8 • The Southwest Portland Post
NEWS
September 2012
Despite ups and downs, first Sunday Parkways in Southwest deemed a success
By Lee Perlman
The Southwest Portland Post
In July, more than 10,000 people
toured Southwest Portland by bike and
foot in the first Southwest Sunday Park-
ways. Cars were barred from a roughly
circular route nine miles long that in-
cluded most of Southwest Terwilliger
Boulevard and touched on Hillsdale,
Multnomah Village, Gabriel Park and
Maplewood School.
It is the sixth year that the event has
been held in various parts of town by
the Portland Bureau of Transportation,
but the first time it has been held in
southwest. Except for one experiment
with a loop through Mount Tabor
Park, it was also the first time partici-
pants encountered significant grades.
Not everyone liked the experience.
One Oregonian letter writer com-
plained that his child had difficulty on
the slopes, and called on the City not
to use such a route again.
“Hey, it’s the west hills,” PBOT
event organizer Linda Ginenthal told
The Post. “Vermont looks straight and
level on a map, but it’s not.”
Conversely, some local residents
told The Post that the event allowed
them to bike on streets where nar-
row rights of way and poor visibility
normally make them too dangerous
to ride on.
Roger Averbeck, Southwest Neigh-
borhoods, Inc. transportation com-
mittee chair and a participant in past
Sunday Parkways in other parts of
town, told The Post, “I’d be surprised
if anyone who came didn’t know there
were hills here. I saw many children
on bikes doing just fine.”
“It did illustrate the gaps and de-
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ficiencies we have here compared to
other Sunday Parkway routes. That
may be why not as many people ride
their bikes here,” said Averbeck.
In Multnomah Village, businesses
such as Annie Bloom Books and Sip
D’Vine brought their presence into the
street; Food Front in Hillsdale held a
berry tasting for the day.
During such events, “Businesses
need to consider not just the sales
they’ll make that day, but the chance to
have new people who don’t normally
come see what’s there,” Averbeck said.
The Sunday Parkways routes are
usually on local streets, but with con-
siderable effort Friends of Terwilliger
persuaded PBOT to close parts of
Southwest Terwilliger Boulevard for
the occasion, which was also a centen-
nial celebration of the parkway.
“People bike there every day, but
this was a chance to do it without hav-
ing to worry about cars and traffic,”
Ginenthal said. “The people who went
there loved it.”
There have always been pedestrians
at Sunday Parkways, but this was
the first time they were directed to
off-road trails, thus showcasing the
Southwest Trails network.
Don Baack, chair of the Southwest
Trails Committee, creator of the net-
work, complained that the trail com-
ponent was “poorly advertised” by
PBOT, but that “quite a few” people
walked the trail. Others signed up for
more information or to volunteer at a
Trails Committee booth in Hillsdale.
Because Southwest does not have
much of the street grid pattern found
in the rest of Portland, finding detour
routes for traffic was a more than or-
dinary challenge.
Indeed, Ginenthal said, the City
Bicyclists make their way along Southwest Maplewood Road during the Sunday
Parkways event, July 22. (Post photo by Lee Perlman)
made some route adjustments on the
day of the event. Still, she said, there
were not nearly as many complaints
as there had been in North Portland
the month before.
“We received phone inquiries in
advance of the event,” Ginenthal
said. “People weren’t surprised.” For
this she gave credit to the Southwest
Neighborhoods Office for getting the
word out. “This is what happens when
the community makes this event a
priority,” she said, “and that’s what
Southwest did.”
Southwest Neighborhoods, Inc.
executive director Sylvia Bogert main-
tained a booth in Multnomah Village
that gave out water and information to
participants. “Many people had never
been to Southwest before, and asked
for directions,” Bogert said. “It was re-
ally well-received by the community.”
Editor’s Note: Blocking off nine miles of
streets in Southwest, even for just one day,
can be a major event in and of itself. One
police officer decided that having motor-
ists enter the Wilson High School parking
lot (from Capitol Highway and Sunset
Boulevard) during the Sunday Parkways
event was too dangerous, and so blocked
it off. This definitely hurt business at the
adjacent Hillsdale Farmers Market.
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