl Blumenauer (US Congressperson), and Sam Adams (Ex-Portland mayor) to chair the committee. Moreover, the report was shaped by consulting with local advocates from the BTA, PBOT, and other advocates, such as, Jonathan Maus. These reports are generally considered to be definitive policy statements by our local government.

Moreover, this anti-bike lane position appears in the context of repeated examples of PBOT and ex-PBOT planners (Mia Birk, Roger Geller) criticizing cyclists who ride in the lane on commercial streets. In particular, Mia Birk wrote a scathing editorial in a local newspaper criticizing a cyclist who was in her way on Hawthorne while she was driving with her boyfriend. The fact that these committee members were so confident in their anti-right of way position that they were willing to urge elimination of existing bike lanes is sad.

The people involved in this policy statement are among the most influential shapers of cycling policy in the USA. For example, Mia Birk is just as well known as Janet Sadik-Khan. If this regressive vision is allowed to gain strength its just a matter of time before we see calls for mandatory side path laws, not just in Portland and Oregon, but in other cities and states.

spare_wheel

As I have argued many times here and other places, the facts simply do not argue persuasively that physical separation is required for increases in mode share. In particular, Germany has shown that a long-term policy of cycle track removal, installation of bike lanes, and aggressive implementation of "bikes in lane" signage can correlate with stunning increases in mode share. Munich now has ~20% total cycling mode share.

spare_wheel

I have had "discussions" with a PBOT planner and a local advocate about this terminology. Apparently, PBOT prefers to use "greenway" to describe the small number of fully-upgraded bike boulevards. The rest are termed legacy bike boulevards. (The upgrades involve bio-swales which are quite useful but have nothing to do with cycling and useless concrete islands/barriers.)

Looigi

Instead of spending many many millions of dollars on local limited infrastructure, spend it on education and awareness programs for all road users. It will benefit all cyclists regardless of where they ride.

I agree that bike lanes, sharrows, and other explicit allowance for bicycles simply reinforce the idea that bikes should be limited and segregated.

I-Like-To-Bike

Can you suggest any specific "education and awareness program" that has demonstrated (preferably measurable) results of benefiting any, let alone all, cyclists?

FBinNY 

It's impossible to quantify, but simple reminders such as those in LA that bicycles are legitimate road users, and that drivers should share the road, seem to be effective. In any case the best reminders seem to be cyclists themselves. Where drivers constantly see cyclists on the roads, they get used to them and factor them into their driving habits. Where they never or rarely see cyclists, they don't expect them and are more likely to not see them approaching intersections, misjudge their speed, or time and execute their passes well.

I'm not so naive as to say that all drivers will ever be enlightened, but the bulk will be, and will tend to be courteous and careful. Of course there will always be some horse's asses behind the wheel, but in my experience, these tend to treat all other road users equally poorly.

Big picture, I believe (opinion) that cyclists are best served (long term) by mainstreaming them into the traffic mix, as opposed to the separate but not equal approach now in vogue in the USA.

buzzman

Really? Effective, in what way?


But then you said,


I am confused by your posts.

FBinNY 

Most motorists are basically decent law abiding citizens, and willing to share the road. A reminder that it's the law serves to make those who may not be aware of the laws, more so. I ride in metro NY and have very, very few negative interactions with drivers, who seem to be very used to sharing crowded roads.

Sorry to confuse you, but when I speak of more cyclists not necessarily being a good thing, I do so because what may be good for society, or cities, or even America and the world, may not be great for me personally. I lived and rode in NYC for many years, and found sharing the road with motorists much easier than with cyclists. Plus more cyclists can lead to more driver backlash, and/or legal enforcement directed at cyclists. It can and has lead to cyclists being confined to the separate but not equal bike lanes the city has built. All in all, I get little benefit from more cyclists, but get many drawbacks.

There are also issues that haven't been thought through as we shift from small numbers of cyclists who can easily be accommodated because they're not a factor, to larger numbers that create greater side effects.

For example, I ride year round, but will jump on the bus in the winter if the weather is bad. I'm only one person and don't factor in mass transit loading. But what if 10% or more of mass transit riders were seasonal, riding bikes when it was nice, and shifting to mass transit when it rains. That's lot's of people, and can have a large impact on crowding. There's a cost to maintaining capacity that isn't used, and how will it be allocated, and what level of ridership should the MTA plan for?

Looigi

I find many motorists have no idea how to share the road with cyclists. Many are overly courteous and create potentially hazardous situations by doing unexpected things, like stopping in a major thoroughfare to let a bike cross when the vehicle has the right of way. Cars behind them don't expect that and cars coming from the other direction aren't likely to stop either. A significant number of drivers think bikes should be ridden on the sidewalk and not the road. Education and awareness would help correct these ideas, at least among some of them. A good number of drivers also don't understand the hazards of a the door zone and why a bike might be in the traffic lane avoiding them. Also, many drivers don't know or understand that a bike has the right to the entire lane and should take the lane when there are left turn lanes and can stop in the traffic lane waiting for oncoming traffic to pass when making a left turn. For these and many other reasons, I believe education and awareness programs would be very helpful. At least when educated, any vehicular misbehavior will be wanton and willful rather than a result of ignorance.

B. Carfree

My favorite "education and awareness program" is run by the folks with the flashing blue lights on their cars. I can always tell when I am in a city that enforces the traffic laws.

B. Carfree

Yeah, I got that from their literature and maps. I'm disappointed that a certain name-caller doesn't seem capable of insulting people he considers his adversaries without roping in his supposed friends at the same time.

I actually do approve of bike boulevards (and greenways) when they are done properly. Doing them right means making the road go through for cyclists and pedestrians but not for motorists and keeping the traffic control devices to a minimum while giving fair treatment at intersections with major roads. Portland does not do any of this very well and they compound the problem by marking these crappy things out on their cycling maps.