Bike Use Way Up!

Bruce:

Yeah, you're totally right! If only the 12,000 bikes in downtown were 12,000 cars a day instead, congestion would just go away.

Also, we should totally be working to speed up traffic! That way, lots more people would die and our neighborhoods would be dominated by high speed traffic. It would be wonderful. You're a genius.

Classic Big Dummy

What makes you think there are 12,000 bikes in Portland on any given day? I assume you mean bikes in transit, not the ones sitting in peoples garages.
Bridge Pedal doesn't count.

Even if you include all the people who have no alternative (don't own a car or a bus pass), I would be surprised if the actual number was even half that on a nice sunny day. Bike messengers don't count.

How many bike commuters do you think there will be on January 20th? Let me let you in on a little secret: Bike Nazi propaganda is not going to solve the congestion problem: wider roads and bridges will.

Had you paused for a moment to actually read the above article before tearing off on a random screed you would have discovered that the 12,000-cyclist figure comes from the PDOT study which serves as the centerpiece of the article itself. Please note that this figure does not include cycling trips that begin and end on the same side of the river, just those that cross it. While that's a useful and easily measured statistic, it's not an accurate representation of the total number of cycling trips made in a day.

Some perspective: Motorists killed over 40,000 Americans last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. Automobile and tire manufacturers and petroleum companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on marketing and advertising. And you're comparing advocating *cycling* to the Nazis?

Clay Fouts: Some perspective: Motorists killed over 40,000 Americans last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.

JK: The interesting thing about that is that the deaths have been trending down while driving has been going up.

If you think 40,000 is bad, be glad everyone isn’t on light rail: there would be close to 60,000 deaths because light rail’s death rate is about 50% ABOVE car’s.

Thanks
JK

Jen:

Yes. 12,000. Downtown cyclists. That's just downtown. That doesn't count the rest of the city as Clay says. If we didn't have people on bikes, you'd learn what real congestion was like -- just like lots of other cities you could move to (like Atlanta or Houston -- you'd like those places -- move there please).

If we can't count messengers or people who don't own a car, does that mean we can ignore freight and people in old cars that can't afford a new one? I didn't think so.

Your rhetoric is baseless. Have you given up on saying we needed to go to Iraq because of their "Weapons of Mass Destruction"?

Let us know when it's OK to knock down your house to build a road. I'll ask to be right there to drive the bulldozer. Your neighbors and neighborhood businesses might not like losing their homes and businesses in the process. Oh well. You need to drive and FAST. You let them know about how your needs are more important than theirs and I'll find the bulldozer.

Sincerely,
Regular Rider

I would love to see PDOT's methodology on 12,000 average daily bridge crossings. If they took the average of four days (Middle of June, July, August, September), and one of them hust happened to fall on Bridge Pedal, then I can see how they get to 12,000. I doubt there are half that many on cold rainy days (roughly 4-5 months of the year), and that's going to weigh on the average. And how many of those are unique crossings? I wouldn't be surprised if the BTA kids knew it was census day, so they spent the afternoon crossing as many bridges as possible.

Asking PDOT to accurately report bike usage is like letting Sam pick and choose which expenses will be excluded from the lifecycle costs on the Tram. They both have a vested interest in the outcome: garbage in, garbage out.

Here's what I know to be true: mixing cars and bikes on downtown streets full of construction trucks, lane closures, buses, and rain fogged windshields is a poor substitute for a transportation plan. Ignoring the issues of bikes/cars/pedestrians for now: the sheer volume of road closures and detours in the central city is evidence there is no effective coordination of these projects. And it will only get worse when the Meth Mall remodel gets underway.

Many cyclists are mired in the Peter Pan school of traffic compliance: "I'm a bike when it's convenient (blow through stop signs, ride on the sidewalk, go the wrong way on a one way street), but I deserve the respect afforded to cars when that's convenient" (go ahead: take the whole lane, you deserve it: who cares if your going 9 miles per hour...I enjoy looking at your black spandex ass).

Have you driven across the Hawthorne Bridge during rush hour, Jen? Sh*tloads of bikes.

A "Sh*tload of bikes" on one bridge, during one hour, on a sunny day is called anecdotal evidence. You can't take that one hour worth of bike traffic, multiply it by 24 hours x 365 days x 8 bridges and expect to be taken seriously.

Assuming they didn't count bikes every day, on every bridge, for a full year, then they had to use some combination of sampling/extrapolation. If they deployed non-human means (i.e. laser with a photo trigger and counting software) of cycle counting, it is subject to manipulation and error.

If you believe that PDOT has nothing to hide, and they are only interested in fact based solutions to public policy questions, then we should encourage them to release their counting methodology and math. In the absence of such transparency, I will assume they have a political bias in support of the bike lobby, and they are adjusting the data to suit their needs.

Anecdotal evidence is used when people are too lazy/stupid to seek statistical or scientific evidence. Anecdotal evidence can be overtly deployed in support of a predetermined outcome, or it can be used (as I believe is the case here) as sloppy thinking which is easily subjected to manipulation by special interest groups (BTA, anti-car zealots, etc)

Jen,

If you read the first paragraph of the study that this this post was about (and is attached to the post) you would have seen:

"Procedure.
In the Summer and early Fall of 2006 53 volunteers fanned out across Portland during either the morning or afternoon two-hour rush (7-9 am or 4-6 pm). During those times they manually counted cyclists passing through selected intersections, recording the number of
cyclists, their direction of travel and movement through the intersection, and their gender and helmet use. These volunteers were continuing a long-standing practice in Portland of conducting annual bicycle counts. Portland’s Office of Transportation organizes these counts in order to track the most easily understood measure for determining the success of
Portland’s goals, policies, and actions relating to bicycling, which is, simply: how many
people are riding."

So, your concern that it was done by mechanical means or lasers is at least addressed by this. And yes, there is sampling involved, and this is clearly spelled out.

Besides that, each graph declares that they are "based on on either 24-hour hose counts or extrapolated from 4-6 pm counts." This is a little more ambiguous, I grant you.

That said, even if you did not seemingly read the report you are suspicious of, I do nonetheless think it is fair to ask questions about methodology.

I do not personally have all the answers to your questions, but I will get in touch with the PDOT engineers who oversaw the study and prepared the report to answer any of your questions which weren't addressed in the above-posted first paragraph.

I also want to point out that even if you do not agree with the measuring technique or methodology, which may or not be fair, the fact that PDOT has been employing the same technique for years at least gives us reliability in measuring trends, if not exact absolute numbers.

This means that even if the extrapolated numbers are not exactly right, we can say with some confidence that the bike numbers (whatever they are) have increased at least 15-20% each year over the past few years.

Does that mean the 4 bridge total of "12,000 average daily bicycle" trips is based (in part) on a count of 2 hours of sunny rush hour traffic, multiplied by 12?

Is that representative of the average daily traffic in January? Perhaps it ought to be relabeled the "Estimated Daily Bicycle Traffic During Favorable Weather"...

Does their math calculation assume a decrease in traffic from midnight to 2:00 a.m. compared to 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.?

Also: I believe the "24-hour hose counts" (while more reliable) constitutes a "mechanical" counting method.

If the methodology is consistently flawed in the same way (only counting a few hours on mild weather days), that doesn't make the methodology any less flawed.

It deserves more than a footnote at the bottom of slide 9. I read carefully, but not that carefully.

You'll get answers from our Bicycle Coordinator re: methodology questions soon.

And let's be clear: the methodology used and the measuring tool used are different. Methodology includes extrapolation and potentially other assumptions, and if this is bad it affects the extropolated results.

Measuring, on the other hand, is done in the absence of extrapolation, and if it is done consistently with the same tools and in the same manner over a long period of time, it can nonetheless fairly accurately capture trends in a system.

Jen W:

No anecdotal data was used for these counts. Roland's initial response to you--quoting the report we put together--spells out the methodology we used for most count locations in the city. They were manually recorded 2-hour counts conducted during either the pm peak ("rush hour") between 4-6pm, or during the am peak (7-9am) if the street was a one-way inbound street. These counts were then multiplied by 5 to give an estimate of the 24-hour total. This is a standard traffic engineering methodology as the traffic during the 2-hour peak represents approximately 20% of the day's total traffic at that location. We have calibrated this methodology several times over the years and have found that it holds as well for bikes as it does for automobiles. It is the same methodology we have been employing for as long as we've been conducting bicycle counts and is the same methodology we use when we estimate auto volumes.

On the bridges (and on other paths) we do things a bit differently. There, we set up pneumatic hoses--the same equipment we use to count automobiles on the streets. When we use the pneumatic hoses we conduct 24-hour counts over the course of several days. Wherever we use hoses the number we report reflects the total bicycle use for a 24-hour period. To address other concerns expressed on this site, we do not publish in advance when we are conducting counts...

Again, this is almost identical to the way we count automobiles. Reported automobile counts on most streets are the result of a one-day, 24-hour count. Keep in mind that many reported automobile volumes--especially at the regional level--are also the product of computer models, rather than actual counts. None of the bicycle numbers reflect numbers reported from a model.

I'd be happy to share with you the completed manual count forms as well as the counts generated from the pneumatic hoses if you'd like to see them.

Roger Geller
Bicycle Coordinator
City of Portland Office of Transportation

Yeah...wider Roads have worked wonders for Atlanta. Get your lazy ass on a bike.

KSK Yeah...wider Roads have worked wonders for Atlanta.
JK: Do you Atlanta GA which has lower un-employment than Portland?

KSK Get your lazy ass on a bike.
JK: Quit telling others how to live.

Thanks
JK

Are you attributing Atlanta's unemployment rate to its street width?

I'd love to see a study that correlates economic growth or unemployment rates with street size!

(Please let me know how New York, Boston, and Europe fit into that study, too.)

Another non-sequitor from free the market faithful - who are not overly concerned with finding evidence or data to back their elegant theories up.

p.s. Jim, you and your kin are quite good at telling your fellow citizens and elected officials the best things for them to do, so if you dish it out...

Roland Chlapowski Are you attributing Atlanta's unemployment rate to its street width?
JK: No, I’m saying that Atlanta is frequently thrown around as something Portland should avoid, but in fact has some very desirable things, including JOBS. But jobs never seem to be a consideration to Portland’s planners as they bulldoze one jobs area after another. (after driving out the businesses)

Roland Chlapowski I'd love to see a study that correlates economic growth or unemployment rates with street size!
JK: Want a example of a few businesses leaving town because of traffic congestion? Something that some Portland officials consider good.

Roland Chlapowski (Please let me know how New York, Boston, and Europe fit into that study, too.)
JK: Thanks for bringing up Europe. I have frequently heard/read planners saying that we should be more like Europe. They are too stupid to look at the numbers and discover that people are less well off in Europe than here - some model to emulate. Europan income averages 3/4 of ours.

Roland Chlapowski Another non-sequitor from free the market faithful - who are not overly concerned with finding evidence or data to back their elegant theories up.
JK: So where is your evidence or data that any of the following foundations of city policy is true:
High density reduces traffic congestion.
High density reduces costs.
High density reduces pollution.
High density reduces commute time.
High density living is preferred by most people.
Buses save energy compared to a modern, small car.
Amtrack uses less energy that intercity buses.
Light rail is safer than cars (overall, not just inside the vehicle.)
People desire a 5 story apartment building on the nearest main street.
People desire a skinny house down the block.
TODs reduce congestion in the neighborhood.

You have no evidence because EVERY ONE of the above statements is provable false, although many are popularly held by planners.
Please open you eyes and look for evidence before Portland is completely turned into NYC or LA. Also note that evidence does not come from the STPP, Vancouver BC, or the Sierra Club.

Roland Chlapowski p.s. Jim, you and your kin are quite good at telling your fellow citizens and elected officials the best things for them to do, so if you dish it out..
JK: I am just asking that you guys let people live as they desire, not try to force them into living the planner’s religion.

Thanks
JK

mmmarvel:

I intend to conduct winter counts on the bridges this year.

The last time we conducted winter counts was on the Morrison and Broadway Bridges in January and February, 1999 (at the time the Hawthorne Bridge was closed for construction and a temporary path was set up on the Morrison).

During the Summer of 1998 the counts on the Morrison was 2,471 daily bicycle trips and on the Broadway was 1,854. The January, 1999 bicycle counts on those two bridges was 1,116 and 605, respectively.

There are two things interesting about these counts:

1)The summer time counts on the Hawthorne and Broadway Bridges in 1991 were 1,450 and 498, respectively, and
2) While the average two-month rainfall for January-February was 9.2 inches, that year the two-month rainfall in January and February was 15.35 inches.

In the rainiest, dreariest months of the winter in 1998-99 the bicycle ridership on those two bridges was higher than it had been in the summer of 1991.

Roger Geller
Bicycle Coordinator
City of Portland Office of Transportation

Roger:

So we know that 1998 Summer traffic was 221% higher on the Morrison Bridge, and 306% higher on the Broadway Brige when compared to January 1999. But you haven't attempted any winter counts in the last 7 years?

The current headline estimates of "Average Daily Bicycle Counts" (on four bike friendly bridges) are based exclusively on data gathered in late Summer and early Fall?

Does that seem like a representative sampling...to exlude that period when traffic declines to 1/3 or 1/2 of peak summer traffic?

If anything, car usage is likely to have a negative correlation with bike usage in the winter (or at night). Why? Because people don't mind driving on a dark, wet, night in the middle of January; many of them do mind biking in that weather.

Give me a $92,000 grant, and I will gladly take a 24 hour x 4 bridge census four times/year. And I promise not to pull an Emilie Boyles on you. No data, no payment.

I'll be interested in the counts during the winter. Today I was at my previous location near the Hawthorne bridge (I commented on it earlier). Today, it rained on and off and the weather wasn't exactly warm, plus it's getting dark sooner. Again, my (very unofficial) 'count' would peg the number of riders at about 10 - 20% of what I had seen during the really nice days.

It will be interesting to see your numbers.

As I write this it's 6:00AM on 10/31/06, it's not even raining today - BUT - it IS 29.3 degrees out (it's dropped 1/2 a degree since I've been up). Count it today Roger, or let's count when it's this temp AND there is moisture on the ground and in the air (like sleet).

I don't mind riding a bike. I just don't think it makes a lot of sense to spend a lot of money trying to pound people onto them - but hey, I'm just a highly paid construction worker, so what do I know. Just because I can't figure how to tow my wheelbarrow behind a bike I'll continue to be demonized.

Compared to total transportation funding, I don't agree that we spend a lot of money on what has always been a more voluntary experience than owning a car.

And who said you're demonized because your job prevents you from sensibly using a bike to commute? Folks seem to take issue with your diatribes because they don't seem very compromising, relational or fair.

BTW, I thought this morning's ride was quite spectacular. Cold, clear fall days are great days to ride.

It's no surprise you're blind to the number of cyclists on Portland's streets, Mel. You don't even live in Portland. Stay out of our business.

I know staying out of our business hurts yours. You sure do make a nice living spreading your lies. I'm glad you're losing the battle.

The lanes are wasted space. When there is an occasional rider, they are usually riding on the sidewalk or improperly (wrong direction, outside lane, etc).

Portland as a bicycle city is a joke. Maybe 12,000 (not including children) people own a bike, but I seriously doubt most of them use them for primary transportation. You want to see real bike use, come down to Corvallis where over 1/2 the students use a bike (to get to class).

Portland is a car city, much like the entire country, and especially the west coast.

Oak Grove is not Portland. Please don't spread lies.

Mel lives in Portland, not Oak Grove. Get your facts straight.

Thanks
JK

Mel,

You have done an excellent job of attacking the integrity of other readers and of an elected (operative word) official. However, I am yet to see you offer any viable strategies to relieve congestion.

The City of Portland may not have every answer, but they are promoting cycling because it is a very healthy, environmentally-friendly, inexpensive way to relieve congestion. I bike to work (year-round) and enjoy the feeling I get afterward for the abovementioned reasons.

Because some transportation policy (not anywhere near the majority, as a quick phone call to PDOT or Sam's office would tell you) is geared toward offering alternatives to getting in a single-occupancy vehicle, you assume that some fascist regime has overtaken PDX and is now closing all the roads. Seriously, man, the Hawthorne doesn't exactly look like Nablus. No one is forcing you onto a bike, and these alternatives are allowing people to voluntarily do their part to enact a real solution, rather than just build more and more roads until we have nowhere to put houses, businesses, mass transit (which will eventually be invaluable), etc.

Robert Moses built New York City by throwing parkways, expressways, and vehicle-only bridges everywhere he could. Ever tried to drive in the city? Dear PDX Commissioners, please don't EVER allow Portland to get like that.

Brian.

I ride day in and day out. What difference does it make if more people ride thier bikes on a good day than in bad weather. Seriously man, take your Prozac

Patrick: you ride your bike rain or shine, night or day, and even (occassionally) in the snow? Good for you: you represent less than 1% of all Portland commuters. That means you are a dues paying member of the BTA (if not an officer!), but it is not representative of most Portlanders.

Do you ever put your bike on the bus? Did you know those smelly diesel buses could have been replaced with clean burning natural gas (but Tri-Met found more important ways to spend their capital budget).

The seasonality of bike use matters because it is very misleading to shout "12,000 bikes cross Portland's Bridges Daily" when that may only be true a couple of months out of the year.

If only 4,000 bikes/day cross the bridges the rest of the year, then they are a statistically minor component of the winter commute.

Boy, the oil companies are getting their money's worth out of you!

http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=463

nuovorecord Boy, the oil companies are getting their money's worth out of you!
JK:Your link is to some partisan site that claims to list contributors to the Thoreau Institute.

How is the Thoreau Institute relevant to Mel?

Or are you trying some guilt by association?

BTW why do you hide your real name? Is it because you on company time?

Thanks
JK

You certainly aren't winning me over by calling people stupid, socialist, and hackneyed.

Sorry, public transit has been around forever in America, and it is a pretty mainstream and popular government program. Same with Social Security, taxing the rich more than the poor, and other things you would surely call socialist.

Listen, cars do not have some inalienable right to the road. They have to share it with other people. I know you might think sharing is socialist, but really it is something that a kindergartener can tell you is the right thing to do.

Stop calling people names and stop posting misleading stuff from bogus websites.

You say that the hevanet.com site you post says something about the traffic congestion in the 100 largest US cities. It has FOUR!! And while anyone can tell you that congestion has been rising, your data doesnt say anything about the effect that population growth and trends towards more and longer trips per person, which just might have something to do with it.

Geesh.

Gil Packaders Sorry, public transit has been around forever in America, and it is a pretty mainstream and popular government program.
JK:Sorry, Gil, government run public transport NOT BEEN around forever. It has only been around since Kennedy decided to rescue the, increasing failing, private transit systems around the country. He did it at the request of rich downtown landowners/business owners, not to provide transport for the poor.

That was done because people had been abandoning the best mass transit system that the USA ever had in droves because they found something better: the car. It was so much better that over ½ of all households bought one in about a decade. Took the country by storm, somewhat like computers did recently. Transit lost the battle with the car 60-80 years ago. Now the planners are trying to repeat the battle, hoping for a different outcome.

Gil Packaders Listen, cars do not have some inalienable right to the road.
JK: Actually they paid for the roads, so they should have more rights than users that pay nothing like bikes or users that pay only a tiny fractions like buses probably do.

Gil Packaders They have to share it with other people. I know you might think sharing is socialist, but really it is something that a kindergartener can tell you is the right thing to do.
JK: Can I share your house with you? (Free of course, like you are advocating here?)

Gil Packaders Stop calling people names and stop posting misleading stuff from bogus websites.
JK: Your definition of bogus is anything that you don’t like.

Gil Packaders your data doesnt say anything about the effect that population growth and trends towards more and longer trips per person, which just might have something to do with it.
JK: Those are two good reasons that we should be increasing road capacity.

Geesh
JK

Additionally, Mel's link regarding congestion increase combines the Portland/Vancouver area. Therefore, I am assuming that this includes freeways. Therefore, I am assuming that this includes the I-5 Columbia River Crossing.

This crossing is a ridiculous bottleneck (ever try to drive on it at any sort of busy hour?), and the City is working on it. A statistic like that has nothing to do with cycling in this City of Portland. I don't care how backed up the CRC gets, so please tell me something about congestion in Portland and how biking negatively affects it.

Brian.

“Sorry, public transit has been around forever in America.”

When public transit was privately operated, it was done so to make a profit. In other words, transit, paid it’s own bills. The operating costs were not subsidized by 80% at taxpayer expense. That amounts to giving each and every person who purchases an all zone transit pass each month over $3,500a year in additional free cash.

“Listen, cars do not have some inalienable right to the road. They have to share it with other people. I know you might think sharing is socialist, but really it is something that a kindergartener can tell you is the right thing to do.”

Bicyclists and transit users do not have some inalienable right to have taxpayers pay for their specialized infrastructure and transport service either. Sharing the road also means sharing the financial responsibility. Transportation policies became socialistic when tax codes and motorist paid tax dollars started being used for subsidizing the alternative modes of transport in an effort to control the way people are mobile and move about.

Mel,

You use a lot of rhetoric in the above post. I'm not trying to attack you, just trying to get some clarification:

Mel says: "Stop persisting in stiupidity. You can't have your cake and eat it. Diversion of funds to no win "alternatives" makes the funds unavailable for better uses."

What does this mean?! It makes no attempt to respond to the section of my post that you cited. I was pointing out that there is demand for bicycle/pedestrian/mass transit alternatives and that funds are diverted there because of that demand. Just because the demand is not felt by you, doesn't mean that it is stupidity or a poor use of funds.

Additionally, I was referring to the land used for housing, businesses, etc. I wasn't saying that the transportation options were invaluable, but that the land that you want to pave over for bike-free roads will be invaluable once there is no open land left and you bulldoze a whole section of residential housing, dislocating over 400 families to build an expressway. ROBERT MOSES DID THAT, AND I KNOW MORE THAN YOU MIGHT THINK.

Those bridges do bring in money to NYC, but that is an ENTIRELY different situation. The tolls are not only to bring revenue, but ALSO A WAY TO PROMOTE ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION. The subway is as popular as it is, because money is a big motivator. The fact that parking for a day in NYC is about $30 and you pay a toll to cross a bridge is a pretty good incentive to take the train or subway.

I do plenty of reading, as you should probably read entire posts before responding. Please do not put words in my mouth. I said nothing about LA, and I said that I don't want Portland to become New York the way it was set up under, yes, Robert Moses. New York's transportation policies since the seventies have been mainly attempts to respond to his over-paving of much of the city and surrounding areas. The city is having to compensate for his auto-centric development, while also dealing with increasing density.

I fully support Portland using these policies and following in New York's footsteps in this way. What I said above was that I don't want Portland to end up with the transportation problems New York has had to deal with.

Brian.

Jim,

You quote an obscure, 12-year old Metro document that says, offhand, that in respect to one aspect of Los Angeles (and remember this is LA proper, not including the sprawling ticky-tacky boxes on the hillsides) that data didnt bear out the commonly perceived issue of sprawl. Now, if they looked at more surrounding sub and exburbs, the data would probably look different.

Further, this decade-plus old document simply states that in central LA, general density and relatively low amount of freeway per capita is something that is good.

The city and metro are certainly not trying to make Portland into LA. If wanted to do that, we would just abolish the Urban Growth Boundary and let the developers go at it, as actually happened in LA - exaclty what you hope we do, comet o think of it.

Roland_Chlapowski: (and remember this is LA proper, not including the sprawling ticky-tacky boxes on the hillsides).... Further, this decade-plus old document simply states that in central LA, general density and relatively low amount of freeway per capita is something that is good.
JK: Sorry, they are talking of the urbanized area, not LA proper or just downtown. LA is large because it has 12 million people. What is that - 10 time the Portland - Vancouver region?

LA is the densest urbanized area in the country, that is what Metro Measured says.

Roland_Chlapowski: The city and metro are certainly not trying to make Portland into LA.
JK Then why are they increasing density and reducing lane-miles - two characteristics of LA.

Roland_Chlapowski: If wanted to do that, we would just abolish the Urban Growth Boundary and let the developers go at it, as actually happened in LA
JK You are completely missing the point:
LA is very dense. It is only big because of its massive population. Sprawl is the inverse of density.

Roland_Chlapowski: - exaclty what you hope we do, comet o think of it.
JK I am trying to keep Portland from become less livable. It IS becoming less livable as good jobs leave town, traffic congestion drives out more jobs and wastes everyone’s time. These things come from failing to build lane-miles as the population increases. JUST LIKE LA.

Further loss of livability comes as we take money form police and fire departments to give to developers. $400 million and counting in the SoWhat to promote high density. At a projected 5000 living units, that is $80,000 subsidy per unit. That is real money that should go to vital city services. According to BoJack, around 20% of our property tax money is now going to urban renewal instead of vital services. Add it up: this mad rush to density is bankrupting the city.

Your policies are damaging our neighborhoods by forcing tacky, shotgun houses, into every neighborhood and out-of-scale giant apartments along all the corridors.

Please don’t accuse me of wanting Portland to be like LA it is you guys that are replicating LA here.

Further you all want me to waste even more time by taking welfare transit.

Thanks
JK

Roland_Chlapowski: (and remember this is LA proper, not including the sprawling ticky-tacky boxes on the hillsides)
JK: I noticed your use of the term sprawling ticky-tacky boxes. Are you using sprawl to indicate development style, rather than density?

That would explain why some people complain of endless strip malls as sprawl, while the reality is that a lot of strip malls indicates a fairly high density (it takes a lot of population to support a lot of stores.)

The converse of sprawling ticky-tacky boxes is really nice houses like you find in Dunthorpe, typically with little impervious surface, enough space for a garden, solar panels and wind energy so you can be truly sustainable - you can live almost without consuming anything from the outside world. Why would anyone be against this? They will be able to survive when peak oil causes mass starvation. They will be able to survive the future pictured in “The Limits to Growth” (a book relied upon by Metro when it planned our high density future.) Why does Portland, instead, try to push us into unsustainable Homer’s holes with no ability to withstand the alleged bleak future.

Thanks
JK

Not another inch of bicycle infrastructure should be put in place until you guys who use it are willing to open up your wallets, be taxed to pay for the costs, and quit whining and freeloading off what has become an excessive reliance on motor vehicle taxes and fees to subsidize your free ride. Lenny stated in another post he is a rich man. Sharing the road also means accepting the financial responsibility of helping to pay for what is used.

Along those same lines, as winter approaches it gets dark faster, so bicyclists need be sure to have a good working headlight and use it as the law requires, or be cited if they don’t. Handing out headlights to bicyclists rather than citations for non compliance of the law is nothing more than a fleecing of taxpayer money.

What if those headlights are donated? Seems silly to refuse them, and instead spend a lot of police time on enforcement.

Lenny,

The lack of growth in bikeway network miles is just part of the story. We are continually working to improve the bikeway network and encourage increased use of the network we already have.

Today I was at a ceremony dedicating the opening of the 3 Bridges on the Springwater Trail. That added a relatively insignificant 2,600 feet to the bikeway network but the connection it makes is huge. Similarly, the signal we just installed at 41st & Burnside added not an inch of real estate to the network, but instead addressed a very difficult crossing for both pedestrians and cyclists. Ditto with the scramble signal we installed in the Rose Quarter and the bike lane we striped on Wheeler north of Multnomah, also in the Rose Quarter. We've also invested significant funds and resources into signing the bikeway network--and while you may not like the signs and boulevard markings that are part of the program, I've heard from many Portland citizens who have found them very useful and encouraging. The same can be said for the significant investment we've made in encouraging increased bicycle use through the Hub projects we've been running for several years. We've also been investing in other elements of the bikeway network that don't add to miles but do add value: curb extensions called for in previous plans to assist in roadway crossings, more funding dedicated to traffic enforcement--especially red light running and speeding, a federal experiment to test shared lane markings.

These efforts are all investments in the city's bikeway system, and that's reflected by the significant increases we're seeing around the city in the number of Portlanders using their bicycles for transportation.

Yes, we have need to expand the bikeway network--and we're constantly seeking the resources to do so (look at this year's MTIP and TE and ODOT bike/ped grants). But don't think that just because the network is no longer growing at the pace it once did that the city's efforts have somehow stopped. They haven't.

Roger Geller
Bicycle Coordinator
City of Portland Office of Transportation

Roger:

So it would be inaccurate to suggest the plateau in the blue columns suggest we are underinvesting in bike infrastructure? Because that is what I thought the chart was intended to communicate.

Also, back to the bridge counts. If 1998 Summer traffic was 221% higher on the Morrison Bridge, and 306% higher on the Broadway Brige (compared to January 1999), why haven't attempted any winter counts in the last 7 years?

The current headline estimates of "Average Daily Bicycle Counts" (on four bike friendly bridges) are based exclusively on data gathered in late Summer and early Fall.

But you are excluding from the 5-6 months of the year when biketraffic declines to 1/3 or 1/2 of peak summer traffic?

It appears the data is being gathered to support
a foregone conclusion: namely, we must be underinvesting in bike infrastructure because ridership is going up so rapidly.

But we don't really know how much ridership has increased, except for a couple of fair weather days in the summer and early fall.

Are you suggesting the city should follow that principle for all measurements and only perform traffic counts for cars at 3am when the system is least utilized? Normally, finding the points of greatest excess capacity is not of much interest, at least not as much as in finding the points of least excess.

Jen W,

The chart was intended to demonstrate that "if you build it, they will come." The strong correlation between increases in bikeway miles and ridership successfully makes that point. Increases in ridership across the 4 bridges (over 300% since 1991) far outpace population growth. Bicycle traffic across those four bridges now represents about 10% of all vehicle trips on the bridges.

Regarding the counts: our entire transportation infrastructure is built around "peak demand." All the highways, all our arterial streets, all our signalization is designed to accomodate the period of highest demand: namely the pm peak (or am, for one-way inbound streets). For perhaps 18-20 hours of the day our arterial streets would likely operate just fine with one lane in each direction of travel and with stop signs rather than traffic signals. However, that set up wouldn't work at all during the peak periods, so we design them--at great cost both in terms of dollars and lost opportunity for other uses of the land and money--to work at the peak periods.

Yes, we measure bike use at the times of the year when demand is highest (roughly April-October). We have been doing that consistently for years so our increases are apple to apple comparisons. Despite thoughts to the contrary, we have very little money and resources to conduct these counts. Even in the spring, summer and fall we struggle to scrape together enough money to (in the past) pay people to conduct the counts. We were able to do a lot of counts this year because we were able to persuade volunteers to perform most of the manual counts. We haven't done regular counts in the winter because we haven't had the resources either in terms of people or money.

Anecdotally, bicycle use even in the gloomiest of months is way up over what it was years ago. This year we'll at least count the four bridges in the dead of winter and see what kind of numbers we get.

The bottom line, however, is that our development of the bikeway network and supporting programs is encouraging ever more people to ride bicycles in Portland for purposes of transportation. I fully expect that trend to continue, and, in fact, to continue to increase dramatically.

Roger Geller
Bicycle Coordinator
City of Portland Office of Transportation

Roger Geller The chart was intended to demonstrate that "if you build it, they will come."
JK: Sounds like induced demand to me. I thought that was evil and a reason to not build transport capacity.

Thanks
JK

It is a reason not to build road capacity, Jim. Fortunately, we don't have such a congestion problem when it comes to bike capacity.

jim karlock:

Here's Porltand's Transportation Goal:

GOAL 6 TRANSPORTATION
Develop a balanced, equitable, and efficient transportation system that provides a range of
transportation choices; reinforces the livability of neighborhoods; supports a strong and
diverse economy; reduces air, noise, and water pollution; and lessens reliance on the
automobile while maintaining accessibility.

The key statements here are "range of transporation choices," "livability of neighborhoods," (speeding car traffic in neighborhoods is among top of citizen complaints each year), "reduces...pollution," and "lessens reliance on the automobile..." One way to accomplish the above is to build the capacity and desirability of other than the auto systems.

We've certainly built a rather complete system for the automobile to the neglect of a complete system for bicycles. Both state law and state and federal policies currently support--indeed require--development of bicycle facilities using state and federal General Transportation Revenues.

Here's Portland's Bicycle Transportation Policy:

Policy 6.23 Bicycle Transportation
Make the bicycle an integral part of daily life in Portland, particularly for trips of less than
five miles, by implementing a bikeway network, providing end-of-trip facilities, improving
bicycle/transit integration, encouraging bicycle use, and making bicycling safer.

Roger Geller
Bicycle Coordinator
City of Portland Office of Transportation

Roger Geller The key statements here are "range of transporation choices," "livability of neighborhoods," (speeding car traffic in neighborhoods is among top of citizen complaints each year),
JK: They way to deal with this problem is to attract cars out of the neighborhoods on to an un-congested freeway system. Your way is just wasting people’s time and money, not to mention driving businesses out of town. It is as if Portland’s official policy is “we don’t need no stinking family wage jobs”.

Roger Geller "reduces...pollution,"
JK: So would de-congesting the freeways, which in turn will draw traffic off arterials, which in turn will draw traffic out of neighborhoods.

Roger Geller and "lessens reliance on the automobile..."
JK: Why would you want to reduce usage of one of man’s most freedom giving inventions of all time?

Roger Geller One way to accomplish the above is to build the capacity and desirability of other than the auto systems.
JK: Why would people prefer to be reliant on welfare transit instead. Remember the transit dependent people of New Orleans. (bikes are an option for only a tiny minority of the population.)

Roger Geller We've certainly built a rather complete system for the automobile
JK: Did the city declare the water system complete twenty years ago? How about the sewer system? The phone system. Then how can you say the road system is complete? The road system is not complete as long as it has not kept up with demand.

Do you happen to have the death rate of bicycle riding? (If possible show what % is the bikers fault). My impression is that it is around 10 times as dangerous as driving.

Thanks
JK

jim karlock:

Here's the data I have. It's from a 2000 transportation study that compared bicycle and pedestrian fatalities in the US, The Netherlands and Germany.

Per 100 milliion trips the death rate in the US is:
29.1 pedestrian deaths
26.3 bicyclist deaths
9 motorist deaths

in The Netherlands:
1.1 pedestrian deaths
1.6 bicyclist deaths

in Germany:
2.4 pedestrian deaths
2.4 cyclist deaths

Here's the reference: Pucher, J., and Dijkstra, L., "Making Walking and Cycling Safer: Lessons from Europe", Transportation Quarterly, Vol 54, No. 3. Summer 2000 (25-50).

In the US you're most at risk of dieing if you're taking a walk (at least in 1995). Overall, cyclists and pedestrians are 3 times more likely, on a per-trip basis, to die compared to motorists.

Of course, the data also shows that US motorists are 3.75-5.6 times more likely to die than either German or Dutch cyclists, respectively.

In Portland we've seen essentially no increase in reported bicycle crashes at a time when ridership is rising dramatically. In Portland, at least, it seems that the bicycle crash rate is declining with increased ridership.

This is supported by a study conducted by Peter Jacobson in Injury Prevention Magazine ("Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and bicycling" Jacobsen, PL, Injury Prevention, 2003, 9:205-209)

How do you propose "uncongesting the freeways"? Building more lanes? Building more access? Both? People getting off the freeways will still be driving on the local arterials and through the neighborhoods for their trips. Most trips in the City of Portland are under 3 miles. Many trips are less than 1.5 miles. How do you build a freeway system to accommodate such short trips when access to freeways is, by definition, limited?

Why make the automobile the only choice when it only takes 18 minutes to ride that 3 miles at a no-sweat pace, and only 9 minutes to ride the 1.5 miles?

Roger Geller
Bicycle Coordinator
City of Portland Office of Transportation

Roger, thanks for the info.
Now if we have average trip length, we could make a meaningful comparison on the basis of passenger miles. I wonder if any life extending advantage of bike exercise is completely cancelled out by it’s very high death rate.

I also have reservations about the city’s promoting light rail because of its high death rate compared to both bus and car. (Please count all deaths, not just those inside the vehicle - dead kids playing on the tracks count too)

Why does the city promote dangerous transportation modes?

Roger Geller Why make the automobile the only choice when it only takes 18 minutes to ride that 3 miles
JK: Because 36 minutes (you have to come home too) is a real amount of time. Cutting that time in half is 1/3 hour saved which, at living wages, makes the car look cheap.

Thanks
JK

Yes I would like to see more lanes for vehicle traffic (and I don't consider a bicyle to be a vehicle). More lanes means that traffic (including bikes) can get where they need to be faster and with less hassle (to both vehicles and bikes) - the thing that no one touches on is that roads for traffic do more than just move people in cars, it's also the lifeline of our commerce. More roads, more goods and services that can get where they need to be when they need to be there. More congestion means higher prices for those goods and services - but those in support of bikes don't want to talk about that. Which is another reason that I oppose money for light rail and streetcars (especially when they don't make the riders pay for the rides). What does lightrail or streetcars move besides people? Answer - NOTHING. It provides a very limited solution to a very big problem and it does it for a very HUGE price tag.

Finally - I don't doubt your stats on how long (both distance and time) many trips around Portland are but consider this. The trip to the grocery store, with a bike (and I'm not talking about those folks who haul a little trailer behind them, they are far and few between) severely limits what I'm able to bring home. If I buy into the 'ditch your car' rhetoric, then I'm going to the store pretty much daily, maybe more than once a day - dude I've got better ways of spending my time. I go visit friends - let's see, I'm cold, possibly wet and a bit tired when I arrive (not the best guest to show up) and I probably feel like I need to leave earlier than I would if I had a car because of the cold, wet and time it takes to get home. Not to mention the times that I look outside and call my friend and tell them I'm not coming because it's just too nasty to ride and I don't really have an alternative. We don't even want to talk about when I want to visit folks out of town, because you did merely talk about the in-town trips.

Too much money is spent promoting this limited/limiting form of transportation.

It is no more "induced demand" than the interstate highway system was when it was created. And you can even make the same case with the sprawling road system we have now in the exburbs.

You have to agree that a lot of people, because of the way landuse and transportation policy have played out over the last few decades, feel like they have no viable alternative to driving. This is especially true for folks in the suburbs and exburbs.

That's as much "induced demand" as giving people bike lanes.

By not allowing people to have bike lanes, or safe-feeling sidewalks, or transit, you are TRULY inducing demand for the automobile.

Giving people options is important, because otherwise you DO actually end up building a system that induces demand for whatever the dominant mode is.

You just really, really like the car. Fine.

All I ask is that you don't force me to drive with your landuse policies, and don't try to keep me off the road when I prefer using a bicycle.

Bikers have just as much of a right to their mode choice being on the road as you do.

Terry,

The $700K figure that we talked about earlier on the blog was CLEARLY described as only encapsulating the capital improvement budget. ($3.5m over 5 years)

No, this does not fully include Roger's salary (since he does work on things other than bike lanes). It does not include other administrative costs, or other bicycle programs, either. But we were very clear that the figure was just for capital project improvements.

The reason we posted that was because you were complaining (vociferously) about how much we were spending on bike lanes. We asked staff to look into it so we could have a good, fact-based idea of how much we were actually spending.

We found, and showed you, via our capital budget analysis that the bike lanes are really cheap, especially relative to freight infrastructure.

So... to accuse me and the city of trying to hide stuff from you is a rewriting of history and not intellectually honest.

Not to mention the fact that you would expect seasonal variation to be much more pronounced with bikes than cars. Does it make sense to lavish "plenty of bike infrastructure for peak demand" of bicycles, and then tell the 90% who drive cars: so sorry, no money.

Alternately, if the goal is to build infrastructure to suit peak traffic demands, the double-decker road building engineers need to get busy.

It is very disingenuous to say "we only measure bike traffic during the busy season" and then let the BTA kids and Stennies quote these statistics as if they were gospel.

Guess what kids: it turns out the 10% of all commuters go by bike is A BIG FAT LIE 6 months out of the year!