(UPDATE, 3:30 pm: County has completed changes and it works much better now. Watch video below for current conditions.)
A Multnomah County redesign of the eastbound bike lane on the Hawthorne Bridge viaduct will be rolled back after negative feedback. One BikePortland reader said the design contributed to being hit by a car on Monday.
The focus of concern is the offramp from Hawthorne to SE Clay/Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd — a section of the bike lane that has been known for close calls and high stress for many years. Bicycle users continue straight at the off-ramp while many drivers turn right. This creates the need for safe decisions by both parties. Riders have to look far over their left shoulder to make sure either no one is coming or the person in the car sees them and will stop. It’s a delicate and often dangerous dance.
As part of a $9.5 million repaving and maintenance project, the County made several changes to the viaduct in both directions. BikePortland covered the project back in April, but I was unaware anything would be done to the off-ramp location. I’ve heard several bits of grumbling in recent weeks about the changes, but chalked it up mostly to folks just getting used to something new. Then I heard from a reader Monday.
“I was hit by a car while riding eastbound on the Hawthorne Bridge this afternoon,” they wrote. “A driver was turning right onto the ramp for MLK and sideswiped me. She stopped and claimed she didn’t see me.”
Fortunately the rider suffered only road rash and a bruised foot, but it set of alarm bells when I learned the design was recently changed. “That intersection has always been dangerous but I think the county has made it worse with the recent redesign,” the reader shared with me.
I shared the reader’s photo and message on Instagram yesterday and heard more negative feedback:
“A guy and kid were almost hit right in front of me Saturday night by a speeding pickup. Definitely the closest call I’ve seen in a long time—it is so bad.”
“It’s AWFUL what were they thinking!?”
“It’s horrible and dangerous.”
“Almost got creamed here on my bike on Sunday with hella families on scooters after Portland marathon.”
This reaction made it clear something was very wrong with the design. I fired off emails to the City of Portland and the County but haven’t heard back from either. That reader who was hit also reached out to the County and heard back from an engineer in the bridge division yesterday.
The County engineer said, “The original configuration [above left] had cyclists going into the intersection at an approximately 45° angle in which they would slow down to cross. The current configuration (installed according to plan) was intended to have cyclists actually slow down more or even stop in order to avoid situations like this.”
The plan the engineer refers to was shown to the Multnomah County Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee in October 2023 (see image below).
The County staffer went on to say they’ve received “a lot” of feedback about the new design, so they plan to alter the design, “to be similar to what was previously in place.” The final striping changes should already be installed and final markings should there by the end of this week.
It’s unfortunate that someone at the County felt making such a harsh angle in the bike lane — and then hoping it would slow riders down — was a good idea. Not only do designs like that usually make things worse because people don’t want to slow down, but it shows how drivers are held harmless while bike riders have to shift behavior and use irregular designs in deference to them. That is the opposite of how we should design streets. Why not alter the driving lane in a way that forces drivers to slow down and be safe?
Road authorities should never experiment on bike lanes. As we saw with this person who got hit, it only takes a bad design in place for a few hours for something serious to happen. These are people! Not a petri dish!
If anyone has an updated photo or wants to share how it looks now, please do.
The County advisory committee meets again tonight and I expect this topic to come up. I’ll report back any updates or details I learn.
UPDATE, 3:30 pm: The County has made changes to the design. See video below for current conditions. Note that green cross markings are still to come.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Wow! That was an intentional design!? I’ve been thinking it was some temporary half-measure until the project is complete. How can we be more than two decades into earnestly creating bike infrastructure and still have this level of engineering incompetence?
The rider has to look far back over their shoulder to see approaching vehicles and even then the angle of view is limited. A rider could think it is clear and in the time they look back in front of them and negotiate the turn, a speeding driver can take them out. There isn’t enough room to turn a cargo bike parallel to the bridge and have a better view without entering the lane. It assumes that every driver knows that bike riders are by default crossing the lane instead of continuing down the ramp. This is such a colossal screw up. People’s, more importantly, my kid’s life is at risk here. I’m livid.
Everyone who signed off on this design should be fired.
I’m confused. What was previously in its place? Here’s 2009, 2012, 2014. The problem is not a radical change in design, but the existence of a freeway design for cars with a slip lane encouraging drivers to speed through the turn. There are a lot of fairly easy and efficacious fixes to this design, but “going back to what we had” is not one of them.
Someone needs to add a stop sign for the cars. The biker is going straight it should have the right of way.
I agree it’s a bit hard to see. I think the new (to be rolled back) design makes riders go a bit further down the ramp and then do a hard (almost 90 degree) left turn so that (according to the engineer) they need to stop and look. In the 2014 street view they can more or less go straight with a bit of a swerve. But also that at least gives them the opportunity to do a shoulder look more easily.
Yeah, agree with Vin and you, the slip lane is a problem. Maybe a stop sign is needed, I don’t know.
Ha, I was just checking the street views myself to figure out when the “new” ramp went in. Looks like it was sometime after 2014, as it’s in the 2016 street view. But yeah, not a whole lot of progress in that area, other than adding bollards to get people to stop cutting the corner of the off-ramp slip lane. The off-ramp “corner” should be made sharper there so vehicles have to slow down, but truck-lobby-turning-radius-freight-priority-blah-blah-blah
So if im looking at the design plan correctly…it looks like cyclists were intended to be in the turn lane (on the cars passenger side) prior to the off ramp exit? What the heck? That literally forces a person on a bicycle to cross in front of off ramp traffic at the apex of the drivers turn? And the pedestrian crossing looks like it would be in a heck of a blind spot to drivers as well. How did this ever get approved? It actually looks like a form of punishment by design. I’m really surprised no one got more seriously hurt there.
Why do they want cyclists to go slower and have a harder turn at more than 45°.
I will readily admit I am no traffic engineer but a mere pedal pusher so what do I know but my preference would be just having the bike lane continue in as straight of a line as possible. If it needs to start a crossing further back then so be it but keeping cyclists parallel with the cars the entire time would make it easier for cyclists and cars to judge who will potentially be “interacting.” Having bikes start to appear as if they’re taking the off ramp by veering to the right only to jut across traffic more abruptly seems completely idiotic to me.
Should also at the very least beef up protection around that stretch and have flashing lights that are constantly on to indicate crossing traffic.
Also, why’d the make the cyclists jog to the right when going over the new bus platform. The bike lane is headed straight for it and rather than have a straight line they make bikes swerve a bit. If there needs to be a buffer for pedestrians loading and unloading then they should have made the platform significantly larger so the bike lane could more smoothly shift off of the straight line.
I was initially impressed they installed wands the full length of the construction zone to “protect” the bike lane but the end result is pitiful.
This is the way it was for years & felt quite safe (to me), but when they added the plastic wands ca 2015 that shortened the distance where drivers & cyclists were subtly communicating their intentions to each other. Prior to the wands cyclists would start to move left into the striped zone, with obvious intent to merge across & continue EB.
It doesn’t help that the wands themselves actually obscure cyclists
I say all this with the perspective that I bike *and* drive frequently through here. The design upgrades to EB Hawthorne from the bridge to Ladd have just made it harder to understand each others’ intentions. I still get nearly-right-hooked crossing the numbered streets, for example. I’m not a fan of “vehicular cycling” (at all) but this was one area where ambiguity & proximity increased everyone’s awareness of each other. (again: in my experience, YMMV)
I’ve been riding in between the bollards at the normal approach. It seemed like something was wrong and since they hadn’t stripped the crosswalk or crossbike I figured it was going to be fixed. I always triple check that drivers are going to stop for me here. I’ve definitely seen some close calls with other riders here and avoided some myself.
The other issue I’ve had with this new design is the bumpout with the ADA ramp on the other side intruding into where the bike lane should continue. I’ve almost hit it several times already because I’m usually more focused on drivers than a clear path ahead of me. It doesn’t seem to provide much purpose for pedestrians here. The bike lanes act as a buffer to the sidewalk so drivers are already well away from the ramp.
The original design had the bike path being elevated to be level with the sidewalk similar to how it is on the other side. The way the lane goes around the bus island is also superfluous and not how it was originally designed. I assume they did it for similar reasons to slow riders down. Overall I’m pretty disappointed in how this turned out.
This is the de facto way that bike projects tend to happen. I can think of so many newly built bike lanes/paths that insist on right angle crossing designs with the aim of slowing cyclists down. There’s the crossing of SE 7th/Tilikum Way, where cyclists get a very tight chicane rather than an offset angle for the intersection with the buses. Or the crossing of the MAX near 17th, where cyclists are forced to take a greater than 90 degree turn. Or the foot of the Blumenauer Bridge in Lloyd, where you take two turns instead of just barreling straight through at a very minor angle with the road. But it’s most often places where a bikeway is crossing a road near another intersection (like along the Springwater at Flavel/Linnwood, or at Tilikum Way/8th)
All of these are ways that designs look to slow bikes down for safety reasons – and each of them is maybe justifiable in some sense. It’s good to make sure that conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists are in places where bikes have a natural slow down point. I feel like I get frustrated when it’s in service of car traffic though – as is the case when bikeways jog out of the way for easier intersections with cars. The Hawthorne Bridge exit ramp has always been less than ideal, but I think the new design clearly shows priorities – bikes need to slow down so they don’t “hurt themselves”, while cars get off scott free. This really could have (and should have) been a raised crossing, with some kind of signal/sign telling drivers turning right to yield/stop to bikes going straight.
Multnomah County government [Moderator: word substitution] screws up everything it touches
probably if you want it to be safer you should slow the cars down?
The slip lane ought to be eliminated.
The entire car ramp onto MLK is highly redundant and unnecessary. Car enthusiasts already have the option to drop down to Water, turn left on Grand, or continue straight onto Hawthorne.
This would be a great spot for a bicycle signal like on the west end of the bridge.
I would not want to be forced stop there. A “cars yield” is the right affordance; the question is how to reinforce that with a sane design.
I always take the “car” lane prior to reaching the off ramp exit.
Feels awkward and unsafe to use the bike lane there.
I’m having trouble visualizing this change. How did it make it more likely for bikes to be hit?
The initial redesign created a sharper angle, thinking that it would force riders to slow down. But the unnatural design only created less predictable movements and created less visibility of drivers by bike riders.
I ride that stretch all the time. They honestly just need to close the ramp. Slightly faster access for cars onto MLK doesn’t justify that level of danger
Multnomah county should get rid of this dangerous and unnecessary ramp and build very low income housing in the three newly available lots.
https://www.portlandmaps.com/detail/property/-13654753.6452_5702509.31878_xy/
I rode through this twice last week. The first time I just continued through the wands (those ain’t gonna last) on the same vector that sort of worked on the previous design. The second time I followed the new intended pattern and had a serious WTF moment as the drivers coming down the ramp behind me apparently did not expect me to stop and turn. And then there’s that weird extra carb that I had to dodge at the last moment. My companions and I left the scene shaking our heads at yet another boneheaded experiment on one of the city’s busiest bikeways.
Classic, an engineer who probably doesn’t ride a bike ever making choices that prioritize cars. The bikes don’t need to slow down here, the cars do!