The future for walking and rolling between the Central Eastside and the Lloyd District looks much brighter.
Yesterday the Portland Bureau of Transportation announced that they’ve chosen a 7th to 7th alignment for the carfree Sullivan’s Crossing Bridge.
The decision comes after over two years of analysis, studies, and community feedback that was solidified at an open house on December 5th where PBOT says they received “overwhelming support for the 7th to 7th alignment.”
Because of existing cycling connections through the Lloyd District, 7th was always the preferred option on the north side of I-84. On the south side PBOT was considering 7th, 8th, and 9th. 9th was cut early on in the process because it would have required the demolition of private property. A bridge from 7th to 8th would have been 130 feet shorter and less expensive to build; but it wasn’t as good of a fit with the cycling network to the south and other spatial constraints for where the bridge would have landed.
The news is being widely hailed by local bicycle insiders and activists. Because cycling access was ignored when Portland Streetcar was put on Martin Luther King Jr Blvd and Grand Avenue to the west, and conditions on the NE 12th overcrossing are far from adequate, it’s extremely difficult for bicycle users to connect between the growing Central Eastside, the Lloyd District and northeast Portland neighborhoods.
7th Avenue is poised to become a major cycling corridor in the future and this crossing will provide much-needed momentum to make it happen. There’s already space set-aside for a protected bikeway on 7th through the Lloyd District (which connects to the protected bikeway on NE Multnomah and the neighborhood greenway at Tillamook) and the street is on the future alignment of the Green Loop. Also in the mix is how the new carfree bridge and associated bikeway upgrades could help boost momentum for building the first piece of the long-awaited Sullivan’s Gulch path along I-84.
As you can see in the graphics below (which were shown at the recent open house) PBOT assumes the future presence of a Sullivan’s Gulch path:
And since the presence of a major cycling bridge is imminent, there’s already talk about building a two-way protected cycle path adjacent to Lloyd Blvd between Grand and 9th to help people access it:
Check out this graphic shared at the recent open house that shows before and after conditions of the south landing of the new bridge:
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A major part of this project will be the redesign of the 7th and Lloyd intersection at the bridge’s northern landing. As we reported one year ago, there was lots of excitement around PBOT’s initial plan for a roundabout or protected intersection. However now it appears those designs aren’t being considered and instead they’re looking at an upgraded, but more traditional intersection design (as seen above).
According to PBOT’s evaluation, the roundabout didn’t move forward in part because it was more expensive and it allegedly wouldn’t handle the projected level of automobile use in 2035:
The design of the bridge itself remains to be determined, but PBOT already knows it will have a 5 percent slope (downhill from north to south) and will have 24-feet of usable deck for walking and rolling. With the alignment decision made, PBOT is now able to vet bridge types at a deeper level.
Here’s one of the potential bridge designs known as “Skip”:
Suffice it to say this bridge will be an absolute game changer and it can’t happen soon enough. PBOT says the bridge will cost between $9 and $13 million (funded mostly by System Development Charges, fees paid by developers) and construction will begin in 2019.
Check out the official project page here.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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I love all these pie in the sky projects…
Meanwhile the Tillamook crossing at 7th is about the most dangerous place I see in my 30 mile a day commute and nothing is done about it.
i hear you dwk. But I don’t think I would define this as pie-in-the-sky. The money, the planning, the outreach, the demand, the politics… everything is in place for this project.
I still have a difficult time believing that this is really happening. This was absolutely my pie-in-the-sky bike network connectivity dream in the early 2000s. I wrote it off as ludicrously expensive and that it was never going to happen. Fast forward over a decade later and it is happening. Dream big, advocate endlessly.
You’re not alone, shirtsoff. Way back in 2006 my friend Jason and I made the idea of this crossing our project for that year’s Traffic and Transportation class. https://portlandtransport.com/archives/2006/12/a_class_unto_th_1.html
This bridge project will create a lot of momentum to improve 7th Ave further north.
Tillamook was supposed to go ahead of Lincoln-Harrison, but BES is replacing pipe on the west half next year.
So the “city that works,” the vision zero leader, the city that always touts its fake bike reputation worldwide cannot fix ONE very dangerous intersection of one if its “touted” greenways?
Seriously?
Someone will die here……
Tillamook will probably still go ahead of Lincoln-Harrison, since the city has gone back to the drawing board on that project to satisfy the whiny drivers in the neighborhood.
Really? NE Tillamook at 7th? It’s not great but I would hardly say it’s the worst place to bike in the city…
It will be so awesome not having to bike on MLK for those couple blocks coming down into SE from North Portland. I love this! I like this so much, I can’t even think of what to be mad about and what I should hate about it. I’ll check back on the comments in an hour for inspiration 🙂
wow. the other commenters did not fail to disappoint. Well, after seeing other complaints, can I just say I hate how noisy this crossing will be. We should replace the highway with river and the cars with canoes. Also the whole river should be underground.
I guess some of this snark is aimed at me. Sorry if my critique comes off as unrealistic or nit-picky, but this is a big deal project that has been planned and wished for for a long time. The City is spending a lot of money on a very needed and great project. However, the project is firmly in the hands of a group of Engineers who are very competent and committed, but may be missing the forest for the trees in a few aspects of this projects. For the most part, most of things I care about would not cost any more to do, but they would contribute to the end result becoming a great place that feels great to use and reinforces Portland’s character.
Awesome project! Great location. The roar from vehicle traffic during off peak hours will be maddening.
Jonthan (or Michael Anderson, etc.) – would someone followup on “why” the RA (roundabout) fell out of the proposal for the intersection design…it would likely function safer, AND give cyclists higher access priority for a regional route [unless the cross street rests at red – due to its assumed lower arterial classification functionality].
Hi Todd,
Like a lot of good ideas at PBOT, it died in part because engineers were afraid it wouldn’t handle future predictions for driving volumes. I just added this graphic to the story…
===
Two things not on the graphic (among others): Roundabouts have half as many points of conflicts for crash opportunities as signals, and they operate even during storm blackouts. Given PBOT “commitment” to Vision Zero, I’m rather surprised to not yet see them for every PBOT project involving an intersection.
Yes this brings up a good point…is there any “neutral” stakeholder design committee that might help staff at the early stages so that innovative designs do not die a too “premature” death…such as the PBAC etc?
Even on PBOT’s diagrams, both Lloyd and 7th are one-lanes, so I don’t understand why you would compare it to Glisan/Chavez, a “roundabout” that was designed at a time when most vehicles moved at no more than 25mph, with a trolley station in the center. IMO, it’s very likely that many cyclists will fly through the intersection during a red signal or any other signal coming off the 24-foot wide bridge. After even the first fatal bike crash, with the driver claiming to the sympathetic police the the rider “came out of nowhere and I couldn’t stop”, BP readers will be screaming for PBOT to “fix” the intersection. A pre-installed roundabout at 7th & Lloyd would help prevent such crashes, forcing both cars and bicyclists to slow down, and pedestrians to use nearby mid-block crossings.
I had this under mh, but it somehow got moved under Racer X. Weird.
The bridge will be a 5 pct grade climb going south to north. It can be designed so that cyclists are moving slowly as they approach the 7th/Lloyd intersection from the south.
Traffic circles and roundabouts work acceptably for one lane roads, but Chavez/Glisan is not fun. And even in a car, the newish bike lane on Glisan just to the east makes the right-turn-only lane from northbound Chavez almost useless. I agree with PBOT on this one. Of course, I wouldn’t argue if they decided to reduce Lloyd to one lane in each direction and put in a roundabout.
The internal scoring system is not consistent with PBOT’s goals (increase in bike share modality, Vision Zero etc.). Therefore, as long as they’ll use it they will land on solutions that are not consistent with these goals.
Chavez-Glisan is not a modern roundabout.
My favourite part of Chavez/Glisan is this- if you’re in a motor vehicle, and you stop at the stop sign, the full-size bus shelter ads completely obscure your view of oncoming traffic you’re about to merge into. It’s been that way for a very long time.
That’s why it’s best to ignore the stop signs, and treat in like a true roundabout.
Not to get sidetracked but the Glisan/Chavez roundabout you speak of is self-sabotaged by forcing a stop at all entry points. An astonishingly stupid and dangerous procedure defeating the whole purpose of roundabout function! The momentum and frequency of north-south traffic forces the east-west mergers to simply force their way in, which pisses off the Chavez users. The whole principal of a circle like this is you enter as equals and yield to coming traffic. Visit any one of about 100,000 traffic circles in the UK or Europe to see this work properly. I can only think the design of the Glisan/Chavez debacle came about because Portland drivers weren’t thought capable of figuring out how to use a roundabout at the time. Sadly this may have been true at the time of configuration, but I think we all know how these work now and it’s time the city makes this a functional roundabout instead a confusing and dangerous sort-of, but-sort-of-not 4 way stop.
With the volumes and speeds of traffic there, there would be wrecks every day. Long ago it was a free-for-all, non-stop-sign traffic circle. Apparently the city thought better of it.
I don’t see how you design a roundabout to be comfortable for bikes or pedestrians. The whole point of a roundabout is that cars flow through it without stopping. That’s not what cyclists need, unless they are fairly fast and skilled. If a roundabout were placed at 7th/Lloyd, a barrage of complaints would follow, about how a 7 year old can’t safely merge into and out of moving auto traffic – and they’d be right. And about how pedestrians can’t find a safe place to cross – and those complaints would be right too.
I come from the UK, a country where traffic engineers view every intersection as an opportunity to install roundabouts. They are incredibly pedestrian unfriendly, and I’m glad PBOT doesn’t make more use of them.
macoinnnich, the problem is not roundabouts, it’s the way they’re done in the UK in terms of not considering peds or bikes. Visit any roundabout in The Netherlands and marvel at how fabulous and safe it feels on a bike. (or as a ped) But as bad as they are in the UK they still work better than the mess at Glisan/Chavez
I don’t doubt that designs in the Netherlands make better provisions for bikes than they do in the UK, but the basic geometry of roundabouts mean they’re always going to require more area (and therefore more travel distance for pedestrians) than a four-way stop or signalized intersection.
While the crossing distance may be slightly longer, the time to cross on average is shorter. A well-designed single lane roundabout is safer than a signal, for all modes, esp. people walking and biking.
This video has been promoted as showing how safe such roundabouts are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEXD0guLQY0
How many people do you think would feel safe performing some of the moves the cyclists in the video are with the traffic we have? I know I wouldn’t.
Looks slow and safe to me, with good sightlines. And it doesn’t look like you can get left-hooked by a truck.
The Dutch cyclists are constantly crossing right in front of and just feet from oncoming cars. There’s multiple near collisions every minute in the video.
In Portland those would be actual collisions. Portland (and Washington) drivers have never seen that sort of roundabout. Portland cyclists travel at widely different speeds. Portland drivers are eating, taking on the phone, watching their GPS screens. Portland cyclists (some, too many, of them) don’t use lights and are very hard to see at night. Portland drivers face little consequence from accidentally hitting a cyclist (absent factors like alcohol or fleeing).
Portland cyclists (here on BP, anyway) complain about the slip road entering Broadway, the car left turn across the bike lane at 3rd/Couch, the bike lane crossing the traffic lane at Greeley. This roundabout functions exactly like those spots. Cyclists and drivers are expected to stream across each other’s paths without stopping or slowing.
Many on BP are focused on separated infrastructure, convinced that cyclists are unsafe unless protected by concrete barriers, alarmed when a car passes with only a couple feet clearance. Yet they clamour for this sort of roundabout?
Europe and the US are very different. Not just infrastructure, but road user behavior. Look up the incidence of DUI in Europe vs US, as an example. European solutions won’t automatically transfer here.
the safe slow speeds of motorvehicles (often slower than people cycling) in that roundabout is a powerful argument for more widespread use of kind of intersection infrastructure.
thanks for posting.
Those in the circular roadway have the right of way at a modern roundabout, and Portland drivers understand circular intersections, so I don’t get the unknown for cyclists’ experience. Ditto for pedestrians.
The geometric constraint is curious, since there are no buses that turn and a mini-roundabout fits easily. Mini-roundabouts are also truck friendly.
I see LOS for cars, but not for bikes or pedestrians. I guess there will be more cars in 2035, since AV won’t actually happen(?)
I also don’t see safety in the matrix. A 15-mph design would achieve very safe and comfortable experiences for pedestrians. Stop lights can still be run by errant drivers.
I’m curious about your statement that Portland drivers get circular intersections. Where’s that coming from? We don’t have a single true roundabout in the city (stop controlled traffic circles != roundabouts) so it’s hard to say what would happen. Especially at a single roundabout plotted into a corridor that is exclusively signal controlled.
Getting this bridge built will transform biking in central Portland and benefit me a great deal. There area a number of details I wish they would attend to a bit more:
1. Short stretches of 2-way cylcletracks on one side of the road are a terrible idea. They are onerous to exit and enter. Any small safety benefit that is gained while using them is more than negated by the danger, discomfort and inconvenience of accessing them. This plan shows 2 of these, one on the south side on 7th for one block, the other on the south side of Lloyd for 4 blocks. just put bike panes on each side of Lloyd and sharrows on 7th.
2. The bridge designs are all glorified expressions of structural principals. The team lacks a designer with sensitivity to the pedestrian experience. This bridge will be loud, smelly, and uncomfortable, but offer great views. The Highway and RR each have screening requirements that should be a driving decision, not a tacked-on afterthought. Pay more attention the experience of using the bridge.
3. The bridge is a landmark, gateway and overlook. In some ways, it marks one end of the experience of traveling from Portland through the Gorge. It would nice if the bridge could pick up on some of the design language of places like Rocky Butte, Vista House, Vista Bridge, etc. The bridgeheads could include battered rock walls or detailed cast concrete, pedestrian lighting could take the form of a series of lanterns instead of overhead cobras. The bridge would be a more effective gateway if it were more level and perpendicular to I-84. This could be achieved by landing on the north bank west of 7th, and climbing the bank to the east at 5% to meet with 7th ave.
4. I am afraid the bridge is too narrow. The cross sections that I have see have raised sidewalks on either side with a 2-way bike “road” in the center. This gives 6′ sidewalks and 6-foot bike lanes- all pretty cramped if this bridge becomes as successful as it should. Also, if they combined the sidewalks on the west side, the walking space would become much more comfortable and give people walking a great view of downtown. Again, this is being designed by engineers who bring an automobile-sensibility to the design: keep each mode and direction segregated.
5. The “place” is on the bridgeheads, but the design is all about the bridge. The bridge is over a highway, not a river. It will be incredibly loud. The bridgeheads should become little plazas for meeting, gathering, viewing, etc.
Here’s the Gateway to Gridlock we have at the Sunset Transit center (officially, as of 2016, the “Terry Hofferber Moore Pedestrian Bridge”). This is one of the 3 crossings of US 26 I have to make just to go straight into town, but it is the most artistic, and the only one that is bike/ped only. It saves me some significant distance, plus bonus: it’s covered.
But it is extremely loud, and if one were prone to it, one could experience vertigo if one looked too intently down at freeway traffic. Also, one would likely be subject to arrest if one were to meet/gather/view anything from here. But then this crossing is so old that I remember when they took down the “NO BICYCLE RIDING, SKATEBOARDING…etc.” signs and actually acknowledged that it wasn’t just a walking path to get to/from transit, but a real, live transportation link across a crappy freeway. So 20 years later, the next county over, and a different agency (PBOT vs. TriMet), and maybe the 7th St./Sullivan’t Gulch crossing will be totally awesome.
I urge everyone to support the cheaper pre-prefabricated deck option so that the ~$3-4 million in TSDC funding saved can be used other badly needed local bike/ped improvements. The planner and engineer I spoke to assured me that the cheaper prefab bridge would have similar longevity and functionality as the more expensive “pretty” option.
While I mostly agree, the neighborhood groups pitching in money who have been advocating for this for years, a decade or more, don’t want a cheap looking bridge.
and David- the bridge will allow emergency vehicle access.
which neighborhood groups are funding this project?
(it was my understanding that bridge was being funded largely via TSDCs and some additional government funding.)
What are you basing those numbers on?
They’re not accurate.
I quote from Jonathan’s piece:
And a snapshot of Table 1 from the ridiculously large and malformed PDF from KPFF that can be found on the relevant PBOT site:
https://imgur.com/a/oEYUS
The lowest cost option in the report, the pre-manufactured steel H truss (Option 1A), would require the complete closure of I-84 while the bridge span is erected. I imagine the chances of ODOT agreeing to that are next to zero.
When this gets built, it’ll be one of the biggest immediate impacts to people who ride bicycles since… I don’t know when.
Gregg, I assume you mean a “positive” impact…
I sure do!
Since the Tilikum Crossing opened.
Questions:
1. Given a 24-foot width and its location, if someone decides to camp on the bridge, who will be legally responsible for dealing with the camper? Will it be Portland, as in the Springwater? Or ODOT, as in the I-205 trail?
2. Also given a 24-foot width and the design options being considered, will the bridge support motor vehicles? Could it be converted to two-way traffic for cars?
This is great, with the extra bike traffic this will generate ( isn’t it cool that extra bike traffic is a good thing, while extra car traffic causes troubles for everyone) I hope PBOT also buts a little effort in to upgrading the crossing at 7th and Broadway.
Yes!! I cannot wait for this bridge to unveil and I can stop using the 12th street bridge every morning. The 11th street/Lloyd/12st street bridge jog takes forever if you don’t hit the light at 11th just so and can be a little hair raising if you’re navigating the curve alongside a TriMet bus. Anyway, this can’t get started soon enough for me! 🙂
great a nice new super noisy crossing..might as well be on the 205 bridge…
why not just CAP that whole area…?
Because they don’t have billions of dollars to spend on freeway caps.
Good points about the lighting and the incline. Go to YouTube and look at some of the bike/ped bridges they have in Holland and Japan. The connections to the future I-84 trail and the Lloyd Center area should be part of the duscussion. At present, Lloyd Blvd. between 99E and 12th have sidewalks only on the north side of Lloyd Blvd., a legacy left over from the old Sears store (now Metro HQ). And I’ve always windred why Multnomah St. can’t be reduced to one lane each way. Traffic tends to move fast thru there, even with the bike lane. Improving the crosswalks to/from Lloyd Center across Multnomah with refuges in the middle of the street would help. And what’s wrong with roundabouts? True, something needs to be done with the 39th (Chavez)/Glisan one, which uses stop signs and blinkers, which slow the traffic but create an awful traffic pattern there. But this ped/bike bridge (and the forthcoming one over I-405) would be a step in the right direction, but this has to be done right.
This will definitely improve safety for some teens I know who need to cycle to the central Eastside from North Portland. I do hope the city can simultaneously discourage camping along the bridge. My young daughter has abandoned the wonderful and safe Bryant Street bridge for the busy I-5 interchange on Rosa Parks Ave for her daily commute, because frequent intoxicated campers cause her to feel unsafe in the isolated Bryant area. Other friends’ kids no longer bike through Interstate by the East Bank esplanade access because campers block the wide sidewalk path. Somehow we have to address these complex issues so we don’t continue to lose the benefits of these multi-million dollar infrastructure investments (among other reasons).
I don’t see the point of building the Sullivan’s Gulch MUP. It will simply become a heroin highway, and an outright dangerous place at night.
For the most part, the Sullivan’s Gulch trail may be isolated and somewhat superfluous, but for the purposes of this project it would be an enormous boost to safety given a separated two-way cycle track from the IRQ down Lloyd to 16th and Multnomah.
Agreed. Even if it didn’t have those issues, it would still be filled with toxic air generated by the freeway. I love the idea of a direct off-street path for bike traffic, but I would never use the Sullivan’s Gulch because of the pollution.
The reason they don’t put in a roundabout is simple. It requires next level thinking which nobody wants to attack. They already have a signals department which. Is happy to charge for installation. And forever maintenance. So…various internal interests win. Plus, seniors by and large, hate those “left roundabouts”.
Got to love we are planning for future car volume, not future bike volume. Which shows you how pbot is really staffed.
I’m really pleased that they chose the 7th Ave alignment. While the 7th-8th Ave alignment could have been slightly cheaper, it would have resulted in out of direction travel. Decades later when nobody remembers the cost it would have been a decision we would regret.
However, while I’m glad to see the Lloyd Blvd two-way protected bikeway move forward it doesn’t have a lot of utility if it only goes between Grand and 9th. This project was proposed in the Central City Plan as a lower cost alternative to segment 1 of the Sullivan’s Gulch trail. To serve any useful purpose it really needs to extend to the Steel Bridge to the west and 12th to the east. Otherwise it’s hard to imagine who will ever use it, or why.
if 11th and 12th are selected as a bikeway couplet by the central city in motion plan then 8th would have been slightly less out of the way. i was disappointed by the lack of information on how this bridge might connect with future bikeways. this might have helped people make a more informed choice.
Very pretty. This will be very convenient for the cyclists of North/Northeast Portland. Not how I would prefer $10-15 million to be spent considering the # of fatalities of late.
the bulk of the funding comes from local transportation system development charges that cannot be spent outside of the area. i personally would like to see this restriction lifted by the city. wealthier areas should be heavily subsidizing infrastructure in less wealthy areas, imo.
I agree. Development in close in neighborhoods tends to displace lower income to further out areas. SDCs generated from close in development should be available to improve the further out areas.
“Development in close in neighborhoods tends to displace lower income to further out areas”
[citation needed]
In my neighborhood which is very close to Mr. Liu’s one of the major causes of displacement is the flipping and/or demolishing of SFR homes that are being used as shared rental housing. This displacement is directly attributable to the exclusionary and anti-renter land-use policies favored by Mr. Liu.
I’ll believe it when I see it, let’s hope they don’t make the connections at each end too convoluted!
Ha! Tilikum anyone?
90 dgr right angle turns for everyone!!!!!!!!1!!!
Saint Joan had no problem with her horse at Glisan/Chavez.
Glisan isn’t a true roundabout with their draconian stop signs. Although, I stopped stopping for them years ago.
Giant work parties to remove English Ivy will be needed.
seems to me that if we go about everything with the expectation of more automobile traffic in 17 years, we have already failed. it’s failure of policy and planning as much as it is a failure of imagination and political will.
what’s the point of setting goals (and lots of them) if we’re going to assume we don’t meet them?
I have been following this project for years and although I am delighted that it is finally happening I am surprised by the final choice. Although the chosen bridge will undoubtedly be a very beautiful structure I can’t help thinking the $4M saved with the other option would buy a lot of much needed safety improvements elsewhere. NE 7th from Broadway to Tillamook would be a great place to start.
there is no final choice of bridge structure. lobby pbot for a less expensive option.
This bridge and the Flanders Crossing will be welcome improvements!
Do they expect a lot of pedestrian traffic? I’m asking because I’m curious about delineating bikes and peds on and off the bridge, and separating them from parked and moving motor vehicles on 7th.
Personally I like a shared street concept with fewer signs and stripes whenever possible.
Hell yeah! I raise a glass of seven and seven to this welcome news. Next up: getting PBOT not to wimp out on continuing north on 7th…