Sunday, May 29, 2011

Bicycle Signals Moving Forward in Oregon Senate

One of the many unique tasks I have enjoyed while working at the City has included the chance to testify in front of the Senate and House Committees on Transportation related to Bicycle Signals. SB 130 has moved forward due to my testimony and response to questions. The last round was very contentious and there were several pointed questions related to the following topics:

  1. Compliance (we have some sense of this based on the early studies), 
  2. Delay to motorists (there's the potential for some, but we have kept it as low as possible without compromising safety), 
  3. Costs (they are truly minimal since we're adding signals where we already have a lot of infrastructure), and
  4.  Safety (our records have been very good in this regard).
The City has six now and we're in the process of developing some additional sites currently where it can improve the performance of the street network or we have bicycle only movements where it is intuitive. 

To address #1, #2, and #4 we need to get Portland State involved more to study the issue. 

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