Portland’ Offers Bright Ideas For Making Biking Mainstream. More than 83 percent of Americans live in cities or their surrounding metropolitan areas. In fact, our metro regions comprise 37 of the world’s 100 largest economies. As a consequence, the choices we make for our ”people habitat” have enormous impacts on our well-being, economy, and natural environment. The good news is that communities create efficiencies that reduce per-person resource consumption and pollution. They are critical to any credible approach to environmental quality. We have an important challenge, but also an important opportunity, right now: over the next 25 years, America’s population will grow by 70 million people (that’s equivalent to adding the population of Germany). What is a Sustainable Community? In its most basic form, a sustainable community is one that can continue in a healthy way into an uncertain future.
For more on what an ideal sustainable community might look like, visit A Trip to Sustainaville. Sustainable neighborhoods Sustainable metropolitan regions. Portland’s Bike Boulevards Become Neighborhood Greenways. Transportation planners in Portland, Oregon are taking their famous bicycle boulevards to the next level. By adding more routes and stepping up the traffic calming treatments, the city is not only making these streets more attractive and usable for cyclists, but also for pedestrians, runners, children, and anyone else who gets around under their own power. These next-generation facilities have been christened “Neighborhood Greenways,” and by 2015, over 80 percent of all Portlanders will live within half a mile of one. The city is counting on these re-engineered streets to reach its goal of increasing bicycle mode share from eight percent to 25 percent by 2030. Just about anybody who’s biked one of these routes can testify to the safety and peace you experience.
You’ll see scores of families and children riding to school with regularity. On a final fun note, one day Portland may also be able to lay claim to being the birthplace of the “sharrow flower.” [music] [music] Portland, Ore. – Bicycle Boulevards. Bicycle Boulevards in Portland are a thing of beauty, safety, and tranquility. They are also wonderful streets to live on. Mia Birk, former manager of City of Portland's Bicycle Program (1993-99), and Mark Lear of the Portland Office of Transportation explain a few of the many strategies employed to keep thru traffic off the boulevards and to make the riders using them safe. [intro music] Mia Birk: [00:09] This is South East Lincoln that we’re standing on here and the South East Lincoln Bike Boulevard is… it’s really cool because it’s like a metaphor for all that we’ve done in Portland. Mark Lear: [01:07] One of the biggest challenges to developing a bike boulevard is you can’t make it easy for cars to get onto the bike boulevard off of a busy street.
[music] Mia Birk: [02:21] People were very concerned about diverting traffic off of a street, how are they going to get to their houses and it might cause traffic on other streets to go up. Portland Climate action plan 2009. Clean Energy Works: Portland. Weatherizing Portland. Clean Energy Works Portland is a groundbreaking new program that enables Portland residents to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and pay for the improvements over time through their utility bills.
A contractor performing a blower door test to identify air infiltration and leakage throughout a home.Energy Trust of OregonBut the most exciting and unique aspect of the program is the Community Workforce Agreement that was developed by representatives of labor unions, community groups, businesses, community colleges, and other stakeholders. It is a comprehensive plan to make sure that new jobs created by Clean Energy Works Portland are high quality, career-track jobs that offer family-supporting wages and benefits, and that they go to local residents from diverse backgrounds.
The Energy Trust of Oregon will schedule home energy assessments for interested homeowners and help them choose the energy saving options that best meet their needs. Read the Community Workforce Agreement.