From A City That Almost Became A Cycling Utopia To One That Claims To Be One

 Before Portland became, well, Portland, there was a moment—say, about 30 years ago—when it seemed that Seattle would become what the “Rose City” has become in America’s —and the world’s—consciousness. (Sorry to sound like a grad student trying to imitate their favorite professor!) 

San Francisco’s countercultural spirit and much of its sheer charm was being ground down (some would say it had already been ground down) by tech- and finance-industry wealth; other cities’ creative communities and bohemian enclaves—if they ever had them in the first place—were similarly destroyed or co-opted by corporatization and gentrification. While “indie” culture, which was largely defined by its music (think Kurt Cobain, Pearl Jam et al.) was Seattle’s trademark and gave  “The Emerald City” a reputation as a haven for people who did things their way, it is very different from what “keeps Portland weird.”

But, because I am writing about cycling and not a cultural history of the United States, I am thinking of a particular way in which Seattle almost became, in essence, Portland before there was Portland—or the notion of Portland, anyway.  That is to say, Seattle seemed destined to become America’s “Bicycle City.”

I tried to find, in vain, reports I read during that time saying that Seattle had more bicycle shops, per capita, than any other US city and that it was building what we now call “bicycle infrastructure” decades before most other cities’ and other jurisdictions’—including Portland’s—planners had even thought of it. If indeed my memory of such things is correct, I could attribute that interest in cycling and cycling infrastructure to traits shared by many who moved to Seattle during the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and who moved to Portland a decade later: They loved outdoor activities, including cycling. Perhaps more important, at least a few fled car-centric cities and suburbs and wanted their newly-adopted hometowns to be more bike- and pedestrian-friendly.

Given this history, it’s understandable that Seattle Bike Blog author Tom Fucoloro would expect to find a cycling utopia during his recent visit to Portland—and surprising that he didn’t. Lest you think that his judgment was a matter of envy or civic pride, he offers some very specific criticisms of cycling in the city which, he says, he enjoyed. 

Tom Fucoloro and his son cycling in Portland.

His most trenchant observations are of downtown bike lanes. One is the lanes’ lack of connectedness: Some begin out of nowhere and take you nowhere, much less to another lane. (That is also one of my pet peeves about New York’s bike lanes.) Another is that there aren’t protected lanes in high-traffic downtown areas.

I share his consternation that a city that touts itself as a cyclists’ haven, and claims to encourage transportation as well as recreational cycling, doesn’t do something that might entice more people to abandon their cars, at least for short trips. Then again, I’m not surprised, as I live in New York, where the situation isn’t much better—but at least we have more extensive, if overburdened, mass transit systems .

Will The CCC Be KO’d?

 The Community Cycling Center turned 30 years old in July. It helped to make Portland, Oregon synonymous, not only with cycling, but with non-profit cycling advocacy.

It may not, however, make it to 31. The organization is in a severe financial crisis that may be a reason why it has had six executive directors in the past five years. Its directors say the CCC can survive only if it receives $115,000 in donations during the next three weeks.

So how can such an organization, with its well-re bike shop, be in such dire straits—in Portland?

According to the CCC, its troubles began during the COVID-19 pandemic. While demand for bikes, parts and services surged, lockdowns ruptured supply chains, making parts and accessories difficult, if not impossible, to find. At the same time, donations to nonprofit organizations like CCC dropped, in part because people were out of work.

But a document provides other reasons that would elicit “I told you so”s from the editors of the Wall Street Journal. One is a “top heavy”  organizational structure. According to the doc, there are too many leadership positions that could be filled with lower-paid workers.  Another reason cited is employees who are kept year-round and provided with benefits and yearly cost-of-living increases.

Now, if you have been reading my blog for a while, you have probably guessed-correctly—that I am all for shop employees, or any other workers, making a living wage and not having to worry about financial ruin if they’re sick or hurt. That it’s cites as a cause of CCC’s crisis points to an inherent dilemma in the bike industry: In most places, it’s seasonal and for all but the mega-retailers, most of whom are now online, profit margins are small and overhead costs are high, hence the low wages paid to mechanics and other employees. The lack of pay (and, in most shops, benefits) is probably why the retail bike industry isn’t seen as a career option to anyone who doesn’t own the business.

I am not familiar with CCC’s administration. I suspect, however, that one reason why it has “too many” full-time leadership positions is that, like other community-centered nonprofits , it’s trying to promote opportunities for people who might not otherwise have them. I would hate to see any organization give up on such a worthy endeavor, but I imagine that it’s not easy to sustain.

No Naked

 What kind of a world do we live in when….?

You’ve probably completed that interrogative sentence in any number of ways.  

Today I’ll finish with this:

…when they can’t get volunteers for a World Naked Bike Ride. In Portland.

You read it here. That’s the reason why this year’s edition of the ride has been cancelled.  Organizers say that the gap in volunteers isn’t due to a lack of interest. Rather, they say, it has to do with their late start in planning and preparation. They plan to correct that and hold the ride next year .

Is Cycling Withering On The Lanes In The Rose City?

Last Saturday marked three years since the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 outbreaks were, indeed, a pandemic.  Not long after that, schools and businesses closed and a seeming caravan of ambulances flashed their lights and blasted their sirens through my windows, which are only a block and a half from Mount Sinai-Queens--one of the first hospitals in this city to set up a temporary morgue outside its doors.

Like other locales where residents weren't subjected to a hard lockdown, New York experienced a "bike boom."  Because the city's subways shut down for a while, and bus service was reduced, people who hadn't been on a bike in ages started pedaling to work. (During that time, I gave one of my bikes to an emergency room worker at Mount Sinai.) Though shops and even online retailers soon ran out of bikes, parts, helmets and almost anything related to bicycles,  the world (parts of it, anyway) seemed like a cyclist's dream come true:  There was very little traffic and, those who ventured outside, whether by choice or necessity, were almost preternaturally courteous and even empathetic. 

Oh, and about a year into the pandemic, a new bike lane opened on my street, for better and worse.

While my hometown of New York and the city that comes closest to my second home--Paris--experienced the "boom" in cycling I've described (which, when I visited in January, seemed to be going even stronger in the City of Light!), the city that has been called America's "biketopia" continued a steep downturn in cycling that began a few years before COVID-19 struck.

According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), fewer people were cycling in Oregon's largest city than at any time since 2006.

From 2019 to 2022, the number of cyclists in the Rose City dropped by 37 percent.  In other words, more than one of every three Portlanders who pedaled the year before COVID-19 reached these shores was no longer in the saddle during the pandemic's third year. 

Actually, the decline began after 2013, when almost half again as many people rode bicycles as did in 2022. But, as you can see, the drop over the past four years from 2019 to 2022 was even steeper than during the previous six years.

From KATU News

Now, some might argue that cycling was bound to fall off in "America's Weirdest City" just because it reached such (at least comparative) heights.  Well, from what I've heard and read, it did--or, at least, cycling culture did--from about 2005 to about 2010.  But there are other, more pernicious factors in play than the disappearance of custom frame builders and bikes shops--and Portlanders themselves, many of whom moved in after places like San Francisco and Seattle swelled with tech money-- only to be, in a cruel irony, priced out of Portland. 

According to at least one survey, the chief reasons for the sharp fall-off in cycling are not that people are still working from home (after all, in other places, people continued to ride to the stores, theatre or just for fun even if they didn't return to their offices or classrooms) or the sharp rise in bike theft that accompanied the increase in ridership and shortages of bikes and supplies, although both were cited.  Rather, by far the biggest reason why some people have stopped cycling is something that I haven't--as yet, anyway--seen here in the Big Apple:  homeless people setting up tents or otherwise camping themselves in bike lanes.  

(To be sure, the homeless population has exploded during the past few years in my hometown, but I haven't seen them in bike lanes.  Then again, I don't do most of my riding in the lanes because they can't always get me to where I need or want to go and I sometimes feel safer riding in traffic than on poorly-designed or maintained lanes where motorbikes and motor-scooter riders zip along without regard for anyone else or the rules of the road.)

That issue, according to Bike Portland editor Jonathan Maus, has to be addressed in any discussions of solutions and safety.  "What we've ended up with is allowing people just to sleep anywhere," he explains, "and there's never been a conversation about taking the transportation routes and making sure that people who use them can feel safe and still get to where they need to go."  That second part of what he said leads to the second most common reason Portlanders cite for giving up on cycling:  drivers who, like their counterparts in New York, seem to have become even more aggressive since the pandemic.  

A Wall Across A Bike Lane--In Portland

Sometimes I won't use a bike lane because it is poorly-conceived, -built or -maintained.  Other times, as is often the case on the Queensborough-59th Street Bridge lane, it's simply too narrow and crowded, especially with ebikes and motorized scooters.  Or the lane may simply not go in the direction I need to go--or doesn't go anywhere at all.

I've mentioned those reasons in other post, along with the fact that some drivers park or pass--sometimes out of spite--in the lanes.  Also, cops often plant their patrol cars in them as they're taking breaks.  

There's another reason that I don't believe I've mentioned:  debris and obstacles, sometimes deliberately placed.  They range from broken bottles, tacks and nails to bricks, cinderblocks and larger objects.  Lately, someone built an actual wall across a bike lane in Portland, Oregon.

No one is sure of who built it, but some have observed that its architect and constructers must have been "amateurs."  While that could have made the structure even more hazardous than it could have been, it made the barrier easier to take apart.  

Remnants of the wall built across the N Concord bike path in Portland. (Photo by Jonathan Maus)

There is another interesting twist to this story, though.  In Portland, relationships between cyclists and non-cyclists are as contentious as they are in other place in the US.  But the wall's construction may have had little or nothing to do with antipathy toward cyclists.  Rather, it seems to have been placed to block a passage that connects two parts of the Overbrook neighborhood.  Homeowners live on one side; homeless encampments stand on the other.

So...The construction of the wall may have been illustrative of just how politicized not only the United States, but local communities, have become.  While the target may have been homeless people, but cyclists became collateral damage, if you will, whether or not that was the wall builder's (or builders') intention.

 

A Chain Of Neglect

Police barricade tapes are bright yellow.  Construction-site cones are orange.  The bollards used to separate bike lanes from the street are finished in similar hues, or white.

Those color choices are not just fashion statements:  They are made for visibility.  It's pretty difficult for most people to claim they didn't see those tapes, cones or bollards.  

On the other hand, you don't have to be color-blind to miss chains--which are almost always dull gray-- drawn across roadways or bike lanes.  This is especially true in low-light conditions, such as night, the beginning or end of day, inclement weather, and under aqueducts, railroad trestles and highway overpasses. 

Such  chains are used to temporarily block off streets or paths for events like street fairs or for construction.  Unfortunately, cities and other jurisdictions that place them often forget to remove them when the event is done or construction work is finished.  Worse, an unsuspecting cyclist or scooter-rider who is paying attention to other road hazards can easily miss them.

The chain that entangled a cyclist--and his bike after the crash. Photo sent by reader of Bike Portland. 

That is what happened to one unfortunate cyclist in Portland, Oregon.  He was riding along North Holladay Street when he passed under the Interstate-5 overpass when he was suddenly entangled in a chain and thrown over his handlebars. He suffered significant injuries to his arm and both wrists.  He also incurred a minor impact to his head that, probably, could have been worse had he not been wearing his helmet.  

The street where he had his mishap, while not as popular for cycling as another nearby street, is nonetheless part of a designated bicycle route. The intersection is adjacent to the Oregon Convention Center. So, according to Bike Portland editor Jonathan Maus, the chain may have been installed to cordon off the street for an event. But, as he points out, that event was long over by the time the unlucky cyclist crashed.

I think that the neglect that led to the cyclist's injuries may have been a result of the auto-centric mentality of city planners.  A chain, debris or some other obstruction--like a sewer grate with wide slats that parallel the curb or divider-- might be mere inconveniences to cars, trucks or buses, but can snag bike tires--or cyclists themselves

I hope that cyclist has a swift and thorough recovery--and, as Maus recommends, city or other government agencies in charge of roadways, bike lanes and other infrastructure pay more attention to seemingly-small details--and basic maintenance.