From www.bikeportland.org today:
The Portland Department of Transportation has plans in the works for its first segregated bike path to be completed in 2010, along a section of road that is being completely reworked. The current plans include a bicycle path separated from the road by a curb, then a planter median between the cycle path and the pedestrian sidewalk. Because this street is being completely reconstructed anyway, they figured it was a perfect spot for testing this idea, which has been inspired by bicycle paths around the Netherlands and Denmark.
Rob Burchfield, who is head traffic engineer of the PDOT and was on the group of delegates who traveled to the Netherlands and Denmark this summer to study their bicycle infrastructure and programs, said there has been a lot of interest from within city planning and bicycle advocacy organizations surrounding this kind of project, but it’s been difficult to come up with situations where it could be easily implemented.
It’s exciting to see this kind of thing happening in Portland, as I’ve noticed from my own cycling around town that the few small areas where bicycles and pedestrians are completely separated from automotive traffic have a completely different feeling of relaxation and safety to them than even bicycle boulevard areas which simply have traffic-calming measures or diversions to keep traffic volumes down. It’s nice to see that the city government is willing to try these ideas. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that people like them and we can get a lot of motivation for new projects like this.
WHAT TO DO NOW?