LEDbicyclelight

 cars slow to a crawl on North Williams Avenue in front of Lula Parker's Tropicana restaurant. Bicyclists zip by the soul food joint on their way home from work. A TriMet bus engine rumbles, and the sun reflects off cars and onto her hanging portraits of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama.

Parker, who owns one of the street's remaining black-owned businesses, perches on her stool and stares out the window, where she has a front-row seat to the accidents and near misses. The congestion has only grown since her family bought the restaurant in 1957.

North Williams "wasn't that busy, and the people didn't ride this fast," says Parker, 88. "They go through here sometimes like it's a runway."

Once a passage for cars between Portland and Vancouver, North Williams is now a one-way thoroughfare shared by bikes, buses, other motor vehicles and pedestrians. Bike advocates say the road has become unsafe as cars speed and zigzag between the two lanes, and as bicyclists navigate a narrow bike lane used by an estimated 3,000 riders daily during warm months.

But in recent weeks, the conversation has shifted from safety and road behaviors to examinations of race inequities and gentrification in inner North and Northeast Portland -- once the heart of Oregon's African American community. Some residents say a safety project launched earlier this year didn't adequately involve people of color. And as people debate whether race and gentrification belong in a discussion of transportation safety, divisions have emerged.

Some question why the city now has $370,000 to pour into a project they say favors the bike community while residents for decades asked for resources to improve safety in those same neighborhoods. To the community, the conversation has polarized the issue: white bicyclists versus the black community.