What would happen if Portland became a bicycle city?

I’m selling my bicycle.

Before moving to Maine, riding my bike from point A to point B was one of the great daily pleasures of my life. I didn’t think Portland would take that away from me. I was wrong.

On and around the peninsula, I have long been struck by the lack of cyclists (and pedestrians – another column). I didn’t move here by bicycle. I’m a Citi Bike user in New York and have completed many one-way trips and never had to worry about theft. When my first winter in Maine turned into spring, I considered buying a bike, but never went any further. My schedule lends itself to walking, and the novelty of a car (I had never owned a car) helped me balance my time.

Months have passed. I hadn’t ridden a bike yet.

Five days after starting this job, with the bright hope of commuting six miles on two wheels, I quickly bought a used Cannondale and a new helmet. I felt like I was about to get back to business.

When I was young, I cycled around my hometown of Galway, Ireland. Bicycles were common there and given plenty of space. During my year studying in Leiden, the Netherlands, my love for cycling deepened at a predictable rate. It was a place where there were almost no cars, kids didn’t use training wheels, adults didn’t use handlebars, and everyone carried a few weeks’ worth of supplies in carts. In a pannier bag. I’m not comparing Portland to the meticulously maintained cities of bicycle powerhouses.

However, you might compare it to Dublin. In Dublin, ‘extreme care’ does not apply in the same way, although cycle lanes have been established uninterrupted throughout the city, dedicated traffic lights exist at cycle level, and a certain number of cyclists is detouring. Streets like schools of fish.

I’d like to compare it to New York City. New York City is another place where I rode my bike almost every day during his five years, circling Brooklyn, speeding up and down Manhattan, and flying over the East River without incident. Stories about biking around New York City tend to elicit emotional responses. You shouldn’t. It’s easy to ride a bike there.

Getting around in and around Portland by bike is a real pain. That can’t be true.

This city is very bicycle friendly. It’s filled with people who are physically active, environmentally conscious, and interested in getting around by bike. And the way I see it, the car is king and its rule is tyrannical. It’s really hard to reconcile the nature of this place and its inhabitants with the severe lack of bicycles.

what will you do? We need more functioning bike lanes than anything else. We need to improve our unattractive public cycling schemes and do more to encourage people to take their bikes with them casually and intermittently. You need a safe place to park your bike, but there are very few of them. And perhaps a PSA is needed to wake up inattentive drivers and pedestrians.

I have only cycled to work once. On a Sunday morning in August, the timing of the trial giving me some idea of ​​how it was going to play out, I left my apartment in Portland and made my way down to the Veterans Memorial Bridge. Route 1 in the direction of Western Avenue in South Portland is civilized enough. From there to the Press Herald newsroom, your chances of being featured start to increase.

I was prepared for the lack of bike lanes. It was alarming that I couldn’t find any free space for my bike. Needless to say, several inches of life-threatening gravel, etc. have accumulated on the verge of doing so (inches undisturbed means there’s no one else stupid enough to do what I’m doing). ).

What about the intermittent installation and removal of sidewalks to avoid hazards? Or the fact that in Greater Portland there are no drivers ready to pick you up? Or once they do? , will they eventually remain to overtake you at an exaggerated distance and tempt a more complicated accident than when they start mowing you down? What about road rage? Are there potholes that cause us all to drive around like Cruella de Vil? How do I use my phone?

These roads are dangerous enough to drive, but they’re also dangerous enough to walk on. Cannondale and I never returned to the newsroom. We rarely hang out around town together. At my most defeated, I wondered: Am I just a wimp?

I’m friends with several people who are daily bikers in Portland. I must report that they are very hardy and skilled and many of them come from out of state. Still, they fight while taking defensive positions. Never switch off. Acting like a car and bending traffic rules is necessary for survival.

You can often see bicycle symbols painted in the middle of roads. attractive! Not worth it! In other places, seemingly serious bike lanes exist for hundreds of feet and then suddenly disappear. I can’t help but think that everyone would be better off without the lanes.

This act of dichotomy creates contempt for the limited bicycle infrastructure that exists in Portland. This undermines any perfectly reasonable expectation that bicycles are a legitimate part of local transportation.

Bicycle or not, that’s always my expectation. If you don’t have success on Craigslist this spring, you might take a deep breath and try again.

sbrett@pressherald.com

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