City puts cycling on sidewalk for safety at tricky northeast intersection

that is beyond unacceptable, it actually seems negligent! Geller should get a pay cut for this! This takes a bad situation and makes it worse. It does almost nothing to address the problem of cars driving too fast down Prescott and it creates a truly dangerous situation for people on bikes and on foot. Imagine a wheelchair user trying to use that sidewalk while someone on a bike also tries to use it! I get that Geller thinks there are ways to creatively re-allocate space for low-cost, creative solutions, but this is unacceptable.

I first saw this design at the Bicycle Advisory Committee and had a strong reaction. I sent Roger several alternative designs (one of which in preserved in a Bikeportland article! https://bikeportland.org/2018/12/07/adventures-in-activism-tools-of-the-trade-292832). I know that PBOT spent time evaluating them, and tried to find other alternatives.
At one point it seemed likely the design would change, but then reverted back to the original.

The issue Roger mentioned was that Prescott is classified as a Major Emergency Response route which and fire trucks would not be able to navigate the turn with significant changes were made to the footprint of the street. This was also supposed to be a small $ change, which also eliminates possible reconstruction of the sidewalk.

Eh, it is about what you expect for $10k. Let us spit the difference between the greenways. 37th, 32nd and 9th. PBOT said no to major diversion on 32nd when the community asked for it.

Then on 7th and maybe 9th it looks like they may bail on diversion as well. Here since a robust intersection redesign with diversion was never on the table, who know what a real retrofit will happen..

Thus, I suggest we retrofit 32nd with as much diversion as possible and call it the mainline bikeway. Once the community is used to it, come back and built out another one around 15th. This endless debate will never get consensus and just serves to delay needed projects

The article (not to mention the design thinking) is missing a key question–how does this impact people walking on the sidewalk? The answer is that of course it makes it more dangerous. It seems like the designers viewed the sidewalk as some sort of vacant lot that’s available to solve a conflict between people biking and driving, instead of a space that’s already important for people walking.

PBOT seems to have been unwilling to put the burden for achieving safety on the mode that’s most responsible for creating the danger–driving–instead dumping it on people walking, and in the process giving people biking a compromised experience as well.

I have crossed this intersection hundreds of times, doing sos exactly as if Idriving a car. For example, heading southbound, if when I enter the intersection there is eastbound traffic on Prescott I stop, facing west, as though in a car waiting to make a left turn. There is plenty of room for the slow moving westbound traffic to pass me on the right. Going through this intersection north or southbound has never been a problem. This seems like an attempt to give an illusion of safety to people who don’t have the most basic street riding skills.

Perhaps every major emergency response route should have firetruck lanes instead of car lanes if we’re not allowed to do anything to slow them down.

I argued against the original plan there too! Very glad median refuge islands are going in there.

Why not a simple Stop Sign on Prescott St on both sides of 37th.

This is an embarrassment for a city that has been designated Bronze, much less, Silver, Gold, or Platinum.

The “City that Works” can’t even keep car parts debris out of the designated (inadequate) bike space and can’t be bothered to trim branches that smack a cyclist in the face or get the property owner to do it.

I can’t say enough bad about this project.

I live across the park from this intersection, and I’ll continue to take the lane like I’ve done every time since I moved to the neighborhood ten or 12 years ago.

The only saving grace is that 37th doesn’t have all that much car traffic in either direction, and drivers have to slow anyway for the dogleg that is Prescott and there’s pretty good sightlines, so usually I feel pretty safe. But this is definitely a PBOT disaster. Try again.

Agree, total crap, and encourages me to ignore the infrastructure and take the lane, just like I do on 7th now that it’s been deemed “not for bikes” by the City.

I ride a cargo bike with a large box (3 kids wide). This intersection is on the bike route to my daughter’s preschool. I avoided it before because it never felt safe riding with kids, and I will avoid it now because it doesn’t feel safe riding there with kids (and there is no way I could fit on that ramp). I prefer using NE 35th Ave to cross Prescott. The sight lines are better and I can see the signal at 33rd and Prescott (as well as the traffic that inevitably gets backed up and stopped there) to easily cross.

Why cross here at all? Just cross a couple blocks west of this mess and your troubles are over.

What would be interesting would be to see what would happen if concrete jersey barriers were placed on the centerline of Prescott just east of the crosswalk on the upper “leg”, and just west of the crosswalk on the lower “leg”, along with a single concrete jersey barrier on the centerline of the N-S section of Prescott. Then paint our beloved green “crossbike” stripes right down the middle of both lanes of Prescott on the N-S segment. This would leave openings for turning between Prescott and 37th, ostensibly not impeding traffic in the slightest; just “suggesting” where motor vehicle operators ought to guide their vehicles. It wouldn’t even divert anyone from any current roadway—no detours, no STOP signs, no changes to the “flow” whatsoever. All it would do is make it uncomfortable to speed through this chicane, and impossible to cut across the center line. Might larger vehicles have trouble? Yep. Let the drivers of those larger vehicles “just go a block over” to Going or Skidmore, where they can avoid this difficulty. Might even drivers of smaller vehicles feel cramped through this intersection? Yep. Let them exercise the due care they should be using already. If they don’t care about the safety of others, at least they might care about the paint on their cars.

My guess is that the outcry would be loud and swift if such a plan were implemented, and it would likely be reversed in short order upon the realization that it was “unsafe” (due to driver incompetence or unwillingness to use appropriate caution). Nevertheless, I would say that if we can foist this low-rent, second-rate, kids’-card-table treatment on bicyclists, we can certainly expect motorists to deal with a taste of it themselves.

Just wait, this improvement can still get better. City needs to finish their work:

– missing a couple of metal sign posts bolted to the concrete right in the middle of this that reads, “bikes use sidewalk”.

– still need to apply some slippery-when-wet yellow bumpy mats right in the exact spot where the rider must execute a slow moving turn and jackknife the front wheel across some wet, smooth plastic.

Sadly, this design would be even worse if the home in the top photo didn’t have a totally see-through fence and an almost bare front yard. At any point (maybe to get back some privacy from all the bikes now on the sidewalk) they could make the fence solid and add taller, dense shrubs or trees in their yard, cutting visibility for everyone way down.