The City That Jerks
Over here near Blog Central, the City of Portland is doing one of its "green streets" numbers on Klickitat Street. The more attentive among you may remember "green streets." This concept came into prominence when the Sam Rand Twins were caught illegally diverting sewer money to bike paths. (At last report, that case is still in court.) So they decided to do some sewer work along the bike paths, and stick in a few concrete drainage ditches (a.k.a. "bioswales") to boot. Voilá! A sewer project is born.
Okay, that's bad enough. But the way the city has gone about it is even more maddening. You see, they rushed in and did a bunch of bikey stuff first -- painted the bike symbols on the pavement every 50 feet or so, for about 50 blocks. Then they popped in some speed bumps, to try to get motorists to go away, and turned most of the cross-street stop signs so that the sacred cyclists on the bike boulevard have hardly any of them to obey (or more likely, ignore).
Fast forward six or eight months, and now, only now, is the sewer work being done. Naturally, the sewer crews are cutting through the speed bumps and bike decals to get their part of the project done. And so when it's over, there'll have to be another round of bikey stuff done. New speed bumps. New decals. This is Portland "planning" at its finest.
Meanwhile, what's left behind isn't too nice to bike on, and if we get some heavy spring rains, it could get downright hazardous for the two-wheelers:
Apparently it was important to give the drivers the finger before starting any of the other aspects of the project. And now the city will get to do the bikey stuff twice. Good luck with that budget gap, Mayor Char-Lie, unless you do some serious housecleaning in the bureaus.
| Posted at 7:46 AM | Permalink |
|
Comments (11)
Don't hold your breath for this kind of coverage anywhere else, folks. Meanwhile, "Portlandia" won a WGA award last night and the Oregonian - as of 8 this morning - hasn't even gotten to that yet.
Posted by Bill McDonald | February 18, 2013 8:07 AM
Oh that's small 'taters. You should see the work now currently being done on N. Going St from Interstate Ave to N.Greely st.
Several Years ago CoP did sound abatement testing on N.Going and it was found noise was above federal standards. The city's plan was to install dual pane windows on all resident's homes along the bluff above Going St and Plant trees along going st to all help dampen the noise, guess what it worked. Now since January the CoP has chopped down all the trees, installed a new bike/pedestrian roadway down the hill to Swan Island so the bike dudes and dudettes can now bomb down the hill. Cost unknown but it's a 2 month project. Fun and loud times for all.
Posted by phil | February 18, 2013 8:18 AM
http://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/370924
Posted by phil | February 18, 2013 8:21 AM
phil: "Going to the River" cost 2.1 million (federal).
Jack, those "sharrows" (that's not a real word!) cost $480 each, IIRC. It's making me furious, too.
Posted by a different michelle | February 18, 2013 9:05 AM
For the last two decades, my best friend regularly quotes the Alex Winter short film "Entering Texas" when encountering hubristic and onanistic displays of this sort: "Oh, he's just greasing the pan, dear. It's special grease." "Special grease" should be an essential euphemism when speaking Portland Polite.
Posted by Texas Triffid Ranch | February 18, 2013 10:37 AM
CoP wants badly to demonstrate to the world how one can boil frogs, and the residents get to be the frogs.
Posted by Mr. Grumpy | February 18, 2013 10:38 AM
We are supposed to be the example/experiment?
It does seem like the elected officials have a disdain for the people. . .
do they go to workshops to train for this?
Posted by clinamen | February 18, 2013 11:01 AM
The Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning
http://www.pdx.edu/usp/courses
Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP)
http://www.pdx.edu/usp/master-urban-and-regional-planning-murp
Posted by Mojo | February 18, 2013 12:55 PM
You may have bought into Irvington, but you own in Lents.
The City of Portland: We Are All Lents Now (except select areas of the West Side)
Posted by Downtown Denizen | February 18, 2013 6:29 PM
Neither a Sharrower or a Lenter be.
Posted by NW Portlander | February 18, 2013 7:21 PM
I wish I could share the outrage. I don't say that sarcastically; I hate what they did to Klickitat, so much that I shouted uncivilized things at the "workers" as they converted it to a bike boulevard (whatever). But yesterday when I drove down Klickitat from 15th to 30th, all I saw evidence of was domestic sanitary sewer work...no silly bioswales etc. So before I can get my BVDs in a bunch, I need to know: Is this necessary work, or make-work? Did they know a couple years ago that this needed to be done, before they put in the bumps and sharrows?
Posted by Breakable | February 19, 2013 12:22 PM