Building a ‘walkable, bikable’ city

SOUTH PORTLAND — It was 10 minutes to the start of the first public hearing staged by South Portland’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Committee and, with only the 10 committee members on hand, Chairwoman Rosemarie De Angelis said she’d “be delighted” if 20 people showed up.

She got her wish. Exactly 20 citizens turned out for the meeting, held Dec. 15 at Memorial Middle School, and afterward De Angelis declared the session had gone off even better than she had hoped for. For 90 minutes, attendees brainstormed in four groups huddled over maps of the city, looking for places where cars could better coexist with human-powered traffic. The purpose of the forum, De Angelis said, was to collect feedback from the community that will drive how the committee works, in a tangible way, to make city streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians.

“We don’t want this to be something that results in just a bunch of flip charts folded up and put on Tex’s shelf somewhere,” said De Angelis, referring to the city planner, Tex Haeuser, also a committee member. “What we want, really, is a plan that the committee can use to look at what projects we can move forward with.”

Haeuser said many suggestions from the focus group could be folded into work on he city’s comprehensive plan, now nearing the final stages of completion.

A number of suggestions centered on what bike enthusiasts referred to, only half in jest, as “Broadway Speedway.” As Patti Smith, the city’s mayor and a committee member, placed colored dots on a large map a pattern quickly emerged, as the dots began to form a conga line of trouble spots along the city’s main drive, grouping where it forms the “one, thin thread” that connects the east and west halves of South Portland.

“We couldn’t even identify one intersection on Broadway, because so many of them are so bad for pedestrians,’ said resident Peggy Stewart.

“My general takeaway is that we need to plan for Broadway in the ‘complete streets’ model for the length of the city,” said Haeuser, near the end of the session.

A design program pushed by the National Complete Streets Coalition, the “complete” model calls on planning for all forms of traffic on city streets. Typical design elements that might come to Broadway in the future include narrower lanes to slow traffic, cars sharing lanes with bicycles (rather than creating a separate bike lane at the edge of the road) and esplanades separating sidewalks from the streets. Another key element is sidewalk “bump-outs” at intersections, and “pedestrian islands” at the counterpoint of the crosswalks.

“If pedestrians feel safer, they’ll walk more, and the same is true of cyclists,” said Councilor Gerard Jalbert. “That’s the big theme.”

Other requests were to link so-called “stranded” neighborhoods, such as Sunset Park and the Red Bank area, to the rest of the city.

“South Portland has a lot low income families who don’t own cars and can’t get around because they are literally isolated over there,” said Christian MilNeil, at the meeting. “That includes a lot kids who can’t walk to school because the Maine Department of Transportation has highway engineers who didn’t think about them when they rebuilt Exit 3 a few years ago. In many ways, there’s a big social justice component to this.”

De Angelis agreed, even going so far as to suggest the Bike/Walk Committee should hold its next meeting, early next year, at the Red Bank Community Center.

“For many people in our community, if you wanted to get from there [Red Bank] to here [Memorial Middle School] either on a bike or walking, you take your life into your own hand,” said De Angelis. “It’s not possible to do it.”

Jeff Woodbury, a city resident and committee member, also cited the Exit 3 area, noting that trying to get under the Interstate 295 overpass there is “pretty sketchy for everyone.”

The new Veteran’s Memorial Bridge also was a frequently cited prospect.

“That will have improvements for pedestrian and bike traffic,” said Woodbury. “Now, we’d like a way to actually get there safely from Cash Corner and Lincoln Street.”

A number of attendees also cited enforcement issues, such as speeding and distracted driving, although De Angelis pointed out that South Portland only has four police officers on duty at any one time, making it hard to catch everyone who texts while driving.

“It’s gross,” said Chris Gorman, referring to the number of drivers he sees on a daily basis who are not watching the road. “There are just so many opportunities for something to go wrong.”

However, Cookie Kalloch pointed out that the problems are not caused by cars alone. Bicyclists have a responsibility, too, she said, to make themselves visible with reflective clothing and lights, and to show courtesy to pedestrians, by using a bell to warn of their approach.

“The vision is to have walkable, bikable city, because that’s who we are,” said Sue Henderson. “We’re not just a car route into Portland.”

A CLOSER LOOK

South Portland’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Committee was formed last January, early in the term of former Mayor Rosemarie De Angelis. Members include: De Angelis; Mayor Patti Smith; City Planner Tex Haeuser; Dr. James Tasse, education director for the Bicycle Coalition of Maine; Paul Niehoff and Carl Eppich, planners with the Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation System; Sarah Cushman, planner for Maine Safe Routes to School; Jennifer Thibodeau, director of the Rivers Region Healthy Maine Partnership; and community planner Katie List, from Portland-based Planning Decisions Inc., and South Portland residents Alan Mills and Jeff Woodbury.