PDXme

I recently saw a post over at Bike Portland regarding a recently-installed "bike corral." Bike corrals are a series of bike racks aligned in a row, in spaces usually reserved for parking cars. With the bike scene taking the city and its on-street parking by storm, the locations of these corrals are appearing across Portland. Local businesses, at first skeptical of taking away on street parking, have realized that increased bicycle parking, creates more bikes, and in turn, more business. Below is a video by the Portland Department of Transportation (now known as the Portland Bureau of Transportation) on the success of bike corrals:

Bike Corral at Mississippi & Beech

In an evening jaunt up North Mississippi Avenue in 2007, I came across this bike corral on North Beech.  I was able to take a good shot of it in spite of the drizzly weather.

So now that bike corrals are appearing in greater numbers (as seen on this map), why don't we expand this concept of efficiency by creating spaces for bikes that celebrate bicycling instead of placing them on the margins of roads? I would argue that taking bikes off of the side-walk is good for pedestrians, but it is at a relative cost to bicycles. Bicycles, like cars, have an air of freedom about them. When they are regulated by parking structures, they seem to lose a bit of their appeal. This is obvious if you drive a car. God knows how long you wait to get into and out of a parking garage in the Rose Quarter. With bikes, the appeal is similar, but there is something to say about finding a real gem of a vélo on display in a standard sidewalk lock-up. When we regulate people and things to certain rights of way, we sacrifice "something," and I think that lacking "something" is community.

A classy lady on N. Mississippi

A blue bike near N. Mississippi & Fremont

Communities in Portland are, in a word, resilient. We like our meetings. Our neighborhood association are among the most vibrant  in the nation with relatively high political influence. Why would their be a Facebook Application pertaining solely to which Portland neighborhood one should live in? As seen with the creation of City Repair, a non-profit dedicated to the creation of public gathering spaces, Portlanders like to shape their communities, each leaving his or her own mark on our city. In one project, community members came together to perform an "intersection repair." The community found its strengths among it, finding carpenters, painters, and good-willed neighbors willing to help. As a result, the community created a space for all to enjoy and changed city-wide policy for the use of public spaces. The reclaiming of "public" space is however, just the first step. Once we recreate an intersection, a vacant lot, it's important that we keep using the reclaimed space.

Now, you might be wondering, don't we want bike corrals? Of course. Walking along North Mississippi and seeing 10-20 bikes all in a row excites anyone crazy for bikes. (And that's a fair number of people here in River City.) Bike corrals are visible, but I'd like them so visible as to take up the underutilized space that cars could do away with at no expense to the driver. Case in point: traffic circles. What goes in the middle of a traffic circle? Usually plants. But often, this patch of green is left to members of the neighborhood to maintain. What if we could use traffic circles to their full potential, designating them as covered bike corrals? Only this time they would be accessible to bicyclists looking for bike parking from four directions, and visible to everyone. No longer will bikes, and the concerns of its bikers be left at the margin, but at the center of attention. Here is a sketch that I created with the help of my friend to give you a better idea of what I envision.

A Traffic Circle is made into a bike corral, a more efficient use of space.

Notice what you see (beyond horrible drawing skills). You see people. Bike corrals create people flow, the lifeblood of any livable community. But what we have in the middle of the intersection is a space that citizens hold dear, a place where bikers can leave their wheels. But why stop there? The space could be a covered meeting place for cyclists, or people waiting for a ride. Creating an "X" in order to access the space creates a uniqueness to the intersection that slows drivers down. Forcing pedestrians to walk through the space insures that watchful eyes maintain and keep an eye out for the space.

If one of these were to be placed on a corner with local restaurants or bookstores, I could imagine people waiting for the table in the middle of this neighborhood street, or kicking back with a book.

The engineering of such an intersection could be difficult. To make more space  in the center, there may need to be bowl cuts in the curves, as illustrated in the sketch. There is also the safety component. What about speeders? We could place speed bumps before the stop signs (which, I judged to hard to draw here) and additional reflectors around the gazebo-like bike corral. Steel posts around the structure are a must to protect people and bikes in the space. The fire department may have something to say about this, but lest we mention our prized statue of Joan d'Arc at NE 39th and Glisan? As long as this intersection an important emergency route, I couldn't see an issue.

Latin American countries often call a block the Spanish manzana, or apple. An intersection like this is at the edge of several blocks, or several apples. Sliced apple anyone? Perhaps some apple pie? These may be some names in the running for this proposed intersection. To my knowledge, I do not know if anything of  similar exists. Large scale roundabouts are, of course, commonplace in larger cities such as Columbus Circle in New York or the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Columbus Circle in New York

Arc de Triomph in Paris © Editions Hazan

I am excited at the prospect of bringing more bike corrals to Portland. As we work through this down economy, its important that we work to support our local economy, and bike corrals, as seen in the video above, do just that.

This proposed intersection works to engender community and, as my economic professor would say, "an efficient use of resources." I want to talk to my neighbors again, and I want to be a part of my own community, not a drone behind a piece of metal.

At the end of the day, I believe Portland has a choice. We have the ability to change our cityscape to reflect the purpose of where we live: as a space amenable to community and human needs, not of machines out of scale with their surroundings.

So on your next jaunt up Mississippi, remember, apple pie!