Many Portlanders are feeling angry, frustrated and afraid this morning after another night of traffic violence.
Last night there were (at least) two collisions that resulted in serious injuries. They both happened at around 6:00 pm Thursday night, just 1.7 miles away from each other, and on nearly the exact same street.
The Portland Police responded to Sandy Boulevard at NE Lawrence/26th after a collision that led to life-threatening injuries to a woman who was crossing the street on foot. According to a witness that spoke to a KOIN-TV reporter, a woman was walking in a marked crosswalk across Sandy when she was hit. “A driver going north [east] stopped for her. As she continued to make her way across the street, that’s when the driver hit the woman,” KOIN reported.
This location on Sandy has a 30 mph speed limit and two lanes in direction. There’s also a wide-open space where NE Oregon and Lawrence come together that adds complexity and danger. There’s a striped crossing and a median island in the middle. Because Sandy is so heavily used by drivers and has very little to no traffic calming, it’s a very well-known danger zone.
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According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, from 2013 to 2017 there have been a total of 759 injury crashes including two fatalities, 27 serious injuries, and 204 moderate injuries. PBOT has tried to make it safer in recent years as part of their Vision Zero and High Crash Network initiatives. Just last month they touted the installation of “safer crossings” with a flashing beacon a few blocks away at 31st.
(Source: Next Portland)
In PBOT’s recently adopted PedPDX Plan, Sandy Blvd is classified as a “Major City Walkway” and the location where this woman was hit last night is in a “Pedestrian District”. The plan says Major City Walkways are, “intended to provide safe, convenient, and attractive pedestrian access along major streets.” Pedestrian Districts are, “intended to give priority to pedestrian access,” and, “should be designed to provide a safe and comfortable walking.” The intersection with NE Lawrence/26th is also just one block away from a segment of Sandy with a “Tier 1” label for “Pedestrian Network Priorization” which means it has the highest aggregated equity, safety, and demand scores.
Also of note is that last night’s collision happened adjacent to the Pepsi Blocks, an industrial area that’s about to undergo a major redevelopment project. As detailed on Next Portland last week, the project is likely to improve safety at this intersection by creating the “Sandy Point” plaza at the intersection of NE Oregon/Lawrence and Sandy. That project will further increase the amount of people walking on and around Sandy Boulevard.
As we were sadly reminded last night, this welcome increase in foot traffic must be accompanied by stronger measures to discourage and control automobile use.
On a similar note, just 1.7 miles directly south of this collision a woman who was riding her bike on SE Clinton at 26th was hit by a car driver. According to a woman who came upon the victim shortly after the collision, then posted about it on Twitter, “it did not look good.” “What a preventable disgrace,” she shared, “Get cars off greenways.”
This section of Clinton is very busy with bicycle riders and is more stressful than a typical intersection because of it’s off-set design. A a slip-lane for eastbound traffic that wants to head south on 26th increases danger. In 2014, Better Block PDX chose to erect a pop-up plaza at this intersection. Their proposal narrowed the intersection by eliminating that slip lane and extending existing sidewalks into the roadway to create plaza space and safer streets.
In My Opinion:
As we see too often, PBOT knows where the problems are and they have the plans and tools to fix them. The problem is, we don’t do enough of that fixing fast enough and the people die and get hurt as a result. It’s very clear: All the plans and promises in the world don’t mean anything until we get much more aggressive with countermeasures to auto use. And please don’t talk to me about a “pedestrian safety crisis.” The focus here should be on the abuse of vehicles that are wholly incompatible with vibrant urban life. This is not about “bike and ped safety” this is about dangerous road design, careless and reckless driving, and a dysfunctional transportation culture that allows it to keep happening.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Again, no funding, no political will. OSP says it needs more officers but doesn’t have the funds. And these are supposedly good times. Wait till all those burned out Californians start flooding in.
never ever miss a chance to project some anti-outsider rhetoric
I hear you Wylie. The largely-unexamined proto-xenophobia running rampant among white Portland (il)liberals these days adds an extra layer of depression to anyone with a splinter of moral clarity or intellectual nuance.
I’ll take a car-free outsider over a car-driving Uber-taking native Oregonian any day of the week. But of course we know it likely won’t work out that way. Most of those who come will be bringing a car. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people, but their presence puts a burden on the transportation network, that their taxes don’t pay for, and that I don’t particularly want their taxes to pay for (i.e. please don’t add any more frigging lanes). So their presence is indeed a negative. As is your presence, probably, like statistically, if you’re reading this. Who’s car-free, raise your hand? You are exempt from the preceding statements.
or sometimes blanket statements about people just aren’t very good for making a point
I think all blanket statements are always fine.
What does OSP have to do with this?
Every morning I have to cross the Glisan offramp from 205 and even with a red light they take the corner at 20, 30 miles an hour. I can have the light and people still can’t even be bothered to look to see if there is a pedestrian, they just take the corner, with a red light….
Do all you want to “fix” these things, but without enforcement, tickets, and increases to their insurance, people won’t learn. You would think that a car stopped at a crosswalk would trigger something in the driver that hit the pedestrian……
“…trigger something…”
Indeed, such as the driver’s recollection of either of these two important laws:
ORS 811.020
ORS 811.028
I mean, they were required to study and learn the rules of the road before getting a license, right? …ROTFL *snort*…
Ahhh… so funny-not-funny.
Drivers not knowing, or disregarding ORS 811.020 is hands down my greatest concern on urban streets. The described circumstances of the collision at 26th and Sandy are confusing to me and may not directly apply to ORS 811.020, but an ongoing campaign to clarify laws around marked crossings is needed. Most people ace their drivers exam and 15 minutes later have no recollection of the most basic laws they just skimmed over while waiting for the quiz. Understanding how many feet you need to stay behind a fire truck and how to negotiate a crosswalk may have equal weight on a test, but in the real world the latter is more important by magnitudes.
“Most people ace their drivers exam”
Missing up to 7 questions is hardly “acing” an already easy test.
The problem with more enforcement is that our enforcers are untrustworthy. Can’t really recommend more PPB unless the division is rebuilt from the ground up
Sandy is long overdue for a road diet.
Let’s also not forget that these venerable road uses may need years of recovery and physical therapy if there are broken bones, etc… Missed work, hospital bills that show up 6 months later that you have to argue over, etc.. Meanwhile, the car user happily goes on with their life with no physical injuries, etc… Never assume the driver has insurance.
Personally, I’d like it to trigger spontaneous combustion.
That Clinton incident just kills me. I biked the whole length of it just yesterday, at almost the same time in fact.
There are way too many cars using it as cut thru. And for every car driving the length of it, there are another five awkwardly crossing as they try cannonball run their way through SE, rather than using the arterials.
I’ll end with this: if you are driving more than three consecutive blocks on a greenway, you are doing it wrong.
Lately, I’ve notice the same thing on the Central bikeway in St. Johns. Lots of people trying to skirt bridge traffic to get from Lombard westbound to St. Louis northbound. Time for some more diverters, I guess.
It was such a nice evening yesterday, I rode the long (28 mile) route home from Hillsboro after work. It takes from Cornelius Pass at Cornell, down to 5th through Beaverton and then out Beaverton-Hillsdale to Barber and over to the south waterfront elevator, finally homeward via The Esplanade and Williams. Everywhere were drivers blocking intersections, running red lights and stop signs, edging into bike lanes. Grid-lock everywhere. I even walked my bike on the sidewalk for five blocks along SW Kelly to get to the Gibbs St. freeway crossing and the elevator down to Moody. With my wide flatbars, there just wasn’t enough room to comfortably squeeze between the parked cars and the idling cars. Walking was much faster than waiting in traffic queued for the bridge.
I kept wondering when are these folks going to wise up and get out of their cars?
“I kept wondering when are these folks going to wise up and get out of their cars?”
Not gonna happen, gas is too cheap.
Dino-farts as fuel will become passe as electric cars begin to dominate. The ROWs need to be metered. You drive, you pay per mile. And all proceeds get plowed into mass transit and personal mobility infrastructure.
Where do people think all this electricity will be coming from? Even now, we are burning coal to produce enough electricity. Now double or triple the demand with an all electric world…….
I bike Clinton in this area, and SE 34th Avenue between Clinton and Division (also prioritized for bikes) on a daily basis. The amount of cut-through traffic on both streets during AM/PM rush makes the experience uncomfortable. So many kids, families bike through here. We need to do something.
26th and Clinton is a terrible intersection, with awful planning. Even with cars, it works as a 4-way stop. And as someone who rides through that intersection every day, I pretty much only ride through if I can’t see any cars, or if I get a signal from a driver, which makes it even tougher at night.
Clinton in general seems to be getting worse, as more drivers use it to cut through and get off Division. It seems, as a really popular and well-used greenway, like a street that shouldn’t allow cars to travel through: more diverters, and, given the number of bars and restaurants between 25th and 26th on Clinton, a pedestrian/cyclist plaza.
So a driver hits a pedestrian in a marked crosswalk at 6pm (still light outside), and receives no citation? Why do we even bother with traffic laws?
You mean “traffic suggestions.”
No enforcement. No meaningful penalties. Predictable consequences.
Wild, wild west.
I am surprised that there hasn’t been a case of vigilante retribution yet, given the lack of justice.
How new are you? PPB often waits on issuing citations until the DA has reviewed the case for more severe charges than a simple ticket. Tickets can be issued after the review.
It continues to get more and more dangerous to walk or bike in Portland, especially at night. Too many drivers not looking for anything other than other large cars, even in heavily pedestrian-trafficked areas. I bet this year is going to see a historically low number of people continuing to walk and bike during the winter.
PBOT continues to do too little, too slowly. The concerns of car drivers should carry zero weight until people feel safe walking and biking in this city.
facts “bike and ped safety” this is about dangerous road design, careless and reckless driving, and a dysfunctional transportation culture that allows it to keep happening.”
do you include cyclists in that dangerous driving broad brush?
I dont think a lot of drivers appreciate just how much power they actually wield. A split second of inattention could possibly mean death for another road user. I think cars also are anonymizing, and much like being able to remain anonymous online while engaging in bad behavior, drivers are able to operate their cars aggressively without any consequences from the law or their peers.
It needs to be appreciated by drivers that their choice of transportation can be lethal to themselves or others if it isnt treated with respect. These are multi-ton pieces of equipment that can accelerate and move pretty quickly. The physics at play there dont really favor survival, especially as speeds increase. Drivers kill other drivers all the time. Traffic safety should exclusively pertain to vulnerable users. It’s just unfortunate that making roads safer has been painted as being anti-driver. Maybe this is arrogant on my part, but I think a lot of drivers either dont understand or are not capable of providing as much attention as driving a car in an urban environment requires. That is, scanning far ahead, side to side, looking over your shoulder before making a turn, watching for pedestrians waiting to cross, maintaining a safe following distance. None of those things can be done when someone is speeding, or isnt paying attention. Drivers are simply held to a very low standard.
Should read: “traffic safety SHOULDNT pertain exclusively to vulnerable users”
Try this: motor vehicles get as deadly as handguns at 23 MPH, as deadly as rifles, and at 30 MPH become more deadly than any man-portable firearm. That’s only if they hit you, the actual comparison is much worse for when they are trying to hit you.
I happened to be riding on Clinton last night and came upon the aftermath of the crash a minute or two after it happened. It did not look good and I could not tell what transpired, however Clinton is not a great bikeway. Also for people calling out the intersection of 26th and Clinton, that intersection is bad, however the crash happened closer to 27th than 26th.
Forty-five minutes prior, also on Clinton, I was passed rather easily around 23rd by a person driving an SUV. This was while riding an ebike and easily going at or near the 20 MPH speed limit. During the pass I expressed, without any finger pointing, my dissatisfaction with the pass, the car abruptly stopped just before a speed bump then the person sped off and made a right onto 26th, not really stopping for the stop sign. All of this to say that we need PBOT to take a much more aggressive stance when it comes to prioritizing greenways for the intended vehicles /modes and discouraging those it is not designed for. This largely means more diversion and perhaps charging for use of the roadway for those who can use alternatives designed for them – congestion pricing could be used to significantly diminish auto usage of greenways similar to highways and city centers.
The status quo is not good enough and we must do better.
I noticed when I use Google maps for navigation in a car in SE it almost always routes me onto greenways. I’ve left Google feedback about this but didn’t get any kind of response. We really need to tackle wayfinding apps with this especially as more people move here and use these apps to find their way around.
That slip lane needs to be gone.
I never ride on Sandy but when I cross it I always wonder why it is not changed to have only one lane of car traffic in each direction. I have never seen automobile congestion on the street, at least west of 39th. I don’t think that auto traffic would be slowed significantly by removing a car lane, using that lane as a protected bikeway that would allow bike traffic to zip to and from downtown. Seems like a good thoroughfare for bike commuters as more people move into new housing in the eastern areas of NE and SW. This would also presumably cut down on the disastrous scenario that is all too common; an automobile stopped at a crosswalk for a pedestrian being passed by a second vehicle that endangers, injures, or kills the pedestrian. I agree with the comments about Clinton, large volume of auto traffic driving through, probably to avoid Division. Aggressively driving through too. Every time I am out on the bike I anticipate an unpleasant or worse moment, it is sad. Although I have to say yesterday a driver ahead of me as I came east down the hill from the Bybee Bridge stopped completely and waited for me to pass before making a right turn. It was such a wonderful surprise, sad that it was a surprise.
Sandy is a good candidate for a Bike/Transit lane. The 12 and 19 busses carry a lot of people, and they do get stuck in congestion at many points between downtown and Parkrose. The right hand lane should be Bike/Transit only.
Sandy is on the list of roads that could potentially get a bus only lane. The proposal would basically be from near the 205 bridge all the way to it’s connection with Burnside. Fingers crossed
Sandy between 22nd/Glisan & 33rd could survive with just one lane in each direction. I feel if they took out one or both sides of streetside parking all the way up and down Sandy that’d free up enough space to fit in a bus/bike lane.
Much of the congestion on Sandy is due to commuters trying to shave a few minutes off of their I-84/I-205 drive by cutting through our neighborhoods. Cutting Sandy to one general purpose lane in each direction will increase congestion, but it will also push people back onto the interstates. Diversion will be minimal, because there are no parallel side streets. At a minimum, it is worth trying in a sample area (say, between 47th and 57th), to view the effects.
Cutting Sandy from four to two lanes would certainly be a hard ask. I think a strong case could be made for getting rid of some of the street parking to make way for BRT lanes (or at the least keeping parking lanes clear during rush times).
Word is that the Vietnamese church up on Alameda Ridge between 54th & 57th will be moving out in a few months… Which means potential future development on that lot. Helps to be adjacent to an existing greenway and Du’s Grill.
Sandy is like so many 4 lane streets. It’s somewhat congested at rush hour and then pretty light traffic the rest of the day/night. I really don’t think it’s that hard or unreasonable of an ask to change it to a one lane.
The other part being- drivers just can’t seem to follow the rules of the road regarding speeding, passing around stopped cars etc. The consequences seem to be a need to make these things a lot harder with single lanes each way.
Everyone understands there’s not enough money to fix all infrastructure problems at once, or to enforce as much as should happen. But there’s so much that can be done that’s much cheaper or free (beyond the obvious thing of people driving better).
The second photo shows a shrub right next to where people step off the curb into the crosswalk that’s so overgrown it would almost totally block visibility between people ready to cross and drivers.
The first shows a traffic sign base left in the street right where a bike could hit it, or need to swerve into traffic to avoid it. It’s as likely as not PBOT left it there.
And I guarantee that somewhere out there today, there are PBOT trucks with their Vision Zero stickers parked in bike lanes or on bike paths, or blocking crosswalks.
And agencies are currently building some really poor infrastructure that would be much better without needing to cost more.
Your depending on a high angle photo at 26th and Clinton (and BP), instead of going to streetview and looking for yourself, means you don’t know that the ‘shrub’ is a tree set back from 26th by several feet.
I wasn’t relying on the aerial photo at all. I was relying on the second photo (the news agency screen shot). The clue I was relying on that second photo was that I wrote, “The SECOND PHOTO shows…”
That photo shows exactly what I said it shows–a shrub “so overgrown it would almost totally block visibility between people ready to cross and drivers”. It is not “a tree set back from 26th by several feet” as you claim. It is DIRECTLY IN THE MEDIAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET. I do see I should have said “step off from behind the curb” instead of “step off the curb” because the crosswalk runs behind the curb–which actually makes it even more dangerous, because it means the vegetation is even higher in relation to the pedestrians totally hidden behind it.
Your response is ironic, because it illustrates so well what happens when I report safety problems to PBOT. In this case, I mentioned two dangerous issues–the sign base left in the road, and the vegetation blocking visibility. You responded by ignoring the sign base issue, and with the vegetation issue you misunderstood the location of the vegetation, even though I told you exactly what photo I was looking at, so you dismissed that concern also. Perhaps you, like PBOT staff I sometimes encounter–should be more focused on listening and understanding, and less on defending yourselves or proving I’m wrong.
At least with you here, I don’t have to assume (as I do with PBOT) that you’ll take up to sixteen weeks to respond (not that I expect you to respond here, either).
We have a consultation process that requires the changemakers to launch large campaigns to get small things done. Meanwhile one or two negative comments from an adjacent business owner and PBOT heads for the hills. What do we pay these outreach communication people for? That’s their job; educate and change people’s mind. Not give in to toddler like temper tamtrums over parking spaces and bus stops.
Besides doing communications, these people also prepare reports, have meetings, and attend conferences where they can hear about neat things being done elsewhere and tell about the neat things being done in Portland.
And your expertise in communications comes from where, exactly?
I completely disagree with any assertion it is the job of city employees to change minds. It is their job to inform, gather feedback, and even present factual data, but no one can change another’s mind, they have to do that for themselves.
Hasn’t PBOT invested in campaigns to change people’s minds before?
Again, as you so often do, you start by asking for credentials from someone commenting. It’s irrelevant. People with no credentials have valid comments, and people with credentials make mistakes.
And you’re arguing about semantics. Of course City communications employees’ jobs are to inform, gather feedback and present data, but often the goal of that is to change people’s minds. As an example, PBOT has spent lots of time and effort communicating with the public about the importance of driving slower, with the goal that they WILL decide to drive slower. It’s really not important whether you call that “communication to change people’s minds” versus “communication that will lead to people changing their own minds”.
Best not to mention “vehicle violence” – words which so offended the fragile ears of state legislators during this year’s session.
But seriously, the problem of vehicle violence is real and pervasive. Look at this article in today’s New York Times about a rash of fatalities caused by drivers of cars and trucks:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/nyregion/ny-biking-death-boy.html/
PBOT’s touting the 31st & Sandy improvement is premature. It still isn’t done. There has been several time recently where various agencies have stopped by and marked underground utilities there, but it is no where near being installed.
you forgot to mention this other vulnerable road user, a hit and run victim just a few nights ago. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/10/watch-toyota-camry-plows-into-moped-rider-in-ne-portland-never-slows-down.html
Don’t forget to read the comments on that O-live story. It’s good to know how the dregs of Oregon feel about people who aren’t in cars.
oops, posted that before i read all the comments, thanks John L for beating me to it.
Jonathan,
Please correct this sentence, by placing it in the proper framework, adding some nouns, anything. No single intersection in Portland has this many crashes over 5 years:
“According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, from 2013 to 2017 there have been a total of 759 injury crashes including two fatalities, 27 serious injuries, and 204 moderate injuries. PBOT has tried to make it safer in recent years as part of their Vision Zero and High Crash Network initiatives. Just last month they touted the installation of “safer crossings” with a flashing beacon a few blocks away at 31st.”
The sentence seems fine, and I don’t see why there’d be any confusion. The sentence before the one you quote states, “Because Sandy is so heavily used by drivers and has very little to no traffic calming, it’s a very well-known danger zone.” So the statistics in the sentence you quoted are for Sandy Boulevard, at least as I read it.
Is there any update on the victim?