Over the weekend my son and I biked to the Columbia River. We have a tradition where we load our inflatable paddleboards into a trailer, load up my bike full of beach stuff, and ride to a sandbar just east of Broughton Beach.
This year, our ride had a pleasant surprise and an unpleasant one.
To get to the beach, we ride on NE 33rd Avenue/Drive to connect between the NE Holman neighborhood greenway and the bike path along Marine Drive. As you might recall from my 2022 video of this ride or the video I shared last summer, a huge feature of 33rd Drive for the past several years has been the folks who live in RVs and other vehicles alongside the bike lane.
The presence of all those people, their car-homes, and belongings made riding on 33rd much more dangerous and stressful than it should be. That’s why I was very pleasantly surprised to see that efforts to address the encampments have succeeded. There was not one person living in a vehicle along the entire stretch of the road.
Some agency (either PBOT or Port of Portland) has placed large concrete blocks and new guardrails in the parking lane to prevent camps from being formed. They’ve also established an “RV Safe Park” just a block away. That special shelter is run by Salvation Army and holds spots for 55 vehicles. It looked full to my passing eyes and seemed to be a well-managed space.
That was such a pleasant surprise!
Unfortunately as we continued home, riding south on 33rd Drive south of NE Sunderland Ave, there was something else making this street unsafe: overgrown vegetation. A massive hedgerow and other bushes along the eastern edge of the Riverside Golf & Country Club golf course is growing well into the bike lane. With a 35 mph speed limit and a paint-only bike lane, 33rd isn’t a low-stress place to ride even when it’s unobstructed. But when people have to bike in the general travel lane to avoid overgrowth, the situation becomes much more risky.
Branches and bushes growing into bike lanes is a huge problem this year. Based on my personal experience (I got swatted in the face by a branch on N Rosa Parks Way while biking just after dusk a few nights ago) and from what I’m hearing in the community, the number of problem spots is much higher than it’s been in the past. Our wet spring and warm summer have led to ideal growing conditions. That’s great if you’re a farmer or a gardener; but not if you’re trying to navigate curbside bike lanes around Portland.
It’s time to get out your lawn shears and clippers and cut what you can. You should also have PBOT’s maintenance hotline and/or email — 503-823-1700/pdxroads@portlandoregon.gov — in your phone. This is an important issue that needs to be addressed. Thankfully PBOT’s system for tracking these is good and they will respond to your complaints (an email sent to that address got a human response four minutes after I sent it today), but it’s a bummer to have yet another thing making roads unsafe for non-drivers.
Homeless encampments are a very difficult issue to handle. Overgrown weeds and trees are simple. Just get out there and cut them back.
Thanks for reading.
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I believe the barriers (including on N..side of Marine Dr. as well) were installed by the Port of Portland (the concrete blocks are marked POP) I hope PBOT signed off on it. I have very mixed feelings and think if nothing else it make keeping vegetation out of the bike lane much harder… Blackberries will be happy to grown right under the metal rail barrier. I’m also have moments of picturing being pinned between a car and the barrier when I otherwise could have bailed for the shoulder.
Sure, but when the RVs were there, I couldn’t ride in the bike lane half the time, and of course no bailing to the shoulder.
So the alternative is a whole city full of barriers right up to the edge of bike lane? And I can’t emphasize enough how these will make it much less likely vegetation will be kept out of bike lanes, drainage will be impeded in wet season, and slowly destroying road surface from taking over the gutter.
It sounds like the homeless in the camps were keeping the weeds in check. I hope Oregon never has to deal with kudzu (pueraria montana), which plagues us throughout the South, it pretty much kills everything in its path by blocking access to light and nutrients. At least blackberries produce edible fruit.
The PBOT page that is linked to at the end actually says not to report “nuisances” including “overgrown vegetation”.
I think overgrown vegetation on the road is a different category and is considered an urgent road safety issue by PBOT. Either way, they will route your report to the proper place so it’s all good.
It just says to use the PDX Reporter app rather than the online form. And I’ve had very good success with PDX Reporter. Vegetation issues and potholes are often addressed within days of using it to report something, especially if I mark the location clearly and attach photos.
I suspect one’s success depends on the mood of the person receiving the report. I annually report overgrown bushes in the planting strip on NE Irving. I sent this year’s on 6/17 just using their locator dot and got a quick response saying “the address that was provided is not valid in our system” – there is no longer a building on the lot. I replied within minutes with Portland Maps’ “1299 – 1231 NE Irving,” and heard nothing. Today when I rode in, the bushes had been cut back. Maybe they had finished by Monday, which would make it 21 days – 3 weeks. A little slow, but it’s not a high speed road, so probably appropriate.
Probably because it’s in Kerns. The delay is for the same reason illegal camps are assessed, posted, and removed at the fastest timeline allowed by state law when they’re in hoity-toity affluent neighborhood like Laurelhurst, but they often take weeks and sometimes months in lower end neighborhoods.
Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
I’d like to see PBOT add concrete block and guardrail protection to bike lanes, in place of paint and posts.
Then they will actually never be swept
33rd has been clear for awhile now (not sure precisely when it happened as I have recently moved my ‘normal’ route through that area out to 42nd/47th and haven’t been riding 33rd regularly). While the new cleanliness certainly makes the biking nicer, I wonder where the people that were living there went/were forced. I think some of them moved to 138th on the Columbia Slough just N of Costco. I somehow doubt they all found stable/permanent housing and promising new jobs. I hope some are in the Sunderland RV lot, but I think that was already pretty full when 33rd was full on. Anyway, I refuse to celebrate homeless sweeps and think arguments that invoke safety as a reason to harass people who are already in terrible circumstances are bogus. I’m not saying those people had a right to settle the shoulders of NE 33rd, I’m just saying that they are people deserving of the same moral consideration as bicyclists, golfers, and beach goers in a Peter Singer kind of way, and it makes me sad that local government is so responsive to calls to hide the homeless when there are sooo many other things that could be fixed. There is some dissonance between all the contentious process concerning the bike lanes between Holman and Lombard on 33rd and the bureaucratic compliance concerning the anti-homeless barricades further north. We have to fight each other for years to paint a bike lane, but there is no red tape protecting urban campers.
As for overgrown bike paths, I nominate N Portland Rd between Marine Dr. and Columbia. Leather chaps advised due to blackberry hazard.
Respectfully, you’re not really saying anything then, just virtue signaling.
Nobody wants to make life harder for struggling people. At the same time, public roads and paths must be clear for the mobility of everyone.
We’ve been struggling with this issue for a long time now, and we’ve tried a lot of solutions. If you’ve kept up with the issue at all, you know that a significant percentage of homeless folks do not want to go to a shelter or park. That leaves us with sweeps.
It’s fine to have mixed feelings about it. It’s not terribly helpful that PDXers (especially ones who don’t live in the thick of it) need to state it constantly or say they don’t support sweeps without providing a realistic alternative (I think we all know there isn’t one at this point).
I, for one, am glad the lanes are clear, and I’m fine with getting it done through sweeps if that’s what it takes to enforce traffic laws.
Yeah- this was a massive safety issue for all involved, including cyclists and the homeless there. I have ridden this stretch through good and bad a few times a week for the last few years. It was madness. Power cables strewn across the road. Garbage bins pushed into travel lanes. RVs parked in bike lanes with open doors into the road. Drivers driving 50+ miles an hour honking at anything in their way. When a dumpster is on fire you put out the fire.
I sympathize with the desire for clean, safe bike paths, and I understand that proponents of encampment sweeps do not want “to make life harder for struggling people.” I commend Portland for being more willing to fund affordable housing and homeless service programs than any other city/region. I share your deep frustration at how ineffective and ineptly administered those programs appear to be. I admit the status quo is untenable, and for that reason I’m OK with sweeps. I do think they deserve comment, however, and I find the framing of the debate highly problematic.
Jonathan is to be commended for his even and fair reporting on homeless people camping on bikeways. (A standard he has accustomed us to with his generally superb reporting.) But for this story, I think some of the phrasings are a little cringe. For example, Jonathan wrote “I was very pleasantly surprised to see that efforts to address the encampments have succeeded,” implicitly equating success with the removal of the campers. I took some issue with that take because the barriers seemed like a fairly big thing to build (on par with a protected bike lane) just to prevent camping in one spot. As I alluded to, I suspect some of the people have set up camp in other unsanctioned areas, so it seems premature to deem the endeavor a success.
My virtue signaling was simply an attempt to point out that “the issue” should be the cascade of crises that is causing numerous people live on our street shoulders, not the fact that their presence negatively affects legal street users. If you’ve kept up with the issue at all, you know that there has been unsanctioned camping in Portland for ages (my personal experience goes back to 1994, but it didn’t seem like a new thing to me then). As long as the campers could be kept to dirtier corners of the city, stasis could prevail. It only became ‘the issue’ when the abject reality of street life became unavoidable. So for years we were happy to let people suffer out of sight. I’m guessing we will again, once we have hardened our infrastructure against unsanctioned camping.
I hear you. But that’s a statement that reflects how I feel and states a fact. Don’t speculate about how my feelings reflect my beliefs about homeless people. Yes I was happy to have the road become less stressful and to no longer see people living in makeshift encampments and it was nice to see some of them in a managed village nearby. I’m not naive to the fact that a lot of the folks were moved somewhere else unwillingly and that there’s still a lot to be sad about with this issue. Just because I don’t share the totality of my feelings every time I mention something doesn’t mean I don’t have those feelings.
I did not intend to speculate on your feelings or beliefs about homelessness more generally. I’m sorry that I did so.
no biggie! I just like to clarify things on here when people use my name in comments.
Not only is there plenty of red tape protecting urban campers, but a literal entire industry focused on it. Unfortunately, the incentives of the public funding that industry and the industry aren’t aligned, because they aren’t willing to work themselves out of a job and actually fix the issue. So, we’re left with sweeps and disparate camp solutions that aren’t actual fixes. Add in a general populace that is absolutely exhausted with the issue and all we have to be thankful for is that we have been spared the immigrant influx of many other cities, because that would put Portland on its knees.
It’s coming though as part of the climate driven crisis. I agree with you that the region is ill prepared mentally and physically for what is coming. This week in the heat is a good time to reflect on what is driving the mass migration to milder and wealthier climes. Two things that Portland and much of the I5 Corridor PNW have plenty of.
The problem once again is allocating too much space to cars and trucks. There’s no need for a center turning lane on most of this stretch of road. They could have reduced the road to two lanes and used the guardrails to make a hard-protected shoulder, a step toward a fully separated and raised path for pedestrians and micromobility users. Instead they chose to place vulnerable road users between a hard object and 35 mph traffic with what looks to be about three feet of room to maneuver in. (And let’s be real, a lot of drivers will be going nearer to 50 mph.) This is hardly going to make the “interested but concerned” riders among us feel safe.
Why does this need to be a through-street both ways for regular car traffic, or at all? How about north and south vehicular dead-ends right near the giant airport fuel tanks, with a small bypass for pedestrians and bikes? At the very least something like the 72nd/Rose City golf course treatment writ large.
The next through street east of this that goes uninterrupted from Columbia to Marine drive isn’t until NE 122nd. Seems like a functioning NE 33rd is pretty essential for all road users.
FWIW comparing data points where five or more vehicles were observed by OMF-IRP contractor CCC CleanStart for the month of June on 2023 vs 2024.
Dot size varies depending on vehicle quantity. Less than five vehicle at each assessment spot is omitted.
interesting — in June 2023 NE 33rd Dr was the largest concentration of RVs in the city.
Seems that in June 2021 or June 2022 there were other contenders. But those areas had been cleaned up by June, 2023.
Ted Buehler
I find it depressing that we live in a VERY highly taxed community yet basic services like keeping our bike paths clean, clear and free of invasive blackberries just does not happen. We have allocated BILLIONS for homeless response yet sidewalks continue to be blocked. RV’s are parked illegally emitting trash and sewage and the response to finally open up a parking lot for them is slow and insufficient. It’s so frustrating!
Liberalism without pragmatism eventually leads to conservatism without compassion.
Ooh I like this.
I’m not sure it always plays out this way, but it’s a lot like a headline I saw years ago:
“If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will.”
That headline is misleading for a couple of reasons. One is that it ignores rampant fearmongering about immigration designed specifically to hurt liberals at the polls. Another is that after Bill Clinton made it harder both to cross the border and to obtain legal status, the unauthorized immigrant population tripled in number over the next decade. In other words, a liberal US president “enforcing borders” is exactly what created the modern border crisis.
And inconveniently for the author of that piece, a majority of Americans think immigration is good, actually.
Legal immigration is good. Illegal immigration isn’t.
“Enforcing the border” is about illegal immigration. Please don’t conflate the two.
Then legalize immigration. Problem solved.
Given the restrictiveness and complexity of the American immigration system and the current calls for even more restrictions on legal immigration, comments to the effect of “I’m OK with legal immigration” will be (justifiably) interpreted as anti-immigration. That’s just the reality of the current political climate. Are you OK with people gaming the asylum system to move here? That’s something that is technically legal but makes immigration restrictionists’ blood boil. What about anchor babies/birth tourism?
Immigration is already legal, though limited (as it is almost everywhere). I’m all for letting more folks in, especially if we could focus more on skills as opposed to family relations. I suspect you agree that unregulated immigration won’t work. In that case, the discussion is about particular rules, not comical “pro” or “anti” absolutes that only a few extremists actually believe in.
You mean comical absolutes such as “legal immigration is good, illegal immigration isn’t”?
Family reunification has been the main form of legal immigration since the 1965 Hart–Celler Act. Is that “good” or not? What about the waves of European colonists who arrived before immigration laws existed, many of whom would not be allowed to enter today? Was colonialism “good” just because there was no law against it?
“Is that “good” or not?”
A skills based system, like that used is the rest of the world, would serve us better than our current system.
So illegal immigration is bad and not all legal immigration is good either. It’s beginning to sound as though you just don’t like immigrants.
How does that even make sense? Saying one is for a legal speed limit does not equate to being anti-speed limits. Or does it?
I though it was pretty clear, but I will spell it out explicitly for you here. Legal avenues for migration to the US are difficult to access because it’s been several decades since republicans have allowed any updates to the immigration system. Nevertheless migration has continued, resulting in a large population that lives in the US but doesn’t have legal status to do so. It’s become a common trope for conservatives to deflect accusations of nativism, xenophobia, and racism by saying that they are not opposed to immigration in principle, it’s just illegal immigration that toasts their cookies, when it is as plain as the day is long that the vast majority of immigrants would prefer to come through legal channels if any were available. When there are no legal means to immigrate, the statements ‘no immigrants’ and ‘only legal immigrants’ are equivalent, and there is no way to separate the principle of the ‘rule of law’ from the degree of limitation on migration. So when Watts says
everyone who has been participating in the immigration debate in this country recognizes this as a standard anti-immigration (and anti-immigrant) talking point. There is a universe in which that statement would be reasonable. This is not that universe. This is one in which the previous POTUS has mused, apparently seriously, “Why can’t we have more people from Norway?” To extend your analogy, imagine if the speed limit was set to 5 mph everywhere. People would inevitably speed, and arguing that you don’t mind fast driving as long as it is legal would be silly.
Inaction on immigration has been thoroughly bipartisan. Even when Democrats have held all levers of power they’ve done nothing. Biden has not even reversed some of the Trump era executive orders despite promises to do so.
It’s true that Republicans have used the issue as a cudgel to bash Democrats, but that only works because of the way the public feels about the issue.
Dems certainly own some of the failure, but there is no comparison. Dems did DACA, Rs did the Muslim ban.
Just an FYI…
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/trumps-travel-ban-doesnt-affect-all-muslims/
Trump most recently issued a proclamation restricting certain nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and North Korea from obtaining visas to travel to the U.S. Certain Venezuelan government officials and their families were also barred.
https://immigrationforum.org/article/adjustment-of-status-through-work-visas-for-daca-recipients-explainer/
DACA does not provide lawful status and it does not provide a pathway to permanent status, such as a green card or citizenship. Because DACA was created via executive action and not legislation, the DACA policy generally can be revoked by further executive action.
It’s risky to assign good or bad characteristics to political parties and the legislation that gets passed. As is often the case, there are good and bad results that come from the same piece of legislation.
That’s not factually correct. You’re assuming a level of symbology that is only shared by an extreme partisan few. Yes means no and legal immigration means, well, I’m still not sure what you think it means.
I’m not immersed far enough into that level of partisanship to be able to coherently understand what you are saying let alone debate ideas with you. The sound of the dog whistles are simply too loud.
Or in some people’s case, speaking without thinking leads to acting without understanding.
Not sure where this idea comes from that Multnomah county is taxed especially highly. We have no sales tax, and Measures 5 and 50 basically crippled funding for public services. According to one center-right think tank, Oregon as a whole ranks #31 in state and local tax burden, just behind Washington. In any case, no amount of “homeless response” is going to fix the problem of not building enough housing in the first place.
We get that idea because “Multnomah county” and “Oregon as a whole” are two vastly different enterprises. How do you even conflate the two?
https://www.koin.com/news/portland/report-high-tax-rates-could-be-driving-people-out-of-portland/
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/state/portland-taxes/
Refer to this comment of mine from a few days ago. Portland ranks similarly to Oregon among largest cities in each state, though I think a tiny bit higher (16th highest vs. 19th highest).
Portland does have high income taxes, but Portland also has relatively low property taxes compared to real estate value. The property tax effect is particular important to consider in Portland relative to the rest of the state, since most of Portland has had a hotter market relative to the rest of the state meaning that the net effect of M5/M50 have been to lower Portland’s property tax burden (in relative terms).
My response to the OP was pretty narrow. The post tried to minimize the tax burden Multnomah endures by substituting “Oregon” to compare it nationally, not compare Multnomah to other parts of Oregon. That is what I was pointing out.
I’ll say it again as my point was clearly missed, Multnomah and “Oregon as a whole” are not synonymous and have different tax rates.
The rates are not that different for most people; the report I linked to included local taxes like the ones Ted Wheeler and the PBA love to complain about. Most people don’t pay the highest marginal income tax rate, and even those who do only have to pay it for a portion of their income. That’s what a marginal tax means.
As blumdrew has pointed out, a person earning $100k per year in Portland had a 10.8% total tax burden in 2021, which is not especially high compared to other metro areas.
The list of bespoke taxes in that other Tax Foundation report includes things like the Preschool For All tax and TriMet Transit Tax that are earmarked for specific purposes. Should we be spending preschool funds to sweep bike paths now?
None of that changes that you conflated Multnomah county with the state of Oregon to take advantage of statistics. By design or you weren’t paying attention? Does no one really care about any attempt at accuracy in their comments? Are people just trying to create a narrative and either can’t find info to support the narrative or don’t mind stretching factual points to their breaking points?
I didn’t conflate them; I specifically said “Oregon as a whole” to distinguish it from the county. In any case the statewide tax burden of 10.8% is comfortably within the range of values for Portland (which has most of the county’s population) in the 2021 report. Nonetheless, I applaud your concern for accuracy. I look forward to your future commentary which I am sure will be based solidly on facts and free of any narratives.
I guess I’ve had too much caffeine to let this go.
Narratives are fine, its preferable if it comes from the individual and they are just not presenting something they have been indoctrinated with, but regardless as long as the the information and or facts presented fits with the narrative without alteration or obfuscation its a good beginning for a discussion.
Once again, I didn’t alter or obfuscate anything. I’m sure an enlightened thinker such as yourself, who is apparently immune to all indoctrination, can see that.
I’ve noticed an increase in RVs and campsites in the area around the I205 path recently. I wonder if some of those people were displaced from NE 33rd.
Looks good. This has been a tricky place because there aren’t a lot of routes up there.
From the picture, unfortunately it looks like they’ve effectively narrowed the bike lane, unfortunately. With the barriers directly over the line, you can’t ride close to the line anymore, especially with a trailer. I just wish they would have given another foot or two.
I don’t like doing the road maintenance for the city, but I may consider adding a pair of pruning shears to my saddle bag anyway. Good idea.
As far as it goes, I happily bring my shears, folding saw and gloves along a couple times a year and clear select spots on my typical routes.
I look at it a little bit trail-steward-like I’m probably one of the most frequent riders of some of those routes, I’m happy to put a little work in to take care of them.
33rd is a different animal, it’s not reasonable to think an individual or small group of good Samaritans can maintain those kinds of locations.
But if there’s a branch or a blackberry vine that you swerve around every day. Bring your clipper and nip it!
Great idea to PBOT’s maintenance hotline/app/email. Not to be gruesome, but I just came across a dead rat on the Eastbank Esplanade just south of the Hawthorne bridge and reported it.
I plan to continue reporting things I come across. I suppose even if they don’t have the resources to address all of the reports, having record of a bunch of reports might help them argue for more budget in the future.
Thanks for the update, Jonathan.
Two things:
The speed limit on this section of street was 45 mph until about six months ago. It’s now 35 mph. I think this is a big improvement. I made a request, I don’t know if others have or not. But, it never hurts to send a speed limit reduction request to PBOT.
I have turned in the overgrown laurel hedge a bunch of times. South of the Sutherlin Rd (south connection). Also northbound blackberry, grass an bramble on this same section. Also sod and grass north of Sutherlin Rd, north connection up to Marine Dr. The hedge has rarely, if ever, been clipped. The sod never removed. Someone could do a FOIA request to see what happened to these maintenance requests. I’m guessing I’ve turned in about 20 requests to correct a “vegetation in bicycle lane” problem on 33rd Dr between 2017 and 2023. If someone can find out which software loop these requests get lost in, they might be able to help similar failed maintenance requests get fulfilled elsewhere in Portland.
Ted Buehler
I’ve always been under the impression that the Riverside golf Country Club trims back the laurel with a heavy duty vertical trimmer at most twice a year. There is a plant with 2imch thorns that is everywhere and grows quickly.
That might have been even more good news than you realized, Jonathan. I saw firsthand that the RVs were gone 2 to 3 weeks ago, but thought the inhabitants had been dispersed without shelter. I’m relieved to learn that they have relatively good alternative space. Thanks, as always.
Wow. White middle class guy happy that being poor is now a crime in Oregon so he can bike for fun on the weekend. This is one of the things you wait to say until Thanksgiving so your entire family can ignore you and talk about how insane you are behind their backs
lol. That’s not what’s going on here at all.
Update! Laurels have been trimmed