"Dinner and Bikes" coming to Portland June 9

My old college buddy Elly Blue, whose name you might recognize from her writings in places like Bicycling Magazine or Streetsblog, is making a stop in Portland Maine for her "Dinner and Bikes" tour in a couple weeks, on Monday June 9. She and her partner, a vegan chef, will be serving dinner with a few short films about bicycling and bike activism.

Because dinner is included they'll need to plan how much food to make, so buying tickets ahead of time is highly recommended. You can buy tickets and learn more about the details from Space Gallery's website:

http://www.space538.org/events/dinner-and-bikes

See you there!

These days are Bike to Work days

Judging by the bike traffic I've seen these last few days it's been Bike to Work Day all week this week, but Portland's official "Bike to Work Day" celebrations happen this Friday. Downtown commuters can enjoy coffee, breakfast snacks and basic tune-ups in the morning in Monument Square. In the afternoon, South Portland bike commuters can stop by Bug Light Park between 4 and 5 for pizza and giveaways.

The weather forecast says that it will be partly cloudy all day, warming up from the mid 50s in the morning hours to the low 60s when it's time to head home. Perfect biking weather.

And in other news, the U.S. Census Bureau announced this week that bicycling is the fastest-growing mode of travel for U.S. commuters — our numbers grew from an estimated 488,000 in 2000 to 786,000 in the 2008-2012 period. Even after that growth spurt, we're still a pretty small slice of the commuting pie — a little less than 5% of all commuters in Northeastern cities. Still, it's worth noting that Portland, Maine in 2014 has roughly the same proportion of bike commuters as Portland, Oregon did in 2000. With continued efforts to make the city's streets safer and more enjoyable for everyone, there's no reason why we couldn't attract thousands of new bike commuters in the coming years.

See you in Monument Square on Friday morning.

"The Human Scale" plays tonight at Space Gallery

"The Human Scale," a documentary about Jan Gehl Architects (who were some of the key designers behind the transformations of New York City streets in the past decade) and their efforts to create safer, more human streets and public spaces in the world's cities,  will screen tonight at Space Gallery.

I had a chance to watch it last week and wrote up a review of the film for my day job over on MaineToday.com. Here's an excerpt:

The cinematography offers an engaging parade of street-level views of people and landscapes from various world cities. It’s like a 70-minute trip around some of the world’s best people-watching spots.

The screening at Space Gallery is being co-presented with the Portland Society of Architects, and viewers will probably be thinking about how the film’s ideas might apply here in our own city, where several high-profile urban design debates have been handed off for lawyers to decide.

Portland is no Chongqing, but we, too, are struggling to accommodate a significant surge of migrants — young artists, refugee families, job hunters, retired empty-nesters — who are all seeking a better life here.

In the abstract, most can agree that Portland should make room for more housing, more arts venues, and more car-free families. Yet every proposal to change the city’s skyline brings howls of protest from people who insist that we actually need more space for cars, or that new apartment buildings can’t be allowed to infringe on the ocean views of wealthy neighbors.

Unfortunately, “The Human Scale” doesn’t offer much insight on how to deal with such conflicts, and that underlies the film’s most serious shortcoming.

Read the rest, and watch the film's trailer, on MaineToday.com.

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.

Portland Bike/Ped Advisory Committee meets tonight

The city's bike and pedestrian advisory committee meets on the second Monday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall room 209 (that's upstairs, just to your left as you get to the top of the grand staircase at the front entrance).

I'm being taken out of town on a business trip, so tonight's meeting will be chaired by Jen Claster. Among the topics of discussion this month:

• Implementing the city's new "complete streets" policy
• How to get better, sheltered bike racks at the Portland Transportation Center
• The Libbytown study (you can find more background material, including concept sketches, on the city's website).

Portland's new Bicycle and Pedestrian chapter of the Comprehensive Plan

Please note that this meeting has been rescheduled to November 5th due to Hurricane Sandy.

The Planning Board's next meeting, on Monday the 5th, will workshop the rough draft of Portland's new Bicycle and Pedestrian chapter of the Comprehensive Plan (download the PDF here).

The plan includes a map of planned citywide bike routes, cyclist safety education initiatives, and a framework of "quality of service" engineering standards that will set measurable benchmarks for safer streets and sidewalks. This Planning Board workshop will be a chance for the Board and citizens to offer feedback and suggestions before the document goes to the City Council for formal adoption, which will give it legal force as a component of the city's comprehensive plan.

Bike/Ped Advisory Committee meets tonight

The Portland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets this evening at 5:30 pm in Room 24 of City Hall (in the basement level near the Myrtle Street entrance). As always, new faces are welcome, so come drop by and learn more about some of the exciting plans in the works to improve Portland's streets.

Please note that, while we typically meet on the 2nd Monday of each month, today's meeting was rescheduled due to Columbus Day last week.


On our agenda:

5:30 pm - welcome and introductions
5:35 pm - brief updates:

• Spring Street study (Corey)
• Martin's Point Bridge project
• Brighton/Falmouth/Deering study update
• new Munjoy Hill bike lane!

5:45 pm - Meet Jeremiah Bartlett, the city's new Transportation Engineer

6 pm - Nominate rep. from PBPAC to Libbytown Traffic and Streetscape Study citizens' advisory committee

6:10 pm - Discuss candidate studies for funding under the regional "urban planning work plan" listed here).

6:20 pm - Open Streets Update (Jen and Zach)

Projects in Planning

Next Tuesday's planning board hearing will discuss some interesting upcoming building projects:

• Portland Yacht Services is proposing to build and relocate to a new boatyard on the western waterfront, under the Casco Bay Bridge. This could potentially represent one of the biggest private-sector investments in the working waterfront in many years. As Carol McCracken reported on Munjoy Hill News, the new yard might include a dry dock and berthing facilities plus large warehouses for indoor boat maintenance. The move would also open up the current Portland Yacht Services space (on the waterfront near the Eastern Prom) for redevelopment. 

• In the Old Port, East Brown Cow Management is workshopping a 7-story, 124-room hotel to replace a surface parking lot on the corner of Fore and Union Streets,  catty-corner from the Portland Harbor Hotel. They're only providing massing sketches so far, but even these early plans make it clear that the developers care about providing an active street-level facade along Fore Street, and a dynamic, high-visibility corner that resembles folded glass.
  
  It's nice to see a progressive developer proposing high-value economic development without sandbagging it with low-value parking to ruin our streets for a change. A well-designed, attractive streetscape is in these developers' strong financial best interests, as they also own the adjoining retail spaces in the Canal Plaza garage, where tenants will benefit tremendously from more foot traffic along Fore Street.
  
  
  
  
  
  This development would fill in a big gap in the Old Port's streetscape and help draw more foot traffic westward, across Union Street, and perhaps help spark more redevelopment on the massive surface parking lots that surround Gorham's Corner.
• Unfortunately, the "Newbury Street Lofts," that ugly parking garage with condos on top, seems headed towards final approval on Tuesday as well. I happened to meet that project's architect in the neighborhood a couple weeks ago; he was pretty upset with my critique, but tellingly couldn't find any faults with my arguments (it was my tone that upset him). Maybe the final design will hold some improvements — it would be a very pleasant surprise, but the architect and developer seem unwilling to budge on their assumption that new buildings need on-site parking (contrary to the evidence immediately above this bullet point), so I have low expectations.

Save these dates

• Tonight is the June monthly meeting of the Portland bike and pedestrian advisory committee. We're meeting in the stately State of Maine room this evening: from the front entrance facing Congress Street, take the grand stairs up to the second floor, then follow the hallway to your right to the end. We get started at 5:30 pm and will hear the latest about the Deering neighborhood byway project, Forest Avenue, the Congress Street bus priority corridor project, and the Bayside redevelopment.
  
  
• The 2nd Public Meeting of the "Transforming Forest Avenue" study will be on June 22, from 5:30pm-8pm, in the Merrill Auditorium Rehearsal Hall (20 Myrtle St., around the corner from City Hall). City planner Molly Casto writes that "the purpose of this meeting, open to the public, is to present a series of alternative design concepts for the study area, which extends from the intersection of Park Ave and Forest Ave, along the Forest Avenue Corridor, and through Woodfords Corner to the railroad crossing."


• The 2011 Active Communities Conference, "Linking Transportation, Economic Development, Health and People, to Improve the Quality of Maine Communities," will be held on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 on the Bowdoin College Campus, in downtown Brunswick. If you can get the day off, it's worth going (Brunswick is about a 70 minute bike ride from Portland, and you can take the 7 bus to Falmouth Town Landing to get 1/4 of the way there). For more information or to register go to the conference website.