Active Right of Way

Nathalie Weinstein has an article up in the Daily Journal of Commerce about the City of Portland moving forward on the construction of a greenway along the South Waterfront’s riverfront property.

It sounds like the project is far from overcoming all obstacles, but Portland Parks & Recreation intends to select a construction manager/general contractor for the project soon.

The effort will come with improved fish habitat along the bank of the river, and it will include separate bicycle and walking paths:

The first phase of the project includes construction of a five-block-long mix of lawn, park and plaza areas along the Willamette River between Southwest Gibbs Street and Lane Street. Below the green space, which will have separate paths for bikes and pedestrians, a 25,000-square-foot gravel beach will provide improved fish habitat. The plan calls for eventually creating 100-foot-wide parks along the river for 1.2 miles between the Marquam Bridge and an existing trail at Johns Landing.

I got the chance to ride the existing trail from John’s Landing after last night’s BikePortland Get Together at Macadam’s, and it’s a real nice bit of infrastructure. At a few points along the way I was riding gloriously right above the river, all lit up by the city’s lights. However, it diverts you onto the striped bike lane on SW Bond Street once you hit the South Waterfront, which is not nearly as pleasant.

The prospect of connecting the riverside bike path all the way along the SoWa up into Tom McCall Waterfront Park is an exciting one that would do wonders for recreation and bicycle connectivity in SW Portland.

Project partner TriMet is providing $1 million for the habitat improvements, which will give it environmental mitigation credits needed to proceed with the Portland-to-Milwaukie light-rail project, Argentina said.

This brings to mind the fact that it will also be a terrific connection from SW Portland to the Max stop sited for the west side of the river and will surely help many folks that commute by multiple modes going either direction. All in all, I hope to see the project move forward. The environmental, recreational and mobility benefits of it seem sound.

The Community Cycling Center’s “Create a Commuter” program received some well-deserved press in today’s Portland Tribune, with one local commuter remarking how riding her bike to work saves money and keeps her energy levels up.

Initially, Create a Commuter provided free bikes to low-income people referred to the nonprofit by social services programs. Sometimes, Community Cycling Center bike mechanics spotted the same bikes for sale on Craigslist.

To sharpen the program’s focus and get bikes into the hands of people with a demonstrated need, Create a Commuter was retooled a couple years ago to target people coming off welfare or enrolled in job training programs.

This sort of outreach is what has made the CCC an invaluable piece of our community’s transportation fabric. Smart, innovative and consistently improved upon, the CCC’s programs promote cycling as a way of life, helping to bring a cleaner, safer and easier commute to all involved.

The personal stories included in the Tribune’s article really highlight how much a life can be changed by changing how we get around. The CCC’s work has been integral to helping many folks, including those out of work or facing economic hardships, take positives steps toward a brighter future.

Kristina Tjepkes-Larson was already fitted for her new bike and anticipates getting it after a Feb. 12 bicycling clinic. Tjepkes-Larson, 46, who lives near 158th Avenue and Burnside Street, recently was homeless for eight months and is in an addiction treatment program. “I’m just kind of like starting over,” she says.

She’s in a pre-apprenticeship program with Oregon Tradeswomen and takes PCC classes at the Cascade and Southeast centers, where she hopes to get trained to be a building inspector or project manager.

Tjepkes-Larson is relying on her 78-year-old father to drive her and her two daughters around town. With her own bicycle, she figures she could get around faster, save time, and relieve her dad.

The free bike program is “another way of giving people hope,” she says. “Now I’m going to work on getting my 11-year-old one,” she says. After that, she wants to try to get a bike for her dad.

Learn more about the CCC and all their programs here.

Riverfront for People - Eastbank Initiative believes we can do better than a highway through Portland's core.

BikePortland recently brought attention to ODOT’s proposals to widen I-5 in the Rose Quarter.

Here’s another idea: How about decommissioning I-5 as a freeway, and converting it to something more appropriate to a city? An arterial, basically. That way there would be no need for ramps, and the road wouldn’t be such an impassable gouge through the urban fabric.

The speed would be a little slower, but that might not be such a bad thing. This blog post discusses some of the implications of a slower speed limit along this route.

Then, like others have said, rename I-205 to I-5. They did something similar in Cambridge, MA when residents objected to a plan to put I-95 through their neighborhood. The solution was to simply rename a nearby circumferential highway to I-95. The freeway was made to go around.

Ask Gordon Price what a benefit it is to not have a freeway plowing through a city, and he’ll speak with pride of the first stop light you’ll encounter on I-5, at the terminus of that interstate, at the city limits of Vancouver BC. And he’ll describe how that city has somehow managed to scratch by, even without a freeway through its core.

Add up the acres of potentially valuable real estate consumed by urban freeways, and the surrounding areas that are poisoned (literally and figuratively) by the presence of freeways. All for what? The ability to go blasting through a city at speeds more appropriate to interurban travel through the countryside? And that’s only when there’s no congestion, otherwise you’re traveling arterial speed anyway. And that congestion never quite seems to go away, no matter how many lanes are added.

Maybe freeways don’t belong in cities. After all, being as they are designed for getting in and out of cities as quickly as possible, and with as little contact as possible with the urban core, urban freeways are essentially monuments to people who don’t like cities. Maybe that’s part of why freeways are so ill-suited for cities. And while freeways and interstates are great for moving quickly between far-flung destinations, cities are concentrated collections of destinations. Maybe the very density that defines cities thwarts the design goals of freeways.

See also:

• Riverfront for People
• Reddit discussion of Decommissioning I-5

The Portland Tribune has a good wrap-up today of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners’ unanimous vote yesterday to approve a $5 vehicle registration fee to contribute to the shared cost of replacing the 85-year-old Sellwood Bridge.

“The region has invested in us,” said Chair Lynn Peterson. “We have a responsibility to continue that investment and participate in that system.”

The commission had heard from a vocal contingent of opposition to the fee increase during a three-part public hearing, but counted a larger number in support of the fee, including correspondence and phone calls.

Only a few more testified against the project on Thursday morning.

A big thank-you goes out to the efforts of AROW members and BTA advocacy director Gerik Kransky for the quick outreach and organizing to ensure that the board of commissioners heard from the many Clackamas County residents that are willing to pay their fair share to improve freight and commuter mobility in the region.

The People’s Department of Transportation (PDOT) is conducting a review of the pedestrian barricade at the NE 82nd Ave Transit Center.

The People will review areas of concern and propose methods and considerations for future projects as well as improvements to mitigate problems created by installing the wall rather than the planned mid-block crossing.

Preliminary findings point to undue preferential treatment given to car traffic in this area that appears to be symptomatic of a larger, systemic problem in the region.

Highlights of the investigation so far include: an exposé of the shadowy and influential committee that masterminded the installation of the barricade; the portrayal of regular transit users and neighborhood residents as dangerous criminals; and the misadventures of a bold chicken attempting to safely use the new crosswalks.