A person was hit by a car driver while cycling on Naito Parkway this morning. A reader saw the collision and shared photos and an account of what they saw with BikePortland. The woman was “banged up” and our tipster wasn’t sure of the extent of her injuries.
It happened right under the Burnside Bridge — a notable location because it’s a section of the “protected” Better Naito bikeway that lacks physical protection and is often used as as car parking for vendors and attendees of Portland Saturday Market.
According to the person who contacted BikePortland, a woman riding in front of him was going southbound in the Better Naito bikeway. As they went under the Burnside Bridge, a driver coming northbound in the general travel lanes on Naito Parkway took a right turn across the bike lane to access a driveway and struck the cyclist. Our witness remained on the scene until responders showed up and said the driver of the black BMW SUV (in photo above) said he “didn’t see” the bicycle rider. The driver would have been facing directly toward the bicycle rider and it’s unclear how he wouldn’t have seen her — much less decide to turn right into her path. The bike lane is also outlines with large, bright orange traffic cones which drivers should read as a caution area.
Back in November 2023 we reported about how a row of steel bollards at this exact section had gone missing. Since this is a two-way bikeway with a relatively high volume of drivers, it’s very important to have some sort of physical delineation between road users. The Portland Bureau of Transportation said vandals and thieves had removed and/or stolen the original ornate bollards (which weren’t solidly attached to the ground because they were made to be removable for Saturday Market access). For a while there was zero protection to replace the bollards. Then PBOT placed large traffic cones every few feet to provide some level of safety — but cones are flexible and do not prevent a driver from easily turning into the bike lane.
Another element to consider is that Multnomah County (they own and operate the bridge) and/or the City of Portland use a parking lot under the bridge that’s served by the driveway the BMW driver pulled into this morning. I assume that parking is for bridge maintenance vehicles and county/city employees only. However without clear signage and/or gated entry, its mere presence could encourage any driver to use it.
After posting this on social media earlier, one of our followers shared their scary experience at this same driveway. “My wife was almost hit last year as we were riding home on Naito in a similar situation,” the person wrote. “A driver was exiting the parking lot and floored it across the bike lane without looking and would have ran my wife over had she not slammed the brakes. Moments like that, even on one of the better pieces of bike infrastructure in Portland, make her feel incredibly unsafe and scared to bike commute more.”
I’ll try to find out more about this parking lot and get an update on the status of a safer, more permanent bike lane protection at this location. 11 months ago, PBOT told me they were working on a permanent solution. “Hopefully they come up with something soon. Before another horrific collision,” I wrote.
That delay could have played a role in this morning’s collision.
The person who saw this happen is frustrated: “It’s like, the one place where we’re supposed to not have to worry about cross traffic. Right?”
Thanks for reading.
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PBOT and Mult co could set an example of not parking their vehicles in the bike lanes or in this area unless absolutely necessary, and enforcing this for contractors during waterfront events or other planned activities when there is anticipated abuse. It is not unusual to see an official vehicle obstructing these areas when alternate parking spaces are within 25 or 50 ft.
This area also needs protection that would make it difficult to turn quickly across the bike lane. This is part of my “safe” route to school.
Im personally amused that both entities claim to be fighting the climate crisis but their vehicles remain running while parked.
There’s barely any credibility to be shared between the two.
In most circumstances, I’ve found “I didn’t see you” really meant I wasn’t looking for you.
I’ve had the same experience, and even asked drivers specifically “But did you even look?” in response to that statement when post-near-incident ‘conversations’ have been able to occur. I usually just get a blank stare in response.
The driver probably wasn’t looking. If they didn’t realize bikes would be traveling towards them on their right, why would they look for rapidly approaching traffic there, especially if they were concerned about the much more typical situation of bikes approaching from the rear?
The lane configuration here is very unusual, and the fact they were turning in there at all suggests they were unfamiliar with the area.
Yes, I’m not a fan of the two-waybike lanes. This one is bright green at least…. and when turning, in general, a driver needs to be aware of all of their potential conflicts, expected and unexpected, and proceed once it’s deemed safe. (sounds like a fantasy!)
I always look both ways before crossing a one-way street.
As should every pedestrian.
Sidewalks are two way
Yes, and people on them move at sidewalk speed.
Or, sadly, “I was texting”
Isn’t “I didn’t see you” an admission of guilt? As a driver of a vehicle, aren’t you responsible for seeing what is in front of you???
No. “I didn’t see you” is a “get out of jail free” card. From what I can tell, that statement is always accepted by law enforcement personnel as a valid reason to exonerate the motorist.
I really don’t understand why drivers think “I didn’t see the bicyclist” is an excuse and not an admission of guilt! If you didn’t see the bicyclists you didn’t look, drove too fast for the conditions, didn’t have lights on, or some other reckless driving behavior.
It’sa real problem I’ve pondered. I think I am trying to get drivers (and others, including messaging entities such as PBOT) to shift their language. See is a passive form of language, LOOK is active verb that puts responsibility back on the driver. It’s why I hate the “Be safe, be seen” type campaigns. I can be wearing neon yellow and flashing lights but if a driver’s not LOOKING at the road, looking FOR bikes, looking AWAY from their phone, I’m still in danger.
Not necessarily. You’ve never looked at something and misperceived it?
Human cognition is highly flawed, and we have to deal with the reality of that, not some idealized version that doesn’t exist. (Libertarians and socialists, take note!)
If you haven’t seen this, I found it to be eye opening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
That is exactly why the whole idea of talking on a cell phone being OK, as long as your hands are free, is so wrong. It’s your mind, stupid, not your hands.
And your mind doesn’t re-adjust that quickly. It can lag by seconds. That’s how a distracted driver can be staring straight at something and still run into it, not “see”it. You see with your mind, not your eyes.
Cognition is not flawed, we can have a long argument about that (not here). Your mind is unparalleled at processing what you pay attention to. We have been living through an epidemic of inattentiveness.
I fully agree. I was using “cognition” as a shorthand for the whole package.
Check out the Hurt report. Researched in 1976, they were trying to figure out why people driving cars kept running over motorcyclists. The gross oversimplification is, since it doesn’t look like a car (single headlight vs two, much narrower), your brain is much more likely to disregard the information. Also, car drivers have a really hard time judging oncoming speeds of single track vehicles because there’s less mass to observe.
In my opinion, since an average modern suv is much faster and quicker than a 1970s ferrari, crashes are going to continue to increase.
There was a similar study in Salem Oregon in the 90s that looked at drivers illegally crossing against closed gates at railroad crossings. The city has a mainline UP track through the middle of downtown with a series of crossings and UP ran an engine up and down the tracks all day with local police onboard and at every crossing. Instead of arresting everyone crossing illegally (there were lots), police instead looked up the arrest records of everyone they pulled over and found that nearly every person not only had arrest records, but parking violations, low credit card scores, debts, low education levels, and so on. Basically, the types of people who are most likely to cross a closed railroad gate are people who have terrible driving records, drug habits, lousy lives, and are simply terrible drivers.
It would be interesting to see a follow up study of the Hurt Report as to what kind of drivers hit motorcyclists (and pedestrians and bicyclists for that matter) – if it’s common everyday drivers, or a special subgroup of maniacs?
The Oregon Walks report of traffic crash fatalities looked at that. Vivek Jeevan went over their data and concluded that, “The top causes of pedestrian deaths are mistakes made by sober, everyday drivers.”
https://bikeportland.org/2021/08/30/mistakes-not-miscreants-cause-most-pedestrian-fatalities-in-portland-new-report-finds-337215
https://bikeportland.org/2021/03/18/the-information-politics-at-the-heart-of-portlands-vision-zero-struggle-328878
Yes, thus the “Start seeing motorcycles “ campaign and it’s morph into start seeing bicycles
Keep in mind that there is a delay from image hitting the retina to the brain recognizing the image. If you “look” at a situation and turn away too quickly, there’s a very good chance you missed something – especially something you’re not expecting to see (SB cyclist on the east side of the road).
It’s why I don’t like using 2 way cycle tracks on the “wrong” side of the road (17th NB for instance).
And, as always, by “I did not see her.” What he really, really meant was, “I did not care to look.”
ugh
I was looking at my cell phone as usual.
“I was not being appropriately diligent when operating my vehicle”
It’s a bit more complicated than that. See my previous comment on the Hurt Report.
So many examples where we invest a ton of money to get infrastructure 95% right, and then bail out on doing the whole thing correctly. This just necessitates even more money being spent later to fix the problem than if you had done it right the first time. Not a good way for governments to operate.
There’s always room for improvement, as my daddy used to say.
Many governments will do projects in phases, particularly bike/ped projects.
Year 1, Phase 1: Painted sharrows
Year 5, Phase 2: Painted bike lanes with signage
Year 10, Phase 3: Buffered bike lanes
Year 15, Phase 4: Buffered bike lanes with cute candle sticks (outer Glisan)
Year 25, Phase 5: Curb-protected bike lanes (Naito)
Year 33, Phase 6: Curb-protected bike lanes with bus rapid transit (outer Division)
Year 50, Phase 7: Close off the street altogether to cars, add a subway.
By delaying each phase, the DOT gets progressively bigger grants, pays more staff, designs more stuff, cuts more ribbons, gets more people elected. Yeah, people get injured or die in the meanwhile, but that’s just collateral damage, since the point of Vision Zero is to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries to a politically-acceptable level.
One of your best posts, David. Thanks.
One shortcoming of the bi-directional design is that a vehicle making a right turn into a parking lot is not going to expect (and so won’t necessarily look for) vehicles rapidly approaching towards them in a lane to their right.
Infrastructure that surprises is bound to fail at some point.
Which is why right turns shouldn’t be allowed anywhere along this bikeway with complete signalized separation. It’s why this section used to have steel bollards.
I agree. There are other examples of bi-directional bike lanes crossing driveways and streets around Portland that can’t be as easily fixed as this one.
There are 2 public parking lots near the Hawthorne Bridge that are accidents waiting to happen
One simple solution is to put a sign in the driver’s view that says two way bike traffic or something along those lines. Also, providing a buffer so that by the time the car is turning any cyclists are more clearly in view and not in their blind spot. Education definitely plays a role here; PSAs about safely crossing bike lanes for drivers should be constant across social media and legacy media. Drivers (mostly) deal with tow-way sidewalks just fine, I think they can also learn to deal with two way bikeways.
And of course, if you’re cycling assume every car is a bike-seeking middle determined to obliterate you and ride defensively.
Signage might help; the difference between sidewalks and bike lanes is the speed of people using them — high speed users defy expectations, one reason biking on the sidewalk is so dangerous.
And yes, defensive riding is essential.
I disagree that riding on a sidewalk is dangerous – if you don’t violate ORS 814.410 1 D
“Operates the bicycle at a speed greater than an ordinary walk when approaching or entering a crosswalk, approaching or crossing a driveway or crossing a curb cut or pedestrian ramp and a motor vehicle is approaching the crosswalk, driveway, curb cut or pedestrian ramp. This paragraph does not require reduced speeds for bicycles at places on sidewalks or other pedestrian ways other than places where the path for pedestrians or bicycle traffic approaches or crosses that for motor vehicle traffic.”
I have 2 sections of sidewalk I ride now:
Lawnfield from 98th Place to the path (the north side, WB bike lane is so overgrown that you end up out in 45-50mph traffic often) and 122nd from 212 to Jennifer (the bike path dumps you off on the left side of a busy freight corridor and, if you’re turning left on Jennifer, you have to use the left turn lane which exposes you to heavy freight traffic turning left off Jennifer,)
On 122nd I cross 1 driveway, Ford St and a driveway. At all 3 I slow, make sure no one is turning from over my right shoulder (SB 122nd) and check for approaching traffic before going forward.
On Lawnfield I cross 4 or 5 driveways and always slow to ensure no one is crossing them.
This is, demonstrably, safer than taking the appropriate bike lane – I have never had a close call since changing – I had several hairy moments before.
That would mean that drivers pay attention to signs. How often do I see drivers ignoring “no turn on red” signs, “stop at this line” signs, not to speak of speed limits. Somehow we have to get to a driving culture where people pay attention to these, or build infrastructure that forces them to.
Why not both. It’s Engineering, Education, Enforcement. We should be using all of those tools.
Maybe, similarly to when a police officer discharges a weapon, a driver involved in an accident, their fault or not, has their vehicle impounded until an “administrative” review is conducted. CCTV, eye witnesses, etc. are consulted and if the driver(s) is found in anyway at fault, they lose driving privileges for some time frame.
Afterall they were using what could be used as a deadly weapon.
I know just a dream . . . c’est la vie.
We could try E N F O R C E M E N T. We’ve been experimenting with no enforcement and the results have been devastating.
Signage and Education and PSAs. I don’t think any of these things work, so we disagree 100%.
This is getting close to victim-blaming. The cyclist was likely doing nothing wrong. Vehicle drivers are responsible for operating their machines safely and for keeping up on changes to the laws and for looking and evaluating the path ahead of them. I ride this path 4 times per week, it’s clearly marked and obviously a place where bikes, pedestrians, or other micromobility devices operate.
My comment is clearly about the design of the bike lanes, not the users. There’s no victim blaming anywhere near what I wrote.
It is not obvious that people will be traveling toward you at high speed to the right of the rightmost vehicle lane. In fact, that would be very surprising to anyone without prior knowledge of the facility because it differs from how 99.99% of the roads in the rest of the world work.
The simple solution is to make it clear that the parking area is off-limits, either with signage or a physical barrier.
Perhaps if the Naito speed limit wasn’t recently raised from 20 mph to 25 mph, this event simply would not have happened or its severity significantly reduced.
Do you seriously think anyone makes a hard right into a shallow parking lot at 25 mph?
Well, maybe somebody does, but that’s not the type of person who would obey a speed limit.
Your unique scenario is not required to enjoy the benefits of the reduction.
If you had any evidence that 25 mph was too dangerous for Naito, a highly engineered street with physical mode separation and excellent pedestrian crossings, I’d probably agree.
Watts’s empathy for car and truck operators is seemingly boundless.
I need to catch up — empathy is so pre-pandemic.
I see plenty of people exceeding 25 mph on Naito.
I agree, and further shouldn’t the line separating the “auto lane” and the bike lane be yellow, to indicate oncoming traffic adjacent to the auto lane? The line is white, but white lines are intended to separate traffic traveling the same direction. The line dividing the bike lanes is yellow, so I guess they got it half right.
In any event the need to be careful should be obvious and the driver clearly did not take adequate care, but PBOT gets some fault for this poor facility with inconsistent markings.
I said it’s getting close, your comment defends the driver by shifting the blame toward others. This is 100% on the driver from my point of view. The pavement is clearly marked with directional arrows, it’s not confusing. It’s the driver’s responsibility to analyze their path before proceeding, complacency behind the wheel is unacceptable and gets people hurt and killed. I agree with blocking off the “parking” area and increasing physical separation.
You said I was coming close to blaming the bike rider (the victim in this situation).
I’m not “defending” anyone. I do think that infrastructure was an important factor in this crash, but to what degree that lessens the culpability of the driver is something for the insurance companies and/or courts to decide.
My sole interest is preventing this from happening again by making the simple and cheap infrastructure changes I and others have suggested.
When a driver in a situation like this says “I didn’t see them”, I tend to believe it unless there is some good reason not to.It’s called inattentional blindness and it’s really very real (kills motorcyclists and bicyclists all the time), and the reason we need good infrastructure that reduces the frequency and severity of mistakes. Humans are bad at driving, period. We should do less of it and make it safer for the people who aren’t doing it. We need those bollards back!
Innatentional blindness happens when something unexpected happens, so just having a lot more people riding bikes will also help.
Also, this is a place where a driver went from bright light to darkness, so it’s going to mess with vision. That of course means the driver should have taken extra caution.
In a futile effort to stave off bad faith attacks, this obviously doesn’t excuse the driver. They’re at fault, as much as a person can be at fault. This just illustrates how dangerous driving is.
Interestingly, this is an argument I’ve been making for years, despite your baseless and repeated claims I support the status quo.
We need to get people out of the driving business.
Never fear, Watts. Elmo Muskrat will soon announce the CAFSD (Completely Absolutely Full Self Driving) update soon!
This is a few years out of date, but that’s just as well as it keeps the video to a sane length.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zhr6fHmCJ6k
It can be taught, though. For example in Germany drivers are much better at looking over the right shoulder before turning to look for people biking and walking. It was so ingrained to me in drivers ed in Germany that I even look over my right shoulder when I turn right on my bike! Of course, there are other factors. In Germany, there is no “right on red” and you have to expect people biking and walking because there are more of them. Safety in numbers.
Yeah, absolutely. It seems a key factor for inattentional blindness is that people don’t see really obvious things that are not expected. People aren’t expecting cyclists. That can either be improved by having more cyclists or training. The problem is, how do you do the “training” part? Our process for getting a license happens once and requires probably an hour of reading to get ready.
Maybe ad campaigns, billboards, I don’t know. I don’t know if that will really work, I think we just have to get more people riding and in some sense it’s a chicken and egg problem. Obviously it’s been done before, so it must be possible.
EVERY time I go to make a right turn, whether I saw anyone in the area or not leading up to it, I still look in my right side mirror and over my shoulder. To me I figure if I do it EVERY time, I won’t forget on the time it’s most important.
And thankfully, I’ve never come close, and the bikers that have come up on me from behind on my right wave a “thanks” that I did take the time to stop and let them by before I finished my right turn.
That wouldn’t have helped here; you’d need to look for a rapidly approaching vehicle coming on the right, closing much more rapidly than a pedestrian, where all your experience tells you no vehicle should be. Even a German driver concerned with clearing the rear-right might miss that — do they teach drivers to check for people off in the distance driving towards them on the sidewalk when they turn into a driveway? That’s essentially what was happening here.
The problem in this incident was largely infrastructural — an apparent parking lot combined with a two-directional bike path to the right of the vehicular travel lane. Making it clear that the parking area is off-limits (which I believe it is) would fix the problem.
I commuted through this exact spot daily for 3 years, twice a day. Within the first few weeks, I noticed how many vehicles were on the waterfront trail and using the better naito lanes. After 3 years, I can safely safely say that having these routes free from cars and trucks is the exception rather than the rule. Saturday Market is truly horrible and aggressive, but there was Thursday night dinner that involved a lot of cars driving on the paths every week, and a maintenance project (on pumps, I think) had workers parking their personal vehicles in this spot for over a year even though it was not within a construction fence (not OSHA approved!). City workers regularly drive their Fords F-250’s and larger on the path, usually to carry no more than a leaf blower, or to pick up few bags of trash. These paths are absolutely abused on a daily basis. IN fact, when one of the festivals placed a fence to block the sidewalk between Taylor and Yamhill, I contacted PBOT to let them know that people were being forced to walk in the bike lanes, and the obstruction did not provide any warning or detour information for people with limited sight or using mobility devices- their response? Those bike lanes on Naito are actually a MUP, so pedestrian belong there! I would say they are not even an MUP, they are just some multi-purpose right-of-way to support maintenance, ubers, festivals, or construction projects and bike there at your own risk. The City likes to tout this as bike infrastructure, but the poor detailing and the abject failure to manage or maintain it tells the real truth- this is a no-man’s land, and bikes have to just duke it out for themselves.
Experienced this several times around there (also used to commute through there every day), they also don’t like to yield to bikes, which is just absurd to me.
There is a special joy that some people get from parking in places that no one is supposed to park. In the picture, it looks like they drove a fire truck a half a block just so they could park it in the bike lane.
If you’re wondering about Saturday Market vendors parking there, I once contacted the Market out of concern for all of the vendors there when I was commuting by bike to work on Sat and had to dodge cars parked in the bike lane. It also explains why the bollards are a problem for the Market folk. Here’s what they said:
“The Market pays for the closure/use of those lanes during loading and unloading times. All vendors must clear the lanes by 10 am on Saturday (and Sunday when in operation). Unfortunately, when vendors vacate the lanes, the public enters and parks illegally. We try and cone it off so that doesn’t happen, however, we don’t have a parking attendant.
Early in the season, The Better Naito project brought in large, permanent metal poles, blocking the bike lanes from the driving lanes. These do not allow our vendors to drop off their equipment and pull out in a timely manner, and has been a huge inconvenience for us since installation. One car has to wait for the others to leave, creating traffic jams. Prior, cars can pull in, drop off and pull out quickly.
Our loading time ends at 10 am and then starts again at 5pm. This has been the paid agreement with the City for several years now and we are in our 48th year of operation. I understand the difficulties you face as a cyclist during those hours of the weekend, and the safety it can interrupt, but we will do a better job of barricading off the loading zone to alert the cyclists of the safety, as well as remind all our members to be more cautious while in those zones.”
If those orange cones were a line of jersey barriers, with just a small opening for parking lot access, the SUV driver would have likely slowed down a lot more to make that turn, if only out of concern for their car. Then, they would have hopefully noticed the cyclist as well.
Assuming they weren’t overly focused on making sure they didn’t hit the barrier.
Right. That’s why I wrote “hopefully noticed the cyclist as well.”
A slower-moving vehicle generally causes less injuries in a collision, so that is another benefit of engineering solutions that require drivers to slow down, and hopefully look around to avoid pedestrians and cyclists.
In this type of situation, where a car cuts off a cyclist, it is the bicycle speed that typically determines the severity of injury.
We don’t know what part of the car the cyclist was hit by. If the front of the car hit the cyclist as the car was turning towards/into them, then yes, the speed of the vehicle contributes to the severity of injury quite a bit. Hitting the side of a fast moving car cutting in front of a cyclist would cause a cyclist to get pushed/pulled/spun as they hit the vehicle, so again, vehicle speed matters very much.
Regardless, it’s not the fault of the rider that they were riding their bike in a “protected” bike lane at an assumed reasonable rate of speed. If this area was better designed, and not compromised as it currently is, this crash would likely not have happened.
I 100% agree that this collision was not the fault of the rider.
100% sure??
From a different incident article, but strangely familiar writing. I just can’t quite place it…
Ok, 99.9% sure (that the rider was not primarily at fault).
I don’t see how the cyclist could be considered at fault at all; it was daylight, they had the ROW; what other factors are there? What could suggest they were even 5% at fault?
Isn’t ROW something we all must share and partake in, the Rights-of-Way, the unowned “commons” we all participate in? Sure, in Oregon the bicyclist must use the Naito parkway path while on Naito, but as JM pointed out from the crash on Glisan at 128th, had the cyclist decided to turn left (in this case at Ankeny or Couch), they would have every right to enter the main traffic stream; similarly the driver of the SUV has certain rights too, to enter the parking area; and so when those two users have a conflict (as they clearly did), each has to negotiate with the other as to who has the greater right of entry and exit – at some point they have to share their space, one yielding to the other.
There are lots of lawyers who view this blog, I for one would be interested in their take on this case.
Usually a vehicle going straight has priority over one turning across its path. The fact that the rider was coming from a surprising direction may make a crash more likely, but it doesn’t change the basic fact that the car was turning across the cyclist’s path.
I don’t think it takes a lawyer to know that the bicycle traveling straight in the bike lane has the right of way over the vehicle turning across that lane from another lane directly into its path.
There is a sign instructing drivers to yield to cyclists. Also, this is not a parking area, it is a park. I don’t see why any member of the public has any right to drive into this area.
But a slow moving unpredictable car is a lot easier to avoid than a fast one. Even if the driving buffoon never sees the bicyclist. In the limit of zero speed, we sometimes think of cars as protection for bike lanes, right?
we need to stop letting people drive into and park cars in our Park
It’s crucially important IMO to highlight non-fatal crashes as well as fatal crashes. Thank you Bike Portland for the in-depth reporting here. Three times this week a vehicle has crashed into a cyclist.
On that note: my partner witnessed a crash at SW Moody and Sheridan on Tuesday; southbound cyclist and eastbound car. The car had a green left arrow (assuming they didn;t run red or yellow) and cyclist apparently came from behind stupid huge pillar in middle of crosswalk. Don’t know if they could see ‘don’t walk’ sign if arrow was lit. Anyways, they got up and appeared ok. Probaby needs a bike stop light there, better positioned. Or remove the pillar!
I hate that crossing so much. Drivers ignore the no turn on red sign pretty much every light cycle. Depending on your destination Bond is such a better option. I understand why people use it but if your destination is the Tillikum or you don’t mind biking an additional 1,000 feet I highly recommend turning left at Montgomery and meandering over to Bond.
Giant parking garages in a 10-mile radius around the city. You want to come in? Walk, bicycle, mass transit, horse, scooter, whatever vulnerable mode you want. I would very much like to be done with cars. If only the in-city transit system were robust and convenient enough to support that!
“Giant parking garages in a 10-mile radius around the city.”
.
This is urbanists heresy!!!
You are hereby ordered to perform the penance of memorizing Chapter 1 of Shoup’s “The High Cost of Parking”.
I can see it now – the Surly Monster Trucker – for the SUV a-hole who wants to live in Stephen Keller’s Portland, a three-wheeler ebike with 4″ wide 29ers, a 2,000 watt motor, a raised cargo and saddle frame with a ladder to get on it, chrome stays and racks, complete with a platinum gun rack. What else?
You are on fire today, David!
Bad design, might as well route the bike lanes into the park so they go around the outside of the parking lot. Some mountable curbs between car and bike lanes would also help slow down people turning into the lot
Or the city could move the park so that the bike lanes go through it, that is, pedestrianize the whole area from say Ash to Davie and from the river to 3rd, add movable bollards at strategic locations (with key card systems for local access of business owners and residents), have centralized parking for all visitors (no on-street parking), encourage sidewalk cafes, and so on. Anyone driving through there would be “guests” and a strict 20 kph speed limited imposed (about 14 mph), like in a public park.
Once the area is pedestrianized, it becomes much easier politically to later close off the rest of Naito to pass-through car traffic and depave it.
That fire station #1 though, the biggest in the city, at Ash & Naito, it needs to go. Its location made sense when Naito was the main drag and later I-5, but now the station is really isolated – it needs to be moved to Burnside at 4th, so engines have easy and more direct access to wider city streets. The old station could be turned into a community center or museum.