Last Wednesday, a woman biking east over the Hawthorne Bridge was passed too closely by another person, and fell onto the metal grating of the bridge floor, according to an eyewitness account from a long-time Portland bike commuter who happened to be riding behind her.
The most common first reactions to this story, which has circulated among bicycle professionals by email for the past few days, have been anger at the impatient person who couldn’t wait to get by and allegedly caused her fall, and sympathy for this poor woman’s painful and frightening experience. While this is the most gruesome consequence of bike congestion and close passing to have come to our attention, it isn’t by far the first time we’ve heard about traffic jams on the Hawthorne Bridge multi-use path.
Our answer to the question, “Is this a behavior problem, or a congestion problem?” is, “Both.” Congestion brings out the worst in people, and also makes the consequences of impatience or poor skills – even when a tiny percentage of people present that problem – much more grave. We are all human, and at some point when places get too crowded, we start to bump into each other – whether on a path, on a freeway, at a concert, or in a shopping mall.
For the BTA, this crash raises long-term questions about both bike path capacity and bicyclist education. Are the Hawthorne Bridge bike paths wide enough? What would be “wide enough”? The paths are each 10.5 feet wide and, at rush hour, they jam up with some people biking in one direction and others walking in either direction. About 7,400 people on bikes travel over the bridge on a summer weekday, which accounts for about 20% of the vehicle traffic. At what point will these paths carry so many people on foot and by bike that the capacity of the bridge would actually increase by widening the paths at the expense of an auto lane?
This informs our advocacy work on future bridges, such as the new Sellwood Bridge, which at present has 12 foot pathways and 6 foot bike lanes in the plan, though officials have said that those may be narrowed to reduce cost; and the new Willamette River multi-modal bridge, for which pathway widths haven’t yet been specified, but whose funders (primarily the Federal Transit Agency, whose purview does not of course include bikes) tend to look at wider-than-minimum paths as an unnecessary “betterment”; and the new CRC bridge, which, with the exception of the section that would be under the freeway deck, is currently planned at the USDOT standard width of 16 feet in both directions for bike and pedestrian use.
Aside from the funding difficulties that sometimes confront planners who would like to include wider-than-minimum paths on these bridges, there is sometimes a feeling that no matter how wide the path is, “it will just fill up,” a phenomenon anyone who has lived near a newly-widened roadway for more than a few years can attest to. Yet when we are talking about non-motorized transportation, we want it to fill up!
And this leads to the second way we must address the consequences of bike congestion: education. The Portland Office of Transportation runs programs on the Esplanade and the bridges every summer, promoting good path-sharing behavior (bell-ringing, slow riding, leash-management and general patience) and the BTA backs them up with our own events.
In the 70+ biking workshops the BTA gives around the region every year, questions about the Hawthorne Bridge abound (“What side should I ride on?” “Is there a passing lane?” “Why are some people so rude and pushy?”), and as a result bike skills and manners for congested paths have been incorporated into all of our educational programs (like the 2008 Eye to Eye Campaign). And there is no question that we need do more in the future.
If you are concerned about path congestion, and about getting all people to be patient and mannerly on bikes, here are a few things you can do:
1. Scold people, as nicely as you can. If you see someone behaving in a way that you think is rude or unsafe, say so. Using language about how you feel will keep it from feeling like an attack to them: “When you passed me very close, that scared me” or “It makes me uncomfortable to see you not yield to pedestrians like that.” (Of course, as a slow bicyclist, I can’t always get these words out in time, or sprint to catch up. Sometimes “TOO CLOSE!” must suffice. And while this sometimes feels obnoxious, I remember that when I briefly rode my bike on the sidewalk in orderly, safe Copenhagen last summer, three separate people “tsked” or yelled and waggled their fingers at me; I was embarrassed and didn’t do it again.)
2. Tell the people building our next generation of bridges how important wide paths are to you: comment on the Sellwood Bridge, the Willamette River Bridge and the Columbia River Crossing.
3. Volunteer for the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Ambassador program. You’ll have an opportunity to talk to people about bike safety, skills and manners. (We hear that PBoT will be out on the Hawthorne Bridge today, Friday, doing an educational mission.)
4. Become a member or make a special donation to the BTA’s educational programs. You can sponsor a Commute Workshop, give to our kids’ Bike Safety Program or support the 2009 Eye to Eye Campaign. All three promote the courtesy and safety you value so much to thousands of kids and adults every year.
Do you have concerns we may not know about? Or ideas about how to address growing non-motorized congestion? Let us know – email me at michelle[at]bta4bikes[dot]org.
Update, 5/11/09: The Portland Bureau of Transportation gave out free bells to those who wanted them, and messages about good manners and safety to everyone whether they wanted them or not, last Friday. See the video here.
I have an idea to fix this problem. Basically, as I see it, the problem stems from bikers commuting into downtown during the day and out of downtown at night (rush hour). Maybe the solution would be to prohibit(!) pedestrian traffic on the congested side of the bridge (detours aren’t terribly far away) during rush hour, leaving the entire space for bikers for 2 hours or so in the morning and evening. I don’t think this would terribly inconvenience anyone and it would solve the rush hour problem.
I have wondered in the past why the bike lane is to the inside of the pedestrian lane? It has always seemed to me that if a slight bump collision occurs it is easier for a pedestrian to avoid ending up falling in front of traffic than a cyclist. Perhaps the travel lanes should be reversed.
While it is true that the Hawthorne Bridge gets fairly crowded at peak times, I think this incident is primarily a behavioral issue, and I think this kind of thing is nearly 100% avoidable, even in heavy traffic, if cyclists just have a bit of patience and learn to wait a few seconds before blowing by someone. We simply have to realize that as ridership in the city increases, we’re going to have to share the same space with more people, and we can’t treat separated paths like our own personal race tracks. Yeah, we should push for more space for bikes and pedestrians, but we should also nail down that these kind of attitudes are the same that cyclists and pedestrians get angry about in automobile drivers, because they endanger people.
This very morning I made a (moderately) illegal left turn through a red light at a ped. x’ing. (This was on SW Barbur & Hooker in front of the YMCA). I say “moderately” illegal because I’ve seen plenty of vehicles (including the kind with motors) do the exact same thing here. Inbound traffic down Barbur is so fast and heavy, and you wait so long for a left, that when a pedestrian triggers the light, you take advantage.
Aaaaanyway, an inbound cyclist stopped at the light shouted at me: “Dude, red light.” He said this in as laid back a manner as possible, not particularly angry. But my first thought was “screw you, ‘dude.’ ” My second thought was “does anyone actually take constructive criticism when it’s being shouted at them by strangers?”
So I seriously question whether any form of “vigilante education” (“too close” … “it makes me uncomfortable”) would work.
Although … next time I’m at that intersection, I suppose I might think twice about slipping in a left turn on the pedestrian crossing light. That “dude, red light” has been bugging me all day.
Maybe the Portland version of the Copenhagen “tsk” would be “duuuude!” (in bummer voice) or “not cool.”
Verbal feedback works very well – I can speak from the receiving end of it – I made a left turn from the bike lane and got a “not cool dude” from an oncoming cyclist, and I’ve never done it again – I always remember it and act accordingly.
Imagine that, a bicyclist acting like a dick, on the way to the near east side. What are the odds of that?
I love bikes and cycle for fun and exercise and to and from work every time the weather permits it, which, sadly, is not too often in Portland. Usually it is the jerk drivers I have to watch out for. Someone last night beeped her horn and gave me a tongue lashing while we were stopped at a traffic light because she felt I had cut in front of her earlier while I crossed the lane she was driving on on my way to a left-turn lane, after I had let other cars go by, waited for a gap in the car traffic, and did a lot of left-arm signaling for my turn. I also have had jerk drivers yell at me as they passed me, had a firecracker thrown at me from a car last July 4th, and some asshole threw a bottle of coke from his car at my girlfriend while she was walking along a sidewalk injuring, fortunately, only her left arm. Finally, there is the jerk cyclist that always blows by me as he passes me on the left without ringing a bell or giving me the “on your left” warning. We obviously need more education for drivers and riders; share-the-road and yield-the-lane rules to protect cyclists and pedestrians; and rigorous enforcement of the traffic laws to get the jerk drivers and riders to mend their ways or off the road.
I am surprised there haven’t been more such horrible accidents, given the sometimes chaotic conditions on the Hawthorne bike paths. And reckless cyclists are not the only problem. Some bicyclists while well intended have physical limitations that make them potentially hazardous.
Me, for instance. At age 74 I still love to ride my bike, but neither my hearing or sense of balance are not what they once were. As a result, I normally cross the Hawthorne only on weekends, when traffic of all sorts is relatively light. The Steel Bridge, although out of the way, is a safer crossing option on week days. The lower deck bike/pedestrian path may be a bit narrow but at least there is fencing on either side to to keep riders and walkers from falling into the river or onto the railroad tracks. That’s comforting.
Wider bike paths would certainly be an improvement on any bridge for cyclists of all abilities. If the Hawthorne pathway had been 12 feet wide instead of 10.5, that accident probably would not have happened.
The article says the woman falling into the roadway is the “most gruesome consequence….to come to our attention…” A retired co-worker of mine who is an experienced rider was riding across the Hawthorne Bridge a year ago and woke up in the hospital with a broken hip. He has no recollection of what happened. Someone called 911. Last I knew he had not spoken with the caller so still has no idea how he crashed.
question, if the cyclist that fell on the grating was that close to the roadway grating, how did another cyclist pass her on the left to begin with? Not sure that was the case as it wasn’t stated above.
As with auto traffic, slower traffic to the right and passing (not lane holding) to the left.
If someone is so nervous and hence riding very slowly and all over the lanes, then they should really get off their bike and walk across, it seems a lot safer for every one on the bridge.
Everyday it is something different on the Hawthorne Bridge in regards to conflict, pedestrians and cyclists don’t always mix well when it’s rush hours. As the bike commute thickens I’m switching my route to the Burnside Bridge, I actually feel safer in the bike lane and cars passing me than dealing with walkers and runners and cyclists that don’t know how to share a lane.
Simple solution: Enact and enforce a 15 MPH speed limit on the bridge portion of the path. As a regular old guy commuter, I frequently have been passed aggressively or harassed by speed demons (often on brakeless fixies) treating the bridge as some kind of sprinter bike race, terrorizing pedestrians and bikers alike. For once BTA should advocate bike safety over speed.
Ultimately we probably need to segregate the bikes and peds. But as it is now, we need to give the foot traffic the right of way and SLOW DOWN and PLAY NICE.
I love the Hawthorne, but I always have that fear off dropping off the precipice into traffic on the grating … this accident probably won’t help the fear.
It is simple a-hole-itis on the part of people. As one above mentioned Copenhagen works fine. Unfortunately ‘common’ sense is not so common anymore, we in the U.S. cannot even be polite anymore. I blame it on [re]publicanism (the party not the idea) running rampant.
In the meantime there should be railings between the road and walkways on the Hawthorne. To me it is irresponsible that there are none.