City puts cycling on sidewalk for safety at tricky northeast intersection

Another new garbage ‘experimental’ design from PBOT. When will it finally end?

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.

1) seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen when someone gets caught on the sidewalk lip under the railing or caught in the railing
2) god forbid PBOT add an all-way stop here instead this bizarre design. I’d like Roger and the engineering team to use this exclusively for a month and come back and tell us they really think they designed this well.

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.

The fact that they paid people to design and install this bothers me. My extended family lives 2 blocks away and I refuse to use this section when visiting.

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

I think the headline is missing some quotes around “for safety” since this was clearly built for cars. They really need to stop wasting all of this time, money, and space on “get bikes out of the way” infrastructure which makes new riders unsafe until they learn to avoid it or otherwise work around it.

If they just put up a couple stop signs, the sightlines wouldn’t matter and we could spend the money on something that doesn’t actively move us away from our Climate Action and Vision Zero goals. $200?

It looks like PBOT is prioritizing speed of cars through the curve on Prescott over the safety of other users. This automobile-oriented intersection (with the smooth radius on the corners to allow/encourage fast driving) needs to be changed in a way that slows down the cars.

I live in this neighborhood and ride this intersection frequently. This is an improvement, but it does not resolve the main issue of aggressive driving. Though it is a low-speed neighborhood route, it is also a major commuter route and passing commuters generally show little concern for our lives. Taking steps to slow traffic would have done more than any amount of rerouting bikes. Cars take that corner all day long at speed and cut through the divider line to reduce the curve. The visibility is slightly improved, but the redesign has done little to convince drivers that they are meant to share that stretch of road.

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.

Unacceptable.

Try again.

So happy to see this featured. I completely ignore this farcical construction and instead cross just right of the center stripe where I can get a good sight-line to eastbound Prescott traffic. (if southbound) I then am in the same position as cars turning onto 37th from Prescott – far safer. The sane thing would have been to put raised dots all along the center stripe of Prescott. Obvious to any regular user of intersection is cars entering it too fast. They inevitably drift, and raised bumps would prevent this, drastically reducing the too high closure rate of Prescott users entering intersection.

I’ve long cursed the poor design of this intersection and was so looking forward to a change, only to be amazed that they actually made it worse.

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.

This is literally garbage.

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

It’s tiresome to hear “low budget” used as an excuse when the agency using it is the one that set the budget.

I live not far from this intersection and run, walk, and bike through here regularly… From my experience, the painted bikewalk / crosswalk seems to have marginally increased driver awareness of other road users, but only just barely…

Riding north on the designated bike “path” is atrocious, especially given the width of the sidewalk ramp, the (now) lane-blocking pylons and the pile of car parts that seems to have accumulated at the base of the ramp. Best option is to divert to 38th or take the lane.

Its only a matter of time until the pylons and oddly placed handrail gets plowed over by someone who fails to negotiate the turn – something that happens every once in a while.

I ride this new… I have no nice things to call it, twice a day 5 days a week. It’s really terrible, constricting, literally filled with garbage, and going Northbound there is a massive divot in the concrete that they just painted over with green paint. This is not safe, people still fly through here while cutting across the centerline of the road.
Once I am up on the sidewalk on either sidewalk I still can’t safely see cars in both directions. I have to angle myself to look one direction and then look the other way back over my shoulder.
There is also traffic entering a third direction from 37th North and Soutbound that quite often turns directly in front of me, without looking both directions. They are only concerned with monitoring one side of the street to see if cars are coming from their right.
It was actually safer for the first few days before they put in plastic wands and plastic speed bumps for bikes! Because the bikes here in the road were clearly the source of danger. I am really at a loss on this.
I would have preferred to use that money to fix the dangerous level of cracked concrete further south on 37th. Some of that concrete is like crossing rail tracks, especially when it’s dark and wet and you can barely see the seams in the road.
#platinum?

> I wondered about people carrying kids and groceries on a cargo bike, or pulling a trailer, or riding a tricycle.

This is my first thought too. It looks inaccessible or daunting for a lot of riders, and totally inconsiderate of sidewalk users.

Even for a capable, confident, and unencumbered cyclist, getting up on that narrow sidewalk while looking over my shoulder for speeding cars sounds terrible.

pretty bad design. bikes have been routed onto the sidewalk there for years. the new part is the flimsy bollards/plastic curbs and the paint. it’s maybe a marginal improvement because it adds a little visual noise for drivers on Prescott. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a cyclist use the intersection as the engineers envisioned, though, for obvious reasons.

I think some sort of curb in between the lanes on Prescott through the turn might have helped. drivers like to straighten out that curve. could be mountable by fire trucks. (but do we really need giant fire trucks, anyway?)

maybe my imagination or coincidence, but since the new work was done, drivers seem a bit more peevish on that stretch of 37th. got honked and yelled at approaching this intersection from the south and honked and yelled at again north of it about 40 minutes later recently.

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.

If I had the ability, I’d bring Dutch policy makers over for a policy makers ride and start with this 2019 improvement.

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.

This stretch of Prescott is one of the routes I take to get to work. Frankly this project was totally over engineered. A few stop signs would have made drivers slow down instead of the slalom that takes place now. I prefer Prescott over my other route to work which involves climbing the hill on regents, but at least on regents the likelihood of getting blindsided by a driver cutting a corner is a bit less. Would have been much better off as a couple stop sign controlled T-Intersections IMO, but the city isnt actually serious about increasing bike mode share(or VZ for that matter), if they were there wouldn’t be as much pandering to the motoring public at the expense of the vulnerable.

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.

Paint is the only actual change to this dangerous intersection. When connecting from Going to Alameda via 37th, I typically use Skidmore then 34th, 35th, or 36th to cross Prescott instead. This way, I can get a clear view of traffic coming from either direction. It is a sad state of affairs though if PBoT is passing off this treatment as an “improvement.”

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.

I used to ride through this intersection regularly for years and always hated it. Visibility is terrible and the traffic is heavy. I wrote to PBOT several times requesting they re-route the greenway around it. Ten grand to change nothing. Totally unacceptable.

Please, just scrape it up and move the crossing to 36th where it should have been all along. The initial design was brought to you by advocates and planners who feel any deviation from a straight line on a map is an affront to cyclists, rather than a reasonable compromise. And this new remediation shows how bureaucracy will double down on bad implementation instead of admitting a mistake and trying something different. I’ve ridden this section of 37th for years and happily spend a few more seconds and pedal strokes to avoid the awkward crossing at 37th by taking 36th between Going and Wilshire park.

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.

I’m not completely sure from the pictures, but it looks like the obnoxiously restrictive handrail could be easily unbolted. Also that curb along the long ramp should be painted yellow for visibility. I agree that that this is depressingly bad design.

Jonathan or Catie —

Did PBOT consider putting in a type of bumpy lane striping here? Make the curves nice and tight, with 11′ wide lanes, with either bumpy paint or those raised white/yellow buttons?

Seems that would slow down a lot of the people that now take the corners too fast.

If not, we should request…

Ted Buehler

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.

Does anyone know what the legal situation is for e-scooters in instances where bike lanes are routed onto sidewalks? Scooters are permitted to ride in bike lanes, but absolutely prohibited from riding on sidewalks, so when a bike lane is routed onto a sidewalk is the e-scooter legally obligated to leave the bike lane and join the “regular” lane? I don’t think that cars will be too pleased when an e-scooter leaves the bike lane to go over the broadway bridge, for instance.

Do you have any insight here, Jonathan?

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.

I go through here 4-5 times a week and the video finally clues me in as to what they want me to do – ie, ride on the sidewalk. The first time I tried it, I was absolutely confused. The next time, I rode the wrong way as it seemed to be safer.
At least now I know what I am supposed to do, thanks to the video.
PS – don’t expect anyone to stop when crossing Prescott between 33rd and 37th if you are walking much less riding. For some reason this is a high speed section that drivers think the “own”.

I ride this route all the time with my kids on our way to New Seasons and this “improvement” is so stupid I’ve been using alternate routes to avoid it. I’m happy that the city is seemingly trying to improve bike routes but this was a misstep for sure.