Last Friday, we shared photos and a story on the new plastic bollards (a.k.a. “wands”) installed by PBOT on the NW Lovejoy Ramp leading into the Pearl District from the Broadway Bridge. According to PBOT, the bollards were installed as an “experiment” in order to “discourage people who drive from entering the bike lane.”
Well, it looks like the experiment has failed on some respects. By Saturday, several of the wands had been hit by people driving cars and were strewn about the bike lane. Upon closer inspection, it appears the wands were attached to the street only by some sort of epoxy. Below are a few more photos of the scene…
As you can see, most of the bollards that were hit were at the start of the bike lane at the top of the ramp; but some were hit in the middle of the ramp as well.
Perhaps the next step for PBOT is to make the bollards bright orange and attach them more securely to the road so they bend down when hit but then pop back up.
Our readers had a lot of other recommendations (such as making them cement or steel poles) which you can read in the comments on our story last week.
PBOT told us last week that they’re aware that some of the “short wands” have been knocked down. I’m sure City traffic engineers will be analyzing the situation and make changes as necessary. We’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for reading.
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Bollards would need to be WHITE or YELLOW:
See MUTCD Section 1A.12 Color Code
Standard:
The general meaning of the 13 colors shall be as follows:
Black—regulation
Blue—road user services guidance, tourist information, and evacuation route
Brown—recreational and cultural interest area guidance
Coral—unassigned
Fluorescent Pink—incident management
Fluorescent Yellow-Green—pedestrian warning, bicycle warning, playground warning, school bus and school warning
Green—indicated movements permitted, direction guidance
Light Blue—unassigned
Orange—temporary traffic control
Purple—lanes restricted to use only by vehicles with registered electronic toll collection (ETC) accounts
Red—stop or prohibition
White—regulation
Yellow—warning
Yellow for this application would be a centerline device.
Wouldn’t red (prohibition) be appropriate?
Red as a pavement marking is only permitted as part of an interstate route trailblazer pavement marking. Again, the white ones are the appropriate color for the application.
I’m surprised these aren’t anchored into the pavement by bolts, which is actually what the bases of those are designed to be attached with, in addition to the epoxy. Orange isn’t the right color, that would be if it were a construction closure. White’s the appropriate color for the application.
Well, in defense of PBOT: it costs money to drill bolt holes. It’s likely a lot cheaper to glue them on, and if I was the one doing it, I would assume that a physical object plus a clear traffic line would be enough to keep people from driving over them (although, obviously, I would be wrong).
But that’s probably why they decided to glue them on.
It costs more money to keep regluing them than it does to glue and anchor them like the instructions for the darn things even states should be done for proper installation. This is a case of “a job worth doing is worth doing right the first time.”
the space was always too narrow to share safely, and the installation of the track has only made this more obvious. there is no need for a motorist to overtake a cyclist on this one block descent from a bridge into an intersection at which everyone will be turning left or right anyway. the bike lane was always a mistake, it is a worse mistake now with the rails, and the bollards only aggravate the problem by making it impossible for a cyclist to assert the lane. the correct solution is to remove the stripe and put down sharrows.
So you want to take the lane? The lane with the tracks in it? instead of riding in the bike lane, which has no tracks?
what do you think is the distance between the cement barrier and the rail? picture that space with no bike lane stripe on it at all, and instead a sharrow right down the middle of it. no one is forcing you over to the rail, and there is basically not enough room for a motorist to pass. what on earth would be wrong with that situation?
Yet somehow, if my personal observations are anywhere near typical, there is a burning need in the hearts of motorists to pass any cyclist immediately, regardless of impending turns or stops, regardless of common-sense safety principles, regardless of whether the cyclist is traveling at (or even above) the posted speed limit. Motorists generally cannot stomach either the indignity or the perceived delay–or the anticipated eventual delay–that is experienced while driving behind any cyclist arrogant enough to ride too close to (or in) The “Car” Lane.
Side note: I would love to see a study done on drivers wherein their stress response was measured in a variety of traffic situations. I would like to compare responses to the following:
– Being blocked by a driver waiting to make a left turn.
– Being blocked by a stream of pedestrians crossing the street.
– Having to stop multiple times at the same signal due to excessive numbers of cars being backed up at an intersection.
– Having to stop behind a bus servicing a stop.
– Having to follow a slow driver for 1 mile at 5mph under the speed limit
– Having to follow a cyclist for 3 blocks at exactly the speed limit.
– Coming upon a cyclist waiting near the center line and signaling to make a left turn.
I don’t have occasion to ride over the B’way bridge, but judging by the photos I would bet that unless a cyclist was between the rails, drivers would attempt unsafe passing all day long and road rage incidents would abound, sharrows or no sharrows.
Epoxy???? Really?????
Wow!! Don’t know what else to say.
Ummmm … I’m glad they chose something cheap like epoxy for their first implementation which was bound to fail no matter what?
PBOT has used so much terminology like “test”, “when conclusions are reached about this experiment” and “what longer-term actions are planned” it makes me think that PBOT knew that what ever they put there would be destroyed for the first few days.
American drivers drive unconsciously, trusting the brake lights of the vehicle in front of them and following paths oft taken in a somnambulant haze unaware that anything ever changes around them.
How about securing the bases to the ground with something stronger and making the bollards more flexible? So, if a car would run over one, they would simply bend back into place? Such as a hinge on them so they bounce back. Along with people just being careless, there are going to be people that just think it will be fun to hit them.
I agree, a permanent installation should be more resilient (springy and strong).
The point I was making was that given the inattentiveness of the average American auto driver odds are very high that no matter what was initially installed it would have been damaged.
This is because a driver’s behavior is dictated not by observations of current real time road conditions but by an amalgam of how the road felt in the past. This is why a perfectly safe stretch of road might terrify one person while another, who might only work night shift, terrorizes others in crowded daytime conditions.
Transportation departments worldwide know this; it is a simple fact of human psychology. They plan not to fight the users but to work within our limitations.
Because of this any initial installation of bollards or markers was doomed. Better that the damaged parts be cheap.
Personally, I think they should glue all but one of the ones knocked down back on, and then replace the last one with steel reinforced concrete.
For the record, epoxy is a viable method for this kind of installation, which is not to say that it was done correctly. Additionally, even the delineators that are designed to flex and rebound get destroyed when they are driven OVER, as opposed to driven into or straddled. Essentially, they’re designed to knock flat and survive, as long as you don’t roll over the base.
Since most of the road users here are not first-time visitors, the ones who drifted into and took out the posts were no doubt caught off guard when performing their usual (though questionable) curve-straightening. It’s too bad the downed delineators weren’t replaced immediately to disallow those maneuvers now that everyone is “educated”. Left down, the offenders are reinforced, and everyone is free to drift again. Maybe hit once = hit always, but leaving them rolling and lying in the gutter is a disgrace.
That epoxy is crazy stuff… I don’t know exactly what epoxy PBOT is using, but many of the earthquake tie downs in wooden commercial structures are secured into the foundation with epoxy.
C’mon, everybody knows those things looked way too inviting for anyone with a beater car to leave them alone.
Shorter wands… below bumper level… would be more effective.
They need to be at least as tall as they are to provide the necessary urgent tactile feedback. Problem is, they really do need to be more firmly attached to the ground; the installation manual for these even recommends anchoring, and the bases provide anchor points. They’re on rubber swivels, so they’d pop back up if they were properly anchored. Even OklaDOT anchors these when they’re used as temporary delineation in overpasses in work zones, so I’m wondering why PBOT failed to anchor them.
So they’d get run over repeatedly. C’mon, nobody can resist those inflatable punching bags.
The likely issue is just an installation problem – it is always a risk to install striping and epoxy in the colder wetter seasons. The best thing would be to reinstall (with care) and wait for a 6 to 12 month demonstration period for proper post project evaluation.
These are not permanent…it’s an experiment. As soon as cars get used to these, they will put up a more permanent solution…probably ones that flex and are bolted down.
“As soon as cars get used to these, they will put up a more permanent solution”
‘Cars’ and ‘permanent solution’ are anathema. They don’t belong in the same sentence. The sooner we get used to this the better for everyone–especially those who are still counting on cars always being around.
I’ll ask again: is anyone at PBOT planning for the end of auto-dominance? The point isn’t to pick (or argue over) the date, it is to acknowledge that cars are not going to always be here, and that anticipating a ramp down would be prudent (however ideologically difficult this may be).
The only permanent modes are feet and bicycles. Both predated cheap fossil fuels and both will outlast cheap fossil fuels.
And yet we are currently stuck with a country and its infrastructure built around automobiles.
I won’t deny that single occupant autos are some of the least efficient vehicles around BUT just screaming that everyone is stupid and inferior for driving them is antagonizing and utterly non-productive.
As much as it would be nice to have high speed rail infrastructure, for both people and freight, and comprehensive public transit in every urban area in America – WE DON’T
To completely change over all of our infrastructure to a non-automobile based society would place an incalculable economic burden on our country (I have no idea where to start calculating such an amount – maybe 10~30 years total GDP?) while imposing impacts that range from societal, traditional, freedom and out right rebellion as any move to rebuild our country that fundamentally without broad support would require a totalitarian regime we haven’t seen since the Han Dynasty phase of the Great Wall construction.
“To completely change over all of our infrastructure to a non-automobile based society would place an incalculable economic burden on our country”
And yet we have to do it anyway. Pretending all these looming changes don’t concern us is a recipe for disaster.
“screaming that everyone is stupid and inferior for driving them is antagonizing and utterly non-productive.”
I agree.
My point wasn’t that everyone is stupid and inferior for driving, but that city staff at PBOT are not paying attention if they aren’t including this in their plans.
I’ll start by saying I really hope you’re correct, and that we move away from jumping in the car for every errand and excursion. That our worst problem is not having bicycle and ped-specific infrastructure at that point. If we truly didn’t need all the roads for 6 foot wide vehicles, we would at least have lots of paved right-of-way. (We wouldn’t have to squeeze by the sunken catch basin grates on the shoulder anymore!) What I see as a response to increasingly rare and expensive fossil fuels, though, is more and more cars designed to run at least partially on alternative fuels. I fear that we humans, with Americans leading the way, will spend many, many more years exhausting every possible energy source before ever letting the car thing go.
Everyone from the Han Dynasty is long dead. The Great Wall is still standing. Guess who won that one?
Seriously, Getting car-centric Americans to give up their over-weening dependence on automobiles will not be accomplished by being nice, careful or gradual. All of these tiny steps are ineffective in the long term because they’re simply too tiny. And a planet will overcook if we continue to play nice about it.
Sorry. Not the Han dynasty but the preceding Qin Shi Huang Di dynasty which was well know for forced conscription of every male that they could get their hands on starting with military, regular citizens and criminals.
Despite the stories of hundreds of thousands of workers being killed or executed during construction and buried in the Wall it is not true: archeologists can reliably state that they were buried or dumped in nearby ditches.
The point is that a major restructuring such as what needs to happen will not occur all at once without a major shift in our personal liberties and standard of living. Many will fight that idea violently just on the hint of the loss of any personal liberty.
Jersey barriers are the only barrier cars understand.
>I’m sure City traffic engineers will be analyzing the situation and make changes as necessary.
the city traffic engineers who designed this brand spanking new ramp are going to fix it.
wunderbar…
It is a *test* so having issues should be expected, learned from and refined. Epoxy is actually quite bomber, note the residual pieces still attached to the pavement. The engineering issue is flexibility of the wands at the base.
All of this costs a bit of money and I’m pleased to see a bit of focus for cyclist’s safety along a very highly used corridor.
There are a respectable number of multi-mode investments that are, on the whole, an improvement. Far from perfect but there are a lot of factors that make each situation different. I’m grateful for the focus given by Portland government. It’s smart investment for all Portland citizens, whether on a bike or not.
Am I the only one who thinks that a better lane separator might have been, say, caltrops? Claymore mines? Ooh, I know: severe tire damage strip!
No. Similar treatments were suggested in comments to the post that preceded this update.
So sorry I missed that. I was busy enjoying my holiday.
cold weather & epoxy = Dumb
I know, right? as the kids say these days.
As someone relatively new to Portland, and who is now bike commuting here after having done so in a few other places, I’ve been really impressed with Portland’s bike infrastructure. Sure, it good be better, but it is light years ahead of other places.
This seems to break down anywhere near street car tracks. Has the city just been so gung ho for street car transit that they neglected to examine how tracks might hinder other users of the street? I know when I’m driving, I’m never sure I should be driving on tracks or not. And a couple of times I’ve found myself taking a new route only to find street car tracks make it more difficult on some intersection where I didn’t expect them.
I’m not being snarky. Maybe I’m so bike-focused I’m missing it. Did the city consider these issues before they started extending tracks all over town?
Of course! We’re the first city in the world to have streetcars AND bikes, so duh!
I can’t even tell if you are directing snark at me or actually trying to answer my question.
I think he’s being sarcastic i.e. of course the engineers didn’t think of it because they were so gung ho to get the streetcar in place. It may be the biggest flaw in all that Portland has done to improve cycling.
So not the case, gang. I’ve been there. I expect many readers have. As every infrastructure project of consequence in Portland goes thru design, City bike folks (staff) are at the table. For bigger projects, there are usually civilians involved too. I was not involved on Streetcar, but I know there was a tremendous amount of push/pull on bikes & tracks on Lovejoy.
This approach goes back at least to the Rose Quarter Project or longer. With Interstate light rail there was also a lot of push/pull on bikes (and trucks), and Interstate Avenue looks very different that the original plan.
I would hope this site would stop short of being the kind of fact-free zone that is so popular with crabby internet denizens.
Sorry about that – yeah, I was actually directing my snarkiness towards the Portland Streetcar planning agency that basically decided not to plan for streetcar/bike interactions. At the same time, Amsterdam is much worse, IMO.
Every city in the U.S, over 80,000 peeps had streetcars before 1945.
“Has the city just been so gung ho for street car transit that they neglected to examine how tracks might hinder other users of the street? ”
Yes.
Ah. That does explain quite a bit.
Here is the problem: There are a lot of streets to ride your bicycle on in the city of Portland. Some are better than others and we can avoid the streetcar tracks if need be. There are, however, a limited number of spans if we want to cross the river. So, in the case of the Broadway Bridge, bicycles and the streetcar tracks basically have to be there.
Just remember that many people cannot ride a bicycle. Many people simply choose not to ride a bicycle. So, perhaps you are being too bicycle focused since that is what you are used to.
And, yes, I think it is a dumb idea to let people operative a vehicle over the street car tracks, but not the MAX tracks.
Thanks for your insightful reply. Good point about bridges being the tricky point.
Well… you may be right. 😉
However, what puzzles me is that I am able to drive my car over the Broadway bridge and up/down 10th and 11th, and my car straddles the tracks just fine. Even if your tires are on the rails, you really won’t lose control if you travel the speed limit (20-25 mph).
Actually, I love biking on those streets, since they have lower traffic.
Yes, there were fundamental flaws in the designing of this streetcar line that impeded bike safety. These problems were exacerbated by the existing prevalence of bicycles along the new streetcar alignment. This is the first time anyone can remember that Portland decommissioned a bikeway and made certain routes practically unusable like MLK/Grand and Lovejoy.
The city has thankfully responded with this recent bollard improvement, the restriping and redesign of Broadway and Larrabee and the moving of a streetcar stop at 10th and Marshall.
We shouldn’t let that happen ever again, and I hope people continue to report their concerns with any existing safety issues to the city directly: safe@portlandoregon.gov or 823-SAFE.
I hope the cyclists who hit these devices so hard are doing ok. Get better soon.
Oh, I figured cars hit the poles?
Daisy, lots of sarcasm and dry humor around here. =)
Sink some 4″ diameter pipe in the ground 3 feet, fill it with cement and paint it yellow, tuti fruity, whatever.
The minute someones fender is ripped off, everybody will get religion.
Maybe visit a scrap yard and pick up a battered right front fender, a headlight bezel, a couple of other odds and ends and carefully seed them onto the roadway near the first bollards, making sure to leave plenty of room for bike passage. A bit like heads on pikes at the city gate as a warning. ;^)
I can’t say how much I like this idea because I keep cackling like a mad scientist in a grade B movie every time I think about it.
I suggested this in the previous thread on the subject, but I think the color should be the florescent yellow-green that indicates a bike or pedestrian area. Combine this with the other idea of gluing down some fenders and headlight parts to the left of the bike lane…
That indicates a crossing ahead. Misuse of that color degrades the attention it needs to command at school crossings, pedestrian crossings, and uncontrolled cycleway intersections.
Yeah, then latte swilling commuters will veer left in the oncoming traffic! Insurance folks and lawyers will have a field day suing the city for not making the bridge wider, so grampa can drive his Penetrator XXL full-size RV down there.
My first reaction to the “hard object” suggestions was that it wasn’t a good idea because someone could get hurt. Then I realised that the whole point of these dividers was to prevent cyclists from getting hurt, so now hard dividers seem like a good idea. Seriously, somebody is going to get hurt if motor vehicle operators don’t take the bike lane seriously.
(Cars don’t kill people. Drivers kill people. It’s a pet peeve of mine when I see people write things like “Cars do “.)
What I found surprising today when I drove by and saw these laying crosswise in the bikelane was, that nobody bothered to stop and move them out of the bikelane. How bad is that? that nobody cared enough about the next guy coming down the lane. Someone could have got hurt there. Lots of people do have the time to complain about them though.
The “cycling community” does not always have a lot to be proud of. I agree how hard could it have been to move a piece of plastic. On the other hand, I saw a cyclist in the median where Springwater crosses S.E. 92nd sweeping up glass! A big thank you to that guy.
One thing I’m sure of… a car hit this pole.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ufobike/6201433959
If not, you should see his bike!
I agree. It happened to me the other day. I caught it on video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKNXM4HBbIU&sns=em
Heh. Awesome. Not only a stop sign, but a center island to squeeze around first. I honestly do not know what drivers like this are thinking. I had an experience a couple weeks ago in a parking lot where a lady pulled up on my left at a “stop” line–stopping completely in the oncoming “lane”–so she could make a left turn ahead of me. I had been signaling to turn left and everything; she just thought she deserved to turn left first, even though she was behind me, even though we were in a parking lot with a max speed of what, 15? I was naughty and I rode her bumper all the way through the rest of the lot, across the road, and down the 20mph street to her destination. I refrained from following her to her parking spot and asking WTF? Maybe I should have; could have been highly educational.
When Charlie Hales or his supporters come to your door asking for your vote for Mayor, be sure to ask about his pushing streetcars for Portland and the problems they have caused for bicycle transportation.
He was one of the main proponents of the streetcar, and even went to work for an engineering company promoting rail transit after leaving city council.
Remember that streetcars were pushed primarily as a development tool, and only peripherally as a transportation mode.
When Jonathan asked “choo choo” Charlie about the poor streetcar and bicycle interface, he mostly ducked the question saying that the Grand/MLK lines should have been on the left side of those streets, and that he would hold a design competition for flange fillers.
One thing that’s important to remember: It’s not always about you! Streetcar rails exist. Railroads run down the middle of streets. This isn’t a unique-to-Portland problem, but being butthurt about it instead of learning how to deal with a minor inconvenience caused by infrastructure seems to be a major league sport here. Can we just drop the bicycle persecution complex when it comes to transit already? The horse has been bludgeoned to the point that there’s a horse shaped hole where the corpse fell.
I seem to have missed a /b tag after “you!”
Thank you for saying what many of us have been thinking.
+1
Walkers are eating the horse.
My guess is they were epoxied down temporarily until the powers that be decided if they’ll work as a permanent solution. The fact that they got mowed down in a matter of days may mean that they’ll decide to go to something else.
I am always amazed at the number of vehicles on Portland streets that do not fit in a single lane. Large tractor trailer trucks going down our narrow city streets as if it they were interstate highways. I am surprised at the number of tractor trailers going down 23rd avenue. Why are these trucks not required to offload onto smaller trucks before delivery.
We are so stuck on getting our cheap Chinese crap delivered as cheaply and quickly as possible that it is literally killing us.
I swear to god, I saw a double tractor trailer driving south on 23rd a few weeks ago. I cannot for the life of me imagine where it went after it hit Burnside. There is no way it could have turned.
“There is no way it could have turned” …and stayed within the confines of the street.
There, fixed it for you.
Trucks like this make turns all the time that require them to literally drive on the sidewalk. I don’t understand how that can be legal, but I see it pretty frequently. I guess all the double and triple handling involved in unloading one truck onto other, smaller trucks costs too much money.
The ones in Seattle that I referred to in the prior post about the bollard installation (that are no longer there and will not be replaced by Seattle DOT) were orange. They were also bolted down. All of the bollards were destroyed; shredded, folded, torn off by drivers not operating vehicles appropriately. I hold that no matter what Portland DOT does, those bollards will be destroyed by drivers. Sad, but not sure what can be done…other than ride with your situational awareness completely turned on.
Maybe they need to paint “car sharrows” down the middle of the car lane (straddling the tracks) to show the cars where they need to position themselves in the lane 🙂
The use of RED is limited to
Walkers are eating the horse.
doop wrong place.
I rode by this morning, they’re pretty much all knocked down and gone now.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all that the majority were removed by the same culprit on different passes.
I posted this on the other thread, but it bears repeating: Why are bollards on car paths made from soft plastic that yields when hit and prevents damage to cars, but bollards an bike paths are made from steel and concrete and break bones and cause massive head trauma even to people wearing helmets? Why not the other way around when the bollards are supposed to be protecting a bike lane from cars wandering into it?
Tell me about it! I would prefer though that the bollards for the MUP types physically prevent the unauthorized vehicles from entering the path.
Just north of where I live a car was able to get on the MUP, swiped one person and launched a second down 40′ off the bridge. In this case no bollards were present and bendables would not have stopped this vehicle operator.
If the bollards are solid in tight roadway configurations they can snag a vehicle and cause it to leave the lane increasing the potential damage over a larger area.
Because on a cycleway, the bollard is telling motorists NO MEANS NO.
After they figure out how to attach the bollards they need to do something about the cars who don’t want to turn right at NW 10th and instead cross the double yellow line and drive the wrong way down NW Lovejoy. It happens more often than you might think, and the lemming theory applies, if one person does it a couple others will follow.
They could put a “DO NOT ENTER” sign next to the “ONLY” one.
Just shows how little respect drivers have for bike lanes and cyclists. Perhaps the drivers need to slow down. A bunch of little speed bumps as they turn right might help (such as on Belmont).
how about a true separated bike lane? make it a concrete barrier and kiss those stupid hubcaps goodbye! guess people will have to drive at a more reasonable speed.
I have noticed that the same treatment is in effect on N Willamette by the Waud Bluff trail construction but in this case to guide car traffic.
As far as I could tell all of the popsicles* except one are still in place.
*(or whatever)
I had a thought, what about mounting the bollards on top of those cast-iron road turtles used to prevent cars from changing lanes near intersections? Running one of them over at speed would cause quite a jolt and would prevent drivers from “accidentally” drifting into the bike lane. And instead of making them from that soft plastic make them from steel mounted on a spring that would allow them to not wreck the car while still causing significant amounts of cosmetic damage. The idea is that stupidity should be painful, either physically, or financially when physical pain is unethical.
In addition, use bases that are square, not round (pointy edges and corners) and have them stick up a LOT more. Something that may cause tire damage if run over at speed (meaning, anything faster than a slow roll forward).