The Portland Bureau of Transportation has replaced nearly two dozen plastic flex-posts that were uprooted from their place in the buffer zone of the bike lane on Northeast 57th Avenue in the Cully neighborhood.
We posted about the missing protective materials in this important curved section of the bike lane between NE Failing and Fremont on Tuesday. And by the end of this past weekend, new posts had been installed. I went and took a look at them yesterday just for good measure and was happy to see new, bright, white posts where there were previously none. This bikeway needs all the help it can get while we wait another three years (at least) before the city builds a more robust solution with concrete curbs.
For their part, a PBOT comment on social media yesterday made it seem like they simply were unaware the posts were missing. “Thanks for making us aware of this,” they wrote in response to the BikePortland story. I appreciate that PBOT is using this as an opportunity to promote their complaint-driven system for keeping roads maintained, but I find it hard to believe no PBOT employees had noticed this situation in the past several months.
Regardless, I’m just happy PBOT responded and acted to fortify the bike lane a bit. I hope the posts do their job of encouraging more people to bike and walk and protecting them better while doing so — while also discouraging people to drive dangerously. Of course, if these plastic posts were tall concrete curbs, I wouldn’t have to hope!
On that note, a reader sent me a photo taken earlier this morning that showed a PBOT crew at the scene. I’m not sure if they were already replacing uprooted posts or what, but hopefully these new ones stick around a while and don’t waste too much PBOT time and resources re-installing them.
If you see missing posts or other maintenance issues or road hazards, please call PBOT’s 24/7 maintenance dispatch hotline at (503) 823-1700 or email pdxroads@portlandoregon.gov. “If it’s not reported, we may not know it needs to be fixed!” PBOT says.