As we’ve reported several times over the years, local nonprofit Depave is working on a big and exciting project on SE 7th Avenue between Stark and Sandy. They want to turn this vast expanse of pavement and lanes where people can drive, to a carfree oasis and “Green Plaza.” Their current activation is a skate park, and while it’s really awesome, BikePortland has heard quite a bit of grumbling from folks who think the bikeway through the skateboarding features could be much better.
Depave is aware of the issues and they’ve tweaked things a few times in response to feedback. Keep in mind this is a permitted plaza that will be in place through September 22nd.
I rolled over Sunday to take a closer look. Watch the video above (or view directly on Instagram) and check out some of the comments on our Instagram post to get a sense of how people feel about this project.
Thanks for reading.
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Progress is messy, this is so much better than the wide open car area previously.
Yes. Skaters might seem chaotic but their situational awareness is amazing. They also self moderate right-of-way amongst themselves, it’s pretty cool to watch.
I’d happily trade any amount of MV operators 1:1 for more skaters.
My experience is just the opposite. Can’t count the number of times a skater has kicked his board right in front of me as I pass on my bike. They generally seem to care less about cyclists.
Maybe they need leashes, like surfers.
Ok, point taken. I mostly interact with skaters longboarding on the street as opposed to doing tricks. I still think they’re a lot more alert than a lot of drivers.
I’d agree that this particular bit of place making is not a good mix. Mark out a good 2-way bike line and put planters in the rest.
How about not leaving a wide open area for the bloody car and leaving a comfortable route for people rolling on a major bikeway that leads to the Blumenauer bridge.
This poorly implemented skate park in the middle of a major bike route is part of a long trend of urban placemaking in Portland that leaves people cycling in the dust.
Wasn’t it you who wrote in this comment section ages ago that the blumenauer bridge was built primarily for the benefit of developers, and that it doesn’t provide any benefit to cycling mobility in the area?
Are you now of the opinion that a skate park that partially constricts one block of this cycling route is a major problem?
I maintain that it was inspired by real estate place making but since it is now a major bike route it deserves functional connecting infrastructure.
Please explain the contradiction, Sarnia.
Oh they both can be true. It isn’t necessarily a contradiction. I’m just surprised by the tonal shift.
“, and that it doesn’t provide any benefit to cycling mobility in the area?”
Nice straw man.
I’m paraphrasing you
No, you are not.
I never once claimed that the Bluemnauer bridge does “not provide any benefit” — an utterly ridiculous claim.
My entire point was that PBOT could have upgraded the existing NE 12th bridge bikeway to world-class standards for a fraction of the $20,000,000 spent on the Blumenauer bridge. This would have left SDC and gas tax money for many other badly-needed active transportation improvements. If we did not live in such a zero-sum car-centric city, I would have no problem with spending hundreds of millions on multiple bike bridges crossing the foetid I-84 traffic-sewer. Unfortunately, we live in a city that prioritizes drips of new infrastructure, not based on need, but on whether it has potential to juice real-estate profits (and eventual property tax returns).
Every time I turn left onto SE 7th Ave (heading north), I try to avoid the traffic speeding down SE Sandy, but I encounter a barricade at the end of the green cross-bike path. Instead of fighting against PBOT’s routing for cyclists on our street, I wish the plaza implementation integrated with the implied pathway along the white line delineating the interim bulb out, avoiding forcing people walking and cycling alike onto the traditional crosswalk pathway. The good news is that it is a temporary permitted usage and can be adjusted and the city needs more public spaces for community use everywhere.
I love the idea but the execution fails at providing obvious way finding for cyclists and de-confliction between cyclists/skaters. I’ve most frequently been Southbound and found navigating the intersection to be challenging to navigate. Generally I have had to dodge loitering/spectating skaters in what I perceive to be a bike lane that best aligns with the intersection.
I think a bunch of solid or striped/crosshatched green paint would have helped. I’m pretty sure a barricade of benches would make a much more obvious place for skaters to hang out. Obviously this would be an integrated engineered solution that considered all factors.
When does the Depave start?
It’s quite disheartening to see nonprofits in Portland that initially seem to be doing great work, only to discover their underlying ideologies are problematic. Take DePave, for instance. They advocate for defunding and reducing the police force, which is the last thing Portland needs right now, given that we rank 48th out of 50 cities in terms of police per capita and are setting crime records. According to DePave’s website:
Personally I’m done supporting nonprofits that are making Portland a less safe and less enjoyable place to live.
https://www.depave.org/advocacy
https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/09/28/portland-ranks-48th-among-50-big-cities-for-cops-per-capita/
Disappointing but not surprising.
Funny how after eliminating most police traffic stops we hit record traffic fatalities and our streets are awash with hundreds if not thousands of unregistered, uninsured automobiles.
It seems like these organizations aren’t really about making meaningful, positive changes in our world– they simply exist to give their supporters emotional wins, like “shut down a street and make it a skatepark!”
Portland didn’t particularly need another skate park; Burnside’s a few blocks away, they’re building another on the other side of the river, there now are tons scattered throughout parks and school playgrounds (unlike when I was growing up). But the goal was of course not to fill an urgent need, it was to flex on automobile drivers, giving Depave’s supporters the emotional win.
It’s all rather performative, to me.
It’s more than an “emotional win”. It uses the space for something useful and blocks cut through traffic. That’s great. We should be doing it in more places.
Complain all you like about their stance on cops, their actual actions and goals don’t really have anything to do with that.
Portland being…Portland.
It’s never enough to effectively advocate for safer streets or more green space for obvious reasons like less traffic fatalities and climate concerns. In Portland, you must have a car-free multi-modal pathway/skate park that celebrates ALL people with equity and inclusion in mind. It must also be vegan, built by a team of 75% or more minority and disenfranchised peoples, and be named for the victims of a historical travesty. Oh, cops are not welcome nor may they bring their oppressive firearms into the new Kalapuyan Diaspora Street Style Skills Park and Halfpipe Plaza.
Nice to see that a dangerous intersection is gone and the kids have a place to nail some sick rail grinds!
Portland doesn’t need another intersection that is primarily for automobile drivers. There are others a few blocks away, there are others across the river, and tons scattered throughout neighborhoods across the city… Complaining about the conversion of an unused and unneeded stretch of right of way into a skatepark is all rather performative to me.
As the video showed, the markings could probably be improved to make it easier to navigate by bike. But there were skaters using the park.
*Burnside skatepark is closed, or closing soon, for construction.
Skaters mostly take a line on pavement that works, unrelated to paint stripes. Confronted with a whack design and barring traffic conflicts I do more or less the same thing, .
One issue with turning bikes through a park space is, there’s a significant vertical drop in that block. That aggravates any conflicts. I’d like to see designs on the NE/SE 7th Avenue alignment that forward bike travel instead of cluttering it up.
If we’re going to have bike boulevards or greenways or whatever (as opposed to complete streets everywhere) I’d like PBOT to hold the thought of making those things actually work for bikes all the way across town without going in the tank for a couple parking spots or whatever. We don’t put stop signs on freeways, do we?
You see this as a flex on auto drivers?
I see this as an attempt to take the streets back from the massively entitled car drivers. Car drivers already have the vast majority of public space dedicated to their use, and only their use, but go on.
citation needed. Crime rates dropped in 2023, and in the first half of 2024. You can attribute this to whatever you want, but it’s not accurate to say that we are “setting records”.
Reallocating police budgets to social services and investment in Black communities is a good thing, and it also relates to the specific problem (too much pavement) that Depave seeks to solve. Wider roads and housing that was destroyed in favor of parking lots were specific strategies used in mid-century urban planning with the express purpose of serving white suburban transportation needs at the expense of inner city Black needs. If you are interested in re-prioritizing urban space, it’s useful to understand the context of how we got to the place we are now and who was harmed by prior attempts to do so.
We’re not actually setting crime records, PPB cherry picked statistics to make it seem like they need more funding.
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/09/04/portland-crime-wave-investigation-street-roots/
I don’t know, man. I kind of question “K Rambo” methodology a bit when this is his response to the Homicide rate going from an average of 31 pre-2020 to 88 post-2020. He also later concedes that they only looked at budget and never even looked at staffing levels.
Portland had an unusually low homicide rate for a city of its size before 2020, and was not exactly known for its functional police force. Staffing levels or not, the PPB was embroiled in controversy and was under supervision of the Justice Department for violating civil rights for like a decade – only ending in the last few years.
If a functional police force is a prerequisite for a very low homicide rate, Portland would not have had among the lowest in the country before 2020. For my money, I think that the social fabric of the city was more deeply affected by Covid and the George Floyd protests than elsewhere, and this combined with continually widening gaps between high and low wage earners has manifested in general social unrest. Fewer opportunities for people combined with higher prices tends to lead to more crime. No amount of policing can change that – but public sector spending elsewhere can offset the worst effects of the sort of economic turmoil that the US has experienced in the last 4 years.
Maybe that’s all a bit off topic though
That argument would be stronger if we weren’t discussing a period of record high demand for workers.
That said, I agree with you that crime is as much a function of social fabric as anything. At least some of that is a result of culture rather than opportunity — if you grow up in a poor community that considers doing well in school to be a failure of character, people (in general) will excel less than if the equally poor community demands excellence.
The police have very control over this (their role is mostly dealing with the resulting mess), and the result will drive crime rates higher or lower more than anything the police can do downstream.
We could test this hypothesis by observing different communities and see what happens in different social environments. I would be convinced I was wrong if such an observation did not reveal an inverse correlation between a community’s attitude towards education and their underlying rate of crime.
Oh Nick but we are. It’s unfortunate people seem unwilling to accept it. Until we as a community face the facts,
we can’t fix it.
Here’s our recent history in Portland:
1) Record Homicides
2) Record Shootings
3) Record traffic deaths
4) Record car thefts
And for 2024 Portland has more murders than Seattle and San Francisco combined. Not good. Let’s fix it instead of denying it.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/portland-homicides-seattle-san-francisco-2024/283-1dc032c9-a970-4ce8-bced-60a3a5c37f9b
https://www.portland.gov/wheeler/documents/2022-pdx-problem-analysis/download
This is incorrect. As of June 30th, 2024 Portland has had 34 murders, compared to a combined 44 murders for Seattle and San Francisco. Moreover, 34 murders is down 17% from the same time last year. That puts Portland on pace for 10.4 murders/100K by the end of the year, a decline of 21% from 2021.
Feel free to check out the MCCA stats.
Yes, the numbers have changed since earlier this year.
Portland is now up to 50 murders for 2024! San Francisco is at 22 and Seattle is at 44.
So, Portland’s murder rate is about 34.1% higher than Seattle’s and a whopping 189.3% higher than San Francisco’s.
Not a good look for Portland, right?
Using a percentage decline from a near-record high in 2021 isn’t really much to celebrate. We had 96 murders in 2022. The 20-year average for murders in Portland is 28, and the major increase started in 2019. What changed then, and how do we get back to less violence in our community?
https://x.com/pdxhomicide?lang=en
https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2024-09/PoliceCommission9424-Commission%20Crime%20Trends%20Notes%2009.04.24.pdf
https://x.com/homicideseattle?lang=en
This makes me like them even more.
Police do not stop crime. Police do not hamper crime. The PPB gets 1/3 of the general city budget. We could instead spend that money on social services to combat the actual root of crime, instead of just policing it.
Crime is going up because life is getting more expensive and more and more people are pushed into desperation, but totally, arresting these people and putting them in prison so they can be used for slave labor is way better than actually fixing the fact that poverty and crime is on the rise.
The Police make Portland a less safe and less enjoyable space, especially if you are a POC, disabled, or unhoused.
That’s an opinion one frequently hears in the inner “white Portland” neighborhoods. Not so much in POC communities. East Portland supported Gonzalez (over Hardesty). A lot of that had to do with their desire for safer streets via more police staffing.
Good article from NPR you might want to read:
“Williams and his coauthors find that, in the average city, larger police forces result in Black lives saved at about twice the rate of white lives saved (relative to their percentage of the population). “
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/04/20/988769793/when-you-add-more-police-to-a-city-what-happens
Classic example of a Luxury Belief.
Even more so now that so many people are working from home now and rarely travel outside of their comfort zones. Yes, who needs police when your daily routine takes you from your $1.5M home in Ladd’s Addition, over to New Seasons for a $10 gallon of milk and back?
I totally get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. Sure, investing in social services is super important and can address some root causes of crime, but we can’t just ignore the role of the police entirely.
Crime is definitely influenced by economic factors, but having a police presence can help deter some criminal activities and provide a sense of safety for the community. It’s not just about arresting people; it’s also about preventing crimes from happening in the first place.
Also, while it’s true that the police budget is significant, it’s not like all that money is just going to waste. There are efforts within the police force to improve community relations and address issues like racial bias and better training.
We need a balanced approach that includes both strong social services and effective policing. It’s not an either/or situation. We should be working towards a system where the police and community services complement each other to create a safer and more equitable environment for everyone.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10610-021-09500-8
If they just clearly marked where the bike path is, I think it would be fine. The route you’re suppose to take is pretty bizarre, but isn’t that hard to navigate if you can see it.
I think I’ve only gone through Northbound on 7th, and from the spot where you cross on the very clearly marked and painted green crosswalk, the path seems to simply disappear. I’ve also only been there late, like dusk or later, and never encountered many skaters.
But yeah, in summary, if the path was just marked in something better than a fading white chalk outline, I think it’d be ok. And a good use of the space!
I don’t hate it, but I did have a “WTF?” moment a few months ago when I happened across it trying to bike through the area. The bike path through wasn’t as clear and it looked to me like some kids just took over the area and used sidewalk chalk.
I kind of felt like I was intruding on the skater’s space and was worried about a manned or unmanned stakeboard crashing into me.
Had I known it was an officially permitted Depave project, I’d have been a lot more supportive.
If Depave cares about public feedback, I’d recommend next time more signage about the project and much clearer bike path definition from the get go.
I feel like cycling is increasingly not what this blog is about. How could it be acceptable for a “temporary skate park” to block a major bike thoroughfare? It gets a pass simply because it’s also blocking drivers?
None of this is normal.
Seems strange to not even mention that it is much harder to navigate this “bike boulevard” on a bike now.
I’m no fan of the vast expanse of empty asphalt but it would be nice if bike routes weren’t so often run through skate parks (here), food cart pods (Park Ave between Burnside and Oak), plazas (Waterfront), parks (NE 9th Ave), dog walking and jogging trails (any multi use path), in front of schools (greenways), and made use of by landscapers, delivery drivers, gig economy taxis, and people who just know they will never get a ticket for parking there (bike lanes).
And don’t forget the rainbow Plaza where a major two-way bike route is funneled into a narrow poorly-marked lane crowded with warning barriers and flanked by lawn furniture and tipsy bar customers.
The conversion of an existing heavily-used bike route into a urbanist place-making “plaza”, where people biking are treated as secondary guests, is a recurring theme in Portland. It also highlights the emerging conflict between transportation cycling and an urbanism that is far more interested in fashioning a twee caricature of a northern European plaza than in maintaining an existing low-stress bike route.