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Friday, November 13, 2009

Bikes Bicycle Master Plan on "Think Out Loud"

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 9:29 AM

Sorry to get this up a little late, but the Bike Master Plan is up for discussion on OPB RIGHT NOW! Listen live here over the next half hour to Bicycle Master Plan writers explain what the plan is and how the hell the city should pay for it.

It's shaping up to be a good show! I'll blog updates as it continues. My coverage of the plan is here.

9:40 AM
Emily Harris just asked BikePortland's Jonathan Maus about paying for and building the 600 miles of bike lanes called for in the plan.

"How much should be resources taken away from cars?" asked Harris.
Replies Maus:

It’s not an issue of taking away from cars… It’s clear that there’s too much space in our city given over to the moving of large motor vehicles and the parking of large motor vehicles, to the detriment of people walking around, people shopping. It’s clear that we could vastly improve our bikeways if we reduced the amount of car parking in the city. Unfortunately, one of the issues of that is the bureau of transportation gets a lot of its revenue from parking meters.

Maus called out NE Alberta as an example — it’s a narrow road with parking on both sides that cyclists still try to squeeze onto. “We’re too reluctant on a city level to really take back some of our public space,” says Maus.

9:48 AM
Small business owner and Central Eastside Industrial Council chair Juliana Lukasik
Isn’t sold on the idea. “Some businesses would appreciate the business of bike riders, but the reality is that a very large percentage of business really need car parking for their customers,” says Lukasik. She does think that removing parking on somewhere that’s both bike-accessible and has a lot of pedestrian-friendly stores like NE Alberta could actually be a good idea.

OPB asked Bike Master Plan chief Ellen Vanderslice what she thinks of requiring bike licenses or registration. “From the city’s point of view, anything that’s a barrier to someone biking is a problem,” says Vanderslice. “We want, at this point in time, not to put up barriers.” Vanderslice does support, though, some sort of statewide or citywide maintenance fee road users would pay based on weight and distance traveled (an idea Rep. Jules Kopel Bailey suggested to the legislature last spring). “It’s the weight on the road that really does the damage,” says Vanderslice.

9:53 AM

Cycletrack on Broadway: Uh... some signs, please?
  • Cycletrack on Broadway: Uh... some signs, please?

Lukasik complains that the new bike facilities downtown (like the cycletrack and the whole lane given over the bikes on SW Oak) just showed up with no education for drivers or very good signage. “I think the city needs to do a better job of letting drivers know what to do in those new areas,” says Lukasik. YES! I think the markings on the cycletrack are terrible—I still have no idea how you’re supposed to turn left off that thing. Just painting the word “parking” in the poorly-marked parking spaces next to the track would be a lot of help.

10 AM
God, I hate "World Have Your Say." They should bump this show to the middle of the night... or KBOO.

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