The new Sunday Parkways routes have been announced for 2017.
The one big change is that there will be NO route in outer SE Portland (where the Lents neighborhood intersects with the Springwater Corridor, a MUP that has been filled with homeless encampments and which was the scene of some friction between Parkways participants and homeless people last summer).
Instead, PBOT has decided to create an outer NE route through Parkrose and the Gateway District, thanks in part to a grant from People for Bikes. PfB will give development funding to Portland to build new bike/ped infrastructure through the Gateway District.
We all know what happens shortly before or after such improvements come to a previously down-at-heel part of Portland: Rents go up; some rental properties are converted into condos or single-family houses for sale; and new businesses that cater to the new, leaner middle/creative class open. Soon, people of color move out and white people move in. Gentrification happens. And it will happen in outer NE.
People who are paying attention to this change in Parkways are crying foul. We are not being fooled.
We are not being distracted from the fact that the city could do NOTHING about the homeless encampments along the Springwater -- once a shining jewel of a Multi-Use Path but today a place so scary I won't ride there anymore, even in broad daylight. Because the city has no plan and no place to house all these people -- nearly four thousand, by some estimates. And the longer those who want to come inside cannot, the more volatile the situation will become. What was merely tension last year would become real conflict if Parkways returned to the Springwater, and that is part of why they're not including it this year.
You can read the rest of the story here:
https://bikeportland.org/2017/01/24/national-org-will-help-portlands-gateway-district-make-a-big-jump-for-bicycling-214543
...and here (be sure to read the comments):
https://www.facebook.com/PortlandSundayParkways/photos/a.473915695730.286974.166832200730/10154850568225731/?type=3&theater
No one who is paying attention is being fooled here.
Just sayin'.
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