The Burnside Blog

Posted By Mike Thelin on 01/12/2008

Yes, we’ve all seen Quicksilver, and thanks to that stunning performance by Kevin Bacon, the daring NYC bicycle messenger who zooms and whooshes between moving yellow cabs and delivery trucks in heavy Mid-Town Manhattan traffic is an urban folk hero. That was 1986. If Quicksilver were made in 2008, Kevin Bacon’s character might choose to travel along New York’s new bike lanes, which outshine what we find in bike capital Portland.

Along a seven-block stretch on 9th Avenue between 16th and 23rd Street, the City of New York has added a physically separated bike lane that’s ten feet wide and completely barricaded from the fast-moving traffic that pervades this busy avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood. Unlike what you’d find in Portland, it’s not merely a painted section of asphalt on a busy street. Nope, it’s a refuge for bikers on an arterial where cars travel up to 40 miles per hour, and New York City is planning to add many more of them.

My photo was taken a bit too early in the day to catch many bicycle commuters (and I’m told that January isn’t the peak bicycle-commuting month in New York) but during busier times of day, more and more residents of the city formerly called New Amsterdam are choosing the preferred method of transport of their city’s original namesake. So how do New Yorkers feel? “Yes, it’s drastic, but this is the only way to make a bike lane work on such a busy street,” says a New Yorker named Paul who carries a bicycle helmet. “It’s made our lives as cyclists much better.”

So what does this all have to do with Portland?

In what was perhaps the most relevant transportation-related story to appear in the Portland press in recent memory, Willamette Week reporter Corey Pein outlined a series of goals that Portland could implement to become more bike friendly. Goal number one: the addition of physically separated bike lanes. Portland has the highest bicycle ridership in the entire country, and you’ll not find one physically-separated bike lane in the urban core.

For we bike riders, there are a good few arterials—like Burnside and Glisan—nearly impossible to navigate on two wheels for fear of death. Had there been a physically separated bike lane on Burnside, the 19-year-old art student killed in October in front of the Crystal Ballroom, might still be among us.

Burnside is a four-lane, two-way traffic dump that sees more than 40,000 cars pass through its busiest intersections each day. There exists a plan to re-energize Burnside (though Burnside appears to be already re-energizing just fine on its own) called the Burnside Couplet, which would add parking and make Burnside and Couch one-way streets below Interstate 405.

Our city leaders have never met an idea they haven’t liked, so how about this one: Instead of shelling out $60 million beautifying a street that in recent years hasn’t had many problems finding private investors to revamp its adjacent parcels, it would seem that something akin to New York’s 9th Avenue bike lane might be a more relevant (and cheaper) solution. Wouldn’t it?