The 2030 Bicycle Plan was unanimously adopted by the City Council on February 11th, 2010, laying out the blueprint for Portland to achieve 25% of all trips in the city by bicycle mode split to bicycles within two decades. When a progress report was published in the fall 2019 detailing a lack of progress, Bike Loud volunteers got to work creating a list of recommendations. Download our full report here.
Portland should have been delivering 34 miles of new bicycle facilities annually; instead, roughly 9 miles has been built per year on average since 2010. Portland has felt in many ways the costs of this gap in performance from not building out its bicycle network on a schedule that would deliver the 2030 Bicycle Plan network by 2030:
- Traffic fatalities: Portland’s streets have become more dangerous; in 2010 there were 26 total fatalities city-wide; while in 2019 at least 49 people were killed.
- Congestion: Portland is now the 14th most traffic congested city in the US. It was 20th in the nation in 2010.
- GHG emissions: By 2010, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector had fallen by 1% since 1990. By 2019, transportation GHG had risen 8% from the 1990 baseline.
- VMT per capita: Portland’s Climate Action Plan has set a goal of reducing per capita daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 30 percent from 2008 levels. In 2010 daily VMT per person had declined 2% from 2008. By 2018 daily VMT per person had only declined to 3.9% from 2008.
- 2030 Bicycle Plan Progress: Only 1/8th of the 2030 Bicycle Plan has been built. We should be halfway there.
To reverse these performance declines, the Portland Bureau Of Transportation (PBOT) will need to begin creating 59 miles per year of new, world-class bicycle facilities every year until 2030. BikeLoudPDX looks forward to working together with Portland’s city government, and all Portlanders, to get the city back on course to achieve our goals.
