(Photo: City of Portland)
Fourteen months after the first orange plastic barrels and a-frame signs were placed on neighborhood greenways throughout Portland, the bureau of transportation says it’s time to make them more permanent.
As we hinted at back in March, today PBOT announced they’ve received so much positive feedback to the program that they will install a total of 80 large concrete barricades at strategic locations citywide in order to fortify residential areas and change the behavior of drivers to make the streets less stressful for walkers and bikers. The city has already placed concrete planters and new yellow 15 mph “shared street” signs at several locations on SE Salmon (at 11th, 12th, 20th, and 30th), SE Ankeny (at 24th), SE Umatilla (at 13th) and SE 16th (at Morrison, Belmont and Stark).
“The infrastructure will help calm and slow traffic, especially as drivers turn onto neighborhood streets,” reads a PBOT statement.
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The Slow Streets initiative was launched in May 2020 as Covid cases spiked and Portlanders headed to the streets in droves to walk, bike, roll and stroll. It began with signs and barrels at 100 locations and has grown to over 210 locations. The intent was great and the program had a positive impact, but the barrels and signs were too easily moved (by angry and/or errant drivers).
As these neighborhood streets continue to be used by non-drivers, PBOT has opened themselves up to public feedback. Today they said they’ve received over 2,000 comments about the program with, “strong support for the installations and their impacts on local streets.”
PBOT has also published a GIS map of all the slow streets installations.
Slow Streets is one part of PBOT’s Safe Streets initiative. Learn more about the program at Portland.gov.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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