Speaking of speed bumps imposed on the way to livability, instead of being allowed just to watch it happen, you have been offered another opportunity to participate:

"Neighborhood Economic Development Leadership Group

With the adoption of the Neighborhood Economic Development (NED) Strategy by City Council on May 25, 2011 the Portland Development Commission (PDC), in consultation with City Council, will establish a citywide NED Leadership Group. The NED Leadership Group is intended both to exemplify and to inform the introduction of a new model of community-driven neighborhood economic development. The broad charge of the Leadership Group will be to guide the implementation of the NED Strategy and to develop resources for the Strategy’s actions. You can find the NED Strategy here: www.pdc.us/NED

PDC is accepting nominations of potential committee members until Friday, July 22, 2011 at 5 p.m."
http://www.portlandonline.com/oni/index.cfm?&a=355910&c=29385

"Please see the full announcement for more information about the desired experience, expertise and background for Leadership members."

Am I the only one who's noticed that the newer speed bumps are too high for the posted speed limits?

Am I the only one who's noticed that the newer speed bumps are too high for the posted speed limits?

That may be because Portland wants to post a 20mph zone there. They recently got the okay from the legislature via HB 3150 to post statutory 20mph limits on "greenways" (the recently coined nebulous term CoP's using in place of "bike boulevards" these days), starting January 1, 2012.

Fortunately, the Senate Transportation Committee modified the bill before it got signed into law, so those 20 zones can only be posted if the traffic volume is less than 2000/day and the 85th-percentile speed is lower than 30mph. (As originally written, there was no legal definition as to what determined what a "greenway" was--CoP could have theoretically called everything a "greenway" and gone on a spree.)

There's more details on the bill here: http://gov.oregonlive.com/bill/2011/HB3150/

I am thinking a lot of these driver harrismsnt devices are really an attempt to lower the speed limit below that which state law allows.

Their circles definitely cause accidents:
http://www.portlandfacts.com/calming/accident/accident.htm

But the city does not seem to care!
They answer to a higher authority - smart growth and saving the earth.

In fact most of the fools at the city would do anything to save the earth except study science.

City planners are highly educated idiots with no common sense or real world experience.

Thanks
JK

I think they always put the speed bumps in after they turn the stop signs, they assume that if they don't people will discover a nice stretch of road where they can drive w/o stopping. I don't think it's a terrible assumption really, I don't much care about speed bumps and I'll occasionally drive on a bike boulevard for that very reason.

Doug

"Greenway" is so they can use sewer money -- illegally.

Somebody still has the Tom Peterson stencil out there.... J. L. are you reading this? Time to get busy boys.....

Speed bumps waste fuel. I won't be using Klickitat street whether traveling by car or bike.

Lovely--a sewer money scam on top of the general skeeviness of the whole thing. Every time I think they've finally hit rock bottom, they somehow manage to find ways to become even bigger crooks. Go by greenway!

Bioswales will be coming to Klickitat, too, as part if the greenway package. They were the thin reed of justification offered for using sewer money for what is really 99% a transportation project. BES has been testing soils along the street and letting neighbors know they will be removing trees (gasp!) to prep for putting in the bioswales. If the speedbumps don't slow traffic down, the swarms of mosquitos and rats bred in these glorified drainage ditches certainly will.

If you wanted an Earl the Pearl logo on one of these horrid things wouldn't it have to be a green bicycle? My suggestion for an improvement to that stencil would be a green bicycle with a yellow rider going head-over-handlebars.

I live on a corner in N Portland and have two beautiful cedars in front of my house.
Does the city have plans to fully ruin life in North Portland/St Johns or might we be left alone?

I believe bike traffic will likely pick up once word gets around via web, maps and word of mouth that this and others like it exist.

Speed humps on residential side streets are now an impediment to "livability" and a "driver harassment device"? Yikes.

Bike boulevards "ruin life"?

Speed humps on residential side streets are now an impediment to "livability" and a "driver harassment device"?
JK:

And they kill more people by delaying fire trucks emergency medical than they save by slowin g traffic. The ratio is 30:1 or higher, depending on the study.

See http://www.portlandfacts.com/calming.html

thanks
jk

JK,
Do you have any stats on the delay of fire trucks in a congested city filled with density such flag lots - where houses are built in the back yards of homes with only a narrow side road back to those flag lot homes?
Am also wondering whether any fire codes were changed to accommodate some of the extreme density in parts of pdx?

LL:I live on a corner in N Portland and have two beautiful cedars in front of my house.
Does the city have plans to fully ruin life in North Portland/St Johns or might we be left alone?

Don't blame you for being concerned. Do you remember when the city had red x's painted on 75 beautiful cedars and firs in St. John's Pier Park ready to be chopped down? That was under Charlie Hales when he was Parks Commissioner.
The community really stood up then and fortunately those trees are still there.

I hear what you voiced from others throughout our city, that don't like the way areas have been ruined and just want to be left alone.

BES has been testing soils along the street and letting neighbors know they will be removing trees (gasp!) to prep for putting in the bioswales.

Really, trees cut for bioswales - how green we have become!!

These bioswales I have seen in neighborhood streets, only a few were decent looking, the rest in my view were hideous!

Stop already, from what I hear they don't even function well and that should be checked out thoroughly before they pop up all over our city creating visual blight and other problems in neighborhoods. Since we cannot trust our city we can only suspect somebody must be making money on these.

Clinamen,

They function great.

I got more mosquito bite this year than I have the entire time previously.

Go by malaris!

I wonder when civil disobedience will arise and people will chain themselves to trees being cut for bioswales. Or people just ripping out the bioswales even without a tree removal, because they are losing parking, or have consequences from mosquito bites. I think the time is near because Sam and bureaucrats aren't listening.

I remember when citizens saved a large maple century tree along SW Corbett with chains, sit-ins, and media attention. Too bad government waits for crises, but it may be heading that way.

I'm with you, Jack. We need for somebody to come up with a Blue Men Hour logo...like a spinning bow tie.

Who says this nonsense isn't working? It's all working perfectly to drive out the residents who built, maintained, and lived in a 160 year old city for generations to make way for a settlement of mostly outsiders with an agenda who actually want to live in a government planned community.

I ride Klickitat on a regular basis.

The improvements make it a much better thoroughfare -- by taking out stop signs you can ride along it at 15 mph. It turns it into a thoroughfare.

If you want to enable more people to ride bikes to work, you need to give them save, comfortable and fast routes.

Taking out the stops signs probably saves 2-3 minutes riding from 57th to Vancouver. The speed humps ensure that cars won't use it as a bypass to Fremont. And the large sharrow stencils make it clear to cars that it's a street where bikes should be expected.

I don't understand the opposition.

For every person that switches from driving downtown to biking, there's one less $25,000 parking space that needs to be built.

Greenways are an excellent investment of transportation funds.