The stormwater management bicycle tour. – Portland, Oregon - Atlas Obscura

The stormwater management bicycle tour.

 

1
0

An eye opening cycle tour of part of Portland’s state of the art stormwater management system.

The city of Portland, Oregon, is known amongst environmentalists for both its support of cycling within the city and the imaginative and effective way it has approached the management of storm water.

This has included a wide range of approaches, many of which are aesthetically pleasing and all of which are essential to both flood prevention and protection of the water quality in Willamette River. This includes pervious pavements, eco roofs, numerous rain gardens, planted swales and biodetention devices. The city has now celebrated these municipal environmental credentials by publishing a  cycle tour around the southeast of the city, taking in some of the best and most innovative storm water management installations.

Full directions for this  tour, and some shorter, walking tours on the same subject, are available at the municipality’s website.

The cycling tour starts on the east side of the Willamette river waterfront near Hawthorne Bridge passes the Portland Convention Center, with its fantastic rain garden and then turns right and loops round the southeast of the city on a tour which  takes about 3 hours. It is both informative and fun and probably better for your health than one of the commercially available guided cycling tours around the City’s numerous microbreweries.

 

Know Before You Go

As would be expected from a bike friendly city there are numerous bike rental shops in Portland in addition to the Biketown bike sharing scheme.

Community Contributors

Make an Edit Add Photos