Portlandia 2 - Going Street

[darkemeralds]

Thing Two in a Five-Thing Visit To My Favorite Portlandy Things

After our tour a couple of weeks ago around the waterfront, I take you now to a much less glamorous site, not frequented by visitors at all: The Going Street Neighborhood Greenway.



Neighborhood greenways (formerly known as bike boulevards) are streets with some relatively cheap fixes from the traffic-engineering handbook that make them favorable for non-motorized use, while not actually prohibiting cars:

• Stop signs turned to face the cross streets (making the greenway street mostly non-stop)
• Speed humps every block to discourage fast through-traffic
• "Sharrows" (share the road arrows) painted on the surface to let car drivers know they're sharing with other users
• Slow posted speed limit (20 mph or a little over 30 km/h)
• Cute street signs
• Special controls at busy intersections, including barriers that prevent cars from turning onto the greenway street from the busier thoroughfare

As a result, neighborhood greenways are lovely and quiet, very safe to ride on, and generally lively with people.

Going Street (yes, that's the real name of the street--has been since 1891) runs in a straight east-west shot along a slight ridge across my whole section of town, and I use it every week because it serves my favorite grocery store. Getting up to Going Street from my lower starting point is great butt-exercise, too.

The cute signs on Going Street show different kinds of bikes (and people walking). My favorite looks just like Eleanor:


One features a stingray-style bike with a banana seat:


One has the more standard drop-bar, racing-style bike:


Sharrow marking and my shadow--you can see what a bright, beautiful day it was today:


New Seasons Market Concordia, a couple blocks off Going Street. That's Eleanor (and my super beat-up grocery basket) at the end of the bike parking:




It was a perfect day for a Going Street grocery run today: chilly, clear and still.

Comments

[darkemeralds]

I follow quite a bit of cycling-related news from the UK (as well as from Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany) and I don't think I've seen quite the same type of development. I'd venture to guess that the "greenway" concept is tied pretty closely to the grid system of streets found in most American cities that grew up in the late 19th century. You can select a street that's parallel to a main thoroughfare and apply the traffic-calming measures to it. Then, drivers can select the faster road while everyone else can use the quieter one just a block or two over, and still get to the same destinations.

One thing I've learned from my interest in bike infrastructure is that it should never be "bikes vs cars" and "bikes vs pedestrians" (though it's still framed that way far too often). If you work to remove cars, and slow down the cars you can't remove, the whole space becomes safer and friendlier for people on foot, on a bike, on a skateboard, in a wheelchair, on a Segway--for people.

Interestingly, in a whole lot of urban spaces, that makes the space better for businesses along the route, too--since it's way easier to stop in on a whim and buy something if you're going less than ten miles per hour and don't have a big parking problem.