At a press conference to celebrate the new cycling facilities on Naito Parkway in May 2022, then director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation Chris Warner was asked to address concerns about the increase in cars and dangerous drivers on the roads. “There might be more cars,” Warner replied. “We just have to keep pushing along and making the case and if the facilities aren’t safe, people aren’t going to ride. The safer the facilities are, the more ability we’ll have to really change the culture.”
Warner could be confident in that statement because a few minutes later he cut the ribbon on Better Naito Forever, a project that established 1.2 miles of bike lanes physically protected from auto traffic by concrete curbs, grade separation, street trees, and/or steel bollards.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for key parts of that protection to be wiped away due to a combination of political compromise, reckless driving, and suspected vandalism.
Almost immediately after Better Naito opened, we heard complaints from readers about people parking in a section of the bike lane between SE Ankeny and the Burnside Bridge. As we reported in October 2022, that violation of the protected space was sanctioned by PBOT as part of a deal they cut with Portland Saturday Market decades ago (Naito had a standard unprotected bike lane for years before it was updated in 2022) to allow vendors to use the bike lane for loading and unloading. According to a permit renewed by City Council ordinance this past March, vendors are allowed to park in the bike lane for 10 minutes at a time on weekends, before and after the market opens as long they display a permit on their windshield.
Unfortunately that permit system has been a failure on several fronts. We found many people parked in the bike lanes without a permit and at least one vendor told us (via comment on our October 2022 story) it’s mostly customers who park in the bike lane.
To facilitate this weekly opening of the bike lane to car parking, PBOT installed about three dozen removable steel bollards as part of the Better Naito project. Today all those bollards are gone. Combined with missing bollards near Salmon Street Springs, we estimate at least half of the 85 ornate steel bollards installed last spring are missing.
We first heard about these missing bollards this past summer when reader Daniel Fuller cc’d BikePortland on an email to PBOT Capital Programs Manager Gabe Graff on June 21st:
“I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that most of the removable steel bollards protecting the Better Naito cycle track between SW Ankeny Street and the Burnside Bridge have been missing,” Fuller wrote. “I assume they were temporarily removed for loading & unloading and never replaced. Was this intentional or just an oversight? Any information you can provide would be appreciated.”
Graff replied a day later saying PBOT staff were “troubleshooting this issue” with Portland Saturday Market.
One month later, Fuller emailed Graff again, telling him that several more of the steel bollards had gone missing:
“Now only two remain… This seems to defeat the purpose of having a two-way, protected cycle track, since there is nothing between southbound bicyclists and oncoming vehicles in the northbound lane. Has there been any progress in finding out why the bollards are not being replaced?”
Graff had the same response and said he’d try once again to follow up with market staff to see if they’d made any progress on the issue.
Fuller waited another month, then email Graff yet again on August 18th. “Since your last email I have noticed that all the steel bollards along the Better Naito cycletrack near Saturday Market have been removed and not replaced,” Fuller wrote. Then continued:
“I am seriously concerned about the safety of bicycle riders traveling next to oncoming vehicle traffic with no physical separation here. Would it be possible to install plastic flex posts (“delineators”) at this location? I am thinking they would be less likely to go missing, and vendors could safely drive over them. Please let me know what else can be done to address this issue.”
Fuller hasn’t heard from Graff since that August email.
In September I shared a video on social media that confirmed all the steel bollards were gone and there was no longer any protection between users of the Better Naito bike lane and drivers on NW Naito.
One day after I posted that video, PBOT laid out orange traffic cones where the bollards used to be. Even with the cones, one person (who has raced road bikes at an elite level) responded to the video by saying riding that section, “Felt sketchy.”
The whereabouts of those ornate steel bollards remains unknown (I’ve heard reports of them being strewn about in the bushes next to the street), and now even most of the traffic cones are missing. Someone who lives nearby shared with me this week that there are only about 2-3 cones still present for the entire stretch where over 30 steel bollards were once installed.
Earlier this month, I confirmed with PBOT that the bollards are indeed missing in action.
I emailed PBOT Communications Director Hannah Schafer on November 17th to ask why both the bollards and cones had disappeared. Schafer was grateful to learn the cones were missing (“That wasn’t on our radar,” she wrote via email) and encouraged folks to call PBOT’s 24/7 maintenance dispatch hotline (503-823-1700) to report that in the future.
As for the bollards, Schafer reminded me about the agreement they have with the market to remove the bollards for loading/unloading. “Unfortunately, that concept worked better in theory than in reality,” she wrote. “And most of the bollards have gone missing primarily due to vandalism.”
So for now, we have just plastic traffic cones (which are mostly MIA) to separate bike riders from oncoming car traffic on one of Portland’s most marquee bikeways. That’s hardly the type of facility that will, “Really change the culture,” like former PBOT Director Warner hoped for when Better Naito opened last year.
It’s also particularly troublesome to leave this bike lane unprotected for so long, given PBOT’s experience on NE 21st, where there’s a similar two-way bike lane design that had bicycle riders pedal directly into oncoming car drivers without adequate protection. On 21st, a woman was violently hit by a driver who swerved into the bike lane, and a few months later PBOT responded with large concrete barricades.
On Naito, Schafer says PBOT traffic engineers are currently sketching out a new, “permanent solution.” “But we have yet to identify funding for the actual installation.”
Hopefully they come up with something soon. Before another horrific collision.