This past weekend, the city of Portland, Oregon officially opened its newest bridge across the Willamette River. In a town known for green living, walkability and bicycle-friendliness, it only makes sense that Tilikum Crossing is designed for walking and biking, or riding a bus, lightrail or streetcar train…but not for private vehicles. This article from CityLab reports on how this new bridge is changing the way other cities around the nation are planning for their own futures.
Leah Treat, director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation, says “the city is abuzz.”
“I think this is a very defining moment for us in terms of how we want the city to grow,” she tells CityLab. “We have really ambitious goals of reducing carbon emissions, getting people to take transit or walk or bike. It’s just a perfect symbol of our values in this community.”
Tilikum has become a symbol to those outside Portland, too. Cities across the country are turning to shared-use or even pedestrian-only bridges as a way to provide more balanced transportation options. When the U.S. Department of Transportation issued its proposed budget earlier this year, the cover image wasn’t an open highway or an interstate cloverleaf – it was Tilikum.
“For urban areas that are growing across the country, this is a great example of supplying convenient, easy, transportation options,” says Treat. “We’re increasingly seeing people adopting bicycling, walking, and transit as the way to get around.”
The city’s ambitions for Tilikum go beyond mobility. Treat says developers have wanted to connect the Southwest Waterfront knowledge district (home to Portland State and Oregon Health & Science University) with the emerging “crafter-maker-doer” economy on the Central East Side. New housing units, jobs, and businesses are expected to emerge on both sides of the bridge, with growth on one side supporting the other.
