As biking in Portland, Oregon moves toward ‘just-a-way-of-life’ status, a $60m dollar industry has sprung up around it
Ah, urban cycling – a playground for young, biking die-hards swerving in and out of motor traffic or for those in expensive gear and rock-hard bodies, right?
Well, not exactly. Though some cities’ cyclists still fit the stereotype, there’s a move afoot to make bicycles the vehicle for the masses. And in Portland – recently named “most bike-friendly major city in the U.S.” by the League of American Bicyclists – it’s working. Here, you need neither a hip messenger bag nor bank-breaking gear in order to ride a bicycle.
Everybody’s doin’ it, says Mia Birk, a former city employee who helped lead Portland’s efforts to make the city more bike-friendly. It’s estimated that 16 percent of Portlanders commute on bikes.
Portland devoted itself early on to some pretty serious cycle-conscious city planning, passing a bill in the 1970s that set aside one percent of state highway funds for bike lanes and paths. Today the city has more than 270 miles of bikeways and recently created the country’s first ever highly-visible, bright green bike boxes. The boxes are painted on the asphalt at intersections where bikers share the road with drivers. Cyclists stop in the green boxes to wait for the light to change; cars stop behind them. This way, cyclists are always in drivers’ sightlines, and out of danger.
If you stand in front of Birk’s house, which sits on a major bikes-only boulevard, you’ll see thousands of cyclists pass by daily, she says. Traffic includes men in business suits, women in skirts and high heels, children on their way to school, and any other kind of rider you can possibly imagine.
“We have a surprisingly broad bike culture,” says Birk, who now heads up Alta Planning and Design, a consulting firm that advises cities across the country on how to become more friendly to two-wheelers.
And while no one can deny the health and environmental benefits of all that cycling, there’s another one: cash. And not just a little bit either. A study completed last year for the City of Portland by Alta Planning and Design, found that in 2006 bike-related business generated $63m worth of activity in the city’s economy and employed as many as 800 people. Alta estimates that in 2007, bike-related biz spurred around $100m worth of activity in the city’s economy.
“It’s the American way to look for economic opportunities,” says Birk. “All these businesses have popped up to serve the bicycle community.”
Not included in the study is the growing pedal-powered industry in Portland – businesses that rely on the strength of their employees’ quadriceps. This includes pizzerias and bakeries that deliver by bike, popsicle peddlers, and at least one business that runs on 100-percent renewable energy: Fossil Fuel Free Lawn and Garden Care, a full-service lawn and gardening business, whose workers ride bikes to jobs and have nary a power-tool in their wagons.
As Birk sees it, Portland has two big hills it needs to power over in the coming years. The first? E nsuring that the next generation of Portlanders are taught that biking is the preferred way to get where they’re going. That’s the goal of Portland’s bicycle education program, now in about fifty of its 200 or so elementary schools.
The second hurdle is finding a way to get the cycling message out to immigrant and minority communities. Many of these communities are located far from the city’s center, where major roadways make safe biking less viable.
Still, the sheer number and variety of bikers, Birk says, is eye-boggling. She says visiting a city’s downtown is never a good indicator of bike culture because these areas are typically not safe for cycling.
“Yet even in [Portland’s] downtown, you will see so many bicyclists, you will be blown away . You’ll go down on the waterfront and be blown away. You cannot believe there are this many people biking.”
Related Links:
1. www.oregonlive.com/cycling/index.ssf/2008/07/war_between_bikes_and_cars_not.htm
