Bicycle Highway on N Williams - 17 vehicles (bikes) in queue

I recall when the City started some analysis of the N Williams corridor, I was unclear why we would make such an effort to make a change on the corridor. These photos were from a Monday in May that was a nice day for a bicycle commute for most of these people.
The first photo shows the queue, the second photo takes a second look at the people in an attempt to capture that there was indeed that many people as the signal turned green. It should be noted that I moved ahead of the first three people, so the second photos shows just 13 people (I was the 17th in queue).
   
 As we progressed down the street, I felt uncomfortable in the bike lane and the number of cars on the street clearly were outnumbered but took much more space then my fellow cyclists.

These pictures were taken at 5:41 PM. Granted it was a bright sunny day, so that has a significant positive impact on number of people on bikes, you can see from the third photos that as we moved down the corridor the adjacent vehicle lane was not full and there was plenty of vehicular capacity to serve the demand on this particular cycle. The current design of the N Williams project offers an opportunity to create a safer environment on the corridor. The City has already done some modifications to the traffic signals to improve northbound flow, I am sure the additional space will be a welcome addition to the corridor and for increasing the safety of Portland's streets.