ADVOCACY ALERT – Washington Park Master Plan – Comment period closes Thursday at 5 pm. Portland Parks is wrapping up the planning process and needs your comments. The good news, an off road cycling trail is included in the plan, the bad news is they have prioritized it to the final phase, many years in the future. Since NWTA is identified as potential partner, and since NWTA is you, please fill out the very short survey and provide your desire for them to move the mountain bike trails to Phase 1, and express your willing to volunteer to help build, maintain, pull ivy and plant natives on this new trail that would be open to bikes. We think with some of our volunteer effort and resources, the listed budget could be reduced significantly from the $771,000 estimate for this trail, and thus should be listed as a Phase 1 work element. See the plan and survey at https://www.portlandoregon.gov/parks/70954 , and your input would fit well on the survey form in Item 1 and Item 3.
If you dig deeper into the plan you will see maintaining the old zoo train railroad bed is expensive and thus they are proposing it as a paved multi-use trail. You might also provide a comment about how this old railroad bed would be cheaper to build and maintain as a light gravel trail for cycling, running and walking.
There are other interesting elements in the plan including focusing on eliminating cars, encouraging travel by bike to the parks, but also closing some roads to bikes.