Tonight: public meeting for new bike lanes on Washington Ave. and bike lane upgrades for Forest Ave.

Back in 2009, the city installed new bike lanes on Forest Avenue from Woodford's Corner to Morrill's Corner. At the time, they were a pretty big deal, filling in a major gap in the city's bike route network.

Unfortunately, the Forest Avenue bike lanes have never seen a lot of bike traffic. They squeeze awkwardly between a smattering of parked cars and the heavy, high-speed car traffic of Forest Avenue. This stretch of Forest is a recognized "high crash location" for motor vehicles and bikes alike. What little bike traffic there is is just as likely to be on the sidewalks – and I can hardly blame those riders from wanting to avoid the chaos on the asphalt.

Tonight, though, the city is holding a public meeting to upgrade Forest Avenue with buffered bike lanes and a center lane for turning vehicles both north and south of Baxter Woods Park (in front of Baxter Woods, the existing configuration will remain). The proposal would remove two lanes of on-street parking spaces, but those spaces are almost never used, so it shouldn't be very controversial. Still, a strong show of support from advocates will be a big help.

The city is also proposing a project to replace little-used on-street parking with new buffered bike lanes on Washington Avenue from Ocean Ave. (where there's an existing bike lane) to Presumpscot Street, a few blocks short of the Tukey's Bridge bike path:

You can find out more about that project here.

Here are the details about tonight's public meeting:


Where: Ocean Ave Elementary School Library
When: Tuesday 4/12 from 6:00- 8:00pm
Agenda:
- Forest Ave will be discussed from 6:00-7:00 pm
- Washington Ave will follow from 7:00-8:00 pm

If you can't make it in person, email comments to Kristine Keeney (the city's bike/pedestrian coordinator) and Councilor Justin Costa (who represents East Deering).

Bigger bumpouts aren't always better

The first phase of construction to narrow down the failed Spring Street urban-renewal scheme is just about complete, and for the most part, it's an improvement: the ugly median barrier is gone, there are fewer lanes of traffic, sidewalks are wider, and bike lanes are coming soon.

But even with the improvements, Spring Street still feels like a forlorn, too-wide speedway through empty parking lots. The hope is that some of those parking lots will soon transform into buildings, and then Spring Street might feel more lively. But for the time being, it's still a sad place.

The weirdest part of the new street is probably at the western end of the project, where the 1970s urban renewal project ended. There, the old street quickly bottlenecked down from 4 lanes east of State to two lanes a block to the west. The traffic engineers' plan for eliminating that bottleneck in the new plan has been causing some controversy. Here's a cyclists'-eye view of what it looks like:

Photo by Steven Scharf

 That's Portland's newest, biggest sidewalk bump-out, sitting right in the middle of what clearly used to be the historic path of the old Spring Street.

Now, as much as I like bump-outs, this design is stupid.

On the north (right, in the photo above) side of this corner, there's a clearly-defined street wall defined by the Little Tap House building, mature street trees, and other historic buildings a little further on up the street. And on the south side, there's a city parking lot – a remnant scar of Spring Street's urban renewal demolitions and a prime opportunity for a new building that could activate the corner.

But for some reason, the engineers designed the new Spring Street to avoid the historic corridor. Virtually of the site's contexts – the buildings, the trees, the streetlamps – tell motorists and cyclists to "stay right", but the paint on the pavement says, "swerve left, then right."

This, unsurprisingly, is confusing people. The Press Herald even got photographs of a driver rolling their car right over the new bump-out. To the driver's credit, this is exactly what the street's visual cues suggest you should do. But if you're a traffic engineer looking at a blueprint of the intersection, you don't see those visual cues, or the intersection's historic context.

Portland Press Herald graphic

Here's another problem with the bump-out: the reason it's so huge - two lanes wide! - is because on the eastern side of the intersection, in front of the Portland Museum of Art, the new Spring Street incomprehensibly bloats to 3 lanes, including an idiotic double-right-turn lane. While the rest of Spring Street got a road diet, this particular section senselessly got a widening.

The sudden bloat in turn lanes is obviously confusing to drivers – the driver who got caught cruising over the bump-out is trying to drive straight on Spring from one of the new right-turn-only lanes. The intersection worked just fine when there were only two westbound lanes there, though. Getting rid one of the three westbound lanes there and restoring the former layout would be an easy short-term fix.

And here's my final beef with the bump-out. The city owns a parking lot on the south western side of Spring Street. Greater Portland Landmarks owns the building on the southeastern side of Spring Street. Both of those corners are prime opportunities to activate a new Spring Street with attractive new buildings that match the context of the historic neighborhood and honors the historic street wall.

If we were willing to shrink the bump-out AND sacrifice one of the new right-turn-only lanes, we could actually get more pedestrian space overall, and get a more sensible intersection, and put more city-owned real estate to work to create new housing. How about it, City Hall?

Suburban streets get complete

Two large-scale construction projects have delivered impressive "complete streets" transformations along parts of Route 1 in South Portland and Falmouth this summer.

To the south, a sewer upgrade project along Main Street in Thornton Heights slimmed down a four-lane road into a two-lane city street in the neighborhood's center, widened sidewalks, and added landscaped curb extensions that will also help filter stormwater before it flows into storm drains. Construction's not quite done, but some of the new sidewalks and curbing have been installed, along with some of the basic stormwater filtration gardens:

Thornton Heights is a classic streetcar suburb, but the neighborhood has had a hard half-century since it became the dumping ground for traffic from a nearby Maine Turnpike spur road.

Unfortunately, the new Main Street is still only an island of walkability – it remains cut off from surrounding neighborhoods, thanks to that previously-mentioned Turnpike stump at the neighborhood's southern edge and the inhospitable stretch of Route 1 that leads through the ugly Cash Corner intersection.

Also discouragingly, South Portland city councilors last year rejected a proposal to allow more walkable and transit-oriented zoning in the neighborhood. So, even with a more urban, walkable street, it's questionable whether neighborhood-oriented small businesses will follow, given that the status quo zoning favors auto-oriented strip mall development.

On the other end of Route 1, in Falmouth, they've just finished a very similar street project for that town's main drag. This one also includes new, wide sidewalks, lots of new street trees, lighting, bike lanes and several landscaped medians for safer crosswalks:

Unlike Thornton Heights, Route 1 in Falmouth is mostly surrounded by strip malls and parking lots – it's hard to tell there whether you're in Maine or in suburban Texas, so the town's nice new street feels pretty lonely.

But Falmouth is one step ahead of South Portland in one important respect: it's enacted some progressive zoning to encourage new walkable development along their new main street. That's been slow to come so far, but the new sidewalks and street trees should help encourage the hoped-for investment.

Portland Street pilot bike lane

The city has repaved Portland Street and re-striped its wide expanse of pavement to give us a short stretch of bike lanes between Deering Oaks and Preble Street:

(an aside: have you ever noticed the terminating vista of the City Hall clocktower at the end of this street? Too bad the Libra Foundation's huge white elephant parking garage squats in front of it to block most of the view. Also too bad the public market that that garage was supposed to support failed after just a few years in business – probably unrelated to the massive, expensive garage it was hitched to, right?)

At a recent meeting, I heard that these bike lanes are being tested on an interim basis while the city gears up for a more complete reconstruction of Portland Street in the next couple of years. So, if you like what you see here, consider sending a message of thanks to your local city councilor and the city manager.

And also consider asking the city to go even further with traffic-calming on Portland Street. Removing some of the street's excessive pavement now could pay off with thousands of dollars' worth in annual maintenance savings in the years to come:

• Reducing the street width and adding trees at intersections with landscaped curb extensions
• Replacing a handful of parking spaces with stormwater treatment infrastructure (the 'pilot' layout increases on-street parking significantly with angled parking near Preble Street, so some spots could be removed in other locations and still maintain a net gain for automobiles)
• Narrowing the street and widening sidewalks between Brattle Street and High Street, where Portland Street had formerly ballooned to a four-lane roadway

Pavement polluters would pay for more sustainable infrastructure under proposed "stormwater charge"

During a 2-inch rainstorm, the parking lots and big-box rooftops of the "Pine Tree Shopping Center" and Quirk car dealership (pictured at right) dump about 1,500,000 gallons of oil-slicked runoff pollution into Portland's sewers, which proceed to overflow into the headwaters of the Fore River.

In a city that prizes its working waterfront and its locally-caught fish and lobster, this particular form of parking pollution is a big problem. The good news is that the city has committed to a $170 million upgrade of its infrastructure to handle this pollution. Even better: for the first time ever, parking lot owners, who are responsible for a substantial amount of the pollution, might actually foot a fair share of the bill.


Right now, sewers get paid for through our water bills; parking lot owners don't pay anything, even though their asphalt sends hundreds of millions of gallons of gasoline-slicked sewage into Casco Bay each year.

But for over a year now, the city's been holding public hearings on its proposed new "stormwater charge," which is its preferred way of paying for federally-mandated sewer upgrades for Clean Water Act compliance. The city's proposal would ask property-owners to pay fees in proportion to the amount of "impermeable surface" – rooftops and pavement – that they own.

This could be a significant step towards reducing the city's environmentally-destructive subsidies for motorists. Right now, parking lot owners are getting a free pass on the pollution they cause, but with the proposed stormwater charge, parking lot owners would be forced to pay to clean up Casco Bay.

In the short term, the fee will provide more funding for "green infrastructure" projects, such as traffic-calming sidewalk extensions that incorporate stormwater filtration gardens (like the one pictured at left, which was installed on Commercial Street earlier this year). And over the longer term, the new tax on pavement will help encourage more property owners to convert low-value parking lots to more productive, more urban uses – and encourage more motorists to leave the car at home.

The idea's got a lot of momentum behind it, but he city's also hearing a lot of opposition to this idea.  Anyone who wants to weigh in with a voice of support would help.

To learn more:
http://www.portlandmaine.gov/1331/Stormwater-Service-Charge

And to thank a city councilor for supporting this concept:
http://www.portlandmaine.gov/132/City-Council

Traffic engineers *still* want to widen Franklin Street

At left: Gorrill-Palmer Engineers' proposal for an 8-lane Franklin Street, blocking the Bayside Trail crossing between Marginal Way and Somerset Street.

This Wednesday, Oct. 1, will be the second public workshop for the Franklin Street redesign study. It starts at 5:30 p.m. in the main library's Rines Auditorium (on the basement level).

There's some good stuff being planned, but the team needs to be challenged – forcefully – on their proposal for the northernmost section near Marginal Way, pictured at left. 

 

Traffic engineers from Gorrill-Palmer – the same guys who proposed turning Franklin into a full-on freeway ten years ago – seem to have missed the long discussions about how this study's purpose was to make Franklin Street safer and friendlier to foot traffic. 

 

Instead, they've sketched out plans to widen Franklin from 6 lanes to 8 lanes north of Somerset Street. 

 

The proposal would make the intersection of Franklin and Marginal Way one of the most massive intersections in the greater Portland region – almost as big as the junction of Route 1 and Gorham Road at the center of sprawl-choked Scarborough.

The traffic engineers claim that extra lanes are needed to accommodate their forecast of 8% more cars by 2030. In other words, motorists will get more space to accellerate to freeway speeds, and pedestrians will get longer crosswalks and more opportunities to get maimed by motorists.

This section of Franklin would be the first section to be reconstructed (in 2016), so it's important to get it right – or at the very least, not make it any worse than it is today.

If you're coming to Wednesday's workshop, a good question to ask might be why we need 33% more lanes built in 2016 in order to accommodate science-fictional traffic that won't exist for another 15 years (if ever)?

Another good question to ask is whether the traffic engineers would be willing to film their children, or elderly parents, spend a weekday rush hour crossing this street on their own.

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).

Asphalt requiem

Construction crews have had a busy summer in Portland tearing out pavement. 

Up on Munjoy Hill, a repaving project along the Eastern Promenade re-arranged the curbs at the entrances of Cutter Street and at Fort Allen Park to reduce crossing distances for the neighborhood's foot traffic. In this photo taken shortly after the construction was done, you can see where the pavement used to be as the brown spot where the new grass hasn't quite grown in yet. 

The old intersection seemed to have been designed to let tractor-trailer trucks make the curve at high speeds; the new one acknowledges that Fort Allen Park doesn't get a lot of high-speed cargo deliveries. It's a lot more pleasant for everyone — even for motorists, who get more time to enjoy the views by slowing down.

There's been a smattering of these spot improvements around town this summer. On St. John Street, they tore out a lane of pavement in front of the Union Plaza strip mall and planted it with shrubs, trees, and boulders. In this photo you can see the old curb (which they left) in the middle, and the newly 2-lane St. John to the right. 

On Park Avenue between St. John and Deering Avenue right now, they're tearing up the parking lane at key intersections to build wide landscaped esplanades. Here's near Hadlock Field:

...and at Deering Avenue, the new curb extensions will create shorter crosswalks between Parkside and King Middle School:

Around the corner on Valley Street, some urban-renewal-era road widening has been rearranged with some nice new landscaped median islands.

Before (in 2011):

And today:

Aside from looking nice and making the streets safer for everyone, these projects are saving the city some real money. The Valley Street and Eastern Prom projects were done in conjunction with regularly-scheduled repaving projects. Moving the curbs and paying for the new landscaping wasn't cheap, but the costs were substantially offset by reducing the amount of square footage that ultimately needed to be covered by new asphalt. 

And from here on out, just from these modest changes, City of Portland taxpayers will save real money every year in reduced snow removal costs, less street sweeping, reduced asphalt maintenance costs, and less stormwater runoff from pavement. 

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:

Another choice for Congress Square

As many readers of this blog undoubtedly already know, the task of improving the mediocre public space at Congress Square has had the attention of a city-appointed advisory committee for some time now, and the new owners of the Eastland Park Hotel have pitched a proposal to buy most of the park's real estate from the city and turn it into a ballroom for conventions and events.


Unfortunately, the Eastland Hotel's proposal has galvanized the debate. On the one hand are out-of-town hedge fund managers who want to convert public space to private use. On the other hand are suburbanite activists who are treating this half-acre of downtown Portland like it's Yosemite Valley. The goal of creating a higher-quality public space that benefits the entire neighborhood has been mostly lost in the shuffle.

So thanks to Clifford Tremblay, an architect who recently moved to Portland, for trying to change the conversation. Clifford pitched these ideas for Congress Square at a Portland Society of Architects "Drink 'n Crit" earlier this winter (I was on the design jury while he presented this concept and I'll try to paraphrase his pitch here).

Courtesy of Clifford Tremblay

Clifford's proposal consists of two fundamental elements: activating the center of Congress Square by inviting through-traffic, and activating the edges of Congress Square with new uses and friendlier edges.

As for the first challenge — getting more people into the center of Congress Square Park —  Clifford proposes a new diagonal orientation for the park, to encourage cut-through foot traffic from Congress to High Street (see site plan above). The center of the park would become a secondary pedestrian-oriented street, defined by a row of trees and a water feature. Clifford makes the point, echoing a number of other architects and members of the citizens' advisory committee, that the current park's sunken design, with several steps leading down into the park from Congress and High, should be eliminated. Clifford would level the park with Congress Street, and relocate a more modest set of stairs leading up to the park to the western edge of the site.

Courtesy of Clifford Tremblay

The second crucial aspect of Clifford's proposal — and again, it's an idea that's been echoed by several architects, business owners, and neighborhood activists — is that the edges of Congress Square need to be more porous in order to invite more public use and public ownership. The sketch above shows a view of Clifford's proposal from Congress Street, with the Eastland hotel in the background. Note the active sidewalk dining on the eastern side of the park (this building, the former "The Kitchen" restaurant, is supposedly under contract to become a new haute-cuisine restaurant). The northern corner of the park, currently a no-man's land of bleak shrubs, is here transformed into a more inviting — yet still relatively secluded and quiet — spot for tables and a performance stage.

At the rear of the site, Clifford has optimistically suggested new windows and awnings to the Eastland Park Hotel's facade (currently a blank wall painted with a mural). Last of all, note the previously-mentioned lack of stairs between the sidewalk and the park. Sure, it's just a Sketchup drawing, but it looks a lot more inviting, doesn't it?

The primary strength of the ballroom proposal from the Eastland is that it provides an economic development boost to this part of the city. Still, what they're pitching isn't nearly good enough to overcome the opposition's strident concerns over the loss of open space. I don't particularly agree with those concerns, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, the owners of the Eastland need to do a whole lot better in terms of their own designs (a preliminary and pathetic example of which is pictured at left) if they really want to convince the public to surrender the less-than-perfect status quo.

This is valuable real estate in the heart of the Arts District. What if the City built — and collected rent on — a row of small artists's studios built to screen the Eastland Hotel's blank walls? What if the City leased park space to the new restaurant on the Congress Street side? These new uses could generate new rental revenue to support park renovations, while adding to the park's vibrancy as a public space, and improving property values in the surrounding neighborhoods. The Eastland Hotel's current proposal frankly can't compete with these possibilities.
 
This is still public space, and Portlanders absolutely should demand a higher standard of design. Thanks to Clifford Tremblay for changing the conversation in the right direction.


 

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.

Freeway deconstruction: now in progress

To anyone who doubts whether Portland will ever be rid of Interstate 295 through downtown and along our Back Cove waterfront: we've already started to dismantle freeway infrastructure from the 1950s. And so far, drivers have hardly noticed the difference.

In the 1950s, before Interstate 295 existed, the original Veterans Memorial Bridge was built with a freeway-like on- and off-ramps on either side of the Fore River to carry high-speed Route 1 traffic. Here's a road map of the area from 1957, when the Route 1 expressway was brand-new:

Here's a view of the grade-separated off-ramp on the South Portland approach that existed until early last year:

And here's what it looks like now. Fewer lanes, a cheap stop-sign controlled intersection, and a nice wide new path for bikes and pedestrians:

Has South Portland become choked with traffic since losing one of its oldest freeway spurs? No, it hasn't been.

The biggest impact to losing a freeway spur has been that thousands of residents of South Portland's neighborhoods now have safe and convenient access to the West End of Portland by foot or by bike.

And this is only the beginning.

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.

Next Neighborhood Byway: Fore River to Deering Center

PACTS, the regional transportation funding and planning agency, is set to approve a small batch of construction projects for the 2013 and 2014 construction seasons. There are some small changes being planned for Woodford's Corner that could widen sidewalks and make marginal improvements to the streets in that neighborhood, based on the Transforming Forest Avenue Study*, and some street reconstruction projects. There's also a proposal to extend the new Veterans Memorial Bridge path from its current southern terminus on South Portland's Main Street, in a bleak district of car repair shops, half a mile further to Broadway at Cash Corner, a bleak district of fast food joints.

But the most exciting project being proposed is one that would extend the city's first "Neighborhood Byway" from Deering Center and Woodford's Corner southward through Libbytown to the Thompson's Point transportation center and the planned sports arena/office complex, along existing low-traffic neighborhood streets (view a map here).

Most of the project's modest budget would go towards traffic calming, and particularly towards shrinking the size of jumbo intersections along the way to give bikes and pedestrians shorter, safer crossings of major roads like Brighton Avenue and Congress Street. The main idea is to make those big, busy streets feel less intimidating, and reduce their impact as barriers that prevent neighborhood residents from walking and biking to the bus & train station on Thompson Point, or to errands in Woodford's Corner.

For instance, where Sewall Street currently meets Congress near the Portland Transportation Center, the crosswalk is currently 70 feet long (longer that the crossings of the much busier Washington Avenue on Munjoy Hill). The Byway plan would move the curbs to create shorter crossings and improve the streetscape with new landscaping:

Moving north towards Woodfords Corner, the crossing of Brighton Avenue would also be improved for bikes and pedestrians with new crosswalks with median refuge islands, which will also help slow down traffic along this length of Brighton:

And finally, where the new Byway meets Woodford Street, there are plans for additional refuge island crosswalks plus — between the two islands — a short center-turn lane for bikes to negotiate the jog from Beacon Street to the contra-flow bike lane on Nevins (which, in turn, connects to the existing Neighborhood Byway to Deering Center to the west, and to the Ocean Avenue bike lane to the east):

Additionally, the entire route would get new wayfinding signage, similar to the signs that went up in Deering early this spring. If all goes well, this might go under construction late next summer, or in 2014.



* As several have suggested, Transforming Bits of Forest Avenue But Not the Parts With Four Lanes of Traffic and not the Drive-Thrus Either and Actually Not Transforming Most of It, Really But Can We Have Our Massive Consulting Fee 'K Thanks Bye might have been a better name.

Surprise! Munjoy Hill has a Bike Lane

Congress Street on Munjoy Hill has been going under a repaving project the last few weeks. Today, they're painting the stripes — only it looks like they've taken the opportunity to reconfigure the lanes a bit:

Awesome, huh? Munjoy Hill now has a nice wide bike lane for uphill-bound cyclists! Downhill cyclists can travel at the speed of car traffic, so a separated lane isn't really necessary on that side, but it sure is nice while you're huffing uphill.

This was a complete surprise to this particular bike advocate, and a very pleasant one.

Thanks, Maine DOT and City Hall!

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.

Calming Outer Congress

Outer Congress Street, between Stevens Avenue and the Stroudwater neighborhood, is a choke point in the city's bicycle and pedestrian network. Aside from long detours through Westbrook or South Portland, it's the only non-freeway connection between Portland and the Jetport area, a district with thousands of jobs and some of the region's biggest employers. It's also a gateway to one of the city's most scenic parks, the Fore River Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, it's been designed to be a dangerous speedway for cars. Large sections of the street don't even have a sidewalk, leaving bus riders to wait in the ditch. The natural surroundings give drivers the impression that they're in the countryside, not in a city, so that many of them hit speeds of 40 to 50 miles an hour along this relatively short stretch:

Image: via Bing Maps

When I first moved here in 2006, Stroudwater neighborhood residents had prevailed on the city to do a traffic study of outer Congress Street. Unfortunately, the hired engineers took it for granted that moving cars would continue to be the most important role for this public space. They also predicted, wrongly, that traffic would increase considerably. The study recommended only minor changes, and  the public that paid for it had little appetite to implement its recommendations.

This year, the Maine DOT is repaving the section of Congress from roughly Stevens Avenue to Johnson Road near UNUM. This presents an opportunity to make some more meaningful improvements, and city staff have revisited the old study to examine where it went wrong, and how its recommendations might be revised to make more meaningful changes for everyone's safety.

It's a good start. But to make more permanent changes, like landscaped medians designed to slow down traffic and give pedestrians a safer place to cross the road, the city will need to spend some of its own money.  The capital budget under discussion includes $175,000 line-item to install more traffic calming, better sidewalks and crosswalks, along outer Congress Street. Please write to your city councilors to ask them to support this expenditure (and if you do, please leave a comment with their response —we're trying to keep track of who's on board with this).

Here's an outline of some of the changes being proposed for the short term. You can take a look at maps at the city's website.

• Large sections of Congress Street will be constricted to one inbound lane with a left turn lane and two outbound lanes. This basically formalizes the status quo, where the inbound left lane is usually filled with cars waiting to turn left anyhow...
• ... but it also opens up the opportunity to create new median islands and crosswalks with pedestrian refuges, especially at intersections like Westbrook Street and Frost Street, or close sidewalk gaps, like the one between Stroudwater and Frost Street. It's also bound to help calm down inbound traffic.
• Near the railroad tracks (from near Frost Street to the Italian Heritage Center driveway), the road will narrow to one lane in each direction, with space in the middle for future left-turn lanes and/or landscaped median refuges. Pending the city's budget, this area could be the future location for a nice crosswalk to connect the Portland Trails network across Congress Street; the extra space could also be put to use to widen the sidewalks or provide better bus stops. 
• "Bikes May Use Full Lane — Change Lanes to Pass" signs (pictured) would be installed at several locations between Johnson Road and Stevens Avenue, giving motorists notice that they should expect bikes in the roadway and giving cyclists an opportunity to question the literacy of the sad, road-ragey motorists who honk at them.
• Inbound cyclists would also gain a climbing bike lane between the Fore River Bridge and Westland. This section has a blind curve, where slow-moving cyclists climbing uphill in the right lane are out of sight of speeding motorists coming up from behind. Even experienced cyclists doing everything right are one texting-and-driving teenager away from a disaster (it's a little better on the other side of the street, heading out of town, and there won't be new bike lanes on that side of the road). Like a truck climbing lane, this bike lane will give slower vehicles a little extra room; hopefully it will be combined with more permanent traffic calming so that the cars move a little slower as well.

Will Portland's "transit-oriented" development offer a way in for transit riders?

The Thompson's Point mixed-use development proposal heads to its first workshop at the Planning Board on Tuesday afternoon.

Commenters on this blog and elsewhere have been giving the proposal mixed reviews, accusing it of being too suburban in its style and layout to be considered a real "transit-oriented" development.

I think that's fair, but I also believe that some minor changes could improve it drastically, and make it much more successful as a business venture for the developers and as an interesting place to go for visitors.

This week's planning board workshop will be a good venue to advocate for urban design improvements. It's still early enough for the developers to make changes, especially if those changes might, in the long term, add value to their development.

Here's the site plan as it currently stands. The big building in the middle is the sports arena and event center; just to the south, and sharing a wall with the event center, is a hotel and restaurant. Two mid-rise office buildings are on the southern tip of the peninsula.

Now, imagine that you're a conventioneer arriving here from Boston by bus or train. You walk out the front door of the station and turn left towards your hotel, crossing the train tracks on your way, and see the event building where your event is being held. But then you get annoyed: the main entrance is all the way on the other side! You end up walking roughly the length of a football field, dragging your luggage, to round the corner - at which point you then need to walk along the edge of a large parking lot before finally getting to your hotel lobby.

May I propose a slightly better way?

Instead of attaching the hotel and event center, which inconveniences foot traffic, the Planning Board ought to ask the developers to include a pedestrian street running east-to-west between the events building and the hotel and restaurant. This would give transit riders a shortcut to the complex's other spaces, but it would give the developers a neat little outdoor space to give their development some street life - potentially something like Yawkey Way or Portland Street in Boston:

A more modern example is the "Center Court" outside Portland, Oregon's Rose Garden (in the photo below, the basketball area is on the left; a complex of restaurants and shops is on the right):

I imagine that the developers had initially proposed to attach the hotel to the event center to make it easy for caterers to move between the two spaces, thus easing operations. That's valid. But I used to work in hospitality myself, and there's an old joke that the way to make your work as efficient as possible is to get rid of the guests altogether. And in a way, that's what's happening here. Is having your caterers cross a narrow outdoor space such a high price to pay for accommodating your thousands of car-free guests from New York, Boston, and elsewhere?

Bayside

Ten years after the City published its "New Vision for Bayside," and three years after the financial collapse scuttled a competitive slate of development proposals for the neighborhood, the empty, city-owned lots along Kennebec Street finally have a new owner.

The Federated Cos. now own five separate building lots between Somerset Street and the Bayside Trail. Details are still in the works, but city planners have verbally described plans to build mixed-use buildings and (in the first phase of development) a 500-car parking garage subsidized by the city and federal governments.

Map via the Portland Press Herald.

The Federated Cos. website shows a portfolio of mostly architecturally bland apartment complexes (although a planned reuse of a historic mill site in Worcester looks like a more interesting and creative project) and only a limited focus on retail and office development.

Still, even a vanilla mid-rise apartment building would be an improvement for lower Bayside, where there's already an abundance of retail services and office space, and not that many apartments. Adding a lot of housing to these blocks will add a lot of housing within easy walking distance of three big supermarkets, a pharmacy, the trail, and downtown Portland's jobs. And even the blandest architecture is better than an empty, trash-strewn lot.

The city has built incentives into the sale agreement to make sure that Federated actually builds something instead of just land banking the property: " Federated would have six months to get permits and approvals for its development plans, or pay $3,000 each for up to three 30-day extensions," according to the Press Herald, and City Hall will also have the right to buy back the property at the same price if nothing happens within 2 years of site plan approval.

Photo of the Elm Street sidewalk near Marginal Way by Corey Templeton, from his Walk Around Portland blog. This is at the western end of the newly-sold property, and the only way to get to Trader Joe's, due to landlord Peter Quesada's spite fence.

While the fast-track provisions are designed to make Bayside more of a neighborhood, I'm also a little concerned that the city's anxiousness to build something will come at the sacrifice of getting a better project for the long term. Also, there's the fact that infrastructure in the neighborhood doesn't match the city's ambitions for a walkable, transit-oriented district: bus routes haven't been adjusted or expanded (even though thousands of new workers and residents have arrived in recent years), sidewalks are broken and discontinuous (see image at right), and the Bayside Trail, while nice, is not particularly useful as a transportation connection (thanks to bad design and idiot landlords like Peter Quesada, who erects chain-link fences in order to inconvenience his tenants' customers).

In an ideal world, the Federated Cos. would realize that they could reduce their parking costs and add value to their own project by making small improvements to the streets and sidewalks adjacent to their property, and thinking creatively about the empty and under-utilized spaces in the surrounding blocks. I have some ideas on that score that I'll write about here soon...