The People's Republic of Portland

Recently, when I moved from Denver to Santa Barbara, I took a slight detour and visited Portland, Oregon, where I lived for many years. I love that town, and don’t get to go there often enough to ease into gradual changes. One visit, there will be a gaping hole next to the building where my mother lives, and the next time I come, there’s a huge condo complex there. The city is changing and developing quite a bit, and some of the changes have been very hopeful. This "Share the Road" license plate was something I noticed for the first time this trip (I erased the license plate number out of a sense of patriotic paranoia).

Two visits ago, my husband and I noticed new, highly visible bike lane extensions called “bike boxes” at many intersections. These are designed to reduce accidents caused by cars turning right without being aware of bikes traveling straight ahead in the bike lane. Looking at the bike boxes, I felt like riding a bike across town would feel like a safe option. In the late 90s and early '00s when I lived there, I would pour over the bike route map trying to find some route that wasn't ridiculously circuitous, to get by main areas of town, trying to get around the places where the green "designated bike route" lines on the map would end and the red "hazardous for cyclists" routes were the only option. I think a relatively timid person like myself who would like to ride more but feels threatened by traffic would be more inclined to ride given safety measures like the bike boxes.

During my visit this month, I noticed parking spaces converted into bike parking on Belmont Avenue. The picture below shows a space about 3 car parking spaces long, and there is another area just like it at the other end of the block.



I think this is a very exciting trend, and as my visit continued, I noticed how many more cyclists there seemed to be than I remembered. It was pretty cool, until dusk when I noticed how many cyclists didn’t have any lights on their bikes, but were riding as if they had the absolute right of way. As a motorist, that was pretty stressful. I think it takes time to work the kinks out of shifts like this one, and the mutual rights and responsibilities of motorists and cyclists will find balance as mutual awareness develops.

It is so good to see a community starting to build infrastructure which will allow a significant part of the population to live more sustainably. In Chengdu, the main city in the Sichuan province of China, the “ring roads” which are a series of concentric main roads circling the city have a divided outer lane for bicycles, most of which is the width of the width of two regular car lanes. Chengdu is a city with a population of 11 million, and when I visited in 2002, the bike traffic was incredibly thick. The photo to the right was taken in Shanghai and shows the beautiful effect of a sea of bike ponchos -- during my visit, most Chinese bike riders would wear these when it rained.

Chengdu, like all Chinese cities, also has expansive bike parking areas, many with attendants, all over the place.

I've seen big bike parking lots in the states - most of them on college campuses - but nothing that compares with China or even Italy. We have so much room to grow here, but it was great to see the tangible changes in Portland, which is known for excellent urban planning, strong community involvement and progressive values. I saw a bumper sticker on a car that read, "The People's Republic of Portland." And it does feel like a town run by the people and for the people. Hey, haven't I heard that somewhere before?

On a personal level, I’m looking at these tangible changes as a reminder both metaphorically and literally to build structures that support the changes I want to see. It gives me hope.