Portland started constructing bike infrastructure in earnest in 1980. Previous to that yr, the town’s complete community of bikeways amounted to only 0.1 miles of motorbike lanes and eight.3 miles of off-street paths. However Portland actually started its regular march towards the title of America’s Bicycle Capital in 1980.
That yr we practically quadrupled the scale of our bike community by including 3 miles of neighborhood greenways, 5 miles of motorbike lanes and 15 miles of paths. As we speak we’ve about 433 miles of bikeways within the metropolis — and that’s lower than half of 1,032 whole miles deliberate.
These numbers are enjoyable, however they imply extra as we give them context. At Tuesday’s assembly of the Portland Bureau of Transportation Bicycle Advisory Committee, we discovered attention-grabbing new context that provides us a greater sense for the progress we’ve made, how far we’ve received to go, and which components of city are faring the perfect (and worst).
PBOT Bike Coordinator Roger Geller (who’s labored within the metropolis’s bike program since 1994) shared a desk titled, “Portland’s bikeway community standing by standing and facility kind by sextant of the town.” As you may see within the map above, Geller took some inventive liberty with the borders and truly break up his knowledge into seven sections (not six). The “East Portand” zone is I-205 and everthing east of it and he creates “Inside” northeast and southeast.
The map graphic on the high of this put up was made with numbers from the desk above. The highest part of the desk lists the lively, funded, beneficial, and whole bikeway miles for every a part of the town.
Who would have guessed that East Portland would come out on high with 54% of its whole beneficial bikeway community already constructed? This can be a sturdy validation of how the Metropolis of Portland has made superb strides in that space over the previous 15 years. (The shortage of consideration on east Portland grew to become a significant political hot-spot for PBOT within the 2008 mayoral election between then PBOT Commissioner Sam Adams and Sho Dozono. Transportation and bicycling was Adams’ high situation and Dozono, an east Portland resident, popularized the concept bike initiatives within the central metropolis and internal neighborhoods had been being constructed on the expense of people that lived on the metropolis’s jap edges.)
Additionally revealing is the decrease part of knowledge that breaks down the bikeway miles by facility kind, after which provides shade to point out which kind of bikeway is most distinguished in every space — darkish inexperienced is the very best quantity and purple is the bottom. “Standard bike lanes” (paint-only, with no buffer) dominate in East Portland, whereas neighborhood greenways dominate in Inside Southeast and Inside Northeast.
These numbers are more likely to gasoline the ire of southwest Portland advocates (already a few of sauciest of us on the town in terms of haranguing PBOT), who will possible be pissed off that in 2023 we’ve solely constructed 29% of the deliberate bikeways in that space.
Talking of 2023, we’re simply seven quick years away from the goal date of the 2030 Bicycle Plan, which says we’re speculated to have a community that’s full and sturdy sufficient to entice 25% of all journeys to be made by bike. How can we use these numbers to assist us attain that objective? What else jumps out at you from this knowledge?
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