When do the Portland Professional Planners throw aside their preference for preciousness? When it’s in favor of bike paths.

Apparently I missed the big announcement about the plan to rip up one of two streets in NW Portland. So it was with a frisson of SHOCK that I came upon NW Marshall at about 9th and saw that the city had removed cobblestones–ripped them out–in favor of smooth concrete–concrete!–bike paths.*

Who rips out quaint cobblestones for concrete? I thought we were concerned with preservation etc.  TREES are protected around here, for crying out loud!

I couldn’t rest until I found out what was going on. In the Zero I found out that these concrete paths are part of

…[T]he Eastside Streetcar Loop project, a $128 million, 3.3 mile extension of the streetcar that will loop from the Pearl District, across the Broadway Bridge and down to OMSI. The project will turn NW Lovejoy and NW Northrup (two blocks north) into an east-west couplet (one-way traffic in each direction). As part of that construction, the bike lanes currently on Lovejoy will be removed and Marshall and NW Johnson (four blocks south) will become the preferred bikeways.

And why is that? Because bicyclists continue to wipe out on street car tracks on Lovejoy. (Here’s your back of the envelope math: Street cars over cars, bikes over street cars = bikes over every mode of transportation)

And did you know the entire Pearl District is going to become a bike district? Me neither. I don’t even know what that means, but I have a feeling more quaintness will be torn up for in favor of precious bikes and I won’t be able to drive in my usual stomping ground. Here’s what I found on the local Bike Portland blog,

They pave over cobblestones in Amsterdam so it’s OK!

…[L]ocal design firm Alta Planning, who helped analyze the Marshall alignment, said the treatment is common in European countries with high bike usage. Alta CEO Mia Birk sent me the photo [nearby] as evidence:)
For Birk and PBOT, a bike boulevard on Marshall is part of a larger effort to make the Pearl District the city’s first officially designated “Bicycle District.”

But this hacked off even NW PDX libs who decried the defacement and noted REI replaced cobblestones when it came to the ‘hood along NW Johnson.

Portland’s preference for preciousness is even niggling at the folks over at the NW Examiner who recently included this cartoon on its pages:

The way I figure it is: if they can rip up street over a century or so old, I can get rid of that tree that’s subsuming my yard. Fair enough?