In response to a MetroLinks post last week regarding bike vending machines, commenter JimmyZ asked:
Instead of “Bike-share Vending Machines”, how ’bout just some simple bike lockers at suburban metrolink stations, available for daily or monthly rentals?
I thought that was a good question, so I spent some time thinking about it, and here’s my answer: Why not both? (more…)
Recently the city of Portland, Oregon created a new kind of bicycle lane on one of its streets. The concept was to create a barrier-protected bicycle lane on one of the city streets without building a whole lot of new infrastructure. According to the local paper’s Hard Drive blog, city engineers used some paint on the road and changed a few signs – no construction necessary – to create a brand-new, cycles-only lane. How does it work?
By moving parked cars away from the curb and out into one of the traffic lanes, the city engineers created a bike-friendly, protected-from-traffic corridor between the parked cars and the curb. The bikers would still have to watch out for car passengers opening their doors (as opposed to watching drivers’-side doors, previously), and for people crossing from the parking lane over to the sidewalk. But the parked cars insulate the bikers from moving traffic. It’s a simple, elegant, low-cost solution to a common safety concern.
Yesterday the Hard Drive blog followed up on how the experiment is going. After some initial motorist confusion, and a few additions to the paint job – notably, adding the words “Bike Lane” to the lane to make it more clear to parking motorists – it seems that the experiment is seeing some success.
But Burchfield said the cycle track, aside from the early parking confusion, is now operating smoothly…
…Burchfield said there have been complaints. Some have told the city that there’s a “lack of predictability” when pedestrians are stepping into the cycle track to cross Broadway. Others say they are feeling the [e]ffects of one less car lane in the area.
“It’s hard to know if these are people who are actually using the cycle track and Broadway, or just complaining,” Burchfield said.
For one thing, even as PSU classes have started up, there is no evidence yet that congestion has increased as a result of the cycle track, he said.
Also, despite earlier concerns from motorists who said they couldn’t park without a curb, “people are better at it than they think.”
(The same Hard Drive post mentions that things aren’t going quite so well with a different kind of bike lane experiment a few blocks away.)
Can you think of any streets around here where that might be a good experiment to try?
This story about the sleek modern bike racks in the transit mall downtown Portland got me to thinking. One thing that I’ve noticed since I started my tenure at Metro is that I have a much greater appreciation for civil engineering and urban planning than I did before. Previously, I passed over bridges and roads, seeing them as a tool to get me from A to B, but never really seeing them. If I thought about them at all, it was only to hope they were safe and not too congested to delay me for long.
But bridges can also be beautiful works of art, of course, and there’s a lot more that goes into planning a roadway than the casual eye appreciates. Curb height, signal timing, pedestrian planning – these are all aspects of civil design that we only notice when they aren’t done well, and even then it’s just a sort of “ugh” feeling about a particular space. Urban planning is a fascinating study that treats roadways, bikeways, sidewalks, and transit as cogs in an intricate machine. The most successful uses of space should be functional, obviously, but they can also be lovely. Steve Patterson explains here why the new style bike racks are much more functional than the traditional “dish drainer” kind we are all familiar with.
Which brings me back to the bike racks: Portland is a lovely city, and a heavily transit-using city. If the bus shelters and the bike racks (or the buses themselves, for that matter) look grungy and industrial and generic, that unnecessarily inserts an unlovely element into an otherwise lovely space. It’s nice to consider form when you’re thinking about function.
I start with this disclaimer: I’m in an awkward position…I need highways…I use highways as well as the Mississippi River bridges to travel around the region…I am not anti-interstate-infrastructure and don’t want to be perceived as such. Nonetheless, I spotted an intriguing article that was so interestingly counter to conventional wisdom, that I wanted to share it.
We’ve probably all heard about the community’s desire to improve the physical connection between Downtown St. Louis, the Arch grounds and the riverfront. And the underground interstate always seems to be an impenetrable barrier. However, this article from The Infrastructurist provides an intriguing approach: remove the highway completely. It’s a radical idea and one which undoubtedly required much thought and community conversation in each instance. But look at the pictures, especially Portland, and see if the “before” doesn’t look familiar. And then wonder how our own “after” could look without the cars (replaced by MetroLink, MetroBuses, bikes and pedestrians instead).
The folks behind the proposed Loop Trolley effort and their supporters are hosting an “Economic Development Forum” on Thursday, June 25 at 8 a.m. at the Missouri History Museum. There, Portland developer John Carroll will discuss the Portland streetcar and its impact on economic development. You can read the brochure here (opens a .pdf).
The event is open but you need to RSVP by this Friday by emailing or calling Kim Cella at 314-231-7272. And if you go, let me know how it went – I’m interested, but unable to attend at that time.
