Council passes $20M bike plan ‘jumpstart’ funding

Portland city commissioners have approved the first round of funds for what’s ultimately expected to become a $600 million plus bicycle transportation plan.

The City Council voted unanimously to earmark $20 million for the project which will build more than 700 miles worth of new bicycle lanes and other accouterments around the city. The vote comes a month after the council, after heavy lobbying from bicycle enthusiasts, passed the original transportation plan.

The vote marks a victory for Portland Mayor Sam Adams, who’d lobbied the council to shift $20 million from money earmarked for the city’s sewer and storm water treatment system to the bicycle project.

The mayor called the funds a “jumpstart” toward building new bike routes.

Adams reasoned that both the new bike boulevards and bioswales, which the sewer and storm water money would have otherwise funded, “make Portland’s neighborhoods safer, cleaner and greener.”

Adams said the bioswales fund was about $40 million higher than projected because project contract costs came in lower than expected.