Portland's Bicycle Plan for 2030

Portland, Oregon has a bicycle plan. Already known as a centre for acting on sustainabile living ideas and as a bike-friendly place, Portland has a vision for how it should look in 2030, and bicycles feature very large. I'm wishing I lived in Portland right now, but that would be too easy. I'm wishing Ottawa's mayor, city council and leaders could adopt the thinking of Mayor Sam Adams of Portland, who says in the Executive Summary to the 2030 plan:

"Our intentions are to be as sustainable a city as possible. That means socially, that means environmentally and that means economically. The bike is great on all three of those factors. You just can't get a better transportation return on your investment than you get with promoting bicycling."

That's a very strong statement. That's a statement that gets me really excited.

Hey Ottawa - we could do this too. We already have some great infrastructure in parts of the city on which to build and a cycling culture. Surely we can do what Portland is doing and do so with success?

Putting bikes front and centre in our transport planning would be good for our health and general wellbeing, our productivity, our economic performance, our efforts to tackle climate change and much more. Can we do it?

Well, Ottawa has a cycling plan and has recently allocated something like $16.7 million in the preliminary budget for implementing the plan (I'm not clear on how much of this 20-year plan would be covered by the 2010 budget). I know that the local group Citizens for Safe Cycling have responded favourably to this and you can read more about it here. These are good things, very good things. What I don't see, is a much of a vision for Ottawa.

There is a vision statment buried in the plan, but it's kind of uninspired. I guess that's what I'm griping about, the passion, clarity and vision that seems oddly absent from everything Ottawa does at the government level. I've no doubt that Ottawa is full of folks passionate about cycling who want Ottawa to become a leader in sustainable transport, but I just don't see those voices translated into what comes out of the city. Why is that?

My fear is that without a strong vision, we won't achieve these goals or grow and expand on our goals. So, how do we build that vision?