Business Leaders Help Win Protected Bike Lanes in Portland

"Multnomah was an underutilized street," said Wade Lange, vice president of property management for Langley Investment Properties, a real estate firm that does big business in the area. "I'd stand out there at 8:10 in the morning and I wouldn't see a car east or west."

All that empty pavement invited many drivers to hit the gas, blazing through the commercial district at 45 mph or more.

So Lange's firm, which had blocked bike improvements on nearby Holladay Street as part of its work on a 650-unit apartment proposal and a major new convention center hotel, embraced the green lane plan on Multnomah, one block north.

"It's about visibility -- if you're driving by at 35 mph in a car, with basically a tree barrier in front of any retail spaces that exist, you're not going to stop," said Lange. "But you slow the traffic down, you do the landscaping and you get more people walking on the streets, and suddenly the retail exists.

For property owners, that's where the separated bike lanes came in: As a way to build a coalition that would support a traffic-calming project.

"It just becomes a more active street than it ever was before," Lange said. "A place where pedestrians want to spend their time."