Dressing up and having fun: A Pedalpalooza event in Portland. Photo / supplied
Dressing up and having fun: A Pedalpalooza event in Portland. Photo / supplied
What does it take for a city with a car culture to get people cycling? Portland, Oregon, has some answers, even though it snows there in winter, the summers get well into the 30s and it rains a lot in between. And many of the suburbs are hilly.
Change cameslowly. In 1994, only 1 per cent of all travel was by bike. In 2012, it was still only 3 per cent. But then the numbers exploded. Two years later, that 3 per cent had climbed to over 7 per cent, giving Portland easily the most cyclists per capita of any large city in North America.
As it happens, 7 per cent is a magic number for Auckland. The council's climate plan, Te-Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri, calls for a 64 per cent reduction in transport emissions by 2030. Cycling is supposed to help by accounting for 7 per cent of the total distances travelled.
Protected cycleway in Portland. Photo / supplied
Unfortunately, we're still in Portland 30 years ago: at about 1 per cent.
But that city shows it's doable. How did they make the change?
Portland has a Vision Zero road strategy, like Auckland. But it also has 800 km of cycleways; Auckland has only about 350km, and despite complaints about all the money being spent, we have been adding fewer than 10km a year.
The difference is stark on the map, which reveals how Portland redesigned itself for cycling. The area shown is roughly the same size as the entire Auckland isthmus, from the Waitematā to the Manukau. The blue lines are dedicated bike lanes, pink are shared paths and orange are funded but not yet built. The inset is the downtown area.
Portland has 800 km of cycleways. Photo / supplied
The green lines are slow-traffic streets in "neighbourhood greenways", formerly known as "bicycle boulevards". There, the speed limit is 25-30km/h and walking, cycling and "rolling" take priority. The greenways, very like the low-traffic neighbourhood that caused such a fuss in Onehunga, include a Safe Routes to School network of more than 100 schools.
Over summer, Portland goes big on cycling events. Pedalpalooza stages 200 community rides. There are Sunday Parkways, the World Naked Bike Ride and, because it's a river city, they have an annual Bridge Pedal, when cyclists ride all the bridges. Movements like Black Lives Matter stage protest rides.
Assembling for the World Naked Bike Ride in Portland. Photo / supplied
A Black Lives Matter protest, Portland style. Photo / supplied
And yet. After the 2012-2014 surge, growth slowed and from 2016 it even declined. Rising property values near the city centre pushed people who used to cycle further away. Working from home became popular, even prior to Covid: the rise of WFH correlates directly to the fall in cycling. New Portlanders are thought less likely to cycle than those who've been there longer. And with more cars on the roads, rat-running has made the greenways less safe.
Portland: City with a culture of cycling. Photo / supplied
It's not failure. Portland still has many times more cyclists per capita than Auckland or any other big city in North America. But if it wants the number to grow, it has to make driving and parking harder, especially for short trips. It's just the same as here.
If city streets aren't safe for kids they aren't safe. Photo / supplied
