I don't know how much this gets talked about in most of the country, but it seems to be a big topic in Portland. How do we make our city safer for people to get around in?
I think one of the best answers to that question is this: give priority to the most vulnerable people.
While we, as in the rest of the U.S., have a long way to go to really make this a reality, Portland has taken some definite steps to help give more vulnerable road users priority in certain situations.
As above, we are starting to have more and more rights of way given to more vulnerable users, such as cyclists and pedestrians. Markings which designate clearly that someone other than automobile drivers have priority in a situation, and to notify the automobile drivers of their presence: in this case, to prevent cyclists getting hit by drivers who are turning right at an intersection.
Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a while to catch on...
I posted before about these walk signals (sorry for the bad picture, I keep meaning to get a better one, but haven't had a chance yet). Something as simple as just showing a count until the light changes gives everyone in the intersection a clear idea of how long they have to get where they are going, and thankfully in practice, I usually see people slow down ahead of time, rather than try to put the gas pedal to the floor to get through at the last second. I'm seeing these going up all over town, even way out in nowhere land past 82nd :D
Portland recently got some federal funding for building and repairing sidewalks throughout the city, giving pedestrians even more safe, easy routes to move around.
We also just got federal funding to finish a streetcar loop on the inner East side, giving pedestrians easy access to transit, and connections to buses and MAX, taking public right of way from automobiles and giving it to a slower, more predictable form of transportation.
We will be doing a test-run of a separated cycle path near Portland State University, potentially with more to come if things go well. This protects cyclists from moving automobiles by giving them their own dedicated right of way.
We've also done things like make it illegal to make a turn in an automobile until pedestrians crossing the intersection are a full car-lane away from you, and drivers are required by law to stop for pedestrians who are crossing the street at a marked or un-marked crosswalk. In practice, this works pretty well on small streets where the speed limits are low, but cars on larger roads like Powell (which doubles as a highway and is managed by the Oregon Dept. of Transportation) traveling at 40mph often don't bother to slow down for pedestrians even when they clearly see them, so pedestrians often just have to wait for a break in traffic or find a crossing with a traffic signal.
Most of the speed limits in inner Portland are between 20-35mph, even on main arterials, which helps to prevent accidents (people have more time to react), and greatly reduces the chance of serious injury, should an accident occur (at 20mph, only 5% of automobile/pedestrian collisions are fatal, as opposed to about 90% at 40mph).
Portland has created hundreds of miles of bike boulevards: that is, smaller streets which have traffic calming and redirection devices to keep automobile traffic speeds and volumes down to a minimum. This gives both bicycles and pedestrians a quieter, slower, safer environment to travel in.
Speed bumps and roundabouts help keep automobile traffic down to around 20mph:
Traffic diversions help reduce the amount of automobile traffic:
Portland also has a number of areas which are completely car free:
Along the west waterfront from the Steel Bridge nearly all the way to the new South Waterfront development. The Eastbank Esplanade, which extends again from the Steel Bridge to SE Division ST (soon to go past the Steel Bridge all the way to St. Johns). The Springwater Trail, which connects the end of the Eastbank Esplanade to Gresham.
As the city of Portland has said, as you make the city safe for the most vulnerable, you make it safer for everyone. That has been made obvious by the fact that in 2008, we had the fewest traffic fatalities Portland has ever had since they began keeping track in the 1920s. Not only that, but you make the citizens of the city feel more at ease, you make the city feel more livable, and you give more options to people as to how they can get around.
Seems like a win-win-win to me. We have a ways to go, but we are definitely making steps in the right direction in Oregon and specifically in Portland.
5 comments:
Another way to phrase this goal -- which might resonate with a different group of people -- is to ask whether the bike path/lane is safe enough for your ten year-old child to ride to school. If you can say yes, and if you can put your children on that path, then you've probably got something workable.
I think this is a great way to frame it, as I think a lot of people don't feel comfortable letting their kids go out on their own, walking or on a bike, and that's a great signal that they don't feel the streets are safe.
As opposed to, say, the Netherlands, where nearly all children walk or ride their bikes to school everyday on their own, and parents feel fine about their safety.
I think that's a major difference of a culture which says "primarily cars belong here, and everyone else, watch out for them," as opposed to "everyone must share the roads, so we will make it safest for theose most vulnerable."
We went totally wrong back there somewhere.
We should be encouraging cycling, not accommodating it. A bike lane made of white paint accommodates cyclists -- the fearless ones -- but will fail to get the broader public on it. It just doesn't feel safe. As such, I think bicycles should have their own roads, or at the very least, protected lanes.
Here in Los Angeles, I see lots of cyclists out on the few dedicated paths we have. The bicycle lanes, however, are hardly used. While I appreciate whatever nod cyclists get from the city, I just hope someday we'll have an infrastructure more akin to the Amsterdam/Copenhagen model. It's probably wishful thinking.
Portland is fortunate in that, at least in inner Portland, the city was built to be very walkable, and therefore is also very bike-able. We have put in the small amount of effort that it takes to calm and reduce traffic on those streets to the point where a growing number of people feel safe riding on them, and it's generally easy to get around on very low-traffic streets, for the most part. However, 50% of Portlanders still say they don't ride or ride less than they would because they don't feel it's safe.
I don't necessarily think bikes need entirely exclusive paths (though I don't think it's a bad idea either, where it makes sense), I think for the most part, we could give them rights of way on our current infrastructure, but simply designed well and with the priority of protecting cyclists, and not simply getting them out of the way, which is primarily what painted bike lanes are for.
Great post! cycling in San Francisco actively for the last 6-7 years has allowed me to be part of the increase in bicycling and able to see the changes of the popularity of it. We got a long way to go, but we are getting there, I think.
I love all the Portland photos, I wanna visit soon!! :D
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