In Commissioner Sam Adams’ just released public opinion survey about transportation funding is some great news for Portland cyclists—a big majority of the city apparently wants to put more money into bicycle boulevards.

Forty-two percent of the 900 survey respondents said they would “strongly support” a transportation package that provides “for more bike boulevards to reduce conflict between motorists and bicyclists.” That answer came in fourth out of 20 such questions.

(Compare that to a package that would “pave all neighborhood gravel and unimproved streets”—the kind that council candidate Charles Lewis made a show of last month—which came in at 21 percent strongly supporting.)

All totaled, funding for bike boulevards has 68 percent approval. Adams says he’ll use that support to push to fund the network of bike boulevards laid out in the Bicycle Master Plan (pdf), which would add 120 miles to the city, creating the largest such network in an urban environment.

Despite the fact that some 95 percent of the city doesn’t bicycle “regularly,” I’m not surprised by the overwhelming support. First, there’s the wording of the question. Not many drivers can argue with a plan to reduce conflicts between motorists and cyclists—I don’t imagine many of them want to increase, rather than decrease, their opportunities to kill a cyclist.

Additionally, last Friday I pored through some of the visionPDX surveys, and found an enormous number of comments from people who want to see Portland become less dependent on cars, and more dependent on bikes. (Why that doesn’t translate into bigger ridership numbers is another question.) I had to ask the visionPDX staffer if I’d stumbled onto a cluster of surveys from, say, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. “No,” she said, “you’re not even on ‘bicycles’ yet. You’re looking at the ‘traffic’ section.”

Interestingly, Adams’ survey also asked about a $25 annual license fee for bikers. That got 34 percent strongly opposed, 15 percent mildly opposed, 16 percent mildly in support, and 32 percent strongly in support. If Portlanders want more people on bikes, why support a disincentive to biking? Especially in the face of pretty strong arguments that the administrative costs would outweigh the revenue, and that construction and maintenance of bike infrastructure costs next to nothing.

There’s a pretty great conversation about the survey over at BikePortland.org.