On my trip home last week, I saw some of Portland’s newest bike improvements. Here are a few photos.

A lot of folks are familiar with “bike boxes” which protect bikers in the street.

They’ve also tucked a bike lane behind a streetcar stop. As someone who commutes by bike in Arlington, I’d love to see the bus stops do something like this, rather than the buses pulling over into the bike lane and forcing me to stop or dart out into traffic.

Portland has just (in the past few weeks) established a new “cycle track.” It simply inverts the standard bike lane in the street to a separated bike lane between the sidewalk and the parking lane of the street.

Notice that there is a little 2 foot space there between the parking and the bike lane to allow for a door to open. This helps to deal with the big trucks that invariably block a standard bike lane. Here you can see there’s still room to get by!

All of this was done in the past few weeks with just some striping changes. No new concrete or asphalt was laid here. Its great that Portland has taken a little initiative where others haven’t and tried something that works in Europe just fine. Wouldn’t it be great if DC and Arlington would do the same?

Originallly posted on Beatus Est.

Erik Bootsma is a board member of the National Civic Art Society and of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.