This guest opinion is by BikeLoud PDX Vice Chair Kiel Johnson. It’s a response to news that the District 4 Coalition is opposed to planned bike lane upgrades in Southwest Portland.
In cities where bicycling has grown rapidly, local governments have streamlined the installation of curb-protected bike lanes. They treat them as standard transportation infrastructure, not as optional amenities. Portland already has the policies in place to do the same. If we want to become the best bike city in North America, we must follow the policies we’ve adopted instead of second-guessing them every time a project moves forward.
Portland’s Transportation System Plan classifies every street in the city. Engineers and planners have determined what type of infrastructure belongs on each classification. Those policies were vetted through multiple layers of review and formally adopted by our elected officials. We have clear design standards for transit, freight, automobiles, pedestrians, and bicycles. Bicycle infrastructure should be treated no differently than any other mode — and it should be applied consistently across the city.
Our policies call for protected bike lanes on Southwest Capitol Highway, SW Bertha, and Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy. The opportunity to build them is in front of us, and we should take it.
The recent effort to oppose protected bike lanes amounts to a rejection of this adopted framework — but only for bike infrastructure. It suggests that the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) must secure a vague and undefined “community support” threshold before installing protected bike lanes. We do not apply that standard to other forms of infrastructure. PBOT has installed hundreds of ADA curb ramps across the city. If each ramp required broad community approval, we would have only a fraction of them. We recognize ADA access as essential infrastructure. Protected bike lanes should be treated the same way.
There are times when PBOT gets things wrong. Public oversight matters. When Commissioner Mapps attempted to remove the Broadway protected bike lanes — despite their consistency with city policy — the community spoke up and stopped it. The claim at the time was that there wasn’t sufficient “community support.” But policy already provided the direction. Those lanes should have been installed a decade earlier.
Community engagement is important. The city should communicate clearly, gather feedback, and make reasonable adjustments when warranted. But we do not require a popularity contest to install water lines, traffic signals, or sewer upgrades. Protected bike lanes are basic safety infrastructure.
Everyone has opinions about where lanes should go or how they should be designed — curb height, parking removal, materials. Those are fair implementation questions. But at some point we must trust our adopted plans and our professional staff to execute them.
If every bike project is subjected to repeated demands for undefined “community support,” we will continue to spend disproportionate time and resources debating whether to build rather than actually building. Portland cannot afford that delay.
We have the policy. We have the standards. We have the opportunity. Now we need to follow through — and build the protected bike lanes our city has already committed to.