Tea & Flowers

This week, several organizations were working on traffic calming for the bike/ped traffic on the Hawthorne Bridge, which they did in an amusing way. Several stations had signs promoting using all 5 senses when in traffic, and each sense had people demonstrating using the sense - FEEL had a couple ladies doing yoga, LOOK had people with binoculars.



SMELL went with smell the flowers, and they had bouquets tied to the posts along the bridge.




Most people got a smile about the displays, much as they do about an amusing piece of public art. But apparently this is serious, as some perceive a problem with road rage amongst the users of the bike/ped way. The comments in the BikePortland.org post show some real anger. I ride this path nearly daily, and have to say I've not actually seen any altercations, so I wonder if it's a matter of a few people getting annoyed about having to hit their brakes in a high use area, and being vocal about it. Since next month the Morrison Bridge will be re-opening with a 15ft wide, separated from vehicle traffic bike lane, I suspect the percieved problem will evaporate when some large percentage of the bridge users head toward the new bridge.