Tiny illegal streets

The City of Portland's "technical manual" spells out precise engineering standards for the city's streets: they need to have two 14' travel lanes, 6 feet of grass on either side, and 5' sidewalks. These standards were spelled out decades ago, when automotive travel was the top priority in street design. Freeways use 14 foot lanes, but most of the city's historic streets have 10' lanes. The extra width lets motorists speed through neighborhoods with a minimum of attention paid to their surroundings.

This, thankfully, is finally being reviewed for changes in accordance with the city's new "complete streets" resolution. And a good thing, too, because a number of the city's best neighborhood streets are completely illegal according to the old standard. With new, more flexible rules in place, the city might gain more great places like these:

Tate Street, West End:

Summer Street, West End:

Dermot Court, West End:

May Street, West End:

Maple Street, downtown:

South Street, downtown:

Oak Street, downtown:

Casco Street, downtown:

Locust Street, East End:

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!

Tonight: final public meeting for Libbytown freeway ramp removals

Tonight at the Clarion Hotel near the Portland Transportation Center (on bus line 5) from 6:30 to 8:30 pm will be the final public meeting of the "Libbytown Circulation Study," which I'd written about previously here.

This will be the final meeting before the consultants present their recommendations to the City Council for endorsement. Word has it that they'll propose removing most of the connecting on- and off-ramps to Park and Congress Streets (shown in red below), except for the northbound on-ramp from Park Ave. This would open up acres of land for transit-oriented redevelopment.

Other positive elements of the plan would add sidewalks on both sides of Fore River Parkway to the bus station, shrinking the intersection of Fore River Pkwy. and Congress Street, new traffic calming, improved sidewalks, and landscaping elements on Congress and Park, and new, high-comfort bikeways that would connect the bus and train station to Deering Oaks Park and the Bayside Trail.

The public will have additional opportunities to weigh in on the plan when it goes to City Hall, but if you've got a free evening, consider coming down to Libbytown tonight to see what's in the works and express your support for a significant pruning of freeway infrastructure.

Also tonight at City Hall: bikeshare planning forum

There's actually a double-feature of public meetings for city-changing sustainable transportation initiatives tonight at City Hall. In addition to the hearing to remove freeway ramps in the Libbytown study (which I'd mentioned yesterday), we'll also have planners in town from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to help Portland set up a public bikesharing system (previously blogged here in February; more details in today's Press Herald).

The bikeshare public forum will be upstairs in the State of Maine room this evening from 5:30 to 7. The Libbytown meeting is happening in the basement level, Room 24, at the other end of the building. Stop by both!

Public hearing on Libbytown freeway ramp removals

Tomorrow, the Libbytown Traffic and Streetscape Study holds a public workshop at Portland City Hall, Room 24, from 5 - 8 pm (entrance is off Myrtle St. on the east side of City Hall). Displays illustrating the proposed changes will be available from 5-6:30 pm and 7-8:00 pm for comments, with staff available to answer questions. A presentation on the neighborhood conditions and the proposed changes will take place from 6:30 - 7 pm.

This study is a pretty big deal: it proposes to remove multiple freeway ramps that connect to Congress and Park at the western gateway to the city, immediately adjacent to our bus and train station (in fact, the cruddiness of this intersection was one of the first things I blogged about when I first moved to Portland years ago). 

All of the alternatives under consideration would sell off acres of empty space currently occupied by looping freeway ramps and make that real estate available for transit-oriented infill development, like housing or offices. All alternative would also install high-quality, separated bikeways to connect the bus and train station to downtown Portland, plus better sidewalks and calmer, smaller streets throughout the neighborhood.

Doing these things would be relatively cheap, and could be implemented in the next few years, but only if these ideas receive public support.

Here's my personal favorite option, alternative 1b (note the conversion of a freeway ramp into a bike path, which could extend all the way into Deering Oaks Park and ultimately connect to the Bayside Trail):

Click here for a more complete view of the alternatives being proposed.

The Social Life of Congress Square

In their pitch to the City Council, the architect for the Eastland Hotel's development proposal for Congress Square included a number of points from William H. Whyte's book "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces," a brilliant empirical study of what makes successful city parks work.

There's a great film version of "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" that illuminate Whyte's theories with detailed footage of New York's Seagram Plaza circa 1980. It's a lot of fun to watch, and not just because it offers a filmed version of the people-watching that attracts us to good parks. Whyte's observations and photography also brilliantly illuminate how subtle elements of design — things most of us don't consciously notice — can have tremendous impact on how public spaces are used.

Any Portlanders interested in Congress Square and its future should treat themselves to spending an hour with this film. Enjoy!

William H. Whyte - Social Life of Small Urban Places from Robin van Emden on Vimeo.

New proposal for Congress Square

My colleague Randy Billings has a good write-up of the Eastland Hotel's updated plan for Congress Square Park, including a couple of renderings.

I want to withhold most judgment until I see more details of the plan, but my first impression is that this is at least a big improvement over the last proposal we saw last summer — and probably an improvement over the status quo. It looks like the main question for the city now will be whether we want to hold out (and pay) for something better.