Vancouver’s first Road Garden will open in June.
According to the City of Vancouver, Heights Bike Garden “will provide a fun community area in the former Tower Mall. “The location, a giant progression bordered by Mill Plan and MacArthur boulevards, is about two miles north of Portland’s Marine Drive (as the crow flies over the Columbia River) and about six miles by motorcycle from the community of Kenton north of Portland.
The Bike Garden will be an off-street area where kids (and, I guess, other people of all ages) will be able to learn the basic rules of the road and enjoy biking and the rules of the road without the dangers posed by motorists. Known as “circulation gardens,” those areas haven’t been unusual in Europe since the 1950s. BikePortland first reported on one in Utrecht in 2009. Since then, gardens have sprung up all over Portland and Washington County. In 2020, we explained how the emergence of Covid sparked interest in the concept, and at the time, there were nearly two dozen traffic gardens on the map.
Vancouver’s Heights Bike Garden benefits from an empty parking lot that will one day become the Heights District, a mixed-use neighborhood that is recently being developed. The design was created through First Forty Feet (with the help of Discover Traffic Gardens), the company Heights. development. According to the City of Vancouver, this is the largest traffic turf the company has ever worked on.
If you’d like to help paint the design and bring the vision to life, the City of Vancouver will be asking for volunteers twice on the weekend of June 1-2. Fill out this form if you are interested.
The City will host a grand opening birthday party on June 8 from 10 a. m. 1 p. m. at 5411 Mill Plain Blvd. Vancouver, Anne McEnerny-Ogle and other City Council members will attend, and local nonprofit Bike Clark County will offer motorcycle protection courses.
It brings back memories of the ’90s, when the Tower Mall DMV had repainted a segment of that parking lot for education and motorcycle license testing. All that’s missing are motors and instructors with clipboards, but that’s okay.
Whoo hooArray. . . now, for those of you who live in North Portland (since downtown Vancouver is the closest hub. . . ), you can stay pedaling. Now, if that hill at Mill Plain or Blandford is too steep for kids just get on the Mill Plain BRT (the red vine). Or the CTRAN 105 Express bus from Portland.
https://www. c-tran. com/routes/the-vine-on-mill-plain
And look around. . . because this district, in the early 1960s, planned the direction of the “future” I-205. . . who intended to join Blandford Trench from Portland (33rd Avenue?). It’s been a disaster at Chkalov/SE 112th Av/Mill Plain.
I guess it’s okay, but it seems like wasted money. The challenge isn’t that cyclists don’t know how to use the infrastructure. The challenge is that cars don’t have enough infrastructure to make them safer, and car legislation isn’t enforced enough. I literally wonder how useful this will be.
Alex
It’s actually for young people. And I think the challenge is that a lot of young kids don’t accept and don’t understand how to use the infrastructure, so it’s actually perfect. In addition, the concept is about 75 years old and has been proven over time. Can Vancouver’s cycling culture help?For me, it’s a question, but I know there’s a growing interest in cycling there and Bike Clark County is doing a wonderful job, so it could turn into something really wonderful. Who knows, maybe the demand will be more wonderful than expected. Like many other people in this field, they don’t have anywhere where they believe young people can travel safely.
Seriously, I hope it’s a success. My son would have loved to do it.
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