Portland ‘bike queen’ finds worldwide niche

Dallas, others seek to mimic Portland’s biking successes

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Feb 12, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

JONATHAN HOUSE / Pamplin Media Group

Mia Birk, Portland’s former bike coordinator, now is a consultant advising Dallas, Texas, on how to make its streets more pedestrian- and bike-friendly.

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They call her the “bike queen,” and it’s no surprise why.

Mia Birk, the 41-year-old former bike program coordinator for the city of Portland, is doing what some might have deemed impossible.

After shaping much of Portland’s bicycling landscape in the 1990s, she’s now helping transform the billionaire-dwelling, car-loving city of Dallas, Texas – yes, the one that topped Bicycling magazine’s “Worst Cities for Cycling” last year – into a bicycling haven.

“Dallas certainly is not very bike-friendly now,” says Eric van Steemburg, executive director of the Friends of Katy Trail group, a nonprofit that promotes the paved 3.5-mile pedestrian and bike trail that winds through Dallas.

But after he attended a conference in Portland in August 2007 and spent some time downtown one evening, he saw the potential for his own city.

“It was 10:30 at night on a Thursday, and it was very lively,” van Steemburg recalls. “The light rail came through. There was a woman next to me with a bike. The train opened up, and she went in to hang her bike on the rack, but all four of them were already used.

“All these things blow people’s minds down here,” he says. “I want to make that happen for Dallas.”

A month later, after gaining tens of thousands of dollars in funding from a wealthy developer, van Steemburg knew who to hire for help.

He looked to Birk and her pedal-powered cohorts at her Southeast Portland firm, Alta Planning and Design, and they quickly got to work. They’re helping expand the Dallas trail system and planning for bike-friendly amenities throughout the city – like lights and public art. They’re designing separated sidewalk lanes called “cycle tracks,” which will crisscross the city, rather than conventional bike lanes.

“We’re typically hired by communities that want to make their communities’ lives better,” Birk says. “We usually have some level of community dissent. In Dallas, every single person has been nodding their heads, saying, ‘What can I do to help?’”

Dallas – which coincidentally is Birk’s hometown – is just one of dozens of cities around the globe, big and small, that are lusting after Portland’s world-renowned status and seeking out Birk’s expertise to help beef up – or create – their biking infrastructure.

The Alta firm, which she cofounded in 1999, consults with cities across Oregon and Washington as well as farther away: Columbia, Mo.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Kansas City; plus cities in Mexico, Canada, Dubai and Qatar, to name a few.

Consulting is only part of Birk’s busy life. She’s writing a memoir of her career and personal experiences, teaching a class at Portland State University’s Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, being a mother to a 10-year-old and 6-year-old, and sitting on the boards of Cycle Oregon and the Community Cycling Center.

She’s also the volunteer co-chairwoman of the steering committee that’s rewriting the city’s Bicycle Master Plan, a process that’s under way with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, and that’s expected to be completed in September.

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