In Portland the "Better Naito" project has its own set of compromises and imperfections, but it provides a kind of framework for thinking about problems with an overcommittment to multiuse/shared use paths.
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| People biked on the path system (ASLA) |
The westside path system in Tom McCall Waterfront Park used to seem like it provided a generous space for people on foot and on bike.
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| People walking normally use space (ASLA) |
But it was increasingly congested, especially in summertime.
- "As festival season begins, Naito’s bike lanes are walkers’ only refuge" (BikePortland, 2015)
Salem doesn't have this exact problem with Front Street and Riverfront Park, so the comparison is not direct.
But it does show how a path system gets congested and exacerbates conflicts between those on foot and those on bike.
The solution was "Better Naito."
In naming it one of "The Best New U.S. Bike Lanes" for 2023, People for Bikes said
In 2015, after Bike Portland called on the city to address a lack of safe space for people walking and biking along Naito Parkway and Waterfront Park, the city responded with improvements that provide plentiful safe space for people walking, biking, and rolling along the parkway. According to Gwen Shaw of Toole Design Group, the adjacent Waterfront Park “became busy with festivals and visitors during the summer months, making the existing conditions of no sidewalk and a standard bike lane a challenge.” Now, with a sidewalk, bi-directional protected bikeway, and pedestrian refuge islands, Naito Parkway offers a complete street that meets the needs of this busy area.
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| A longer view (BikePortland) |
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| Lane markings and separation (BikePortland) |
The other best bike lanes in that People for Bikes list are also separated from the sidewalks, as well as from the auto travel lanes, and are not not any multiuse path.
So here, anyway, it is a little disappointing to see how quickly people advocate for multiuse paths when there are superior types of design that offer both separation from people in cars as well as separation from people on foot.
Previously:
3 comments:
So to be clear, are you advocating for widening existing pathways in Minto Park to accommodate for this double wide bike lane and separate identified pedestrian lane? Thanks. - Evan West.
Since this post (or the other two recent related ones) made no claims about the paths in Minto Park specifically, your query and tone is a little confusing.
If you mean, "Do you want to ban biking in Minto Park?" The answer is no. It is appropriate for kids and families with kids to bike, scoot, roll, whatever, in the park, and I certainly have greater tolerance for kids wandering all over the path on bike than tolerance for adults going too fast or wandering all over.
But I would like Salem to have a better system of on-street protected bike lanes so that people, especially adults, no longer feel like the only safe alternative is biking in our parks system. The way we shunt bicycling to the parks and walks is an autoist move, a displacement system to get bikes "out of the way." Though it looks like it benefits the biking public, it functions primarily for the convenience of drivers.
Apart from direct connections to the Union Street Bridge, we should not actively encourage more biking on our parks paths as they are. (For a more complete perspective, do please read the bulleted links to previous posts.)
As for your specific question on widening and lane markings, that is very possibly the best solution for Minto and some other parks where there is growing congestion, and it is certainly in the range of reasonable solutions. Maybe some chicanes would slow down scorchers also.
The conservation easement at Minto in particular might interfere with any widening, however. The widths of the path system in Minto Park are likely constrained in one or more ways, and deemphasizing bikes and scooters there might be more important than trying to figure out how to widen the paths. (Demand management rather than path capacity supply increase, as it were.)
Lane markings alone on some parks paths could be an incremental improvement. They have been discussed before, and it is likely time to return to that conversation.
I apologize, I thought there was a spot in this post where you specifically called out the Minto paths as problematic. Looks as though I was confusing your post for another. - Evan West.
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