Portland celebrates neighborhood bicycle roads

Here’s the latest out of City Hall, which is touting an increasingly visible push to make Portland more bike and pedestrian friendly place to move around. This program in particular involves creating enhanced bike lanes and even devoted roadways for folks on foot or bicycles through some of the busy neighborhoods.

This is what the city’s got to say about it in a news release today:

Beginning last week, a number of more visible elements for the city’s pilot ‘Neighborhood Byway’ project were installed in the Deering Center neighborhood. A Neighborhood Byway uses local, residential streets to create a comfortable environment for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages. Byways are designed to encourage use by beginner or less experienced cyclists, kids and families traveling to and from local schools, and residents walking or riding to various neighborhood destinations. The Deering Center area was selected for the pilot project as a Neighborhood Byway would be able to connect a large number of locations and address long-standing neighborhood concerns regarding traffic and pedestrian safety. The pilot project will promote safer connections between four neighborhood centers, five schools and numerous trails and parks.

As a part of the project, the city of Portland’s Department of Public Services crews painted more than fifty ‘Bicycle Boulevard’ pavement symbols along four miles of Byway streets. These stencils are intended to raise awareness among motorists to expect more bicycling activity on the Byway streets as well as promote these streets as providing good bicycling connections between important neighborhood destinations and to other parts of the city.

Also this week, the city installed its first ‘Contra-flow Bike Lane’ along a block of Nevens Street (between Saunders Street and Concord Street), a one-way street from Concord Street to Woodford Street. This bike lane on one side of the street allows bicyclists to legally ride against the direction of motor vehicle traffic within a striped and signed bicycle lane. Bicyclists share the travel way with motor vehicle traffic in the other, southbound direction.

A ‘Neighborhood Byway’ combines techniques such as enhanced pedestrian crossings, pavement markings, signs, and landscaping and street trees to create connections between places residents are likely to walk or bike. Byways typically run parallel to and between busier streets while still allowing local vehicular traffic.

Earlier in the summer, city crews built a sidewalk along Warwick Street from Glenhaven Street to Sunset Lane, filling a missing sidewalk gap as well as install two curb ramps and new and enhanced crosswalks. New and relocated school zone flashers have been installed on Warwick Street to better define where traffic should be observing the 15 mph speed limit while children are going to and from school.

During the coming weeks and months, additional Byway elements will be added including to the neighborhood including:

  • Curb extensions, refuge islands/medians, and curb ramps at new or enhanced pedestrian crossings on Ludlow and Warwick Streets
  • Byway signage, including ‘directional’ signs that indicate turns/changes of direction along the Byway and ‘destination’ signs that are larger and include the names of key destinations the Byway connects and distances to those destinations.

The Neighborhood Byway initiative is funded in part by a $1.8 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant to the City of Portland’s Healthy Portland to prevent obesity by increasing physical activity and improving nutrition within the community. Funded through Communities Putting Preventing to Work (CCPW), the city’s obesity prevention program seeks to provide quality ways for Portland residents to lead active, healthy lives, including creating safe places to walk and bike.

Seth Koenig

About Seth Koenig

Seth has nearly a decade of professional journalism experience and writes about the greater Portland region.