Portland, Oregon is often considered this country’s bicycle commuter Mecca. As we reported here, the City of Roses has seen it’s number of bicycle commuters quadruple in recent years. However, this has not come with a number of speedbumps as well.

As reported in the Oregonian, this week begins a pilot program to test the effectiveness of bike boxes in Portland. Bike boxes are areas of specially-marked paint at traffic signals so that bicyclists can queue up in their own special place at the front of the right-hand lane of traffic. Automobiles must stop for the signal before the bike box. Also, automobile right-hand turns are not allowed at these intersections during a red light.

A Portland Police Officer prepares to issue a warning to a driver for not stopping before a newly-installed bike box (Source: The Oregonian).

There has been much discussion (here, here, and elsewhere) around the city about the effectiveness of bike boxes. However, as the city hopes to continue down this trajectory of being a great biking city, they are becoming more open to ideas such as these. The ground underneath bike boxes is expensive real estate to be sure, but they may get the city back on track to creating a biker’s paradise.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 11:17 am and is filed under Cities, Safety, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.