npGREENWAY

friends of the north portland greenway trail

 

Meeting Date: Tuesday, 15 January 2008

Meeting Start: 7:00AM

Meeting End: 8:30AM

Location: Madrona Hill Café

Attendees: Pam Arden, Breen Goodwin, Curt Schneider, Adam Robins, Francie Royce, Jason Starman, Lenny Anderson, Paul Maresh, Scott Mizée

Guests: Roger Geller (City of Portland Bicycle Coordinator), Barbara Quinn (Cathedral Park NA, Friends of Baltimore Woods)

Absent with our regrets: Joe Adamski, Mary Jaron Kelly

 

 

Breen’s Departure

This will be Breen’s last meeting.  She is moving to Philadelphia.  Everyone expressed their gratefulness for all the work Breen has done with our graphics and brochures.  She will be missed.

 

Roger Geller

Roger spoke to us about Rails to Trails Conservancy (RTC) 2010 Campaign for Active Transportation.  See the RTC Website for a great summary article: http://www.railtrails.org/whatwedo/trailadvocacy/2010Campaign.html

“In the last transportation bill (SAFETEA-LU), Congress funded the Non-motorized Transportation Pilot Program, a demonstration effort to promote active transportation for urban mobility.”  The program set aside $25million ea for four communities (Marin, Calif., Minneapolis, Minn., Sheboygan, Wis., and Columbia, Mo.) to see what communities can do to make focused investments to increase the bicycle and walking mode split.

 

RTC and the City of Portland would like to expand this concept with the next federal hwy bill.  They want to get $2 billion to offer to 40 communities around the country…They want Portland to take the lead on this with $50 million.

 

There would be 40 Communities involved.  David Bragdon at METRO is very interested in building what he calls the Great 8 Trails.

His perspective was that $50 million would come directly into METRO’s coffers out of Federal Highway bill and would be put to use building “The Great Eight.”

PDOT felt this was too diffuse an investment.  RTC would like to have cities and counties of different types to take the money and use it in different ways.

RTC would like to go back a few years down the road and say, “See what we can do!” in hopes that then they can really ramp it up much like we used to do with investing in highway infrastructure….

PDOT went back to METRO and said this is not what was intended… would really like to focus that investment on a more concentrated scope of strategic “bikeways.”

 

 

Roger cited some statistics of Portland’s current “Bikeway” network including:

170 miles of bike lanes

30 miles of bike blvds

79 miles of off-street paths.

And something about Signed Streets…

 

Sam Adams has his “Safe Sound and Green Streets” proposal… which Roger thinks will pass… that will build about another 110 m of Bike Blvds…  See Map “Active Transportation Investments”

 

The idea is to create a series of Bike Freeways…to connect the city from each direction…

 

The North Portland Greenway Trail is one of those…. Roger says largest challenge is getting through Lower Albina area…

 

Paul Maresh asked Is PDOT looking at permeable surfaces?  Roger says yes…..  Lenny said he is working with PDOT on that for his portion right now on Ballast St with the grant received from [PDC?].

 

Curt asked, “How can we help?”   Roger responded that it would be good for METRO to hear from our group that we support the “Maximum Mode Split Package.” For reauthorization of Federal Highway Bill in 2010.  If this doesn’t go through, there aren’t any other large sources of money out there right now.  This is not a “Great Eight” trail focus like METRO was originally pushing for.

 

Paul Marsh asked about the Portsmouth Force Main.  Lenny answered that BES says they only need to rebuild the street the way it was…not with a trail on top of it.  UPS also plays into it.  UPS doesn’t want to lose mature trees.  If UPS builds a sidewalk first, then BES would have to replace it.  The result is a twisted riddle that “we want BES to build the street the way we would build it if BES wasn’t going to tear it up.”  There will be an open house next month….  2nd Wednesday or following as part of the outreach process.  There will be one during the day and one in evening.  We would like to advocate that they put a trail on top of the pipe easement along the lagoon or on Basin Avenue as part of the project.

 

Roger also asked us, “Do you have any supporters that could talk to their colleagues in Lower Albina that could support a trail?”  In response, Lenn;y brought up the Cement Road.  He noted that we have a letter in support of it from  adidas and Swan Island Business Assoc.  to the city but currently Planning is the party at play in the situation.

 

Letter in Support of Trails Coalition Group

Everyone in attendance signed the letter that was attached to the agenda regarding trails coalition group…  Francie will present at meeting later this week.

 

Barbara Quinn RE: Trail north of St Johns

Showed Map of trail officially north of St. Johns Bridge… Idea is to connect Cathedral Park, Pier Park and Smith& Bybee Lakes.  The Park Bureau is trying to decide, “Should we leave it on grade at Edison St?”  The neighborhood association is in favor of moving it down to Decatur…

 

The neighborhood association is interested in preserving the woods on one side and keeping industrial on other side.  Right now The River Plan is calling out one or two areas on the entire greenway as White Oak woods.  The neighborhood association would like to preserve the whole area as habitat because they think it is more valuable….  Pressure on the neighborhood association is that property is being eyed right now by developers.  It has EG2 zoning.  The neighbors don’t really realize that, but developers are starting to discover it.  Lenny Anderson asked if Barbara has spoken to METRO about purchasing some of the land with the Green Spaces bond issue that passed last spring.  It is shown on Decatur in the River Plan.

 

Question: Does npGREENWAY support a trail to Kelly Point Park.  Do we support Decatur?  Yes and acquisition of adjacent woodlands… Yes  Curt asked if it was part of our mission to acquire the woods… We decided to say that we are “in support of the general idea of the woods” as they relate to the trail…more specifically we are in support of acquisition of trail right of way… The Port of Portland is supportive of the trail alignment.  Gregg Theisen is supportive.

 

npGREENWAY will sign and send a letter to Baltimore Woods and CPNA

Cc: METRO and summarizing the above statements of support.

 

Brochure

Spending $1800 and printing 5000 copies

We need to update our map to include the trail to Kelly Point Park. We should have been using all along, however a strategic decision was made due to space restrictions when original map was created.

This map would show that we explicitly support Decatur connection between Cathedral Park and Pier Park…. And propose to discuss the route options from Pier Park to Kelly Point Park.  There is apparently another one in play.

 

Strategy and Planning Meeting

Paul would like to have a Future Overall Strategy and Planning Meeting.  Paul would like to discuss the possible alignments at a larger public meeting….

 

Integrative Committee Meeting  

With River Plan?  January 31st?  Today (Jan 15) is a general River Plan meeting

 

Willamette Cove Meeting

Tina Kotek will convene meeting Jan 18th with all the various agencies responsible for Willamette Cove.  The purpose of the meeting is to try and nudge that trail ahead with the property that is already publicly owned. Friday 9AM Water Lab Pam, Francie, Barbara Quinn, Paul will be there.  We (the public) own’s the land… There is a planning document available.

 

Trail Coalition Meeting 

Francie and Lenny and Curt to attend Thursday at 4:00pm at METRO

 

Outstanding Tasks

Phone: Has anyone gone forward with getting and npGREENWAY voicemail and phone number?  This will again become important as we enter the spring and summer season when we are hosting walks and rides.

 

Business Cards: A desire to create some business cards for spreading the word was again expressed.

 

Notes Online: We will begin posting our notes online once they are approved.

 

 

 

These notes are accurate to the best of my knowledge.  If you discover an error, please contact me for corrections.  After one week of comment time, the notes will be considered final.

 

Submitted by Scott Mizée

January 19, 2008