After over 16 years, Portland gets a sidewalk to its bus and train station

Back in the late 1990s, Concord Trailways moved its bus terminal out of Bayside to more spacious quarters on the edge of the central city, on Thompson's Point. That gave the bus company lots of room to grow, from a handful of daily roundtrips to Boston to the near-hourly, round-the-clock service we enjoy today. But there was one problem: there were no sidewalks on any of the streets leading to the bus station.

The problem got worse about 10 years ago, when the Amtrak Downeaster started running to the same station. Car-free arrivals from Boston and other points south found themselves stranded at the edge of a huge parking lot and a tangle of hostile freeway ramps.

It didn't feel like arriving in Portland – it felt like arriving in the strip malls of Falmouth, Scarborough, or Freeport.

In truth, though. it's only a 30 minute walk from the Portland Transportation Center to Longfellow Square, in the middle of the city. Back in 2008, the Portland Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee designated this area one of the city's top priorities for bike and pedestrian infrastructure improvements – due largely to its significance as a destination for Portland's car-free travelers.

This summer, thanks to a grant from the federal Economic Development Administration, street improvements in the area have finally created a few passable walking and biking routes to the city's busiest transportation hub. I took a bike ride down there this weekend, and here are some shots of the area's newly completed streets.

This new crosswalk across Fore River Parkway connects to Frederic Street, a dead-end for cars that will now serve as a nice bike/ped shortcut to and from Congress Street (there had been an informal goat path through a fence here before, but the new one is accessible to bikes and wheelchairs).

The new Thompson's Point Road now boasts sidewalks. It was also widened, from 2 to 3 lanes, but the center lane will be a "reversible" lane to be used only when events are happening at a still-unbuilt Thompson's Point arena.

Sewall Street (below) also received some new sidewalks, and remains cut off from Thompson's Point for motorized traffic. Sewall is the first built link in a planned and funded "neighborhood byway" connection that will run on quiet neighborhood streets from Thompson's Point to Deering Center, 1.5 miles north of here. 

Part of the new neighborhood byway includes safer crossings of the three busy streets that lie between Thompson's Point and Deering Center – Congress, Brighton, and Woodford. Here's what the corner of Congress and Sewall looked like a few weeks ago:

...and here's the same scene from this past weekend. Sewall Street has been narrowed down and the crosswalks have been improved with ADA-accessible ramps.

Finally, Fore River Parkway has gained a new separated shared-use path that runs from Thompson's Point Road to Congress Street. I understand that the bike lane on Park Avenue, which currently peters out into a freeway on-ramp, will be extended to flow into this new bike path. 

Fore River Parkway still lacks a sidewalk on its western shoulder – building one there will require the roadway to sacrifice a lane for car traffic, so we'll still have one good battle to fight. Still, it's a good start.

Will "The Forefront at Thompson's Point" scuttle a key link in Portland's Bikeway Network?

On the western edge of the Portland peninsula, the Mountain Division railway offers a scenic direct route between Portland and downtown Westbrook — and from there, on to Windham, Standish, and Fryeburg. The corridor (shown in red in the map below) has long been envisioned as a regional bike and pedestrian connector — a safe and scenic alternative to travel along the outer Congress Street bottleneck.

A 10-foot-wide shared use path (highlighted in green) already extends from the Portland Transportation Center, the easternmost point of the Mountain Division line, along the Fore River Parkway to Veterans Bridge and West Commercial Street, where another trail connection into downtown is in the works. The next link westward would go through the planned Thompson's Point development to the area behind the Westgate shopping center.

That development, called "The Forefront at Thompson's Point," has spent several years in limbo, but it's going back to the Planning Board yet again on Tuesday to seek approval of a scaled-back Master Development Plan.

And unfortunately, the developers' new Master Plan cuts the Mountain Division off in favor of a surface parking lot. A trail could be carved out from portions of a single row of parking stalls, but the developers say they can't sacrifice 12 or so parking spots in a development that's planning to construct 1,290 parking spaces in all.

The good news is that city staff are pressing the developers to be more creative and figure out a way to fit the trail in. It's helpful that the trail corridor is in the city's official Comprehensive Plan, as part of the "Planned Bikeway and Pedestrian Network" approved by the City Council in December 2012.

If you want a safe bike and pedestrian link between the Portland Transportation Center and the Stroudwater neighborhood (and eventually on to Westbrook), chime in now by sending an email to the city's Planning Board and the City Council.

Bike lanes and a side path could be built this summer on West Commercial Street

The proposed expansion of the International Marine Terminal's cargo facilities on West Commercial Street (under the Casco Bay Bridge) might bring a big influx of state transportation funds to Portland this summer — and with those funds could come new bike and pedestrian routes along West Commercial Street.

In order to accommodate more activity and a new freight rail line in the area, the state is planning to rebuild sections of West Commercial Street between Veterans Bridge and the Casco Bay Bridge. This is a significant bike route, and there are already city-adopted plans to extend the Veterans Bridge off-street path eastward towards downtown. The International Marine Terminal project might turn those plans into a construction project as soon as this summer.

Right now, Commercial Street is a bumpy road with no sidewalks between Bernie's Clam Shack (near the Western Prom, where an asphalt path leads to Veterans Bridge) and the Star Match building on the eastern end near Beach Street. That asphalt sidewalk near Bernie's was designed to be an off-street shared-use path, and this project could extend that pathway all the way to Harbor View Park, under the Casco Bay Bridge. The rebuilt Commercial Street might also include new on-street bike lanes, plus an improved, traffic-calmed intersection at Beach Street.

Although the project is fast-tracked and could begin construction this summer, the actual plans are still up in the air. Bike/ped advocates are encouraged to weigh in at a public meeting this Wednesday, at 6 p.m. in City Hall's State of Maine room (that's upstairs, in the western wing of the building).

New bike paths, traffic calming in the East End

The city is finally building long-planned access improvements from the East End to Tukey's Bridge (in order to fix some of the problems I blogged about six years ago). I was walking in the area this afternoon and, even under construction, they're already doing a great job of slowing down traffic that comes into town off of the freeway:

The project is tightening up the wide intersection of the Eastern Prom Road with Washington Avenue (at left) and adding a landscaped median where pedestrians can wait. Cars are already driving through the area much more slowly than they used to.

This view, looking north on Washington towards the bridge, shows how much wider the new bike/ped path (the dirt area) will be compared with the current sidewalk (still visible in the foreground), and how much shorter the crossing distance is on the new crossing of Washington:

 The path shown above extends all the way to the Tukey's Bridge ramp, where another new bike path will connect down the hill to the left to join up with Anderson Street and the Bayside Trail.

Kudos to the city's bike/ped committee, PACTS, and the City of Portland for making this happen!

Bayside update

The Federated Companies' proposal for the old scrap yard in Bayside continues to be refined. They're currently seeking a zoning amendment that would allow their project to proceed, and they've been tempting planners with some of these tantalizing sketches (from the most recent Planning Board workshop, held this afternoon):

The image above takes some liberties; the green space depicted to the left is actually a paved parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. Below: a view of a proposed new plaza along the Bayside Trail, looking from the rear of Planet Dog store southwards towards downtown. The building on the right is a large parking garage with a large first-floor retail space, on the left is a residential apartment tower with more ground-floor retail.

Here are a few of the hoops they'll still need to jump through. Approval for the project is still months away, at least:

1. Planning Board approval for zoning amendments (hopefully in a public hearing at the next Planning Board meeting, mid-March)
2. City Council approval of zoning amendments (end of March/early April)
3. Agreements with the City of Portland regarding the redesign and reconstruction of Somerset Street and title agreements for the Bayside Trail encroachment (unknown timeline)
4. Planning board workshops for subdivision and site plan
5. Planning board public hearing and approval of subdivision and site plan
6. Execution of Purchase and Sale agreement, transferring land ownership from City of Portland to Federated Companies
7. Financing and building permits

Reviewing the city's planning memos, I'm encouraged to see that city staff share the concerns that the developers might be building too large of a parking garage.

The proposed Phase 1 would set aside 221 parking spaces for a 196-unit apartment building (plus 191 spaces for retail uses, plus 200 spaces for city-mandated 'public' parking, plus 68 spaces for existing businesses like Trader Joes and Whole Foods). This is far in excess of the other successful market-rate apartment and condo developments currently being built (the Bay House and the proposed West End Place, both of which only have 0.8 spaces per apartment).

The last project to propose parking at a 1-to-1 ratio, the Newbury Street Lofts, proved to be an aesthetic disaster and financially unworkable. Buyers and renters are generally unwilling to pay the rents necessary to finance this level of parking in Portland, a city where substantial market demand is coming from households looking to get rid of their cars in one of the only New England cities where it's possible to do so. I'd hate to see a similar fate befall this project due to unreasonable parking expenses.

That said, my concerns are somewhat allayed by the possibility of reducing the parking planned for Phase II, when two more apartment buildings are planned. It still strikes me as a bad financial decision to build dubious infrastructure up front, but ultimately it's up to Federated to assess those risks and deal with their consequences. 

The other sticking point is that Federated is proposing to encroach on the right of way of the Bayside Trail for a short stretch east of Chestnut Street, while also adding to the public right of way with wider sidewalks on Somerset Street on the other side. While this is of some concern to everyone, it seems like the city is ready to demand strong urban design and architecture along the trail side to compensate, and I think it'll be worth it.

I also hold out hope that the developers might strike a deal with the owner of the abutting Planet Fitness parking lot — converting just a few of the trail-abutting parking spaces to compact or parallel parking could restore the Bayside Trail to comfortable width in the pinch-point. But since the owner of the parking lot is Peter Quesada, the same embittered crank who refuses to remove the fence between the trail and Trader Joe's, we probably shouldn't hope for much.

Coming Soon: A Connected Somerset Street

View Larger Map

This dead-end section of Somerset Street, next to the Portland Flea for All, is one of many minor nuisances to walking and cycling in the growing Bayside neighborhood. This particular one is located at the western end of the new Bayside Trail, and is one of the reasons that particular pathway is currently so little-used. The street seems to have been disconnected as part of the urban-renewal-era effort to turn Preble and Elm Streets into high-speed, one-way auto expressways.

Thankfully, that's about to change. The city has just put out a request for bids to re-connect Somerset Street across Preble and Elm, and to study possible routes to extend Somerset Street as a bike and pedestrian route all the way to Forest Avenue and Deering Oaks Park. Part of the study component of this project is expected to look into the possibility of making Preble and Elm back into two-way streets, and opening up new redevelopment opportunities on adjacent blocks — possibly something like this.

New Veterans' Memorial Bridge Opening Tomorrow

The new Veterans Bridge (first speculated about here back in 2008, then discussed again back in 2010, when a design and construction team was first selected) is finally opening tomorrow, on June 28th, 2012, with a fantastic new bicycle and pedestrian pathway that extends all the way from the West End to South Portland's Ligonia neighborhood.

You have a few more hours to enjoy the new bridge without any traffic. It will be open to pedestrians and bicyclists only until the end of a grand opening ceremony, which runs until 11:30 am tomorrow. After that, cars will roam free on the main lanes, but bikes and pedestrians will still be able to enjoy a nice wide path on the southern edge of the bridge all to themselves.

Corey of Portland Maine Daily Photo took some nice shots of the new, empty bridge late last week; you can take a look here.

Exit 7 Connection Finally Coming (Albeit Overpriced and Late)

After a long, drawn-out process of "analysis" (read: inflating costs far beyond necessary) the Maine DOT is finally preparing to install a basic sidewalk on Franklin Street under Exit 7 to connect the Back Cove Trail to Marginal Way, after failing to do so last summer when construction crews were rebuilding the intersection anyhow.

It's going to cost taxpayers $200,000. Now, I'm pretty sure a single Eagle Scout could have done it for less, but at least it's getting done.

If you have any interest, Augusta's bureaucrats are hosting a public meeting about the project tomorrow at City Hall:

Public Meeting to Discuss Much Anticipated Trail Connector

City and state officials invite public to view plans for Bayside-Back Cove connection

Tomorrow, the City of Portland, Maine Department of Transportation and Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System (PACTS) will host a public meeting to discuss plans to construct a trail connector from the Franklin Street-Marginal Way intersection to the Back Cove Trail. The connector will help fully realize the vision for the Bayside Trail as a key link connecting the city's most used trails and parks: the Back Cove Trail, the Eastern Promenade and Eastern Prom Trail, East End Beach, and Deering Oaks. The connector will also provide easy and safe access for cyclists and pedestrians looking to travel from Portland’s downtown to communities off-peninsula.

“Linking these popular trails with a safe and accessible connector is going to have a tremendously positive impact both on the Bayside neighborhood but also for those who commute to the downtown by bike or foot,” stated Director of Public Services Michael Bobinsky. “The success of this project is directly related to the willingness of all parties, from MDOT to the city and PACTS to the public, to collaborate and work towards a common goal – make the city accessible to all modes of transportation.”

The public is encouraged to attend the meeting to learn firsthand of the preliminary plans for the proposed ten foot wide, asphalt and stone dust bike/pedestrian trail, ask questions, and provide feedback to the design. The $195,000 trail connector, funded by the Maine Department of Transportation with a 20% local match provided by the City of Portland, is expected to be constructed this fall. Plans for the trail connector will also be available for review at Portland Public Services, 55 Portland Street.

When: Wednesday, August 3, 2011, 6:00 PM

Where: Merrill Auditorium Rehearsal Hall, Myrtle Street, Portland

Negligence on the Bayside Trail

Anyone who's been on the new Bayside Trail has probably noticed the hair-raising crossing of Franklin Street, where trail users are forced to detour to a new, but incomplete, crosswalk at the Marginal Way intersection (next to the Planet Dog store):

The Maine DOT installed the new crosswalk across Franklin this summer to help trail users get across. It's a fairly lousy design that forces a clunky detour from the trail's natural path, which is cut off by a fence that Maine DOT installed on the median strip of Franklin Street (the red line in the aerial view above).

The fence forces trail users onto the new crosswalk, but there they find a more substantial problem: there's no walk signal to cross Franklin, and if you try to cross with a green light, you'll be forced to contend with a lot of vehicles making left or right turns from Marginal Way onto Franklin Street.

Crossing pedestrians tend to be in the peripheral vision for turning cars, especially at such a busy intersection. Everyone would be safer if the trail crossed in the middle of the block, where cars are frequently stopped anyway to wait for red lights to change, and crossing pedestrians would be more visible in the front of drivers' windshields. But to deal with the Maine DOT's lousy design, a pedestrian crossing signal was supposed to be installed at the crosswalk, and let pedestrians cross only when the rest of the intersection's traffic is facing red lights.

Several months after the trail's opening, that pedestrian signal still isn't there. According to neighborhood activist Alex Landry, "The company that MaineDOT has contracted to do this has ordered the signal, and is now waiting on it; as we all are. But the responsibility lies with MaineDOT, for not having started studying the crosswalks seriously until about January of this year. Their failure to provide a signal in a timely manner is unconscionable."

It's not just unconscionable, it's criminally negligent - as another Committee pointed out, the Maine DOT would never open up a major intersection to traffic without a functioning traffic light.

If you know anyone who's been hit or injured by a turning vehicle at this intersection this summer, whether on foot or on a bicycle, they should pursue legal action against the Maine DOT and project engineer Ernie Martin, who need to be held responsible for their petulant and threatening treatment of non-motorists in this neighborhood. A number of neighbors (including me) would be willing to help cover interim legal expenses on their behalf. Please leave a comment or shoot me an email (c.neal.milneil at Google's email service) if you're interested in taking action. In the meantime, be careful out there.

Friday Miscellaney

• Forecasts show that Maine's Department of Transportation's Highway Fund is going to be short 3/4 of a billion dollars over the next two years, as more Mainers ditch their cars and as the remaining cars on the road get more fuel-efficient (the DOT gets most of its money from gas taxes and vehicle registrations).
  
  The bad news is that the state will not have any money to invest in sustainable forms of transportation for the foreseeable future. The good news is that the state was never very interested in spending its money on anything but highways, and this should put a definitive damper on Augusta's highway expansion plans. Filling the budget gap this winter in the Legislature should be a golden opportunity to cut the Maine DOT down to a more reasonable size, and implement some sensible policies that would actually reduce the state's dependency on oil while we reduce the deficit.
  
  
• Corey at Portland Daily Photo has some nice photography of the newly-opened Bayside Trail. Also, check out his Flickr account for an on-the-street view of Park Avenue's freshly-painted bike "sharrows." These appeared last year, but the City has painted more of them this summer to make the routes more clearly defined and give motorists an extra heads-up that bikes are allowed to occupy the full lane on those routes. You can find more of them on Forest Avenue downtown and near Morrill's Corner as well.
  
  
• Broke207 brings up a good idea: a monthly Ikea bus on Concord Coach. My wife is a fine carpenter and might be offended if I showed any personal interest in buying particle board furnishings but I think it would be a big hit for most Portlanders, and Mainers in general.

Important vote Monday to determine the fate of "Fee In Lieu of Parking"

Next Monday's City Council meeting - at 7 pm on the 21st, in the Council chambers on the 2nd floor of City Hall - will decide the outcome of the Peninsula Transit Study's proposed "Fee In Lieu of Parking" concept.

Generally speaking, this ordinance would give developers of new buildings on the Portland peninsula an alternative to opt out of the city's parking requirements by paying into a new "Sustainable Transportation Fund" instead. This fee would be $10,000 per space. So, for instance, a new office building that would otherwise require 20 off-street parking spaces could instead pay $200,000 into the Sustainable Transportation Fund; or, alternatively, build only 10 parking spaces and pay $100,000 into the Fund. The incentive to do so comes from the fact that $10,000 per space is substantially less than the amount of money it would take to build a parking garage, and in many cases, it will also be more valuable for a developer to use their real estate for purposes other than parking.

The net result of this should be that Portland will reduce the costs of development while also diverting private developers' investments away from car parking, and towards sustainable transportation. Or, even more simply: fewer parking lots, more jobs and housing, better transit, and safer streets.

The net result of this should be that Portland will reduce the costs of development while also diverting private developers' investments away from car parking, and towards sustainable transportation. Or, even more simply: fewer parking lots, and more buildings, better transit, and safer streets. These funds could be used for sidewalks, transit facilities, trails - all the good stuff we want more of. The ordinance currently states that the funds could also be used for shared parking garages, and that's something we might want to press the Council to amend. But it's not a dealbreaker - the use of the Fund will be determined annually in public hearings, and as long as we continue to hold elected officials accountable, we can make sure that the money is spent wisely on sustainable transportation.

To give you a rough idea of how powerful this might be: the City has proposed a new 400-car garage for the empty lots along Somerset Street in Bayside, which could cost well over $8 million. But suppose a developer comes along who wants to build on the empty lots down there without paying that much for parking, and having most employees come in on on the new trail or by transit instead.

Instead of giving over an entire city block to a huge garage, they might choose to build a much smaller 100-car garage on a smaller footprint for about $2 million, build more office space where the parking would have gone, and then pay $3 million (that's 300 times $10,000) into the Sustainable Transportation Fund in lieu of parking.

$3 million is a lot of money. It would be enough to buy 4 new buses for METRO and potentially establish a new bus route to deliver employees into Bayside, for instance. Or to build (with matching funds from the state and federal governments) a substantial part of the new Franklin Street. Or pay for a year's worth of commuter rail services between Portland, Brunswick, and Biddeford. It's serious money for the kinds of projects we'd like to see happen here.

So, at the end of the day, this hypothetical Bayside situation would yield:

• more land in Bayside dedicated to functional living and workspace, instead of parking;
• 300 fewer cars coming into the peninsula every day;
• $3 million for safer streets and/or new transit infrastructure;
• 300 more transit riders/walkers/cyclists;
• the developer saves $3 million by building a smaller garage and has more space to rent out as well;
• lower rents for the developer's tenants - i.e., Portland businesses and households.

We should get a big turnout on Monday night from the city's bike/ped community, from transit supporters, from Portland Trails, from environmentalists, business people, affordable housing activists - EVERYONE - to show the City Council that their voters support this idea. I'd like to recruit at least ten people from the Bike/Ped Committee alone. The good news is that this vote is near the beginning of the evening's agenda, which means that it won't be a late night - we might even be out of there by 8 PM. And maybe celebrate with a frosty pint afterwards.

Please comment below if you think you can be there, so I can have a rough idea of turnout. If you can't be there, please consider writing to our Councilors to let them know you support the idea. Here's their contact information.

You can read the Council's evening agenda and its associated backup material here. The proposed Fee in Lieu ordinance packet begins on page 70 of that PDF.

Thanks, everyone!

Unelected Bureaucrats tell City Council: "Screw You, Augusta Knows Best"

Update: The League of Young Voters has sent out an action alert, asking members to call Governor Baldacci (287-3531) and hold his administration's highway planners accountable (a sample call script is below)

"Doesn't the Gov. want to promote energy independence? Blocking willing pedestrians with chain link fences and threatening their safety with unmarked street crossings next to the Park and Ride lot is not the way we would suggest promoting efficiency."

Last month, the Portland City Council passed a resolution calling for the Maine DOT to include basic pedestrian safety facilities when it widened Exit 7 at the junction of Franklin Street and Marginal Way. Exit 7, you may recall, is a long-planned trail connection between Bayside and Back Cove under I-296, the state-owned traffic sewer that monopolizes valuable waterfront real estate.

Traffic levels are still flat, and Augusta is still billions of dollars short of being able to do basic road repair for most of the state. But the Maine Department of Transportation is nevertheless STILL shoving forward a multi-million dollar freeway widening here. It recently released plans for construction, and intends to take bids from construction firms beginning on Wednesday.

Last month, the Portland City Council passed a resolution that this project would include basic sidewalks and crosswalks for pedestrians to negotiate their way between the busy Park and Ride Lot, the new developments on Marginal Way, and the Back Cove Trail. A trail connection between Marginal Way and Back Cove at this location has been called for in the City's Comprehensive Plan since 1990.

Also last month, Federal Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood declared "the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized."

"We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities. [source]

But Augusta's construction drawings conspicuously omit any pedestrian safety measures in defiance of local elected officials and these new federal policies (not to mention basic common sense).

The plans would only build a short, 8' wide sidewalk under the freeway overpasses themselves. This sidewalk wouldn't be connected to the Back Cove Trail or the Marginal Way sidewalk. Quite the opposite: MDOT is actually going to spend a few thousand taxpayer dollars on not one but two chain-link fences to prevent anyone from using the sidewalk (at least until volunteers from the neighborhood "repair" the fences themselves).

This sidewalk would not have any lighting. It would be a narrow, dark alley squeezed next to speeding freeway traffic. Remember, they're calling this a "safety improvement".

MDOT is also refusing to build any crosswalks between the Park and Ride lot and adjacent sidewalks on the other side of Franklin Street and Marginal Way.

The plans do allow for future crosswalks to be built, someday. But they are conspicuously labeled "BY OTHERS," meaning that the State of Maine is refusing to pay for them. Instead, local Portland taxpayers will have to pay the bill to clean up MDOT's mess.

You can look at the plans yourself by following this link.

I find it pretty incredible that a few unelected bureaucrats in Augusta feel entitled to defy local elected officials so brazenly. Is Portland's City Council really going to take this?

Update: The League of Young Voters has sent out an action alert: "Can you make some time today to put in a quick phone call to the Governor and let him know what his administration is up to? The office's number is 287-3531. "

Here's a sample call script, written by local activist Steve Scharf:

Hello my name is ________ and I am calling about MDOT's plans for the I-295 Exit 7 in Portland project. I am appalled that after the public and the City of Portland has made it clear that they want a fully functioning, well-lit, 10' wide trail connection with crosswalks, that the bid is going out with no crosswalks and two chain link fences to block access between Back Cove and Marginal Way.

Please pull this bid document back and add the requirements to make this a fully usable trail connection in the city of Portland.

Again my name is _______________________, my phone is ____________ and my email is ___________. Thank you for taking my concerns into consideration.

The New Veterans Bridge

A design/build team of Reed and Reed construction, a local Maine company, and T.Y. Lin International, a global civil engineering firm, has been tentatively selected to replace the Veterans Memorial Bridge between the West End of Portland and the Maine Mall area of South Portland.

The details are still scanty, but the new bridge is almost certain to be a huge improvement for bike riders and pedestrians who would like to make the three-mile trip between the Mall area and downtown Portland. It will create a pleasant and safe new crossing point between the two cities. But the new bridge, in a new alignment, also has the potential to dramatically simplify and calm traffic at the southwestern gateway to the Portland peninsula.

Here's what the area looks like now:


Those green dotted lines are the existing sidewalks in the area, and white dotted lines indicate crosswalks. There's a sidewalk on the bridge, but it dead-ends on a freeway offramp on the South Portland side. There's also the Fore River waterfront trail, which is little-used right now - its northern end leads to a freeway off-ramp and its southern end leads into the nightmarish intersection of the bridge with Valley and Commercial Streets.

This junction is a half-acre field of pavement, so vast that it's hard to see the other side. There are a full twenty lanes coming into and out of it, and it's a huge source of confusion for everyone who gets sucked into it. The truck in this Google Street View provides a good, unintentional commentary on how safe this place is:


View Larger Map

Fortunately, the word from reliable sources indicates that the new bridge design from T.Y. Lin would dramatically simplify and shrink this intersection by bypassing it entirely. Again, details are scanty, but here's a rough sketch of their proposal:


Instead of replacing the bridge in its current location, which leads into the Tombstone junction clusterfuck, T. Y. Lin is proposing to lead the new bridge into a new T-junction with Fore River Parkway, near the new Mercy Hospital campus. A new, 12' wide bicycle and pedestrian trail on the bridge would link to existing sidewalks and a little-used dead-end spur of the Fore River Trail south of Mercy Hospital. The word is that the bridge itself will also include bumped-out viewing platforms along its length, which would commemorate veterans, and that its length would be illuminated with human-scaled streetlamps (as opposed to freeway floodlights).

The realignment will save a lot of money, since the new bridge would be slightly shorter and allow the builders to work while the old bridge remains in service. But once the new bridge is open, there will also be an opportunity to reduce lanes and calm traffic at the junction of Commercial and Valley Streets, which will go from an awkward four-way intersection to a three-way T-junction. The five lanes leading to and from the old bridge will disappear, and turn into a park. But three additional turn lanes leading from Valley, Commercial, and Fore River Parkway would also become obsolete, making room for median pedestrian refuges, or larger sidewalks.

One of those lanes - the long, right-turn slip lane from Fore River Parkway to the old bridge - could be retrofitted as a new sidewalk on the south side of the railroad overpass. This conversion would significantly reduce the city's long-term maintenance costs on this smaller bridge, and create continuous sidewalks on both sides of the Fore River Parkway between Valley Street and the new Mercy Hospital campus.

More detailed bridge designs should be available soon, and some elements are still open to tweaking. A public hearing on the proposed design will probably happen in February or early March, so that final designs can be completed for construction in the spring. Stay tuned.

Paul Niehoff, a planner for the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System (PACTS) committees, writes:

On behalf of the PACTS staff and Bruce Hyman Planning, thank all of you for your interest and enthusiastic participation in the update of our 1995 Bike/Pedestrian Plan. A lot of thought and hard work went into this plan and we think its excellent document.

It can now be accessed and commented on at our new blog site; PACTS Blog.

We hope you enjoy and utilize it. Let us know what you think!

New stuff on the streets

The summer construction season got off to an exceptionally late start this summer due to the long rains of June. But the work is finally finished, and Portlanders can now enjoy a number of improvements in the city's pedestrian and bike networks.

For cyclists: this fall brought some major additions to Portland's network of on-street bike lanes and routes. The city painted new lanes on Deering Avenue from Park to Woodford's Corner, on Forest Avenue between Woodfords and Morrill's Corner, and on Ocean Avenue, between Forest and Washington.

Above: the new Deering Ave. bike lane. Below, the Ocean Ave. bike lanes.

There are now bike lanes radiating in three directions from Woodford's Corner, and the complete Forest Avenue bike route stretches 5 miles from downtown Portland to Westbrook. The separated bike lanes merge with traffic lanes at Woodfords and Morrill's Corners, though, due to lack of road width. Luckily, traffic is already moving fairly slowly through those areas, and these new "sharrow" markers alert motorists that bikes are going to be in the lane:


This fall, the City also installed dozens of new bike hitches in front of neighborhood businesses all over the city. I noticed them first at Woodford's Corner, where bike parking had long been a struggle - but not anymore.

I've updated the new bike lanes in the Portland bike map in the sidebar to show the new routes.

For walkers: the past year witnessed a pair of very convenient new trails open up in the East End, under the sponsorship of Portland Trails. On July 1, Portland Trails opened a new stone staircase that descends from Fort Allen Park down to the waterfront East End Trail, near the Portland Company (photos from the opening). And last November, PT opened a similar stone stairway that effectively connects Marion Street, off of Washington Avenue, to Fort Sumner Park off of North Street.

Another long-awaited trail - the Bayside Promenade between Tukey's Bridge and Elm/Preble near the old Wild Oats Market - also went under construction this fall. It won't be finished until after the winter is over, but in the meantime, the trail's path has been cleared and graded, which makes it a pleasant and interesting walking path.

Corey at the Portland Maine Daily Photo blog has published some shots of the under-construction Bayside Trail, an exclusive street for bikes and pedestrians that will extend from Elm Street in Bayside north to Tukey's Bridge and the Eastern Prom.

Much of the excavation for this project is being done in order to treat stormwater in the neighborhood, which is build on filled-in land. The "Bayside Promenade" will include raingardens and landscaped swales to collect and filter rainwater, rather than let it collect street grime and pollute Casco Bay.

Also in the works: bike lanes on Ocean, Forest, and Deering Avenues (several sections of these streets are still being repaved, after a rainy summer postponed work). Signs are up but the paint on the street isn't there yet; at this point, I wonder if Public Works might hold off on striping the lanes until next spring. Stay tuned.

ACTION ALERT: Call Rep. Pingree to Save Pedestrian Access to Back Cove!

The Maine League of Young Voters has just sent out a new action alert with a focus on including pedestrian and bike access through the Exit 7 underpass, between Franklin Street and the Back Cove Park. This connection has been called for in city Comprehensive Plans since the 1980s, and is a high-priority "missing link" in Portland's trail and sidewalks network.

Unfortunately, the Maine DOT engineers in Augusta - people who rarely drive through this intersection, and have never walked through it - have decided, by bureaucratic fiat, to block pedestrian access at this location by widening the freeway off-ramps, allegedly for "safety" purposes.

To be fair, the Maine DOT is proposing some positive steps: adding a traffic light at the end of the northbound on-ramp (at the 'd' in Bayside in the birds-eye view below), for instance, would give pedestrians a safe place to cross the offramps. And, although it's probably not the best use for the Maine DOT's rapidly-dwindling funds, I have no beef with adding another lane to the northbound ramps, which wouldn't affect pedestrian access and would give cars a place to rest while they wait for the light.

But there's no need to add another lane to the southbound ramp (the one that curves along Back Cove), which is nearly 1/2 a mile long and never has traffic congestion issues. The Maine DOT keeps on citing an arbitrary prediction of 30% traffic growth, which will supposedly neccessitate the extra lane. But in the past 20 years, there's been no measureable growth in traffic here - roughly the same number of cars come through here today as in 1985.

So now that gas is headed towards $4 a gallon and GM and Chrysler are bankrupt - now Augusta expects thousands of additional cars to materialize here? That's baloney, but unless we make a lot more noise, this stale lunchmeat will be forced down our gullets, with a lot more traffic to go along with it, at a cost of $2 million to you, the taxpayer. Building the safe, well-lit sidewalk that the city actually needs, instead of an extraneous highway lane, would cut the project's bill in half.

Portlanders sent a lot of grassroots complaints about the Maine DOT's spendthrift bullheadedness this past winter. In fact, I'm pretty confident that Exit 7 may have been a tipping-point issue in the Legislature's ultimate decision not to raise the state's gas tax this summer, as a few key legislators were forced to ask themselves why they should divert tens of millions of dollars away from Mainers' disposable incomes, just to prop up the DOT's Circus of Whimsical Asphalt Fantasias.

But now, we need some top-down pressure on the DOT. The $2 million that Augusta plans to spend on this widening project would come from a federal earmark approved in 2005, at the behest of Rep. Tom Allen. Now that Rep. Chellie Pingree has taken over that seat, she's in the best position to hold the Maine DOT accountable. After all, what's the point in her fighting for funding in Washington if the Maine DOT is just going to piss it away on projects like this one?

So here's your chance to hold these renegade bureaucrats accountable for once: call Rep. Pingree today. She and her staff are friendly and want to hear from you, but more importantly, if we can muster a few dozen phone calls, our chances of getting a safe pedestrian connection to Back Cove and saving a cool $1 million in the process will be much, much better.

Here's a sample script that you might want to use as a guideline, but feel free to riff with personal stories about walking and biking in greater Portland, and the importance of this connection:

-- 207-774-5019 --

"Hello, this is a message for Chellie Pingree. My name is ________ and I live in [City, ME.] I'm calling to express concerns over how the Maine DOT is planning to spend our federal earmarks to expand the freeway ramps on Exit 7, without providing adequate pedestrian access between Bayside and Back Cove. Some elements of their plan - like adding a new traffic light and crosswalks - are moving in the right direction. But their plan to widen the southbound off-ramp, thus blocking pedestrian access to Back Cove Park, goes against our state's goals for energy independence, fiscal responsibility, and reducing pollution. Please encourage the Maine Department of Transportation to spend some of the money from the federal government on sustainable transportation alternatives for our future, not more highway!"

Also important: let us know if you called, either by sending a quick note to Katie at the League office in Portland or by leaving a comment here.

What's in the stimulus for Portland

Above: the planned parkland along the Bayside Promenade Trail. The park and trail, which will begin construction within the next three months, are eligible for a $2 million investment from federal stimulus funds. That would be enough to landscape the park, but not enough to build an ill-advised overpass over Franklin Street (see below).


The Maine Department of Transportation, an agency that expects to lose $3 billion of taxpayer money in the next ten years from maintaining its unsustainably overbuilt highway network, has been granted a temporary reprieve from the federal stimulus bill, which will deliver $162 million for transportation projects. Most of the money will go towards fixing crumbling roads that MDOT can't afford to fix itself - but the good news is that the stimulus won't be building any new roads or highways in Maine.

The better news is that some of that money will be used to build new sidewalks and buy new buses, ferries, and vanpool vehicles for the entire state.

Here are some of the eligible transit projects on the table:

• $18.2 million for new buses, paratransit vans, and ferries to replace aging vehicles and support expanded transit services;
• $960,000 for new vanpool vehicles operating under the GoMaine program;
• $5 million for track maintenance and rehabilitation on state-owned railroad lines;
  
• $35 million to rehabilitate rails north of Portland and expand The Downeaster service to downtown Freeport and Brunswick.

Notably, MDOT dropped the ball on repairing Portland's hundreds of sidewalks and sidewalk ramps that are in dire need of repair. Augusta will now need to pay for those urgent projects out of its own pocket, using Maine's own gas tax revenues.

Instead, the big-ticket bike/ped item for Portland is a $2 million budget for the Bayside Promenade Trail (pictured above), which is supposed to begin construction this spring but has been lagging in its overly-ambitious fundraising efforts under the helm of the Trust for Public Land.

Potential funders have every right to be skeptical, as the Trust for Public Land's Sam Hodder has been single-handedly lobbying hard for an extremely expensive pedestrian overpass over Franklin Arterial. I've long been a supporter of the Trust for Public Land, but Hodder's bullheaded and unilateral cheerleading for the overpass idea is not welcome. Most pedestrian overpasses are magnets for crime and promote reckless driving on the expressways beneath, and an overpass over Franklin Street would feed into MDOT's desire to make Franklin Street look more like Boston's Storrow Drive.

Thankfully, the $2 million stimulus allocation for the Bayside Promenade isn't nearly enough money to build a pedestrian overpass over Franklin. Houston, Texas (where I lived in 2005 and where I still sporadically follow bike/ped issues) is planning two bike/ped bridges over its own freeways and bayous, both of which are expected to cost much more than $2 million. One, the proposed "Tolerance Bridge," would span a bayou that's about as wide as Franklin Street at a cost of $7 million. A second overpass with more basic architecture would span a four-lane expressway in Memorial Park to the tune of $4 million.

The Franklin overpass isn't ready to build by any means - it hasn't even been designed yet. But unless the Trust for Public Land is planning to build a hideously cheap pile of concrete and chain-link fencing, like the unused overpass that disgraces the Westbrook Arterial, there's no way they'll be able to afford to build an overpass here. Building an overpass at any price would only happen at the expense of the planned parkland that's supposed to be landscaped this summer. I can't believe that the Trust for Public Land and Portland Trails would be willing to make such an egregious mistake as that.

Other noteworthy local projects due to receive stimulus funds:

• The intersection of Riverside Street and Warren Avenue near the Westbrook-Portland boundary will be rebuilt with signalized crosswalks and sidewalks, plus traffic-calming measures
• Replacement of the railroad overpass on Veranda Street, including both sidewalks
• Traffic calming and new crosswalks at the driveway of Lyseth Moore School on Auburn Street
• Traffic calming around the UNE campus in Biddeford, including sidewalks and crosswalks on Route 9 (Pool Street)
• Construction of new segments of the "Eastern Trail" recreation path through York County
  
• New sidewalks in Gorham village, Wells Village (along Route 109/Sanford Road) and Bangor's Capehart neighborhood.
  

A bridge over troubled traffic?

Portland Trails' Bayside Promenade Trail, which would extend through from Elm Street to the Eastern Prom, will soon be unveiling its final design. One of the biggest hang-ups involves how to cross Franklin Arterial:



Portland Trails and the trail designers have big hang-ups over crossing Franklin in the middle of the block, where the trail's natural course would be. The concept design (shown above) would detour bikes and pedestrians to Marginal Way, to cross at a new set of crosswalks there.

For me, this is a mildly annoying design, one that essentially says, "go ahead, car traffic, you're more important here." It also fails to accommodate bikes: what if I'm headed downhill on Franklin, and want to take a left onto the trail? This design would force me to do a u-turn at Marginal Way and ride a short distance, illegally, on a city sidewalk, instead of making a normal left turn.

This design is also more backwards-looking than forward looking. Franklin Street is in the midst of a redesign, and the community's vision statement calls for a "boulevard... that serves autos, existing and future transit, pedestrians and cyclists equally... and provide for human scale, pedestrian-oriented development." The future Franklin Street will include many more crosswalks and slower vehicle speeds. Why can't we start here?

And the design ignores reality. If there isn't a crosswalk, people will jaywalk. Even on a group walk a couple of weeks ago, when interested parties strolled along the proposed trail's length, nearly half of the participants scurried across mid-block to get to the other side, rather than detour to the intersection.



The desire paths that already cut across Franklin demonstrate what will happen without a proper crossing. Build a fence, and determined pedestrians will cut it down (it's happened numerous times next to the Noyes warehouse at the Oxford Street crossing, shown above). People will follow the shortest, most convenient path across to the other side, regardless of the designers' and planners' desires.

Still, the inconvenience of a detoured crossing pales in comparison to some peoples' desire: a long, high bridge over Franklin Street traffic. This, they argue, would eliminate the inconvenience of detouring to Marginal Way, and make people feel "safer" by separating them from traffic altogether.

But there's nothing convenient about having to climb a 20-foot hill on your bicycle. And there's nothing safe about streets where traffic is encouraged to speed and pay less attention because there's a bridge instead of a crosswalk.

A bridge would eat up a lot of real estate that could be better used as open park space. And with ramps that begin hundreds of feet away from the intersection, it would make it way more difficult for anyone to enter or exit the trail at Franklin Street. In fact, by making the crossing less convenient in so many ways, a bridge over Franklin would probably encourage even more jaywalking than the detoured-crosswalk alternative.

Finally, there's the cost consideration. A bridge would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the trail's budget. For the price of a bridge, we could probably extend the trail westward all the way to Deering Oaks. I'm a minor supporter of Trust for Public Land, which is helping fundraise for this trail, and I've got to say that I have some serious problems with such a poor use of donor money.

The Veterans' Bridge Bike Path

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The map above, a detail of the Portland Bike Route Map, shows how the Veterans' Bridge Bike Path (in light green) could connect to bike routes on either side of the Fore River. This project would also be a great opportunity to improve the terrible intersection of St. John and Commercial Streets with the Fore River Parkway, in the West End.

And here's what it should look like: wide, separated from traffic, and full of bikes and pedestrians [image from NYC's Transportation Alternatives]: