Photo Spot, A Year Later

More than a year ago, I posted my last “photo spot picture.”¹ NE Veterans Road is now done, cutting through the field. You can just make out the lights in the distance. It’s a great road, curvy to keep traffic speeds low. It features Hillsboro’s second cycle track² and a separate pedestrian pathway. A traffic circle controls and routes traffic without stop signs or signals and bicycles can either take the road or merge with pedestrians.

I’d use Veterans Drive if it took me where I wanted to go. Once NE Belknap Court is extended to meet Veterans,³ this could be my preferred route to work. Well, maybe. It wouldn’t go through Dawson Creek Park. And it wouldn’t go by Starbucks. Okay, I probably wouldn’t use it at all… ;-)

I don’t bike by the photo spot much anymore. Cornell has narrow car and bike lanes and some curves—and a dangerous intersection with Brookwood Parkway. Instead, I bike north of the airport on Evergreen, which recently also received some love from our local civil engineers. It’s been widened, with a couple of feet of buffer space between the rightmost traffic lane and the bike lane. No longer is a 4X4 pickup with its wheels on the paint stripe going to have its trailer-appropriate mirrors extending into the bike lane. That’s huge! For me, it’s worth riding the extra mile to avoid Cornell.

1
Across the street from the Hillsboro airport.
2
Our cycle track is a raised bicycle path adjacent to the road. It makes traveling by bike feel safer. In some respects, it probably is. No more can a distracted driver drift unawares into the bike lane. Unfortunately, I suspect the raised edge will “suck” a drifting car onto the bike lane. Time will tell. A square curb would stop cars from drifting but would make biking near the edge much more dangerous for those on bikes.
3
Or should I say, if NE Belknap Court is extended…