The City of Portland just confirmed changes to the neighborhood greenway route on NW Overton.
As we reported last week, the transportation bureau had second thoughts about their design on Overton between 9th and 10th just over one month after it was first installed. Local businesses (especially Ovation Coffee & Tea) fumed about the removal of on-street parking spaces that came with addition of new bike lanes and first responders said the traffic diverter at the NW 9th/Overton intersection made it hard to turn. Many drivers also chose to ignore the westbound prohibition — especially when traffic backed up due to the busy railroad crossing nearby.
PBOT’s new plan will remove the bike lane, add back most of the auto parking, and add shared-lane markings to the block. They’ll move the eastbound-only, one-way driving configuration two blocks over.
In the graphic sent out by PBOT today, the new plan drawing didn’t show cars parked on the street. They haven’t said how many spaces will be returned, but we can expect to see them on both sides of the street except for the ramp into the Encore Condominium building, near the corners, and at the southeastern corner where the bike lane will remain.
“As a result of both communication with area stakeholders and on-site evaluations, the project team will be moving the NW Overton traffic pattern change from NW 9th Ave to NW 11th Ave to improve traffic operational issues. The revised design will improve access to NW Overton Street, particularly for freight vehicles and during train events, while reducing cut-through traffic on the NW Pettygrove/NW Overton neighborhood greenway,” read a PBOT statement released earlier today few minutes ago. Here’s more about the changes (taken directly from PBOT):
- NW Overton Street between NW 11th and 12th avenues will become one-way eastbound only for auto travel to discourage cut-through traffic on the NW Overton-Pettygrove Neighborhood Greenway.
- A section of bollard-protected bike lane will remain on the south side of NW Overton Street approaching NW 9th Avenue to allow people biking to bypass vehicle queues.
- No changes will be made to the current amount of on-street parking on NW Overton Street between NW 12th and NW 11th avenues. No changes will made to NW Overton St between NW 11th and NW 10th avenues.
- On-street parking on NW Overton Street between NW 9th and NW 10th avenues will be restored on both sides of the street, except where the short bike lane will remain.
The changes will be made as soon as weather allows and PBOT says once the new configuration is in place they’ll monitor traffic for six months to determine if any changes should be made. But of course they said that the first time and only waited about five weeks before making major changes, so we’ll have to wait and see how this all plays out.
This work is part of the NW Pettygrove Neighborhood Greenway project, a key part of the city’s Northwest in Motion Plan. Learn more about the project on the official website.
NOTE, 6:59 pm: This post was originally published with a doctored image. I thought it was silly that PBOT didn’t add the car icons to their conceptual drawing of the new plans, so I added in a bunch of my own. I shouldn’t have done that, because it’s misleading. I replaced that image with the original and regret any confusion.
Thanks for reading.
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Cool cool cool. Thank god PBOT is taking this bold action to support free parking on our streets.
To the editorial team: Can you please add something to the text to indicates that “greenway” is being used as a label by PBOT, and does not confer safety, a reduction in motorists, or any bike infrastructure. When I lived in Eugene, I would read this site and it was only when I moved to Portland did I realize that the greenways here are just greenwashing propoganda rather than actually comfortable places to ride a bike.
PBOT and CoP generally is such a clown show. I don’t know how anyone care work there and feel good about it. I guess this really drives home my decision to abstain from voting in Hardesty’s race. We need a new form of government. Charter reform can’t come soon enough
That parking is not free. It’s in the meter district.
The comment might be referring to it being free for the businesses who get parking provided for their customers at no cost to the business, versus businesses who pay to provide off-street parking for theirs.
greenways suck, nothing about them say “bikes have priority here” or “stress free route”
Greenways are the savior and downfall of Portland. They have made Portland a name for itself, and buried Portland in that weird voodoo. A lot of people in Portland still believe greenways will someday be something other than what they have always been: residential streets with painted bike shapes on the ground.
The sharrows give bikes the lane.
The epitome of virtue signaling. Do you really believe Hardesty’s opponent will be better? Because that’s what we will get if enough people decide the better candidate isn’t ideologically pure enough. Even if charter reform passes, it won’t take effect for another two years, during which time whoever oversees PBOT can do a lot of harm…or good, depending on who wins next week.
It really isn’t.
I’m not voting for her opponent. I’m not voting in that race. It’s a wash. A screw-up everything progressive vs a do-nothing republican is a wash in my book.
Or…hear me out. Hardesty could stop being a joke? Maybe she could stop pretending to not see what 90%+ of Portlanders see about whats going on in the streets? She lost this race all on her own. Even Tina has stopped pretending the street campers are just down on their luck.
I guess we don’t need to worry either way though because a Hardesty run PBOT still serves corporations over human lives!
Oh no! Will PBOT do a bad job like they have for the last 100 years? Who knows! What’s the difference?
Hardesty sucks. Gonalez sucks. I’m not interested in which one is worse
When I and others criticize Hardesty you called us racists who were afraid of strong black women…..
I’ve long-been a critic of Hardesty, so I don’t really know where that delusion is coming from.
The do nothing Republican gave $1000 to Tina Kotek.
Hardesty gave 0.
Maybe you should look stuff up before you call names….
Here’s a datum: Hardest gets to work on transit. If I weren’t already going to vote for her that would make it so.
[citation needed]
I guess homeless campers don’t have “human lives” in your book.
How fortunate that you don’t have to live with the outcome of your choices. Some of us do.
Well you should be because the worst one won. One more corporate tool on the council is not what we needed.
No. No, it does not.
True, I was being hyperbolic. What actually drove home my abstaining from the race was when she proposed allowing the free-for-all drug camps to continue to exist permanently, even when we have enough shelter space.
She got 46% in the primary and will be lucky to crack 30% in the general. She did everything in her power to lose the race. Its really sad she valued virtue signaling about dangerous shanty towns on the sidewalk more than her actual constituents in Portland.
Mm, is that what they’re calling it these days..
By “her actual constituents in Portland,” You mean… people who refer to homeless camps in general as “free-for-all drug camps?” I assume you prefer Wheeler’s plan?
Wheeler wants to create safe places to sleep, where they can store their belongs securely, access hot food, hot showers, and services vs the status quo that Hardesty wants of allow people to rot on a sidewalk, laying near their own waste and trash and at best having access to a porta potties
I’d have to be a monster to not support Wheeler’s plan. Hope he goes through with it and gets these folks the help they need.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Knowing people who were previously sleeping in flooded tents that they cook in/catch on fire are now sleeping somewhere secure with a communal kitchen and bathrooms will help me sleep at night! That’s why I and thousands of others voted to increase our taxes.
Now, if you want to add anything to the conversation, feel free, but I’m not going to feel bad about helping homeless people get to a safer space with services unless you can point out why that’s worse than the gunshots/cold and heat/lack of plumbing that they experience now.
Its disturbing how many “advocates” for the homeless flinch when someone proposes something that will actually help them rather than keep them on the dangerous streets.
Ted’s plan is political theater masquerading as an unfunded pipe dream. They don’t have the money, resources, or institutional support to set up 500-person camps. Unhoused people don’t want to be herded into mass internment camps like cattle either. It’s disturbing how many people actively ignore the stated wishes of people they claim to want to help.
They do
I have no idea what this means, the CoP is the institution
Then they can rent a place to stay! Sometimes we don’t get what we want.
Also, comparing come-and-go shelters that are massive improvement in living conditions to an internment camp or concentration camp is gross and you should feel bad about.
Spare me. We bend over backwards as a community to accomodate people who zero interest in being part of society. I don’t care if they prefer to live on the sidewalk. I truly don’t care. The sidewalk is for walking. Our parks are for recreation.
Its over dude. We are done being bullied by people like you who want us to feel bad for having expecations that people will actually get off the street. You can’t gaslight us anymore. People with your philosophy have created massive dangerous shanty towns that have real victims. They are actual people, not just a political matter you can virtue signal on. Real people are assaulted and trafficked in these camps. Real people are robbed. Real people get diseases from the unsansitary conditions. Stop promoting this humanitarian disaster.
We are in the midst of a housing market crash and will likely enter into recession in 6-12 months. And all this sh** will almost certainly hit the fan with a government run by a very lame duck POTUS and a reactionary wingnut legislature that would happily burn it all down to own the libs. It’s no where near over, CC.
It’s also not over because this city simply does not have the $$$ to criminalize people living outdoors (at $300-400 per night in jail). Wheeler’s unfunded election scheme is nothing more than a pipe dream. Put down the pipe, splash some cold water on your face, and start thinking about why we live in a society where so many people are housing insecure and where few people have access to basic metal health and addiction care.
Housing getting cheaper is bad in your mind? Okay
We don’t need to take people to jail really. All we need to do is make inconvenient to be live on the sidewalk here.
There is plenty of money to make this happen. It really depends on who gets MultCo County Chair. If Vega Pederson is elected, the majority of our taxes will continue to be grifted to her and Deb’s friends. But the reality is there is plenty of money.
Right back at ya! Why do we live in a society where its okay to infantalize adults and allow them to be a drain on the rest of us?
My question to you is, why do you oppose getting these people into shelters where they have access to clean water, showers, kitchens, and services? Instead of lying about funding, shouldn;t the focus for you be on making sure there is adequate funding for the most humane proposal on the table? Why are you so opposed to helping these people?
.
Only a “creative destruction” libertarian/conservative would argue that recessions are a good way to make housing cheaper.
“The number of people living on the streets far exceeds shelter bed capacity.” –KGW, August 2022.
You’re just making stuff up now.
Hi Dan! I’m not sure what you’re referencing here. It’s helpful to quote what I wrote so I can tell if you’ve just misunderstood something that I can clarify.
You wrote, “we have enough shelter space”. Now you know you were mistaken.
Again, quoting stuff also helps you understand what was written
“True, I was being hyperbolic. What actually drove home my abstaining from the race was when she proposed allowing the free-for-all drug camps to continue to exist permanently, even when we have enough shelter space.”
This sentence doesn’t indicate that there is currently enough shelter space. It means that Hardesty would allow the drug camps even if (and this is the conditional true or false) we have enough shelter space. In fact, the way its written even indicates that the current state is that we don’t have enough shelter space.
I’m not sure that’s the tone you should take when you are having trouble with basic sentences
Glad I could clear that up for you!
“We need a new form of government. Charter reform can’t come soon enough”
We need PBOT to have even more insulation from voters? Charter reform will not result in more progressive transportation policy.
Do voters have any impact on PBOT currently? I have never gotten the impression that PBOT cared in the slightest what voters think.
Charter reform will allow us to have a professional bureacracy where the head of the transportation bureau…wait for…specializes in transportation!
I do hope they’ll allow parking setbacks from that garage so giant suv’s don’t cause potential collision issues. That’s probably my #1 issue on our streets these days.
I wish they move the traffic diversion to 11th and make the Overton the greenway. I think PBOT might be worse than ODOT at this point.
Did you read the article? They are moving the diverter to 11th Ave.
My point is that they are trying to make Pettygrove a greenway. Bike routes work best if they are simple, safe and direct. Adding a diverter on 11th is good start, but they are trying to make some sort of half-assed “greenway on Overton and Pettygrove. They should take this opprotuinty to commit fully to afull safe adn direct greenway, with diversion, on Overton from 11th to 24th. Pettygrove can be returned to local street status, and Oveton from 9th-11th can have sharrows. This would be direct, well-connected, and safer.
PBOT’s been worse than ODOT for a long time, unless you live in inner SE
Inner South Easter: Neighborhood Greenways with diverters really suck. We demand protected bike lanes just like in Amsterdam!!!
Outer South Easter: Can we please have sidewalks, crosswalks, and bus service.
Meanwhile, Southwesterners: “Can we have any sort of walkability, even if it’s just a striped shoulder? And can we have any transit, even if it only comes once per hour? And can we have any sort of bike infrastructure, even if it’s just painted bike lanes?”
It seems to me that this encourages cars to use the greenway from NW 9th to NW 15th via NW Overton, NW 11th, and NW Pettygrove. I thought the goal was to get cars off the greenway, not funnel them onto it.
NW Northrup may be more direct, but NW Overton is more obvious as the way to head west from the NW 9th/NW Naito intersection. And once drivers on NW Overton heading west, they have no choice but to turn right on NW 11th, following the greenway.
Why couldn’t they turn left instead of right? You say they have “no choice” but they definitely do. 11th Ave is a two-way street in that area.
Diversion can be anywhere on a street and still achieve its goal of eliminating cut-through traffic while maintaining local access. Whether it is at 9th or 11th doesn’t make much of a difference.
Isn’t it more than a bit misleading to doctor an official image, especially when what you’re showing isn’t even correct? There’s not going to be car parking in front of the Encore garage entrance, close to corners, or where the protected bike lane is clearly shown still present in the PBOT graphic at the east end of the block. I get that you’re annoyed they didn’t show any car parking, but you just swung in the opposite direction of showing way more parking than will actually be allowed. And it’s not like it will be 100% occupied either. Maybe that’s the reason they just said “parking as space allows.”
This reminds me a lot of that fake image going around online a few months back of the spiral ramp for IBR, that made it seem like an official image when it was actual just some guy’s graphic to advance his personal agenda. This is basically the same thing, but you’re supposed to be a journalist and should have higher standards. I’m a monthly supporter and I definitely expect better.
Mieville,
Thanks for this feedback. I just edited the story and the graphic. The original PBOT image is now up. I feel like it was misleading that PBOT didn’t include car symbols in that graphic, so I felt like it was only fair to add some of my own. After hearing your feedback and thinking about it a bit more however, I agree it was misleading and not cool for me to do that. My point about PBOT remains!
Did PBOT single out Ovation Tea & Coffee, or was that something else that was added to their drawing?
That was added to the drawing by Jonathan, then removed later.
The way I understood it, the owners at Ovation were doing the most complaining.
So you singled out a small business for pushing back on PBOT’s design, and even drew a map so activists could harass them and vandalize their storefront? This is ridiculous and dangerous and you counter with “whoops, my bad!”
Bullshit, you know exactly what you’re doing.
Hi James,
You’re wrong. But thanks for letting me explain myself: My previous article detailed how Ovation Coffee sent a detailed email to PBOT in 2020 in strong opposition to the bike lanes, saying the lack of car parking would “devastate” their business. So I think it’s completely relevant for the map to show folks where Ovation is located. What people feel about Ovation is their responsibility. Not mine.
I received a call from an employee of Ovation a few days ago with similar concerns, blaming me for some bad reviews their business is getting. I’m happy to talk about this. I called back and left a message but have not heard back.
Thanks for following up with them to see if their opinion had changed in the last two years and whether they found there was any real impact on their business after the changes went in.
So incredibly frustrating how much sway businesses and business associations have over transportation policy and decision making. Maintaining street parking for “business concerns” is the dumbest move imaginable. If a business needs to rely on (subsidized) street parking to fill seats, they probably have other issues going on.
We need so many more diverters on greenways than PBOT has now – removing one (even with the plans to move it elsewhere) because of political pressure is just throwing cycling safety to the wolves in the name of freight movement and “business concerns”. Annoying to say the least.
It’s especially dumb in this case because I guarantee you that this coffee/tea place doesn’t need the parking to be successful! They’re in the pearl district, surrounded by high density housing, where many trips to local businesses are made on foot. Often if people are driving to the pearl district, they are parking in a garage or on the street somewhere and walking to a bunch of businesses anyway.
They should feel lucky to be on a major bikeway! It’s sure to get them more customers than a handful of parking spots. I suspect the owner just missed being able to park directly in front of his store.
Especially a coffee shop in the pearl. Like, who is driving across the city to get an expensive cup of coffee? There’s expensive coffee everywhere these days.
Would be interesting to know specifically who at PBOT made the decision; they should be held accountable. If this were a private company like Boeing skirting safety, people would be calling for executives to resign or be imprisoned; yet here PBOT skirts safety, and the project manager or Warner or god knows who is making the decision gets to safely hide behind the bureaucracy. What gives?
Maybe you could start a gofundme to pay for a public records request.
Yep, start a GoFundMe and then keep all the money instead of refunding it when you don’t do anything with it. Great idea!
Bonus points if you move to Amsterdam when people start asking questions.
I thought Zach said he is refunding the money.
Y, asked and answered, I think the money was donated to another activist group of I remember correctly. Give Katz credit for doing something, getting out and talking to a lot of people instead of, you know, commenting.
Is that really true? The last BikePortland article on the topic said he was still holding on to the money.
Very convenient how whenever PBOT’s solutions don’t align 100% with the aspirational fantasies of armchair urban planners, y’all jump straight to baseless accusations of corruption and conspiracy. It’s like the last ~6 years of “fake news” claims have rotted your brains and deprived y’all of the capacity for reason.
It’s a city, you’re not the only group whose needs matter. Sometimes there will be outcomes that you don’t like. But the sky will not fall and the sun will rise again tomorrow.
I mean this isn’t some fantasy thing. PBOT built something that was good for cyclists, and is tearing it down because of “traffic concerns” and some local business opposition. When it takes 4 years to build safer cycling infrastructure that can be removed in 4 weeks, there is definitely reason to be concerned.
Wanting to hold people accountable, and wondering who is responsible for the decision making process for something is entirely normal. It is corrupt when businesses can bully their way into getting things done 50x faster than regular people. Is it the end of the world? No. But it’s still concerning!
What stands out for me in your comment is that this really was a tearing out of existing infrastructure. The fact it wasn’t there long is really irrelevant. Money was spent on it, it was there, and it got torn out.
Bullshit. Belki, you sound like a PBOT employee with your elitist “armchair urban planners” comment, complete with a couple of “ya’ll’s” lifted straight from the lecturing bowels of social media. Don’t ya’ll me! I’m surprised such a derogatory and manipulative comment got through moderation. No one here has suggested that bicyclists are “the only group” (hardly some sort of monolithic “group” to begin with) whose needs matter or that PBOT projects must align “100%” with the vision(s) of people on Bike Portland. Time to go back to the trolling drawing board.
I can’t find where anyone claimed corruption or conspiracy. Where did you see that?
I must be alone in wishing for the return of Critical Mass, although I guess I would worry about actually being murdered these days. Things have gotten so much worse since those heady days of on-the-streets advocacy. It’s obvious that PBOT is entirely unconcerned with political fall-out from the bike community here (and everywhere – 7th, Hawthorne, etc), which is a measurement of our lack of power. Also, do we not need new, young, locked-in energy in the Bike Coordinator position? PBOT’s lumbering bureaucracy seems to be moving from “ossified” to “zombified” at the worst possible time, mirroring all of our increasingly-ineffective institutions of governance as our society’s disintegration accelerates.
Yes, it t does seem like there used to be more on-the-streets advocacy in Portland… but Why do you think you must be alone in wishing that?
One of the unintended consequences of having metered parking is that it encourages “bottom-line” agencies to add as much parking as the street can hold and to eliminate non-revenue-generating uses such as loading and bike lanes.
Maybe they could add tolled bike lanes to recoup the revenue? (I’m joking)
How will people biking east get to the short stretch of bike lane to bypass the queues of cars when there are queues of cars and parked cars?
There really aren’t any long queues there, since it is just a stop sign and not a traffic light.
Have you tried riding east on Overton to 9th at rush hour? Lots of cars back up if someone’s trying to turn left onto 9th, and way more backup if there’s a train. I’ve had to ride the sidewalk from 10th down to 9th because Overton is a line of cars and they’re too close to the curb to pass. At least that short strip of bike lane might help reduce right hooks at 9th.
Rich people complaining get things done. Especially when it comes to cars.
Bikes too, if you want to be honest about who drives policy in this town.
Yeah, right – bikes have about 2% of the infrastructure in this town, but that’s still too much for many motorheads.
I consider most Portland streets to be bike infrastructure.
Always. Rich people & veterans.
oooh…sharrows!
If I am being honest here, this reversal doesn’t actually seem like it is that big of a deal. Maybe I have just not been biking through that stretch at the right time of day but that particular block doesn’t actually seem that high traffic, they are implementing an alternate solution to reduce traffic on the greenway overall, and as far as I know this isn’t removing vital safety infrastructure from a high crash network street (I’m looking at you ODOT).
Like, obviously it is dumb to capitulate to business owners whining about how they need more street parking, but it is also pretty obvious that if a bunch of drivers are illegally driving the wrong way down a one way street (which sounds like is the case here) there should be a change in how the road is configured.
I agree with the general sentiment here that PBOT hasn’t been that inspiring in terms of building out visionary bike infrastructure, but this seems like a pretty trivial rollback in the grand scheme of things
Except that it sets an awful precedent for the rest of the city that Council-adopted plans don’t matter, the countless hours of volunteer time spent by advocates to develop said plan (Northwest in Motion) doesn’t matter, if enough drivers decide to illegally drive around a diverter, the city is willing to remove it in less than two months and potentially replace it with something worse. At least pre-COVID, Overton Street had traffic volumes well in excess of established greenway guidelines and so these changes were warranted based on the City’s stated policy goals. On top of that, restoring nearly all the parking spaces just helps validate the businesses’ complaints.
I’m still waiting for BikeLoud to say something about this.
I mean correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like their plan is to just make a different block one way to achieve the same traffic reduction to overton?
The problem is that the greenway is planned to jog one block from Overton to Pettygrove at 11th, and this design would reduce traffic volumes on Overton precisely when the greenway is supposed to turn off. This would divert some traffic onto Pettygrove ironically.
Also, a lot of the traffic that turns on Overton from 9th already turn off at 11th because they’re just trying to bypass the slow signal at Northrup and 10th where the streetcar turns west. While a diverter at 11th would probably deter some drivers on 9th from turning on Overton, this design basically enshrines what is easily the most stressful section of the street with minimal improvement. That goes for people biking as well as those trying to cross the street to get to Fields Park.
Perhaps since the city has acknowledged what they believe is a bad design and reverting to the former design, they might recognize the error of their way at NE Tillamook and 7th. The design there is wrong by removing the traffic circle. This will only increase the speed of motor vehicles, not slow them down. The city needs to reconsider its design, as it has done with Overton