According to Mia Birk, the city’s bicycle coordinator at the time, “For less than one percent of Portland’s transportation budget, we’ve increased bicycling from negligible to significant. For the cost of one mile of freeway—about $50 million—we’ve built 275 of bikeways.”24 Spending 1 percent of transportation funds on a network serving 8 percent of commuters sounds like a good deal, even better when you consider the indirect economic benefits. In contrast to widened roads and other highway “improvements,” new bikeways actually increase the value of nearby real estate.
