(Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
If you appreciate the new protected bike path on North Greeley Avenue between Interstate and North Going, you’ll be interested to know that by the end of this summer it could extend all the way to North Willamette Blvd.
In September 2019 we reported that apparel brand Adidas — whose North American headquarters are located on Greeley — would help fund a “cycle track” outside their offices to the tune of $1 million. Adidas is in the middle of a major office expansion project at their campus in the Overlook Neighborhood. Corporate construction projects like this usually come with fees known as Transportation System Development Charges (SDCs) that are paid to the City of Portland to offset impacts of increased road use. As per the ordinance passed last year, the Portland Bureau of Transportation has agreed to give Adidas a $1 million SDC credit in exchange for the construction of this capital project (which will be built by Adidas contractors with PBOT oversight),
The expansion project that spurred this investment is nearing completion and since PBOT has finished the southern portion of the path, we figured it was time for an update.
We recently came across plan drawings for this project and can now share more details.
According to the drawings, the plan is to build a two-way protected bike lane between Willamette Blvd that will connect to the existing path at Going Street. The two-way facility will be on the west side of Greeley and will transition to the east side at the bike signal that was turned on last week. Greeley currently has bike lanes on both sides of the street between Going and Willamette that are buffered from other lanes with plastic wands and paint.
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The new facility will vary from about 10.5 to 12 feet wide and will be protected with short raised concrete curbs and plastic wands similar to what PBOT used on North Rosa Parks. Plans call for a 4-inch tall, 16-inch wide curb with a one-foot gap every 25-feet. This protection will feel much different than the continuous, 12-inch thick jersey barriers PBOT used on the southern section. This difference is likely because the northern section has driveway access to Adidas offices and a lower speed limit (30 mph) than the southern section (45 mph).
The project also calls for construction of a new bus stop island just north of Going Court (the short street that leads down to Going Street). The island is needed so TriMet operators can service the stop without encroaching on the protected bike lane.
Just south of the bus stop island the project will build a new crosswalk to connect to Going Ct/Going St (image above). A bike signal will be install to facilitate bikeway users who want to cross to the east where they’ll connect to a new two-way buffered bike lane on Going Ct. This new bikeway will be grade-separated and connect directly to an existing sidewalk/multi-use path on Going St that’s the preferred route into Swan Island. The existing buffered bike lane on the north side of Going Ct will be removed.
Once the new bikeway is built we will have a protected, two-way facility from Interstate Avenue to the neighborhood greenway on Willamette Blvd — a distance of about 1.5 miles.
These plan drawings are nearly final and I’m working to get confirmation of a construction timeline from Adidas. I’ll update this post as soon as I hear back from them.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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