Since this week’s theme for the Source Weekly is bikes, I was asked how important bike-able neighborhoods are to buyers. The only time bike-ability was important was for buyers who were mountain bikers and they liked having nearby access to trails. Bike-ability for commuting has never come up as being important, probably because most people realize how dangerous it can be to commute by bike in Bend.
Bend is touted as a bike town, but realistically, it is a great and probably high volume recreational mountain biking town as opposed to a commute biker town. Driving down Newport and Galveston and on 14th particularly, the bike paths that do exist are hazardous. Fourteenth has lots of debris, particularly lots of pine cones that appear to never be cleaned up and present a hazard to cyclists avoiding cars. It is nice to have bike lanes, but if they are not maintained, they force bikers to drive closer to traffic. Downtown is grim down Wall or Bond Street where there are no bike lanes, so bikers must negotiate traffic on narrow streets and watch out for people pulling out of head-in parking spaces. Downtown neighborhoods are scary as well and really not amenable to kids safely riding bikes to school unless they use sidewalks, which are non-existent on many downtown area streets.
The main impediment to encouraging commuter biking in town is that most people live in one end of town and work on the other, so biking can be an even greater challenge. This is something city planners and activists seem to be considering more often these days. If there were more bike friendly neighborhoods and amenities, this would become an asset to homebuyers and might be a factor in homebuying decisions, particularly to families who would like a safe commute for children.
House Round-up
<<LOW
20667 Cooley Rd., Bend, OR 97701
3 beds, 2 baths, 1,190 square feet,
.09 acre lot | Built in 2016
$239,900
Listed by Kine & Kine Properties
MID>>
876 NE Locksley Dr., Bend, OR 97701
3 beds, 2.5 baths, 1,727 square feet,
.17 acre lot | Built in 1995
$325,000
Listed by Fred Real Estate Group
<<HIGH
2630 NW Champion Cir., Bend, OR 97703
5 beds, 5.5 baths, 4,642 square feet,
.48 acre lot | Built in 1998
$1,195,000
Listed by Keller Williams Realty Central Oregon
Photos and listing info from Central Oregon Multiple Listing Service
This article appears in Jul 13-20, 2016.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
It seems like this is always a catch 22 for city planning. If few people bike, cities aren’t willing to invest in bike infrastructure and safety… but unless bike routes are safe and make it easy to get around, residents aren’t likely to bike.
I commute extensively and find it not nearly as harrowing as you propose. Of course, caution is always important. Downtown has never bothered me. For several years, I lived in NE Bend and commuted on Butler Market, Newport and 14th. Now, I live in midtown. My wife and I selected our current place specifically to be walkable and bikeable. I can ride from my home to Century Drive in 20 minutes or to Whole Foods in about the same time. That’s only a few minutes longer than it would take to drive. During Bend’s traffic peaks, I pass block-long lines of idling cars. The biggest obstacle to East-West travel is the obsolete underpass on Franklin Avenue. If we could improve that one passage, bike commuting would be smooth, efficient and safe for hundreds of bike commuters. Sure, I would love protected bike lanes everywhere, but I won’t wait for the future to reach Bend. For now, I see hundreds of other commuters making the best of what exists today.
I heartily disagree with the writer’s personal assumptions (based on their own opinion and not actual data) that (1) bicycle accessibility is important only to those who want to be close to Phil’s, and (2) the roads are too “dangerous” and “hazardous” to bike on. We purchased our house in 2015 specifically because the neighborhood was relatively flat and easily accessible to downtown, the Old Mill, and the Westside, and we ride at least as often as we drive, particularly for social events. Since then, I have become an occasional commuter cross-town, and while the bike lanes certainly aren’t protected, they exist, are adequate to the task, and are no worse than anything I biked on in other cities and towns. Surely the author could have taken the time to ask recent home buyers for their opinions, or contacted CommuteOptions or some of the other excellent resources available here in Bend for actual hard data.
Bike-ability for commuting has probably never come up because Bend is relatively easy to get around via bicycle. Anyone considering commuting by bicycle would be better off asking advice of a cyclist rather than a real estate agent anyway. Having commuted diagonally across town for many years, I’ve never considered Bend to be scary. Commuting by bike is fun, good exercise, and finding bike parking is rarely a problem. The main impediment to encouraging commuter biking is that some people actively discourage it.
I agree with most comments the readers have already made. Downtown is easy to navigate if you BEHAVE as a road user should – TAKE the lane when the need is there, folks. Honestly, the bike lanes are fine. However, as a year-round commuter, I’ve basically resolved to ride my mountain bike most of the time because of the piss-poor road conditions. In the winter, bike lanes are hardly ever plowed, even on main arterials. Currently, with so many potholes (and gaping huge cracks in side streets as the alternative), along with the mind-boggling utility and other road work occurring throughout town, I basically cannot use a road bike without popping a tire or bending a rim. But, with that said, it is still possible to commute okay and relatively quickly, as long as you can endure the ridiculously bad street conditions.