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StreetFilms-Portland: Bicycle Boulevards

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    thi is SouthEast Lincoln that we are standing on here
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    and the Southeast Lincoln Bike Boulevard is really cool
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    because it's like a metaphore for all that what we've done in Portland in the eighties.
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    South East Lincoln here was we called called a traffic collector
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    There was quite a bit of auto traffic on the street
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    and it was a major ? affair
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    and in the late eighties and early nineties
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    the city really with pressure from neighborhood and citizens
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    turns this street as well as a number of other streets into what we call bicycle boulevards
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    where we did traffic coming? elements to make
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    the street more livable
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    and slower traffic, reduced traffic,
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    and much more friendly for bicycles and pedestrians.
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    So let me tell you what we did to the street
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    at a couple of key points on the street, at Southeast 39, two blocks this way
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    and South East 20, which is about a mile that away
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    we put in what we call traffic divertors
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    and so traffic as to turn.
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    One of the biggest challenges to develop a bike boulevard
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    is you can't make it easy for cars to get onto the bike boulevard out of a busy street.
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    If you fail to make this kind of improvement,
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    what will happen is that you will have a lot of more cars on the bike boulevard.
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    We don't want a lot of car on our bike boulevard.
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    So we do this little dislocation
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    is only allow car to come out of the local service street on the 39
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    but we don't allow cars to come in from 39 onto Clinton
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    In this case, the project has worked really well.
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    It's made so that bicyclists can pass through easily
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    but it keeps cars off and actually acts as a good treatment
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    and diverts cars that would otherwise be on this facilities.
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    We also put in things that slow traffic down,
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    which includes the traffic circle that you can see over there
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    and speed bumps along the street to slow traffic down
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    so that the speed of cars is prety similar to the speed of cyclists
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    which create a more confortable environment for everyone
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    and then more recently we put in signs and circles to identify the street
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    as well as other a Bike Boulevards, has been part of this special Boulevard Network.
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    People are very concerned about diverting traffic off from a street.
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    "How they gonna get to there houses?"
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    And that "it might cause traffic on other streets to go out".
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    So, and this was what happened here,
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    there was a lot of fights, it was a difficult project,
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    and what happen as a result is also very similar to what hapens in many other cities,
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    and that it's so pleasant afterwards that properties values stear? up?
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    are becomes wonderfull terfair?? for people walking their dog and jogging
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    it's "very" part of the street
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    for bicycling, for people walking, for kids to be out of the bounds.
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    and it's just become this wonderfull community street.
Title:
StreetFilms-Portland: Bicycle Boulevards
Description:

Bicycle Boulevards in Portland are a thing of beauty, safety, and tranquility. They are also wonderful streets to live on. Mia Birk, former manager of City of Portland's Bicycle Program (1993-99), and Mark Lear of the Portland Office of Transportation explain a few of the many strategies employed to keep thru traffic off the boulevards and to make the riders using them safe.
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Video Language:
English
Duration:
03:08
manouchk edited English subtitles for StreetFilms-Portland: Bicycle Boulevards
Maggie S (Amara staff) added a translation

English subtitles

Revisions

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