City adds new buffered bike lanes to N Skidmore Street

New, six-foot bike lanes on Skidmore.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

The Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) has installed new bike lanes on N Skidmore Street. The new lanes begin at the intersection of Michigan Ave and continue west toward Interstate.

According to Ross Swanson with PBOT, the work on Skidmore is part of the Going to the River Project. That project is a $2.3 million effort to connect “Portland’s premier neighborhood greenway” on NE Going Avenue to the employment and industrial areas on Swan Island.

The new bike lanes are six-feet wide and have an added five-foot buffer zone where Skidmore crosses Interstate 5. There is no buffer on portions of Skidmore that are not on the bridge overpass (reader Allan Rudwick explains below that ODOT prohibits people from parking on freeway overpasses, thus giving PBOT plenty of width to widen the bike lanes). Crews were working this morning to install the hash-marks inside the buffer, which create more separation between the bike lane and the standard vehicle lane.

Here’s how the bridge looked prior to the new lanes…

And here are a few more shots I snapped this morning…

The bike lane is curbside, the area adjacent to the car is the buffer zone which will have hash marks in it eventually.

The buffer zones vanish as you leave the bridge and approach Michigan.

PBOT says they’re installing the new bike lanes from Michigan to Maryland and intend to complete the final blocks (to Interstate) once a construction project on Interstate is complete. Skidmore is not only a crucial connection between Swan Island and the Going neighborhood greenway, it’s also a key route for residents of the Overlook neighborhood to access popular shops and restaurants on Mississippi Street. For more on the Going to the River project, see PBOT’s website.