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A bicyclist travels along the east bank of the Willamette River as the downtown skyline is bathed in early morning sunlight in Portland.

(Don Ryan/The Associated Press/2008)

As bicycling becomes more mainstream, Oregon should enact a new tax on bike purchases to generate funding for better safety and research programs, says a new

report.

is considered one of the most comprehensive examinations of bicycling in Portland's history. It concludes that biking is "essential to continued growth in the local economy and overall quality of life" in Portland.

However, the 12-member committee that spent a year on the analysis uncovered what it characterized as serious financial and logistical challenges facing Bike City U.S.A, including poor policy decisions that have made bike projects needlessly controversial.

Among other things, the committee, made up mostly of regular bicycle riders who also drive cars, proposed a 4 percent excise tax on new bicycles sold in Oregon. That would amount to an extra $20 on a $500 bike.

Rather than being funneled to building new bike lanes, greenways and cycletracks, revenue generated by the new tax should pay for bike safety programs at schools and providing more reliable accounting of pedal-powered traffic, according to the proposal.

The study highlights possible problems with how Portland has tracked the meteoric growth of bicycling in recent years, relying heavily on volunteer hand counts at different points around the city. With dedicated tax revenue, the

could expand the use of

for use on the Hawthorne Bridge last fall, the report says.

The analysis questions how Portland can make informed decisions about where to make future bicycle investments and what shape they should take without reliable traffic-collecting methods.

"What we'd like to see is good, actionable data that's consistent year over year," said Henry Leinweber, a regular bike commuter and committee member who wrote the report.

The full City Club membership will vote on the committee's report next week, determining whether it becomes an official position advocated by the civic group.

The report also noted that some city decisions have made bicycling a hot-button issue -- a shame given its great potential to make Portland "more prosperous, healthier and happier."

"There is little organized opposition to bicycle use in Portland," the report states. "However, there is latent, but pervasive, uneasiness among some residents that expanding bicycling opportunities will come at the expense of other modes of transportation."

Some of that uneasiness was apparent in the proposed document.

The committee stopped short of recommending the mandatory licensing and registration of bicyclists as a way to raise money. The majority deemed the idea unenforceable, unmanageable and punitive.

But two members wrote a strongly worded minority report in dissent, saying the requirement would improve safety and erase the image of bike commuters as freeloaders.

"The argument that car ownership by bicycle riders constitutes a funding contribution is faulty," committee member Robert McCullough wrote in dissent. "All modes of transportation are subsidized, and the amount of this subsidy is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate."

Meanwhile, the full report cites cases of "poor communication" between planners and the public creating problems on various projects. For example, the committee said "insufficient neighborhood engagement" allowed a planned $370,000 transportation safety project with bicycle improvements on North Williams Avenue to become mired in controversy.

The project runs through a historically African American neighborhood that has received little infrastructure investment in the past. "The sudden interest in bicycle improvements ... was perceived as the city catering specifically to the younger, white homeowners who had recently moved in," the report said.

Although the report is skeptical of the city's 2030 goal to have 25 percent of all trips under three miles made by bike, its recommendations focus on smarter ways to improve safety and integrate bicycling into Portland's future transportation plans.

"All transportation planning should become multi-modal planning," the study says.

-- Joseph Rose