Chapter 5 of Pedaling Revolution covers the rise of bicycle culture in Portland and the city's substantial investment in bicycle infrastructure over the last couple decades. After an introduction that unfortunately focuses on the more whimsical side of Portland bike culture, Mapes pivots to a discussion of what the city has done to get cycling closer to being a mainstream form of transportation.
Given Portland's reputation (often challenged by other cities) as the bicycle capital of the US, it is easy to forget that even ten years ago Portland was not nearly so bike-friendly. As Mapes points out, it was only recently that Portland added good bike access and crossings to most of the bridges across the Willamette. Bike Boulevards (later rebranded as Neighborhood Greenways) are another relatively recent phenomenon, spreading throughout Portland very quickly due to their low cost. Bike corrals can be spotted every few blocks in some commercial areas and are often full of bikes, something that a decade ago would not have been imagined.
After several pages of praising Portland in a rather uncritical manner (for example, he accepts without question the dubious claim that the streetcar has promoted dense housing), Mapes draws a connection between Portland's land use planning, with its emphasis on compact development and limiting urban sprawl, and the rise of bicycling. While he is correct that compact development helps make bicycling a better option for short trips and commutes, I would argue some of his other points. He often argues that the Portland grid of small blocks is part of what promotes cycling. This may be true, but the same grid encourages a lot of car traffic on the same streets, interfering with bikes and making it less safe.
Let's compare this to the Netherlands. Dutch cities rarely contain anything like a grid system--on the contrary, most new neighborhoods have very limited access points for automobiles. The key seems to be that they limit access for cars while at the same time maintaining a high degree of permeability for bikes using bike/ped-only access points. This not only makes cycling safer, but also makes cycling very competitive vs the car for many trips since only bikes can make a direct path.
The grid neighborhoods in Portland may make cycling somewhat direct, but driving is still the most convenient way to get from A to B. Portland has started to utilize traffic calming techniques like traffic circles, speed humps, and diverters to deal with this problem, but hasn't come close to the Dutch willingness to actually affect mode choice through altering the street network to make driving less convenient and useful.
The section covering Mia Birk's tenure at the City of Portland was very interesting because it helps to explain a contradiction I have continually noticed regarding Portland's commitment to cycling and traffic-calming. The contradiction is that despite the clearly impressive number of road diets and pedestrian crossings and bicycle facilities installed in the last decade or so, the pace appears to be slowing and projects are becoming more compromised. Part of this surely has to do with limited funding during a bad economic time, but Birk's story points at another explanation.
My main takeaway from this section was that Birk was a no-nonsense administrator with a commitment to results over process, an attitude that probably extended to much of the rest of city government at the time. The story of her instituting a road diet on SE 7th Ave with zero public process, far from being the cautionary tale Mapes makes it out to be, was refreshing to read about after being frustrated by the years-long process and poor results of the recent N Williams traffic safety project. As Mia Birk is quoted as saying, "It was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission." I wish more planners had this kind of professional attitude.
No other profession has such a willingness to abdicate responsibility and expertise in favor of decision by plebiscite. In the case of N Williams, city planners led by Ellen Vanderslice allowed a so-called citizen advisory committee to take over the project and not only advise the project but also decide it. Their choice of a left-side buffered bike lane that isn't even continuous was not even one of the options put forth by the planners, and certainly is no improvement on the current situation. If only Mia Birk were still working for the city!
This whole issue reminds me of visiting Portland years ago and being impressed at the city motto: "Portland: The City That Works." It was such a great contrast to other cities' grandiose mottos, instead reflecting a practicality that says the city wants to get things done. Even though it appears this is still the official city motto, I haven't seen it used for quite a long time. The new one popping up is "Portland: Your Sustainable City," a meaningless and trendy moniker that I think reflects the new commitment to process over results.
It also makes me think about how different it appears to be in the Netherlands. While I still don't have a full understanding of how planning works that country, a couple planners who spoke to the class mentioned that their primary guides are national and regional policy documents rather than public process. They mentioned that they do public outreach, but it sounded like a rather top-down process that focuses more on feedback, advice, and dealing with potential problems than actually designing a project through public process. While many contemporary American planner would call this "tokenism," I would call it by the simple name of "representative democracy." It is entirely appropriate for the people to elect their leaders in open elections, after which those leaders write policy documents, which are then used by planners to guide projects. If the people are unsatisfied with this direction, they are free to elect new leaders. This is, in fact, precisely what happened recently in the Netherlands. In the US, especially on the west coast, direct democracy has emerged as a poor but obviously popular substitute for representative democracy, and the public process endemic in modern planning is a manifestation of this.
Another key section of this chapter deals with Sam Adams rise from City Commissioner to Mayor and his commitment to making Portland even more of a cycling city. While Adams was really just continuing a long trend, it is notable that this more recent era marks a focus on bike boulevards rather than the previous focus on bike lanes. Without a doubt the bike boulevards have been a massive success that has also been very cost-effective, but again Mapes seems to accept without much question that these bike boulevards will be enough to reach the city's goals. The fact is, they are wonderful for getting through inner Portland's grid-based neighborhoods on quiet streets, but they are useless for accessing destinations (which are pretty much all on major arterials) or accessing the bridges across the Willamette.
As Peter Furth points out in his recent report on Bike Level of Traffic Stress, it is the most stressful link in a network that will determine if someone rides a bike to work or other destinations. If someone with a low stress tolerance has a comfortable bike boulevard like SE Salmon St most of the way to work downtown, but then gets spit onto a tiny bike lane on SE 7th Ave with heavy cross traffic, is that person going to keep riding to work? This is a case where a cycle track on a major road would make all the difference.
We also have the problem that bike boulevards are rarely the most direct route. Furth's research has found that cyclists, like all travelers, have a pretty low willingness to go very far out of their way. Diagonal roads like Sandy and Foster currently have no bike facilities, so we have a system in which cars get a direct route and bikes have to go the long way around. This is the opposite of the Dutch system, of course. The point is that while bike boulevards are a wonderful addition to Portland's bike network, at some point the city needs to move beyond the low-hanging fruit in favor of substantial separated facilities on major roads where people really want to go.
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