(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)
When I rolled up to the memorial and rally for Lou Battams on Southeast Foster Road last month, I noticed the crossing adjacent to her makeshift memorial was officially closed.
It seemed like a poke in the eye for the City of Portland to deem an intersection too dangerous for crossing just days after a woman was killed trying to walk across it.
But this isn’t the only “No Crossing” sign I’ve seen pop up recently. There are several in my neighborhood along North Rosa Parks Way and I’ve heard about more of them from readers via social media. So what’s up? Is Portland ceding our streets to the most dangerous users? If “every corner is a crosswalk” why aren’t all corners open? Why would a Vision Zero city discourage walking?
Since last fall I’ve asked the Portland Bureau of Transportation about two specific crossings that have been closed.
@BikePortland you really ought to do a piece on the proliferation of these anti-crossing signs that @PBOTinfo is currently enamored with. They’re going In all over as if improvements in one place require limitations in another. PBOT’s zero sum game? #zerovision pic.twitter.com/fJSnmxK02B
— Tony (@Tonyatwork) October 10, 2018
“PBOT is not in the pedestrian crossing closing business. We do not close crossings unless we absolutely have to.”
— John Brady, PBOT
After a reader tweeted a photo of a “No Crossing” sign at N Rosa Parks and Moore (above), I forwarded the link to PBOT Communications Director John Brady. “PBOT is not in the pedestrian crossing closing business. We do not close crossings unless we absolutely have to,” he assured me. Brady said in the case of Rosa Parks and Moore PBOT decided to install a closure sign because there’s no way to access the sidewalk on the north side of Rosa Parks in that location (it intersects with a wand-protected bike lane). If people want to cross, PBOT thinks they should walk across Moore to the other corner where there is a curb ramp on both sides of Rosa Parks. “There are also marked crosswalks at Vancouver (marked and signalized) and Williams (marked and signed) less than 300 feet away where people can cross if they feel more comfortable doing it there,” Brady wrote in an email.
As for the crossing where Lou Battams was killed. Brady assured me it was not closed because of her. “That installation [on southwest corner of Southeast 72nd and Foster] was a condition that had been placed on nearby development. They just happened to be installed right after the fatality,” he shared. Brady added that new construction triggers a crossing analysis, and if warranted, PBOT will require developers to pay for the “No Crossing” signage.
What triggers the installation of these signs? Here’s Brady’s response:
“A classic example is when, opposite a corner, there is a driveway, bioswale, parking, or a non-ADA curb—i.e. something which restricts free movement or could cause conflict if a pedestrian tried to cross. Other common situations could be where traffic volume is so great that we want to incentivize people crossing nearby where there is better traffic control (signals, stop signs, rapid-flashing beacons).”
As for the recent uptick of these signs around town, Brady said that’s simply a function of more private development and PBOT infrastructure projects coming online.
If you have a question about a specific “No Crossing” sign and want to know why it was installed, feel free to contact PBOT for more information at (503) 823-5185 or PDXroads@portlandoregon.gov.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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I never noticed this before, but the frames supporting the crosswalk-closed signs look just like “Portland Staple” bike racks. (The blue color in @Tonyatwork’s photo clued me in.)
Not only is it a wasted bike rack, it’s the newer, more secure kind (the lower bar gives it away) with the cable inside. What an egregious use of resources.
How is it wasted? Looks like you could still lock to it.
Silver lining: more bike parking.
The ones I’ve seen around are secured using standard bolts rather than security bolts. So somebody with a vehicle could unbolt it easily and toss it into the back of a truck with the bike still attached. At least with the secure bolts they need to have a specialized bit.
“A classic example is when, opposite a corner, there is a driveway, bioswale, PARKING…” (emphasis mine) Every undesignated stretch of street frontage is assumed to be parking. That’s literally a killer statement.
Oh, I hate that spot — every time I want to bike with my kids to the library, I am trying to think of the least annoying way to cross Fremont.
Thank you, John L. for this sub-thread on the fraught crossing at NE Fremont & 14th, which is the final vehicle traffic exposure of my long bike commute. The row of newspaper vending boxes used to be right next to the utility pole, completely blocking sidewalk access on the north side of Fremont.
I repeatedly contacted the property manager & city about that and finally someone moved the vending boxes so there’s enough of a gap to get through — but most of the time, as you noted, that access is blocked by parked vehicles.
Also as noted, vehicles parked on the south side of Fremont block sight lines, so even if one lane stops for someone crossing it’s still dangerous. The only saving grace might be the inevitable presence of police enjoying their coffee on the Starbucks porch right there — so if a bad thing happens they will see it.
The 20′ from a crosswalk (even unmarked) is usually not legal to park in unless it’s signed as such. So for the most part there shouldn’t be parking spots in the way of most crossings.
None of those spots are legal to park in. Looks like there’s only 2 available ZipCar spots at that intersection. And those should be removed due to blocked visibility.
Call the city 823-SAFE line and ask to have No Parking signs installed.
So Brady’s answer is PBOT will restrict pedestrians’ free movement to cross a street when “something which restricts free movement or could cause conflict if a pedestrian tried to cross.” It’s like arguing against providing bike lanes on a dangerous street because the street is too dangerous for bikes.
Brady then gave some examples, like a bioswale, that would block a pedestrian from crossing. Perhaps BES should not have built a bioswale in that location, but given that it’s there, it’s either close the crosswalk or fill in the swale.
What would you do?
On a kind of related point, has the city ever provided a justification as to why it has retained the policy of allowing street parking to the block end or estimated the cost to redo parking signs / curb paint so that they can retire this policy and provide better lines of sight for all users at intersections?
Same as any other program they aren’t particularly enamored upon: Costs, lack of personnel, unfunded mandate from a past City Council, not a current priority for City Council, other more pressing priorities, blah blah blah… We heard it constantly at PBOT budget meetings.
Vision Zero starts with zero parking on corners.
No, but there was talk about it at the Council meeting on PedPDX, and Oregon Walks is starting a campaign around it: http://oregonwalks.org/blog/help-us-clearthecorners.
I don’t think John knows what incentive means.
“As for the recent uptick of these signs around town, Brady said that’s simply a function of more private development and PBOT infrastructure projects coming online.”
No, those wouldn’t lead to any increase in these signs unless PBOT was requiring the crossing closures.
If PBOT were requiring crossing IMPROVEMENTS instead of CLOSURES, then the sentence would start out, “As for the recent uptick in improved crossings around town…”
“A classic example (for triggering the “no crossing” signs) is when, opposite a corner, there is a driveway, bioswale, parking, or a non-ADA curb—i.e. something which restricts free movement or could cause conflict if a pedestrian tried to cross. ”
In the case of the non-ADA curb, why not fix the curb instead of spending money on a “no crossing” sign?
Rather than complain about a theoretical case, it might be better to pick a real life example and ask why PBOT closed that particular crossing rather than improve it.
In your hypothetical, it may be that the sign costs a whole lot less than rebuilding the corner, and PBOT wants to do something else with the money.
I was responding to PBOT’s general statement about why crossings (not a specific one) might be closed. I’d love to see a list of closed crossings with the specific reasons for closing each one.
PBOT did cite non-ADA-compliant curbs as a reason for closing crossings, and I’d guess it IS more expensive to provide one than to put up a no-crossing sign. But there are thousands of crossings in Portland without ADA-compliant ramps on one or both ends, so I’m skeptical when PBOT uses that as a reason for closing one and not touching the 99% of the rest.
And two of the other reasons PBOT cited were parking and bioswales. PBOT has control of both of those. Is it significantly more expensive to put up a no parking sign than a no crossing sign? And of course it would be expensive to remove a bioswale, but as someone else said, those are almost all new, with their locations approved by PBOT. So there’s a likelihood that a bioswale conflict was caused by PBOT.
I complain regularly about poor design related to pedestrian and bicycle facilities on public projects, and dig into the details on each, and screwups are often the result of someone at PBOT (or Parks or ODOT) not understanding the site or the code. In almost every case, things start out with the agency giving a general statement that’s wrong, because nobody thought things through past a general level.
Regarding bioswales, the odds are that the pedestrian crossing existed LONG before the bioswale. Bioswales are relatively new to Portland. I think they started being added roughly 10 or so years ago, and the vast majority have been added after the fact to existing infrastructure. So if a pedestrian crossing was closed due to a bioswale it is pretty likely that the placement of the bioswale did not take into account the existing pedestrian crossing, and that is a pretty poor planning.
within the last year, brand new curb ramps were constructed on SE 12th/SE Madison. They were then ripped out and rebuilt with a straight curb and no pedestrian crossing sign added.
you should ask John Brady about that!
PBOT would rather discourage pedestrians than deal with a poorly designed road that encourages unsafe driving (like westbound Hawthorne). Also, how shocking is it that that they paid to build the damn curb twice, and the citizens of Portland who walk got EXCLUDED as a result?!
They just rebuilt all the existing curb ramps along SE 26th, while just a block away, there are still corners with massive curbs that are utterly impassible to the unagile.
Reminds me of pentagon speak during the Vietnam War. ” we had to destroy the village to save it.” PBOTS’ version, ” We had to close the crossing to preserve peoples freedom to walk safely.”
These signs have appeared all up and down Foster. In some places, such as at 67th, where the crosswalk was realigned to improve pedestrian visibility, I can understand the rationale, but many others seem capricious. At the Foster/Holgate intersection, there’s a no-crossing sign right next to a pedestrian signal. Do they cancel each other out?
The sign they installed nearest me is on a new curb extension only ~5 feet from a new ADA ramp. It’s so close to the ramp that it appears to close the ramp. On the opposite side of the sign there is no obstruction, and no parking due to a fire hydrant (Unless they are considering the fire hydrant to be the pedestrian obstruction). I’m wondering how many feet on either side of the sign does the sign apply to?
Also soon after installation, the sign quickly started to acquire stickers, like so many others, to the point at which it is no longer readable. If you can’t actually tell what the sign is indicating anymore, is it still illegal to cross there? At what percentage of sticker coverage would the signs be considered to be unreadable?
ODOT and PBOT may have their differences, but their spokesmen sure are in lockstep. I noticed this particular tactic used by both of them recently when questions about carcentric infrastructure changes. This is ODOT’s Don Hamilton quote on narrowing bike lanes on Rosa Parks a couple weeks back: “This is not some bureaucratic exercise done to annoy bicyclists.”. PBOT’s John Brady here: “PBOT is not in the pedestrian crossing closing business.”
The most charitable interpretation would say this sort of tone reveals a callous nonchalance (“Come on, just a joke!”) to the questioning of their organizational respect for process over actual safety. My own take is that such remarks are classic paternalistic gaslighting. Set up a ludicrous strawman to avoid engaging substantially with the question. It belittles the other person in the conversation by framing the very question as ridiculous. It’s common enough in day to day human interaction, but unconscionable coming from people who are supposed to engage with the people they serve about questions of public safety. I hope that someday they find a soul and take this stuff more seriously.
It wouldn’t be so egregious if those comments weren’t so demonstrably false.
“This is not some bureaucratic exercise done to annoy bicyclists.”
And yet it was bureaucratic, and does annoy bicyclists.
“PBOT is not in the pedestrian crossing closing business.”
And yet, they close pedestrian crossings, kind of often, and get paid a salary for it.
I get what each of their puny, craven and ill-worded objections are trying to say. They’re saying “We didn’t do this on purpose.” i.e. “We did it, but it’s an accident.” i.e. “We don’t want to take responsibility for doing our jobs poorly.”
Darn the luck, huh? Accidental lane-shrinkings and crosswalk-closings will happen, amirite? Shoot it’s too bad there’s not some kind of government entity that is in charge of transportation, that you could work for, where you might have some control over things like this! Eat me.
Whoa whoa whoa, this is not some kind of angry epithet to annoy and insult you! I’m not in the disrespecting lazy cowards business!
Comment of the week.
They seem like anything is preferable
to enforcing speed limits and laws on other driving behaviors.
Many here would agree.
Hey Kitty! Can you go back and review the posting guidelines? Here’s the main one:
Also, if you comment frequently, please consider holding your thoughts so that others can step forward. Thank you — Jonathan
It’s really, really okay for you to have thoughts but not post them. Just say them out loud, to yourself, and then you don’t need to type anything. You don’t need to comment on everyone’s comments – it gets really tiresome and drags down the tenor of the conversation. Thanks.
This article is a good starting point, and it doesn’t get to the bottom of this important issue, or the examples. In general:
(1) Crosswalk closures often cause people to walk three sides of an intersection instead of one “bad” side, which may increase the total exposure/risk. This happened when Washington County closed the west crosswalk across SW Barnes at the St. Vincent Hospital exit–after Betty G. was struck and killed by a driver while she and another person were crossing (on a leading pedestrian interval);
(2) Humans aren’t robots. “Compliance” is always poor with closures, so people will not just get hurt but also blamed; and
(3) Closures are most common where the roadway authority has failed to implement better measures to make an entire street/area safe, such as reducing speeds, shortening distances between safe crossings, reducing the lane count / crossing distance, providing refuge islands, tightening turning radii to reduce the speed of turning traffic, adding adequate pedestrian-level street lighting, and clearing parking that obstructs sight distances.
Once you’ve done all those things talk to me about closing a crosswalk.
They put in a bunch of these along Killingsworth from Sandy to 82nd, perhaps no coincidentally someone who decided to cross mid-block was killed by a motorist earlier this year.
There doesn’t seem to be a good map/list of closed crosswalks. Would you consider adding those you know about to this map? https://drive.google.com/open?id=13wM2C6ms6co4-DsrAIFBSCFQNk6tChJ1&usp=sharing. You can add photos and comments to the location as well.
Or perhaps romantic feministic gaslighting?
Washington County closed numerous mid-block crossings on NW Bethany Blvd when they added a shared turn lane and two more car lanes. Closing crosswalks is horrible.
PBOT may have found the easiest and cheapest way to Vision 0 is to simply close crosswalks?
It’s obviously time for some enforcement action. PPB should definitely get out there and cite pedestrians to make sure Foster Road motorists can continue unimpeded through the intersections at 10 mph over the speed limit.
Have they studied or considered the unintended consequence of the mass closures, that more people will now cross midblock to avoid the signs? How do they know that a resulting increase in midblock crossings won’t result in an overall increase in collisions. PBOT should gather data to insure they are not making things worse overall.
I think the experience (i.e., “data”) shows that compliance among motorists is extremely poor. Most drivers cannot be counted on to yield to pedestrians in unmarked, marked, or even signalized crosswalks. Therefore, PBOT puts their money on better compliance among vulnerable road users, since they are under threat of literal death if they don’t comply. Removing the only legal protection for VRU—the existence of a crosswalk—puts 100% of the onus on the pedestrian to comply or suffer with no recourse.
Before: take your chances that drivers will comply with the law; if they don’t, you suffer the physical consequences while the driver “suffers” the legal ones (maybe).
After: take your chances, but if you don’t comply with the closures, you will suffer both the physical AND the legal consequences, while drivers feel legitimized outrage at your chutzpah in thinking you could dare go against them in a street fight.
I don’t agree often with Kitty. However, I disagree with your mansplanin’ and your effort to stamp other voices. So, let me be direct. Cut it out or go to some other site that strokes your ego. Kitty can post 18 times per day as can anyone else in any post.
1dt amendment.
Who has time to post 18 times a day?
If multiple people are talking about an immoderate amount of posting, is that data or anecdote?
It sounds more like a PBOT meeting…
It’s anecdote. Here is data: comments measured by words and frequency in this article, as of c. 7PM, not counting this post (obviously). It’s interesting that only one person made both lists; I would have expected more overlap.
Top 5, sorted by word count [(‘El Biciclero’, {‘words’: 215, ‘posts’: 2}), (‘Tom’, {‘words’: 191, ‘posts’: 2}), (‘Jim Lee’, {‘words’: 190, ‘posts’: 1}), (‘Mark smith’, {‘words’: 189,
‘posts’: 3}), (‘Mick O’, {‘words’: 182, ‘posts’: 1})]
Top 5, sorted by post frequency [(‘John Lascurettes’, {‘words’: 153, ‘posts’: 5}), (‘Hello, Kitty’, {‘words’: 134, ‘posts’: 4}), (‘Mark smith’, {‘words’: 189, ‘posts’: 3}), (‘David Hampsten’, {‘words’: 50, ‘posts’: 2}), (‘q’, {‘words’: 126, ‘posts’: 2})]
That’s not what the [1st] Amendment pertains to. Bikeportland is not Congress.
Anyhow, this is all about cars first. If the city was concerned, they would fix the intersection not prohibit the free movement of people on wheelchairs, legs or on bikes.
Closing crosswalks seems like cynical behavior for an agency with a stated preference for active transportation. Portland Bureau of Car Storage?
Bioswales? A bioswale on NE Siskyou was taken out because too many people drove their cars into it. Should we cancel driving there due to bioswale incompatibility?
This is the cognitive dissonance that must be maintained (I’m guessing) by PBOT. If it inconveniences or poses the slightest impediment or risk to drivers, get rid of it, remodel the roadway to facilitate the easy, “safe” passage of cars. If the exact same thing (in this case, a bioswale) even theoretically poses a similar risk to pedestrians, then just block pedestrian access—you know, for their own “safety”.
Wodnt it be amazing if they shut intersections to cars where they have high crashes and only opened to bikes and legs/wheelchairs?
As far as I know, 100% of bioswales that would interfere with someone crossing a street were approved by PBOT (because they’re in the right-of-way) and many or most were actually installed by PBOT also. All or almost all were also installed within the last few years–that is, in the era that PBOT has been talking about being supportive of pedestrians.
So why has PBOT been approving and building bioswales in locations that interfere with people crossing streets? Why not locate them better?
Exactly. The real reason is “A non-ADA curb that we don’t want to spend money to fix..”
Sharpen your pencils become civil engineers and be the change.
Somehow, I don’t think the engineers are the real issue here. Maybe we should polish our shmoozing and BS skills and become politicians?
I agree that big improvements are going to be spurred by politicians, not engineers, but on the other had I also see a remarkable amount of problems with infrastructure that ARE the fault of engineers/designers/technical staff. They (not all or most, but many) don’t know the codes, and don’t use common sense. You can go to some new infrastructure projects and see problems as fast as you can walk or ride through them. It’s not politicians not wanting to do the right thing, or poor budgets–it’s poor design work. Then politicians and the public get told, “Sorry…code made us do it” which is often not true. But politicians and the public usually don’t have the knowledge to see the BS and argue.
Ideally, we need good engineers with political skills.
So if the city has a location that is technically a crosswalk but where it doesn’t think it is appropriate to provide a curb ramp, (maybe there are 3 intersections all within 100 feet of each other), is their only other option to close the crosswalk? Are these signs just being put out to avoid an ADA-based claim that the city should have provided a curb ramp at every legal crosswalk no matter the circumstance? I don’t think the public realizes how many locations qualify as “intersections” and “crosswalks”.
These are popping up like weeds all over Beaverton too, often forcing me to take my life in my hands cross at objectively more dangerous locations and/or crossing more times. In addition to the obvious inconvenience. It is infuriating. I’m trying to figure out if anything can be done about it. Can we have a cross-in or something?
PBOT has these signs at the Hawthorne, Madison, 11th and 12th intersections. They inhibit pedestrians crossing to the food cart pods and local businesses in favor of Hawthorne vehicle commuters. Instead we need more pedestrian safety there.