seeing reports in the comments here that places marked as swept still don't have the bike lanes clear 🤨 Seems like this strategy where we do nothing except completely clean everywhere with a big 3mph truck is costing a lot of flat tires.
I get this whole thing where PBOT staff are working as hard as they can to pick up the gravel and it's a lot of work, but if it takes a month, there seems to be an underlying assumption that people will just not ride bikes for a month so that cars can get moving a little sooner after it snows. The sort of policy that just abandons people who don't own cars for at least 1/12th of the year, seems like we'll never get to the level of non-car-owning necessary to even fit, geometrically.
I wonder how PBOT staff resolve that with their Climate Action Plan goals, like we all own cars but we'll all just drive them for 1/3 of trips? So nobody will only drive, nobody will only bike, obviously nobody can only use transit, since that stops on nights and weekends. What we actually need is for car ownership to be 100% optional, without giving up any opportunity, mobility, quality of life. Giving up a month or two for the weather isn't an option.
To hear them talk though, they think about 30% of people simply refuse to do anything but drive for any trips even 1/2 mile. And this does map to the number of people who voted for ted, but if they all drive every trip, that leaves no car trips in the emissions model for people who aren't climate denialist dickheads but actually have a justifiable reason to drive. Granted, some of those voters will be dead, but this 20yr strategy to reduce car use better pull out a rabbit in the last quarter.
Big slowclap.gif for the slow but steady sweeping up of what was all-hands-on-deck spreading gravel. What if those protected bike lanes were connected, wouldn't that help people who are trying to get somewhere but scared to ride in an unprotected lane? This whole event / scenario is a design failure, policy failure, failure of imagination, failure of elected officials to understand how cities work. #Portland#ClimateDenial#CarSupremacy#transportation
What basis exactly, are they using to prioritize the sweeping, or is this section waiting on the protected sweeper because only a small part of it is protected? Are there other parts of town with essential #pdxBikes connections still left like this?
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