The bicycling decline in Portland may be very unlucky. Nevertheless it’s our new actuality. The earlier we face the information, embrace the problems that received us right here, and have a productive dialog about what to do about it — the earlier we are going to get again on observe.
Regardless that the decline wasn’t a shock to me (BikePortland wrote about a serious shift in native politics and tradition in the beginning of the decline again in Could 2014), studying the onerous numbers from the Metropolis of Portland’s Bike Depend Report nonetheless hit me onerous. I’ve spent practically twenty years of my skilled life making an attempt to stir up biking in Portland, so to see us slip this far again down is a serious bummer.
There are lots of explanation why biking is down in Portland, and Taylor Griggs and I speak about a few of them on this episode, together with:
- The pervasive sense of hazard many individuals really feel on our streets — from drivers and their automobiles, to interactions with unpredictable and/or unstable folks
- The work-from-home shift and the way it broke the biking behavior for a lot of Portlanders
- How (and why) politics and tradition in Portland shifted away from biking
- The epidemic of motorbike theft
- The shortage of motorbike routes on predominant streets (the “hidden” neighborhood greenways)
- The benefit of driving and ensuing enhance in variety of automobiles on the street
- and extra!
We additionally learn a number of notable reader feedback and share clips from interviews Taylor did round city over the weekend. My aim with this episode was to deal with what we really feel are the important thing causes for the decline and start a dialog about how we will dig out of this gap. I hope it’s useful and we’d love to listen to your suggestions.
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