The Portland Bureau of Transportation has been busy in southwest. Here are a few updates we’ve recently noticed…
SW Broadway Drive
A grateful neighborhood association recently named the path pictured above the “Marx Pedestrian Pathway” in honor of Michelle Marx, PBOT’s outgoing pedestrian coordinator. Area residents have tried for ninety years to get the city to improve pedestrian safety on Broadway Drive. Marx finally made it happen, at least in this most dangerous stretch.
This is the same location where last summer an area resident had bushwhacked a DIY path (pictured above). A few weeks ago, PBOT crews replaced the old guard rail with jersey barriers and made a compacted gravel path over a 200-foot length of lower Broadway, just uphill of SW Sherman Street.
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Marx will be leaving PBOT at the end of the month, and the bureau is losing a workhorse.
She was responsible for the twenty-year overhaul of two major active transportation guides, PedPDX, and the Pedestrian Design Guide.
Despite all that responsibility, she still made time for a walking tour of SW Broadway Drive. Seeing firsthand how unsafe the road was, she pledged to do what she could about it. Prior to the tour, the Southwest Hill Residential League had surveyed area residents, most of whom live in apartment complexes or condominiums, and has credited the surveys with being “essential in providing critical demographic info and safety concerns to PBOT.”
The new path means that residents will no longer have to travel in the road, alongside speeding drivers, as they walk to and from jobs and school downtown.
SW Capitol Highway and the Red Electric trail bridge
The SW Capitol Highway project is still many months away from completion, but in the photo above you can begin to see the multi-use path on the west side of the road take form. The retaining walls were recently installed.
Construction of the Red Electric trail bridge is scheduled to complete this spring and it is already looking breathtaking. In the past few weeks crews have been installing the railing. One issue we’re watching are the bolts that hold the wire railing together. Hopefully they don’t protrude into the path itself, which would be a hazard to users who brush up against them.
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Quick. Someone call Fox News and tell them that Portland is a building a “Marx Pedestrian Pathway”.
Be sure to mention the nearby ‘Ho Chi Minh Trail’ to PSU as well!
“Marx will be leaving PBOT at the end of the month, and the bureau is losing a workhorse.”
Interesting that we still compare people to horses. Yet another piece of infrastructure being named after a living person.
If SWHRL knew the names of the people who petitioned city council for a sidewalk in 1930, I’m sure they would name it after them. Otherwise, I suppose credit where due…
I’ve been holding off commenting David, but metaphors are something I ruminate on when I’m sitting in a chair doing nothing. I wonder if vernacular American English leans on metaphors more heavily than other languages, I don’t know, but we use them a lot.
The most over-used class of metaphors seems to be war imagery: incoming, barrage, “do you have my back,” no-man’s-land, “enter the fray”–try going a day without using a war metaphor. Ironically, it’s most often used to describe office work. Hmm.
And the poor hen, did ever an animal do such heavy lifting for us? “Flew the coop,” broody, flighty, “raise your hackles,” “all cooped up,” LOL
Thanks for the updates, Lisa!
Broadway Dr. is a perfect example of what PBOT needs much more often. Instead of focusing on what we can’t do/afford, focus on what we can do. Clearly not perfect, but WAY BETTER than it was. A success by any measure.