Money in the game: Council ushers in new era for bikes
By Mary Roberts, Stephen Gomez and Jim Middaugh
Bicycle Transportation Alliance

Published Monday, February 22, 2010:

Despite the hysteria in the news, the case for cycling has always been airtight. A city that has more bikes on the road is safer, healthier, and more livable. A city that prioritizes bicycling sees an economic benefit every time one of their citizens decides to take a bike instead of driving a car.

When you build for bikes, you re-engineer what you have, as opposed to building something new. We take all of our experience and knowledge about how our city moves people and freight, and we improve it. As a result, we all see less traffic on the roads, and goods have an easier time reaching the heart of our city.

You don’t even have to own a bike to get the benefits we all see when more people ride a bike for transportation.

But the case for cycling had always been missing one key ingredient: the political will to disrupt the status quo. That is until last week when the City Council unanimously adopted the Portland Bike Master Plan.

We at the Bicycle Transportation Alliance were overjoyed to see this long considered plan adopted, but we were also surprised. Surprised that the leaders of our city decided to look past adoption of the plan and towards the next critical step: funding.

To this end we applaud both Mayor Sam Adams and City Councilor Dan Saltzman for demonstrating not just political will, but real political leadership by addressing the key gap to getting the Portland Bike Network built by announcing a program to kick-start the implementation of the plan with a seed investment of $20 million.

Bikes connect neighbors and neighborhoods. That is why we thank the leaders of our city, and why we strongly urge Mayor Adams, Commissioner Saltzman and the rest of the Portland City Council to work together and fulfill the Mayor’s promise to dedicate $20 million to new bike-related projects.

Today, 50 percent of driving trips in Portland are under 3 miles. Build it and they will bike instead.