If all goes according to plan, by next summer a key segment of Northeast Broadway will finally receive a design update that includes protected bike lanes.
In the past week or so the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) has uploaded the website for the NE Broadway Main Street Pave & Paint Project. This site makes official what many Portlanders have dreamed about for years: turning inner Broadway from a car-dominated stroad into a more humane street where people can walk and bike — and drive! — with much less stress and crash risk.
The project was triggered by a need to install fresh pavement between NE 11th and 24th. And as PBOT prefers to do, they’ll seize the opportunity to update lane striping when given a blank canvas to work with. And with major bikeways already established on NE 7th and NE 26th, the project scope will go beyond the new paving boundaries to make connections to those existing routes.
The current cross-section on this section of NE Broadway has five lanes for car users and just one narrow, unprotected bike lane. The final design is far from final, but early concepts have all shown at least a seven-foot wide, curbside bike lane and three-foot buffer zone.
While the conventional wisdom is that there will be less space for drivers in the new design, nothing is certain until the paint dries (and even then we know PBOT can change their mind). And given the high-profile stature of Broadway as a major commercial corridor, we should expect healthy debates about the final cross-section.
On the PBOT website, they place “support a vibrant main street” and “make the streetscape work better for [the small business community]” atop a list of project goals. Other stated goals are to make the street safer, make it better for bicycle riders and walkers, and “develop a high-quality project with broad community support.”
One major thing to keep in mind that sets this project apart is how it ties directly into the I-5 Rose Quarter megaproject. PBOT received a $38 million federal grant back in March to transform NE Broadway into a “civic main street” between NE 7th and the Broadway Bridge. My hunch is whatever cross-section they have in mind for that project will have to match up to this one. Will the more prescriptive federal dollars influence the design of the lower Broadway project? If so, what will that mean for the PBOT-funded “pave and paint”? That is one question on my mind as this gets underway.
I am also eager to see how the newly elected city council handles what could be a very high-profile project.
The “pave and paint” project kicks off this summer with a “listening and learning” phase that will include business and neighborhood outreach, some technical analysis, and a series of walks and bike rides along the corridor. By fall, PBOT should have initial concept drawings to share and open houses will start. We should see a design recommendation by early 2025 and PBOT says they plan to implement the changes in summer 2025.
See the project website for more information.
Thanks for reading.
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This sounds like a great first step. NE Broadway should be an “East Side Main Street,” not a repulsive car sewer.
I wish that the standard for bike lanes going forward on major arterials was fully grade separated facilities. But any kind of protection will be an improvement over the tiny unprotected five foot door zone lane that currently exists.
It would be great to see the streetcar run up and down NE B’way.
Would be nice if it went all the way to the river (the Williams and Vancouver area is quite dangerous on a bike), but this is way better than what we’ve got today!
Great news indeed! I often bike (and drive) through this area, but more often take Tillamook than Broadway (when on bike). This street does not need three traffic lanes. It would be nice if the street design around the I-5 on and off ramps did not give the illusion of extended highway functions.
I live on this corridor, and this would be amazing. But after living through the Hawthorne debacle from a few years ago (at which time I lived off Hawthorne), forgive me if I don’t get my hopes up until it’s further along in the process. I wish I had more trust in PBOT, but they haven’t earned it.
To be fair to PBOT, whether or not fairness is deserved, bike lanes were not a part of the original plan for Hawthorne. They half heartedly looked at adding bike lanes at some point along the way without ever really seriously considering them as an option. Broadway is different. It already has bike lanes, and it is a designated bikeway, unlike Hawthorne. I can’t imagine upgraded bike facilities not being included in this project. We may not get an amazing bike facility, but we’ll get something, for sure.
In the 2030 plan Hawthorne was designated as a “city bikeway.”
I stand corrected. Hawthorne is a designated City Bikeway in adopted transportation system plan. It was also featured in the bike network in the 2030 bike plan, as you noted. Thanks for the catch.
AFAIK, pretty much every street in Portland has a “city bikeway” classification. The only classification that has teeth is “major city bikeway”
I personally find it to be perverse and contrary to how most good biking cities do their planning that the vast majority of major city bikeways are greenway streets (at least in the inner neighborhoods), and therefore have zero infrastructure, and often have awful road surfaces. The 20s/30s bikeway between Lincoln and Powell is horrible, for instance. That’s not how you do things if your goal is to have a bicycle mode share that exceeds the SOV mode share. You need to make every street bikeable. Otherwise, Portland’s transportation planning goals are just platitudes.
I generally agree with that. And FWIW even Portland’s own PBOT Bike Planner has blamed “hidden bikeways” for the lack of ridership so it’s a well-known problem that we need more high profile facilities.
That’s not a Portland goal.
How about speed limits, visible radar? Been digging the bright green lanes locally.
hmm curbside bike lane… “parking protected”? Bway is already right hook central when you’re left of the parked cars. I hope they don’t try to put parking between drivers and cyclists. Sounds like we’ll find out in the fall.
Considering the majority of businesses are located there and the ROW width is rather large, Broadway is a great cadidate for a two-way separated bikeway. It will be used that way one way or another, so I hope to see this as part of the design.