Bicycle Friendly Communities

Portland, OR | Platinum Level

Community Highlights: Portland is the first large US city to gain the designation and joins Davis, Calif as the only other Platinum BFC in the country. Highlights of the community include:
• Portland’s bikeway network includes 270 miles of on-street bike lanes, bike boulevards, and paved trails; another 6 miles of singletrack, 40 miles of bike accessible trail offer mountain biking opportunities in city parks.
• A city ordinance requires bike parking in new development and redevelopment projects; another provides a huge incentive for developers to provide showers and locker rooms.
• Six bike corrals have been installed, each replacing one on-street car parking space with 12 bicycle spaces.
• 400 bikeway destination signs have been installed (with 400 to come) on the bikeway network.
• More than 1,000 traffic offenders (including cyclists) have been through a two-hour “Share the Road” Safety Class.
• More than 400 bicycle light sets are distributed annually to low-income bicyclists by the city, Tri-Met (the transit agency) and the Community Cycling Center.
• 2,250 elementary students annually receive a 10-hour bicycle safety course as part of a larger Safer Routes to School initiative. The course is delivered by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and has helped increase bicycling to school by 5% in just one school year.
• The city distributes 35,000 citywide bicycle maps and another 35,000 local area maps. The citywide map is also reproduced in the Portland phone book.
• More than 9,100 people participated in the 2007 Bicycle Commuter Challenge, including 1,700 first-time bike commuters
• A Tri-Met survey found that three-fifths of area employment sites provide bike parking and ten percent offer incentives to bicycle.
• 20,000 participants in the Providence Bridge Pedal make Portland home to the second largest community bike ride in the United States (after Bike New York).
• 2,000 hardy riders fill the annual Worst Day of the Year ride in early February.
• The Bicycle Transportation Alliance boasts 3,000 members in the city and is just one of many advocacy and riding groups that organize thousands of rides, events and bicycling activities year-round.
• The city boasts 40 bike shops and more than 150 bicycle-related businesses that provide thousands of green-collar jobs and with an economic impact of more than $65 million (2005).

Most Signifcant Recent Accomplishment: Portland recently striped a “double-wide” bicycle lane to reflect the growing demand on one of their busiest corridors. Their bicycle use numbers reflect this, having experienced their third consecutive year of double-digit growth. The city auditor estimates that 16 percent of Portlanders use the bicycle as either their primary or secondary means of transportation to work.