We could have more diverters if the city did not create the most costly equipment and costly labor methods to install them. – See pictures and video below of the $50,000 diverter at N Holman and N Mississippi. Crews of 4-9 people spent 4 days to install this with overtime. We could have 8-80 diverters for the price of 1 bloated design by the Portland Bureau of Transportation,PBOT ( Commissioner Steve Novick ) This is not a question of money, it’s how our lawmakers in city hall and Salem waste our Transportation money chasing old design methods and cars focused designs. We will never get close to #VisionZero with these leaders.
Preface: Diverters are those objects placed on quiet street corners so that cars from neighbors can still get from A to B. Long distance commuters can’t cut straight through quiet side streets, and cars going long distance are diverted back to an arterial street designed to be safer for that. The media sells diverters as a ban on cars.
My question to fellow BP readers: What ideas would you send to the city leaders and staff? Please reply here and I’ll print them and hand deliver them in a meeting.
Your ideas?
My ideas:
a) More low cost diverters. Involve the people or City Repair Project. We already paint colorful art in some intersections at zero cost to the city. Citizens could just as easily build safer and more sustainable ( and maintainable ) objects to divert cut through cars. Some might cost the city zero dollars. Adopt a diverter. Design a diverter contest. We could have 80 community diverters for the cost of the Holman diverter. Seriously.
b) Let locals spend budget. Let local authority and neighborhood associations spend some of the budget. There is better and cheaper off the shelf equipment other cities purchase on the internet. From Obama on downward our leaders talk but don’t act on building community engagement. This bottom up budgeting is what David Bragdon said would fix the backwards Oregon Transporation plan quote: 2015 Transporation Bill – It “was old school, no performance measures” — “Big road widening at the edge of town” — “key projects for key legislators if they vote the right way”
c) Make diverters more bike friendly, not less. The Holman design is worse for bike passage. Often there are inadequate gaps for bikes. See URL below JPG of the new PBOT equipment blocking bikes.
http://ift.tt/29QlER8
PS: Stay tuned. Stay involved. I’ll post more video. Here’s the first video https://youtu.be/nZ2opKQLzOE
More video to come
The post PBOT: We can have 8 diverters for price of one appeared first on BikePortland.org.
from BikePortland.org http://ift.tt/29TJNKk
No comments:
Post a Comment