I was noticing this morning on my walk from train to work that some of the egregious construction-related congestion in downtown Portland is easing up. It's all to do with the new transit mall project; they've closed long segments of several major streets in order to put in light-rail tracks and bus shelters and stuff. It has, with delicious mid-project irony, made it impossible to navigate the city center by bus or bike or foot for the entire time I've been here. But they're starting to reopen streets as they finish laying the rails in, and today I noticed that 5th and 6th avenues are finally usable again.
If you're a car, that is. Or a pedestrian. Not if you're a bike.
There's a difference between a street that's simply not set up for effective bike use and a street that's Total Fucking Bicycle Suicide. Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley is not set up for effective bike use -- it carries heavy traffic and horrible traffic jams and has no bike lane. Market Street in San Francisco is Total Fucking Bicycle Suicide, because in addition to the above problems it has MUNI trains and MUNI lanes and people in cars going in the train lane and then getting the hell out of the train lane and getting in front of the train and generally acting like dorks. Also, train tracks are not my friend.
SW 5th and 6th in Portland are now Total Fucking Bicycle Suicide. I actually discovered this several weeks ago, while attempting to bike back to work from Veganopolis with a delicious bbq unchicken sandwich that I needed to be alive to enjoy. I rode on 5th just for the novelty of the thing, and I discovered that the 5th Avenue of the future is 1.5 lanes wide with no stripes(?!) and no bike lane, and it has MAX tracks that veer gently back and forth across the entire driving surface of the street.
Let's have a quick review of bike/train-track interactions.
The gently-veering tracks on 5th avenue require the non-deathwish-having bicyclist to continually swerve in and out of car traffic to get even close to a 30-degree angle crossing the damn things. But swerving in and out of car traffic every two blocks is almost as suicidal as riding over the tracks at acute angles, and will cause the drivers (who have no idea what's going on because their tires don't get stuck in the tracks) to shake their fists, honk at you, roll their eyes and bitch about how Portland bicyclists are reckless and unsafe and should be banned from the roads.
6th, I confirmed today by some eyeballing on my walk to work, is just as bad except that it is fully two lanes wide. So the odds of having the (crappy) right side of the street to yourself, without cars behind you while you veer and swear under your breath and try not to die, are more or less zero. This is what the downtown planning folks cheerfully call "improved bicycle access" on the Portland Mall project website. I do not accept it.
Bonus! Here are descriptions of the best routes I have currently found for biking southbound into downtown and northbound out of it. They're really fucking stupid.
"[W]hile attempting to bike back to work from Veganopolis with a delicious bbq unchicken sandwich that I needed to be alive to enjoy."
This would make an excellent factual allegation in a wrongful death claim:
"Your honor, we are seeking nominal and punitive damages for Dianna's death, as well as compensatory damages for the expected value of her lifetime earnings and for the monetary value of the enjoyment of the foregone veganopolis bbq unchicken sandwich, which she would have eaten had it not been for her untimely demise."
Posted by: Zach S. at November 19, 2007 11:24 AMThis is not related to bicycles and i thought you would enjoy it.
http://members.aol.com/yahyam/coincidence.html
Posted by: Ping at November 19, 2007 12:44 PMThe interwebs facilitate hobbling to and fro:
http://www.walkscore.com/
Posted by: Elliot at November 19, 2007 01:06 PMI... bu... what is going on here? Is this a rebellion against my insistence on blogging about stuff you guys aren't interested in?
Elliot, your offering has me particularly baffled. Am I missing something that will make this contextually logical?
Posted by: Dianna at November 19, 2007 01:33 PMI'm interested in your post! I just have nothing interesting to contribute to the main topic at hand because 1. I don't live in Portland, and 2. I don't bike. But I saw a hook for a comment and ran with it (straight to the mixed metaphor factory). I'll try to keep on-topic in the future.
Posted by: Zach S. at November 19, 2007 01:54 PMNo, no, that comment wasn't directed at you. Your response was perfectly topical, at least within Snoqualmie tolerances. It was the Unrelated Link Parade to which I was addressing myself.
Posted by: Dianna at November 19, 2007 02:11 PMUnrelated Link Parade could be 1) a band name, 2) a co-op event involving loud objects in unexpected locations. Or ideally a band whose events consist of playing loud objects in unexpected locations. A marching non-sequitur.
Here was the connection in my mind: post was about good/bad places to bike, link was about about good/bad places to walk. More or less. Though the link is more about from where to walk, rather than the quality of the walk itself.
I would be waging a guerrilla war against carefully constructed trains of thought, but I was derailed when the Contextual Liberation Army ran out of bananas.
Posted by: Elliot at November 19, 2007 02:31 PMI'm not sure if that last comment clarified anything.
Posted by: Elliot at November 19, 2007 02:33 PMThe first and third paragraphs were actually quite illuminating.
Posted by: Dianna at November 19, 2007 02:37 PMOooh, lookit the ears.
You can post bewildering links all you like; I don't mean to stop you. That one was just extra-bewildering because, when I followed it and found it claiming to be useful for homebuyers and real estate agents, I was not actually sure whether you were you or a spammer and what the hell was happening. Now that I know that you are you, and what the hell is indeed happening, I am much more at ease.
Posted by: Dianna at November 19, 2007 03:23 PMHey, that website Elliot links is pretty neat. My house gets a walkability score of 98/100. My parent's house gets a walkability score of 0/100. Which is why I live in New York and not San Diego.
Posted by: Zach S. at November 19, 2007 03:50 PMBananas were originally planted in Costa Rica alongside the railroad, in order to feed the workers who were laying the tracks. They don't have an army, but if they did, it would be well fed.
Also: http://timelines.ws/
Posted by: lisa at November 19, 2007 04:13 PMOuch. My house only gets a walk score of 57, and my parents' house in suburban LA where nobody walks anywhere gets 49.
My office gets 92, though!
Damnit, now I am compulsively scoring everywhere I have ever lived. The house in South Berkeley gets 68. Kingman gets 66, but so does my summer apartment on the godforsaken hill. Also there's something funny about the fact that they're allowed to count the Jesuit School of Theology as the closest school. 'Cause, you know, that's useful for lots of people.
Posted by: Dianna at November 19, 2007 04:33 PMYeah, I have to question their algorithm. I'm surprised that Kingman got a 66; my old apartment at 2511 Heart scored an 83 and it's about five minute's walk from Kingman, if that. It might be that I get a boost for living across the street from the University and half a block from that little mini-shopping district on Euclid.
I would also like to point out that, at 2511 Hearst, the nearest grocery store by their accounting is Le Petit Market. A fine place to go if you want a $3 Hostess Fruit Pie or a $6 pint of Ben & Jerry's, but woefully inadequate for general-purpose grocery needs. Also, my nearest school there is listed as UC Berkeley. This strikes my as highly non-useful.
Posted by: Zach S. at November 19, 2007 04:46 PMYeah, I have to question their algorithm. I'm surprised that Kingman got a 66; my old apartment at 2511 Heart scored an 83 and it's about five minute's walk from Kingman, if that. It might be that I get a boost for living across the street from the University and half a block from that little mini-shopping district on Euclid.
I would also like to point out that, at 2511 Hearst, the nearest grocery store by their accounting is Le Petit Market. A fine place to go if you want a $3 Hostess Fruit Pie or a $6 pint of Ben & Jerry's, but woefully inadequate for general-purpose grocery needs. Also, my nearest school there is listed as UC Berkeley. This strikes my as highly non-useful.
2511 also seems to benefit a lot from all the stuff on Shattuck, which is not set up for effective bike use. Bam! Back on topic! Sort of.
Posted by: Zach S. at November 19, 2007 04:46 PM