Extra! Extra! Shameless Self Promotion!

[the press release i wrote for the neighborhood bike event. --sph]

Neighborhood Goes By Pedal

Is Kerns Neighborhood the most bike-friendly in Portland? G.T. Meili, shrugs his shoulders at the question, “We might be.” Don’t mistake his low-key demeanor as laissez-faire. The strides in biking infrastructure that Kerns has made in the last fifteen months were exactly what the Goodfoot Nightclub owner had in mind when he created the Bike Advocate position on the neighborhood board at its annual elections in May of 2008.

“When people think of neighborhood associations they think ‘boring,’” Meili confides, “we created sustainability and bike advocacy positions on our board to kind of reach out to the interests of a new wave of neighbors who might not otherwise turn out for this kind of thing.” In the past year the efforts of the neighborhood have yielded measurable success—the recent installation of bike corrals on 28th north and south of East Burnside perhaps being the most visible.

“Right locality, right time, right city,” Kerns Bike Advocate Sean Hutchinson suggests, “all these things were happening around bicycle infrastructure already, so to be able to add the clout of the neighborhood association helped push them in our direction.” Hutchinson lists the overwhelming support for the Twenties Bikeway, a $2.1 million project to bring a dedicated North-South corridor for bike traffic through the close-in Eastside with Metro’s Regional Flexible Funding dollars, as another of the neighborhood’s successes, “I don’t know how much a role our grass roots online campaign or testimony at Metro played, but I do know that the Twenties Bikeway was the most favorably reviewed of all the proposed projects.”

Although Hutchinson had been a long time bike commuter, even coordinating for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s yearly Bike Commute Challenge in his day job as a producer at Oregon Public Broadcasting, the role of neighborhood advocate did not come with stringent prerequisites. “Basically he said he’d do it,” Meili deadpans.

“Having the neighborhood association on board can really help expedite the process,” remarks Sarah Figliozzi, Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Bike Program Specialist who oversees the on-street bike parking installations, or corrals. “Having an outside voice that speaks from the perspective of the community at large helps the City develop parking solutions that serve the whole neighborhood's needs.” The corrals at Pambiche, Crema and Ken’s Pizza on 28th Avenue represent the 18th, 19th and 20th installations by the city.

The denouement for Kerns comes August 16th at the Southeast Sunday Parkways event. PBOT will close 14 miles of streets to cars as part of an all day bike festival. Kerns’ Vice-President Angela Kirkman wrote the grant funded by Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition that will enable the neighborhood to promote bike safety and awareness through the disbursement of helmets, bike lights and reflective accessories. Partnerships with Legacy’s Trauma Nurses Talk Tough program and the Bike Gallery have allowed the subsidized helmets and bike mechanics to be part of the event. Three bands—Dave Fulton, Pancake Breakfast and Physical Hearts—will play outdoors at the Box + One building nearby to the new corral at SE 28th and Ankeny.

Ironically, the Sunday Parkways route almost missed Kerns Neighborhood entirely. “Initially we had it drawn up heading south from Laurelhurst Park,” informs Janis McDonald, the PBOT Project Manager who heads up planning for the Parkways events, “after meeting with them and hearing their plans we realized this community would be a great inclusion for the Southeast route.”

“We’re looking at this as a celebration of all we’ve been able to accomplish in the last year,” Hutchinson crows. “We had these grandiose visions starting out, and, remarkably, they’ve played out just as we schemed.”

Contacts
Angela Kirkman [insert e-mail, phone]
Sean Hutchinson: sepahu [at] gmail.com, cell 503.453.4316

Captions
CremaCorral.jpg: Kerns Neighborhood Association has planned a bike safety and awareness event at the Box + One building around the corner from the new bike corral installation at SE 28th Avenue as part of the Southeast Sunday Parkways event. A grant from Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition funds the event.

TokenSwap.JPG: Kerns Neighborhood Bike Advocate Sean Hutchinson exchanged his minivan for a new bicycle and beer tokens at the 2008 Tour de Fat festival sponsored by New Belgium Brewing. Proceeds benefited the Bicycle Transportation Alliance.

Twenties Bikeways Funded

Today's discussion about bike corals at the Belmont Business district meeting got me curious about when Metro's selection of Regional Flexible Funding projects would be announced. As some of you will remember, RIDDEN advocated on behalf of the Twenties Bikeways project which would put bike lanes on 28th through Kerns Neighborhood where I live and reside on the board as Bike Advocate.

Somehow it flew under my radar, but this announcement was made in late
March and, in fact, "our" project was among those approved!
We are now beginning in Kerns the decision-making process as to where we want to prioritize bike corals placement and planning a safety day and helmet/light giveaway as part of the Sunday Parkways event in Southeast Portland.


PDOT 's decision on funding these corals is based largely on "destination"
and "visibility" considerations. Hopefully, the news about intended
bike lanes on 28th assuages any concerns over encouraging bike
traffic there. The intersections with Bike Boulevards or low-traffic
cross streets (Ankeny and Davis, as identified in the Bike There!
maps) still do make for good candidates and have already support among
adjacent businesses, another key for PDOT . For those interested, I've linked to the .pdf with the list of all the Metro funded projects here:
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=19681

Thanks to everyone (Mom) who read my earlier post and advocated through the online forum.

--Hutchie

Tell Metro Where to Put It

Where to put $21 million worth of transportation funds, that is. Metro is currently seeking input as to which projects to greenlight with Regional Flexible Funding dollars. From the Bicycle Transportation Alliance blog:

The process by which Metro allocates federal dollars for bicycle, pedestrian, transit and freight projects began last month. Metro has narrowed down the list of possible projects to $58 million worth - but there's only $21 million to spend!

But more specifically tell them how to spend, or rather why they should, the $2.1 million required for the Twenties Bikeway proposal. The deadline for comment is December 1. From the Metro website:

The Twenties Bikeway is a proposed bicycle facility running north-to-south parallel to the Interstate 5 and Highway 99E Regional Mobility Corridors. The Twenties Bikeway is a 9.2-mile corridor, of which 2.3 miles currently exist as bicycle lanes. Of the remaining 6.9 miles, 5.5 miles are to be developed with bicycle boulevard treatments and 1.4 miles are to be striped with bicycle lanes. Route is on NE 27th from Lombard to Ainsworth, NE 29th from Ainsworth to Knott, NE 28th from Knott to SE Madison, SE 27th from Madison to Stephens, SE 26th from Stephens to existing lanes south of Woodward. Project also adds improvements on SE 27th, Crystal Springs Boulevard and SE 44th from Bybee to Harney Drive.

This will fill a direly needed link in the network of dedicated bike passages in the heart of eastside, residential Portland. Remarkably, "Bike City U.S.A." has no dedicated north-south corridor for bike traffic from the Eastside Esplanade all the way to the I-205 bike path (which has been frequently closed in sections over the last year for construction of the new MAX line).

Don't believe it. Check it out for yourselves:



This map is produced by the Portland Office of Transportation. Similar to Metro's famous Bike There! maps, the purple and blue lines are multi-use pathways and bike lane striped roads respectively.

I'm often flummoxed as I look at these maps and try to figure out how to head out to neighborhood street festivals and the like with the family in tow during summer. My wife likes to feel safe in local traffic on a bicycle, especially with our young children in the bike trailer and tag-along bike extension. I'd even like to go to the grocery store on the bikes with the whole family so we could totally abandon the car on the weekends, but traffic on 28th over I-84 can be kind of treacherous. The Banfield is really the concrete river of Bridgetown that channels traffic north-south to certain corridors in the same way that the Williamette does East-West.

So please, if you live in the area and feel likewise, or if you support the example the city sets for the rest of the country, take this opportunity to address a shortfall of Portland's otherwise deserved bike friendly reputation.

Click here to comment in favor of the Twenties Bikeway.