Archive for November, 2009

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Meeting Summary 11/10/09 – Bicycle Plan Endorsed

November 10, 2009

What we did today (all on 5-0 votes);

1) Recommended the updated invasive plants policy and code to City Council, including some technical amendments provided by staff.

2) Enthusiastically endorsed the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030, including changes proposed by staff and the following specific recommendations:

Strategy

We agree with the recommendation of the Plan to focus initial investments in Bicycle Boulevards to rapidly bring a comfortable cycling experience to as wide a portion of Portland as possible. But we also agree with testimony that other investments are essential as well. We recommend that the black and white labeling of funding priority tiers be removed and that immediate programs be established to:

  • Fund project development of major off-street trail corridors in concert with Metro’s Intertwine effort so that these projects will be ready for implementation when construction funding becomes achievable in the future.
  • Develop and implement a list of high priority pilot corridors for separated in-roadway bikeways that can be initially created with ‘software’ (paint, signal timing changes, plastic pylons) rather than ‘hardware’ (concrete, asphalt, new signals). Based on the results of these pilots, consider prioritizing permanent build-out of these corridors and construction of additional separated facilities.

Equity

Consistent with our recommendation on the Streetcar System Concept Plan, it is important that the benefits of our investments in cycling be distributed equitably in all areas of the City and are accessible to all members of the community. The following actions should be prioritized:

  • Schedule early implementation of the following item from Action Plan 5.1E:
    • “Fund and perform a study of opportunities to increase access to bicycling in East Portland”
  • Emphasize the following from Action Plan 4.2B:
    • “Develop culturally specific outreach and education programs
  • Anticipate the impact that the rapidly developing category of electric-assist bicycles may have on the practicality of cycling in SW and NW Portland and prepare supporting facility recommendations.
  • Support the work of community organizations that are making bicycles available to youth and low-income populations.

Portland Plan

The Portland Plan should support and incorporate the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 with the following work plan items:

  • Designate a set of current and future 20-minute neighborhood centers and designate a set of corridors interconnecting these neighborhood centers, Region 2040 Town and Regional Centers and the Central City. Corridors connecting these centers should be priorities for separated in-roadway bikeways and to the extent possible should be coordinated with the Streetcar System Concept plan to create continuous multi-modal mobility corridors between centers.
  • Consider whether all Region 2040 Town Centers should be classified as bicycle districts.
  • Examine space devoted to vehicle parking (both motor vehicles and bicycles) in the public realm, in commercial parking facilities and in accessory parking to all types of land uses and recommend policies to ensure that space is allocated appropriately between vehicle types to accommodate parking needs while to the extent possible reducing the total square footage required for parking.
  • Conduct research to comprehend the impact of cycling infrastructure and mode share on property values and make recommendations on the viability of value-capture funding methods (Local Improvement Districts, Tax-Increment Financing) along the lines of those used for Streetcar development.

3) Forwarded two out of three schools zoning changes to City Council. We supported:

  • Removing a conditional use trigger on student population (on the theory that this didn’t need to be reviewed until you added enough students to need a new classroom, which would typically trigger a review based on floor area anyway)
  • An extension of how long a school can be vacant before it needs a new conditional use review if put back into service as a school

We did not approve a change that would have allowed grade changes within grades K-8 without review. Concerns were expressed specifically about transportation and more generally about impacts when changing the population from younger to older kids and vice-versa. Staff was asked to bring back a proposal that would draw a conditional use trigger line between grades 5 and 6, comparable to the one proposed between grades 8 and 9. This will come back to the Commission in January along with further work on the fields issue.

Posted in Agendas, Transportation Plans | Leave a Comment »

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Updated: Coming Up on November 10th.

November 6, 2009

Update: Staff memos on the schools and parks item and bicycle master plan became available today.

Official Agenda

12:30PM – Invasive Plant Policy Review (hearing/recommendation)

The policy update proposes changes to the invasive plan list, including a ranking system to respond to different levels of impact and focus mitigation resources on the most problematic plants. Here is the full report.

1:30PM – Bicycle Master Plan (record open for written comment only/worksession/recommendation)

We will sort through comments about different strategies for the system build out and consider recommendations for how the Portland Plan should build on and respond to this plan.

2:00PM – Schools and Parks Code Refinements (continued hearing/worksession/recommendation)

We will make recommendations on 3 components of the proposed code revision to conditional use triggers for schools:

  • Enrollment levels
  • Grade Changes
  • How long a school site retains its conditional use status if not in use

The 4th component of the original package, regarding use of school athletic fields for non-school events, will be separated for later action. We’ll get an update on the process for that item.

Posted in Agendas | Leave a Comment »

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Bike Master Plan Strategy, Broad or Deep?

November 5, 2009

There are at least three different ideas for how to sequence the build-out of the next phase of Portland’s bicycle network:

  1. The plan Steering Committee (full disclosure – I am a member of the Steering Committee) has suggested a focus on first implementing a large expansion to the City’s Bicycle Boulevard network. These are low-traffic neighborhood streets where cars are infrequent and travel more slowly than on major streets. These boulevards are assisted with crossing treatments at major arterials.
  2. Supporters of the North Portland Greenway and Sullivan’s Gulch trails testified at the last hearing that off-street trails should be a higher priority.
  3. And most recently, the urban design folks at Crandall Arambula have suggested that a network of protected bikeways (aka cycle tracks for those of you familiar with the European examples) connecting key centers around the City are likely to lead to the highest rates of cycling. And they insist that these bikeways must enjoy physical separation (i.e., concrete), not just painted boundaries.

All three ideas are targeting the “interested but concerned” demographic of potential cyclists, which comprises as much as 60% of the population.

But the strategies are radically different. Bicycle Boulevards are dramatically less expensive to build, so for the same amount of dollars we could get potentially hundreds of miles of bicycle boulevard, one major trail or perhaps several tens of miles of protected bikeways on the street system.

The reality is that we will almost certainly do some of each, based on grabbing opportunities to leverage funding that may only be available for certain categories of projects.

But to the extent that we have funds for the network that are not linked to a specific facility type, are we better off building boulevards that could reach many cyclists, or separated facilities that would provide an experience that might be perceived as more comfortable on a limited set of corridors? Where should our emphasis be to attract the largest pool of potential new riders?

The Planning Commission will make its recommendation on November 10th, so weigh in now! You are welcome to discuss the issue here, and written comments are being accepted through November 8th at the PBOT site for the plan.

Posted in Transportation Plans | 5 Comments »

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Thinking Big Thoughts: Bikes and Land Use

November 2, 2009

As we get ready to make our recommendation on the Bicycle Master Plan next week, I’ve been thinking about what we can do in the Portland Plan to advance the objectives of the “Bicycle Plan for 2030″. Here are some of the connections between land use and cycling that I’m thinking about.

Destinations

One of the proposed themes for the Portland Plan is creating additional 20-minute neighborhoods (neighborhoods where you can walk to all your essential needs within 20 minutes) and strengthening the ones we have. This would have the effect of creating destinations for people to cycle to, meeting their needs more easily by bike. Cycle-zone analysis (PDF file) by PBOT identified land use as one of the barriers to cycling in some areas of the City. Which areas need the most help?
DSCN0233

Streetcars

One of our strongest potential tools for creating 20-minute neighborhoods is Streetcar, but we also know that if we’re not very careful rails create a challenging environment for bikes. If we do this right we can create vibrant main streets where bikes and Streetcars co-exist in blissful urban harmony (as in Amsterdam above), but we’re going to have to pay attention to the details.

Centers

Do we need a stronger alignment between Metro’s regional and town centers and the bicycle plan? Should all of the centers be bicycle districts in the plan? Do these centers, where significant and busy arterials often come together, need special treatments (cycle tracks?) to make cyclist comfortable? (The Crandall/Arambula testimony appears to point in this direction.)

DSCN0141

Parking

I’m sure you’ve seen all those pictures of Amsterdam and Copenhagen with parked bikes stacked on what appears to be every inch of available space. While this may appear cute to us, those cities consider it a serious nuisance. It’s time for us to plan NOW for where we’re going to put all our bikes when 20%+ of our trips are by bike. The good news is that we have a lot of space around town, we just keep cars in it right now. I’m hoping that as part of the Portland Plan we can look at all kinds of vehicle parking, cars and bikes, and figure out how to allocate that space to the best effect, whether it’s on-street, in a Fred Meyer parking lot, a downtown parking garage, or in residential buildings. The current recommendation to adjust the bike parking ratio in apartments and condos is only an interim step to what I think needs to be a much deeper exploration of how to manage this transition.

Equity

How do we make sure these benefits are distributed fairly around the City? How do we bring great cycling to outer East Portland where the street grid tends to fragment, or SW Portland where topography makes cycling challenging? Will we need targeted encouragement to different demographic groups to help create ethnic and income-level equity?

What else can the Portland Plan do for cycling? What’s the magic that goes beyond the on-street facilities that makes districts like Alberta, Mississippi and Clinton such great environments for bikes? Can we figure it out and replicate it in the Portland Plan? What do you think?

Posted in Portland Plan, Transportation Plans | 6 Comments »

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Schools and Land Use – A History in Documents

November 1, 2009

We have a bit of a paradox – schools are a key piece of urban infrastructure. They are tremendous generators of social capital, often serving as the heart of a neighborhood. And they have significant impacts on transportation, generating hundreds (in the case of some high schools, probably thousands) of trips per day. I think everyone who listens to traffic reports on the radio knows that when school is out, our streets and freeways are less congested.

The paradox is that the government entity tasked with delivering urban services, including local transportation – City Government – has relatively little say over school planning.

Since at the Planning Commission meeting coming up on November 10th, we’re going to take another crack at discussing schools zoning issues, and we hope to make a recommendation to City Council on 3 out of the 4 issues in front of us (the 4th issue needing more work is the use of athletic fields at schools for non-school activities), I thought it would be useful to prompt a little discussion about this issue. But really I hope this discussion will help inform some of our work on the Portland Plan, which I suspect is the best vehicle to address the relationship between the City of Portland and the school districts that are partially or completely within the boundaries of the City. And I’m going to use several documents, historical and contemporary, to help outline the basis for that discussion.

First of all, if anyone has any doubts that the physical arrangement of classrooms in the city can have impact on educational outcomes, you only need to read Beth Slovic’s recent, excellent “Left Out” cover story in Willamette Week to understand that the impact can be huge.

Let’s go back in history to look at how we got many of the school buildings we have today. A report (part 1 and part 2 – both PDF files – thanks to Beth Slovic for pointing me to this report) from 1957 prepared by the Planning Commission for Portland Public Schools looks at post-war birth rates and predicts the rise (and projects the later decline) in school-age population and suggests areas in which the school district should acquire land for schools. The contrast is fascinating – in times of growth, the school district looks to the City for planning assistance, but I’m not aware whether the school district has ever had a conversation with Planning Commission about how to plan what schools to close (someone please correct me if such conversations have occurred).

By 1979, things were different and the school-age demographic was already in decline and the Goldschmidt adminstration adopted a schools policy (PDF file) for the City that includes criteria for closing schools – but as far as I can tell, this policy was entirely aspirational, it included no agreement with PPS for a City role in making these decisions. The policy also includes many aspirations for how the City and School District (and County) could cooperate on a number of fronts. I suspect many of us would agree that the goals of this policy are still relevant today. Of course the landscape in which these issues exist has changed a lot in the 30 years since. A partial list would include:

  • In 1983 Resolution A established distinct roles for the City and County around urban services (City) and social services (County) putting the delivery of social services through schools in a different context (the Sun Schools program attempted to re-unify this to a degree, but has suffered from cutbacks in a difficult funding environment).
  • 1990, voters adopted Measure 5 that had the dual impact of largely decoupling schools funding from property taxes while capping property taxes overall. This has led to funding constraints for schools and both the City and County.
  • Since that time dramatically fewer children walk or bike to school. Current efforts at “Safe Routes to School” programs are working to reverse this.
  • And of course the demographic trends in school enrollment have come to pass.

Finally, many of those schools built post-war now have historical significance and PPS has released an Historic Building Assessment.

So where does that leave us? On the 10th, we’ll talk about the zoning code provisions for schools. But the bigger strategic conversation will happen inside the Portland Plan. What kind of partnership do we want to build between the City and its school districts (not just PPS!) as we develop our strategic plan for the next 30 years?

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

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