The Portland Bureau of Transportation has just released a list of streets where we can expect to see some form of traffic calming in the coming few years.
Thanks to funding from the Fixing Our Streets program (a 10-cent local gas tax that funds safety projects), PBOT is able to attack neighborhood street projects in a more strategic way. We recently came across a new page on their website that lists 23 projects that have either been recently completed or are scheduled for completion by 2024.
Below is the map followed by the full list:
| Street | Start Point | End Point | Expected Construction Year |
| NE Sacramento | NE 111th | NE 122nd | 2021 |
| NE Shaver | NE 122nd | NE 141st | 2021 |
| SE 60th | SE Flavel St. | SE Flavel Dr. | 2021 |
| SE Nehalem | SE 67th | SE 72nd | 2021 |
| SE 64th | SE Clatsop | SE Flavel Dr. | 2021 |
| SE Flavel | SE 52nd | SE Clatsop | 2022 |
| N Columbia Way | N Fessenden | N Smith | 2022 |
| N Oswego | N Lombard | N Columbia | 2022 |
| N Buchanan | N Lombard | N Columbia | 2022 |
| NE Ainsworth | NE MLK Jr. | NE 15th | 2023 |
| N Portsmouth | N Lombard | N Fessenden | 2023 |
| NE Fremont | NE 122nd | NE 141st | 2023 |
| NE 139th | NE Glisan | SE Stark | 2023 |
| SE 135th | SE Stark | SE Division | 2023 |
| SW 45th | SW Multnomah | SW Taylors Ferry | 2024 |
| SW Broadway Dr. | SW Patton | SW Broadway Ave | 2024 |
| SE Harold | SE 122nd | SE 92nd | 2024 |
| NE San Rafael | NE 122nd | NE 132nd | 2024 |
| SE Duke | SE 52nd | SE 72nd | 2024 |
| Chicane Pilot Project – Testing lower cost materials for speed reduction impacts | |||
| SW Burlingame Ave | SW Chestnut | SW Capitol Hwy | 2023 |
| SW Dolph Ct | SW Capitol Hwy | SW 30th | 2023 |
| SE 62nd Ave | SE Harney | SE Flavel | 2024 |
| NE 119th | NE San Rafael | NE Halsey | 2024 |
PBOT says they considered many factors to choose these streets including: traffic speeds and volumes, safe routes to school designations, and also the street’s equity score. PBOT has an equity matrix map that assigns a score (between 2 and 10) to every census tract using the demographic variables of race, ethnicity, and income. Every project above scored a 7 or higher. “Streets with the highest speeds and traffic volumes in areas of highest needs were prioritized,” PBOT says.
For an example of what type of treatments you can expect in these projects take a look at what PBOT is doing with their North Portland Traffic Calming Project in a neighborhood in St. Johns.
If you feel like a street in your neighborhood should be on PBOT’s list contact Program Coordinator Scott Cohen at scott.cohen@portlandoregon.gov.
Thanks for reading.
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Love to see the calming on Oswego and Buchanan. Cut through cross traffic makes the n central greenway pretty uncomfortable and uninviting. Hopefully this will help to improve conditions.
I love these simple calming projects, but those that I’ve seen so far seem to appear in streets that are already medium calm rather streets with fast car traffic. For example, lots of work was done to calm SE16th in the Buckman neighborhood, leaving cross streets like Hawthorne, Belmont and Morrison as fast and busy as before, in some cases (as the missing light turn on Hawthorne) less safe for bikes trying to clear the intersections.
I ride SE 16th on my way to work and I don’t see any increase in SUV/personal-truck “calm”. The cement barrels; however, do create a new chokepoint where SUVs speeding on their way to Buckman Elementary try to squeeze past people on bikes. These same barrels could easily be moved to genuinely traffic calm 16th by creating half-diverters a la the Lincoln NG.
I will also add that the relatively recent door-zone bike lanes on 16th between Sandy and Irving have made 16th far more conflict-prone for people on bikes (and were designed to protect the excessive VMT on this route). Trucks and drop-off vehicles now constantly block or jut into the bike lane and the ultra-wide lanes encourage speeding by freeway-ramp traffic. This stretch of 16th needs far greater protection (e.g. a protected 2-way bike lane). And to be honest, I think there is very good argument for closing the freeway ramp at 16th entirely.
Is anyone else puzzled at the sometimes present contradiction of the 15mph signs posted on the traffic calming infrastructure, then not far down the road a standard 20mph sign is posted? I feel as though I’ve seen this in more than one location.
yes I agree it’s a confusing thing to have both of these signs posted by the city at the same time and place. What’s happening here I think is that 20 mph is the legal speed limit, but 15 mph is what PBOT is advising people to drive. Yellow signs are known as “advisory signs” which means they contain mere suggestions are not binding law. The white sign with black letters are the legally binding signs.
Is this another example of PBOT trying to use ambiguity to achieve what it can’t through actual rules? I’m thinking specifically of the green crosswalks as a point of comparison.
To the extent that an advisory speed lower than the speed limit is a form of ambiguity, it’s a form of ambiguity that I’ve seen all over the country, mostly on highways and freeways. So it’s not just a quirk of PBOT, quirky though their infrastructure can be.
2 years seems like a snail’s pace- any idea why they would move so slowly? Are they doing this work in-house and are short-staffed? This seems like the perfect project to procure all the materials at once, and hire a conctractor to bang them all out at at once. Le the contractor scheudle the work so they can minimize trips. I don’t think these strets require more traffic control than a road closed sign- I can’t wrap my head around this timeframe.
The speed bumps don’t work all that well. People still bomb over them seemingly not to care as their junk cars bottom out and scrape over them. It’s just added noise pollution.
You can’t prevent all of it, but speed bumps are better than nothing at all. These projects are big wins for Portland’s cyclists – I’m so excited!
“Something crappy or nothing at all” seems to be a pretty consistent theme with PBOT.
I’m happy they are adding speed bumps but, for at least the two roads in my neighborhood, you could solve the problem for next to nothing with a well placed traffic diverter.
Its the through traffic that is speeding down the street. Make it so you can’t go from Lombard to Fessenden on Oswego or Buchanan and magically the speeds will drop.
But the first priority for PBOT is making sure that we don’t inconvenience cut through drivers enough to get them to take an actual through road.
Disagree heavily, haven’t found speed bumps to have a noticeable impact on cars speeding but they do absolutely suck to bike over, especially for cyclists with bad backs. Would honestly rather have nothing than speed bumps.
There are cutouts specifically designed for bicycle tires, making them easily navigable for cyclists. That’s how a lot of speed bumps throughout the city are designed now.
Those cutouts are designed for emergency vehicles, not bikes. If they were designing the speed bumps with cutouts for bikes, it’d probably make more sense to put the cutout in the bike lane, not in the car lane making cyclists have to merge into and then out of the bike lane briefly to avoid the bump… Or the outer side of the speed bump is close to the curb, also not a great place to be near. Although, if the cutout were in the bike lane, it’d just encourage drivers to use the bike lane to not have to go over the bump on one side.
PBOT is…actually…doing something on a street in Southwest that’s north of Beaverton-Hillsdale? Miracles do exist! Super happy to see this.
Yeah <blank>, I fell out of my chair when I saw this list, I’m still trying to get up off the floor. Thank you, thank you PBOT for Bway.
The projects south of BHH are really good also, wow.
Over the past few years, several cut-through streets on the hill have benefitted from Southwest in Motion and Safe Routes to School traffic calming projects: SW 16th has new speed bumps; there’s been traffic calming on Vista in front of Ainsworth Elementary (and they moved the flashing school zone light to a location that actually precedes the school); Bway got a stretch of jersey barriers installed to protect pedestrians; the bike route on Montgomery through Talbot up to Fairmount has been improved, and pedestrian crossings along that route too.
After years of nothing happening, the past three have been active.
Unfortunately for SE Flavel, the speed humps that were put in have the exact spacing that allows most any car to slightly cross the center line and go over them at well above the speed limit. What a joke.
SUPER curious about what’s planned for SW Broadway. I have been down it 100s of times with zero issues — indeed I am usually moving faster than cars. Never gone uphill!
SW Broadway is getting speed tables. As a pedestrian, I am happy for ANYthing that slows down cars hurtling just 18 inches from me. As well as for anything that slows down a bike whipping around a blind corner at me faster than auto traffic!