Again in September, I rode over to the Slabtown neighborhood to try a brand new neighborhood greenway in Northwest Portland. On account of excessive numbers of drivers, the Portland Bureau of Transportation needed to maneuver the NW Overton greenway over one block north to NW Pettygrove. On the time, the venture wasn’t full but, however the plan was to incorporate a wide range of visitors calming measures on NW Pettygrove from eleventh Ave to twenty fifth (west of The Fields Park).
So as to create a easy connection to the brand new greenway from the Naito bikeway, PBOT additionally made some large adjustments to NW Overton between ninth and tenth avenues — eradicating many of the automobile parking and including plastic security posts to create brief post-protected bike lanes on each side of the road. This bike infrastructure additionally prevented auto visitors from driving westbound on this stretch of Overton.
Ah, these plastic security posts: we hardly knew ye!
As these of you who adopted the Overton saga know, these adjustments didn’t final lengthy. Solely a month after they accomplished the road redesign, PBOT obtained chilly ft. One motive for this might need been complaints about dropping parking areas from house owners of a close-by enterprise and residential tower.
Effectively, the automobile parking is again on Overton, and folks driving can, as soon as once more, journey in each instructions. Because of this, many of the bike-friendly adjustments to the road have been decreased to mere sharrows. There are nonetheless some protecting posts on the south facet of Overton close to ninth, however their placement so near a parking lane doesn’t make lots of sense.
So as to bike behind these posts for a couple of ft, you’d need to journey via the parking door zone, requiring a pointy flip if there’s a automobile parked behind the posts. Though it seemingly presents some safety for individuals in opposition to drivers taking a proper from Overton onto ninth, I noticed a number of individuals biking within the automobile lane as a substitute of utilizing this piece of infrastructure.
Whereas less-than-ideal biking situations on one block of Overton might not make or break somebody’s commute, what occurred right here nonetheless issues — particularly in gentle of the metropolis’s latest bike ridership report. If we would like extra individuals to trip bikes, we should always keep each piece of motorbike infrastructure now we have. And the less vehicles and drivers now we have within the system, the higher.
NW Overton is positioned in one of many densest, most walkable and transit-rich elements of town, the place it ought to be the simplest to persuade individuals to search for options to driving vehicles. The Overton saga was unhealthy for morale, and it resulted in a road that (to this reporter at the very least) is much less snug to trip on than it ought to be.
However, issues are trying a bit brighter up on Pettygrove, the place PBOT accomplished a bit of the NW Pettygrove greenway venture between eleventh and twelfth. Now, this stretch of the road solely permits westbound automobile visitors, and PBOT has put in a brief submit protected eastbound bike lane just like the one which was once on Overton.
As I identified in September, there may be nonetheless work to do on the intersections between Pettygrove and busy NW streets to ensure that biking on this hall to be a very easy expertise. However general, I respect what PBOT has accomplished on the Pettygrove greenway: not like another “bike streets” all through town that closely depend on sharrows to discourage automobile visitors, town has put in fairly a couple of bodily diverters alongside this road to make it extra snug for individuals biking.
This design actually highlights the significance of constructed infrastructure when creating amenities that really prioritize individuals on bikes. It could be unattainable for a automobile driver to take the greenway for any longer than a couple of blocks at a time as a result of so many streets are one-ways in numerous instructions. So, hopefully, the way forward for PBOT’s design ethos is best represented by Pettygrove than Overton.
Taylor has been BikePortland’s employees author since November 2021. She has additionally written for Avenue Roots and Eugene Weekly. Contact her at taylorgriggswriter@gmail.com
