Register Guard: Bike-Friendly Town: The long path to a

“Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Bicyclists, Have Your Say!

So proclaimed a large banner across Eighth Avenue in early autumn of 1973. Almost 100 bicyclists, young and old, had their say during a nonstop, 12-hour meeting on Oct. 15 at the Lane County Courthouse. Eugene’s commitment to a signature amenity - its riverfront bike path - started there.

Most of all, bicyclists told the Eugene Bicycle Committee that they wanted a bridge connecting the River Road area in northwest Eugene with the developing Valley River Center. As chair of the committee, I and my fellow committee members set out to find funding for it. It takes a big chunk of cash to build a bridge.

Funds for such a project come from federal gas taxes, after a nod from the state Highway Department. To our surprise, Eugene was not the only city eager to fund bicycle facilities.

Competing proposals came to the newly appointed Oregon Bicycle Advisory Committee, of which I was also the chair. To my horror, Klamath Falls offered a superior presentation and got the committee’s No. 1 rating, while Eugene’s bridge was No. 2. Only one project per state could be funded, so Eugene was out.

Or were we? The state’s recommendation was only that; the feds made the ultimate decision. Hustling back to Eugene, I located Chris Anderson, the city’s first bicycle coordinator. She responded to my frantic pleadings. Architect Dan Herbert agreed to alter the four pages of single-spaced text to include numerous sketches and a fetching cover.

Leaving nothing to chance, I flew to Washington, D.C., and located the rabbit-warren-like office in the enormous transportation building, where I pleaded Eugene’s case. Sen. Bob Packwood shepherded the Greenway Bike Bridge project through Congress. This bridge remains Eugene’s most used bicycle facility.

I salved my conscience by getting Klamath Falls the funding for its bike path the following year.

Oregon leads the way

Eugene’s system of bicycle paths and trails was possible because of visionary leadership at the state level. The 1971 Legislature passed bills protecting Oregon’s beaches, recycling bottles and encouraging bicycle use - the “three B’s,” they were called.

Waves of bicyclists arrived in Salem. Eugene’s Mr. Bicycle, assistant parks director Ernie Drapela, organized contingents of two-wheeled lobbyists in support of the Bicycle Bill.

State Rep. Don Stathos, R-Jacksonville, was annoyed that he couldn’t bicycle safely from his home in Jacksonville to his insurance office in Medford. He proposed the now famous Bicycle Bill, allocating 1 percent of all highway gas tax money to bicycle and pedestrian uses. Within three years there were widened shoulders reaching from Medford to Jacksonville, called the “Don Stathos Bikeway.”

The Bicycle Bill was simple but revolutionary. But it dipped into precious highway money, and highway people still controlled the purse strings. Crusty 60-year-olds were approving strange projects such as sidewalks in the desert and bicycle trails to nowhere.

In 1973, state Rep. Nancie Fadeley, D-Eugene, shifted control by drafting a bill to create a seven-member Oregon Bicycle Advisory Committee to approve new projects. She ensured my appointment to the committee by lobbying Gov. Tom McCall, who urged us to “get tough.”

The Bicycle Committee met in all areas of the state, listening to citizen proposals. At one hearing, a senior highway man near me appeared to be studying intently his bicycle user’s manual. Tucked inside was a copy of Playboy magazine.

The Oregon Highway Department, changing mightily with the times, evolved into the Oregon Transportation Division. A full-time bicycle engineer became part of the staff.

In 1980 the voters of the state limited the use of gas tax funds to highway rights-of-way, restricting its use to widened road shoulders. But in the interval of those years Eugene managed to complete much of its Riverbank Trail. Indeed, Oregon’s Bicycle Bill of 1971 is one reason Eugene got the jump start it did.

The time is right

Upstream dams on the Willamette River, built in the 1960s, ended the frequent flooding of the riverbanks in Eugene. The city moved quickly to obtain easements on these formerly flood-prone lands. In 1970 there was no urban development near the riverbank, except the newly built Marist High School.

The time was right to build riverbank trails. Ed Smith, Eugene’s visionary parks director, lined up federal money for a small section of trail in Skinner Butte Park. Newly elected Lane County Commissioner Nancy Hayward found a youth corps grant to build a trail in newly created Alton Baker Park.

The time was right for our family as well. When we married, my husband, John, promised to love me, honor me, and ride a bicycle once a year. He did better than that: He rode his bicycle to work. I addressed cabin fever by putting myself and six children on bicycles.

The time was right for me, too. In January 1971, my husband brought home a letter asking him, as a doctor, to join the newly formed Eugene Bicycle Committee. He handed it to me saying, “This sounds more like your political thing.”

At the first Bicycle Committee meeting I received a cold shoulder; they had wanted a physician. In May, because no one else wanted the job, I became chair. For nine years.

By 1973, I was chair of the Eugene Bicycle Committee, chair of the Metropolitan Bicycle Committee, soon to be chair of the Alton Baker Park Committee, and chair of the Oregon Bicycle Advisory Council. I couldn’t dismount, even if I wanted to.

Eugene’s tentative beginning

The Eugene Bicycle Committee was composed of five staff members and five citizens. Such joint committees are rare in local government, but Eugene’s experiment brought results briskly. Citizens pushed staff members; staff members kept citizens realistic about possibilities. Both respected the others’ time.

We had a sense of mission. Here we were, breaking new ground to help the environment and the health of our nation! Soon this heady atmosphere gave way to sober reality. We made mistakes. We labeled certain streets as bikeways, but bicyclists chose not to use them. Backpedaling, we sought professional help to develop a workable Eugene Bicycle Plan.

Developing such a plan required working with the Public Works Department, headed by Don Allen, known to be unfriendly to bicycles, and his traffic engineer, Al Williams, even less friendly. They set about hiring a firm to develop a bike plan.

Allen asked me, as head of the Bicycle Committee, to sit in on the interviews. I was as silent as a corpse in the corner. His choice from among the three applicants differed from mine. With difficulty, I kept my mouth shut.

The chosen firm, DeLeuw Gather Engineering from San Francisco, sent two men to Eugene - Chuck DeLeuw and an Englishman, Gerald Fox. They parked their bicycles in the Bascom garage and logged countless hours researching our city and its potential for bicycle use.

As the Eugene Bicycle Plan developed, I came to respect the chosen firm, and I appreciated the wisdom of Allen’s decision.

Wooing the staff

When an elected body such as the City Council sets new policy - such as “Pay attention to bicycles and encourage their use as transportation vehicles” - the staff has to shift gears. They must make time for this new direction, dropping other assignments.

The Bicycle Committee learned to ask for help from secretaries and from parks and public works staff. Once in 1973, venerable Parks Director Ed Smith complained, “the Bicycle Committee uses more than half of my secretaries’ time!” City Manager Hugh McKinley quietly responded, “The City Council’s direction in this area is firm.” Both McKinley and Mayor Les Anderson frequently bicycled to work.

Once I asked Allen how our committee could be helpful to him. He must have known I was trying to butter him up, but he answered, “Check which intersections are candidates for traffic lights.” We did, and we learned where high traffic volume discourages bicycle use.

No area offered more conflict between bicyclists and motorists than the section of Alder Street from campus south to 24th Avenue. Al Williams once stormed, “I’ll never permit bicycles on Alder Street!”

I gathered my middle-school-aged children and their friends and asked them to count the cars and bicycles at four key Alder Street intersections. Bicycles outnumbered cars! Williams changed his mind about Alder. He eventually supported a design that made Alder Street a principal bicycle street, with two lanes for bicycles and one for cars.

Wooing the City Council

With city staff increasingly committed and the City Council breezily adopting the Bicycle Plan, implementation should have been a cinch. Not so.

The council almost failed its first test: Would it remove parking from one side of Pearl and High streets, forming a two-way couplet as the principal bike routes from south Eugene to downtown? Traffic engineer Williams put it bluntly: “If you can’t win this vote, put the plan on the shelf and forget it.”

Three councilors pleaded conflicts of interest and recused themselves. Our strongest supporter, Mayor Anderson, whose business was on Pearl Street, was among them. I listened to the discussion with increasing dismay. Three councilors were strong no votes, insisting that “Parking is a right not to be denied!”

The vote tied: three votes yes, three votes no and three abstentions.

There was silence in the Council Chamber. All eyes turned to the city attorney who announced, “I rule this to be an administrative proposal - in which case, a tie vote is a vote in favor.” Williams said to me brightly, “That win is as good as a unanimous vote.”

Williams then introduced our controversial solutions for Alder Street and 13th Avenue. Bicyclists were to ride against car traffic, separated by two stripes of paint. One councilor queried, “Aren’t we creating a dangerous obstacle course?”

“On the contrary,” retorted our newly supportive traffic engineer, “This will be much safer than before.”

Mayor Anderson, marveling at the staff’s turnabout, commented to me, “You’ve made some converts.”

But the council was still pivotal, especially at budget time. The Bicycle Committee’s first budget requests were submitted in 1974. The budget as proposed contained none - not one dollar - of our submissions.

New programs have difficulty finding their way into a city budget. Once there, they are hard to remove. We worked tirelessly to restore our requests. We blanketed the Budget Committee (half are city councilors) with letters. We invited councilors to ride bicycles with us to review the proposals. A third of our requests were restored. Related budget items have been mostly protected and sometimes expanded since.

Bicycle bridges as piggybacks

Look at the underside of three of Eugene’s bicycle bridges: Autzen, Willie Knickerbocker and Owosso. All three carry utility lines, sharing the cost of the bicycle component.

In 1971, the need to reach football games at Autzen Stadium from campus coincided with the need for a steam line to Chase Gardens.

In 1973, Keith Parks, the Eugene Water & Electric Board’s general manager, was searching for funds to build a new water main across the Willamette River near Interstate 5. He squinted through crafty eyes at a new source of money - the state 1 percent Bicycle/Pedestrian Fund - and phoned me with this offer: “If you can get me $60,000 by next week, I’ll put a bicycle deck on the water main.”

So was born the Willie Knickerbocker Bike Bridge. The name was chosen by Register-Guard columnist Don Bishoff, after a Eugene stunt bicyclist who was famous at the turn of the last century.

The third piggyback bridge (named the Owosso after the connecting street in the River Road area) demonstrates the ingenuity of city staff. I had gathered the last $100,000 of funding from the Bicycle Bill to build the West Bank Bike Trail to the bridge site. Chris Anderson, new Lane County Public Works Director and former Eugene bicycle coordinator, seized the opportunity for another piggyback, with electric and sewer lines sharing the cost.

A near miss

With the Eugene Bicycle Plan adopted, riverbank easements secure and funding available through the 1 percent allocation in the Oregon Bicycle Bill, we expected trail construction to be on easy street.

However, while driving over the Washington/Jefferson Bridge one day in May of 1974, I looked down on the beginning construction of Valley River Inn. What was I seeing? The footings for the inn were complete at the edge of the steep river bank, and there was no room for the trail! I was horrified.

A trail system is not a system if a key section is missing. I called City Manager Hugh McKinley to see what could be done. Could that section of the bank be built out and stabilized with riprap? Yes, but who pays for it? As chair of the state Bicycle Committee, I knew the state had not yet met the required expenditure for 1974. Again the Bicycle Bill provided the funds. Next time you bicycle or jog past the Valley River Inn, reach out and touch someone sitting on the restaurant deck, sipping coffee. You are that close.

Marist High School and 30 years

The earliest vision of the Riverbank Trail placed it on both sides of the river throughout the length of Eugene.

Some sections were easily built, such as those through Alton Baker Park and Skinner Butte Park, where the land was in city hands. Others, such as the West Bank Trail in the River Road area, required lengthy negotiations to obtain easements. However, condemnation was not necessary to acquire the needed strip.

Marist High School was another matter. The Eugene Bicycle Plan required new development to provide a riverbank easement for the trail. But Marist was built before the plan was adopted.

For nearly 30 years, Marist resisted the bike trail. Other sections of the East Bank Trail developed, with all property owners providing the required Riverbank Trail easement. The city dug in, ready to use its ultimate weapon, condemnation, against Marist.

Marist dug in, too. Failing to soften the City Council’s determination to complete the trail, Marist sought protection from the Legislature. Bus loads of students went to Salem to testify in support of a bill prohibiting city condemnation of Marist’s strip of land. Eugene citizens countered with letters, petitions, and even a movie showing the Riverbank Trail.

Alas, the Legislature passed the bill. But a veto by Gov. John Kitzhaber, a native Eugenean, kept both sides at the negotiating table.

Marist wanted lighting along the trail, a metal fence with spikes, and a transfer to the city of land from the fence to river’s edge, increasing the city’s responsibility and lessening Marist’s. The school got what it wanted, plus a handsome financial award.

All’s well that ends well. Today, Marist High School students do not complain of being harassed by ne’er-do-wells using the path. Nor are frail elderly walkers on the trail accosted by high schoolers.

Private/public partnerships

As the 20th century ended, two final private/public efforts helped complete the Riverbank Trail’s 12-mile loop. Neither of these efforts was as exhausting as the Marist marathon.

Willamette Oaks Retirement Center and the city scuffled over design details, but only after Willamette Oaks had granted an easement. The city was patient, wanting to make friends, not enemies. A design at last emerged to please both parties.

The final piece was near Valley River Center, where the path passed City Councilor Gary Papé’s office property in order to avoid Delta Ponds. Papé had a better idea. It was also more expensive, but he volunteered to gather the resources and support necessary to realize his vision. Recalling the citizen/staff partnership of the 1970s, Tom Poage, a staff member of the Bicycle Committee and city engineer, showed how the Riverbank Trail could meander through Delta Ponds, rather than going around them.

The Poage-designed Delta Ponds solution features a long causeway at pond level affording unique wildlife views. Many consider the Poage Causeway to be the Riverbank Trail’s best feature.

Completion of this final link in the 12-mile loop trail occasioned a grand celebration on Jan. 31, 2003. Can any other city in the nation claim such an uninterrupted loop trail connecting five bicycle/pedestrian-only bridges over a major river in the center of its urban area?

A band, a congressman, city councilors, mayors, staff and citizens, all of whom had made it happen, joined for the ribbon cutting. Thirty years did not seem so long after all.

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