The Portland Bureau of Transportation has revealed a new proposal for a major redesign of Northeast Broadway. And while the city will remove one general lane for driving and vastly improve several crossings, the unprotected bike lane isn’t as impressive as some folks hoped for.
To refresh your memory, this is happening because of the Broadway Pave & Paint project. Since PBOT plans to repave the street between NE 7th and NE 26th, they are seizing an opportunity to reconfigure the lanes and make other changes. These changes will ultimately connect to a major, federally-funded project from NE 7th to the river that is part of the state’s I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project.
But unlike the $38 million PBOT received to transform lower NE Broadway, they have only a meager $500,000 (in addition to the paving funds) to spend on the Pave & Paint section from NE 7th to 26th. That budgetary limit helps explain not just the design choices, but also the reactions to it.
The design concepts PBOT shared back in 2022 showed a parking protected bike lane. But the design proposal revealed yesterday as part of an online open house and survey is an unprotected bike lane sandwiched between two lanes used by drivers. That fact peeved some folks when I shared the drawings yesterday. “This is awful,” one person wrote on Bluesky. “When will PBOT build a real goddamn protected bike lane, and not magical wands and paint?”
BikeLoud PDX Vice-chair Kiel Johnson spoke with PBOT Project Manager Mike Serritella about the project this morning. After their phone call, Johnson told me in an interview that, “The project isn’t living up to the Transportation System Plan.” “We don’t think it will be comfortable for a wide range of riders,” he added. “And the budget illustrates that we continue to underfund these opportunities.”
The bike lane PBOT wants to build is about 11-feet wide (same as the adjacent lane for drivers) once you add buffer zones on each side. But it lacks physical separation — which has been the consensus best practice standard for years now. And in some sections, PBOT has maintained parallel parking spaces that will require drivers to maneuver over the bike lane to reach a spot.
Despite one less lane for drivers, the streetscape in PBOT’s new drawings is still dominated by cars. And as we struggle to regain cycling momentum and prevent deaths and serious injuries on our roads, any space dominated by such a deadly vehicle will fail to result in the outcomes we all say we want.
From PBOT’s point of view, this is a major step forward and all they can do with limited funds. “The team believes this recommended design optimizes resources available at this moment in time and sets up the corridor for future upgrades and investments,” their website reads. In contrast to this $500,000 to spend over 20 blocks on NE Broadway, PBOT will spend $16 million to build fully-separated and protected bike lanes on 27 blocks of SW Fourth. The agency also says their proposed design for Broadway does not preclude upgrading the bike facility with more protection in the future.
PBOT can also point to a load of other changes Broadway will receive — like protected intersections where new median islands will greatly reduce crossing distances.
Another thing that gives PBOT confidence is the fact they’ve got political support for a road diet through a major commercial district. Yes the local business association is fully on board with the changes despite losing driving capacity outside their doors — and despite a 4% decrease in total car parking spots along the corridor (11 spaces less than they have today).
It likely didn’t take too much cajoling by PBOT for the business association to agree to these changes however, because current conditions are absurdly car-centric. Between NE 17th and 26th, NE Broadway is as wide as 82nd Avenue (a former state highway). Even PBOT says the street is currently “overbuilt for automobiles” and their analysis found that — even at peak travel hours — drivers use only 50-60% of the total car capacity on the road.
Given this wasted space PBOT has 14-18 feet of roadway space, “to be reallocated along the corridor for community priorities.”
PBOT wants to use that space for a wide, buffered bike lane as well as five new pedestrian crossings (at 11th, 13th, 17th, 19th, and 22nd), two bus stop bulb-outs, and the new median islands at intersections. The maximum speed limit on the street will also be lowered from 30 to 25 mph.
Matt Zajack from the Sullivan’s Gulch Neighborhood Association likes what he sees. He’s met regularly with PBOT, reps from the Irvington Community Association and the Northeast Broadway Business Association since planning began this past summer. “Although it doesn’t hit every item on a long wish list,” Zajack said. “we are excited about the long overdue updates and changes that will bring this road in alignment with current codes and safety standards and better align the vibrant, human-centric business and neighborhood corridor we have here.”
Given the changes on the table and the new parking arrangements (neighbors worry a vast reduction in parking in the corridor means more people parking on side streets), Zajack says the neighborhood is downright “excited” about the project.
PBOT wants to hear community feedback before they finalize their design in February. If all goes according to plan, they’ll repave and repaint Broadway in summer 2025.
— Browse the open house and take the survey to make sure they hear your voice.
Thanks for reading.
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This is a pretty good outcome.
Removing an entire travel lane on a stroad with too much capacity is welcome.
A 25mph speed limit and signals timed/tuned/dialed to that speed will slow people driving.
It is a pave & paint on a major arterial, bike lanes are being improved and driving capacity reduced by 33%
Thanks PBOT !!
Keep up the Good Work !!
Agree. I think this will be a huge improvement in the area. Also pretty pleased they can do this within the $500k paint & pave budget. With slower travel speeds and fewer lanes I’d honestly think there’s a probably a case to be made that the paint will pay for itself eventually based on reduced maintenance costs. If it gets built as-designed within budget, I think it will win people over to see how much positive change can be made within normal maintenance budgets. We don’t necessarily need to spend a ton of money to make our city better.
No amount of budget for “safety” is going to make double-jeopardy crosswalks and painted door-zone bike lanes safe, especially while we spend 2-3x as much paving the street to make it faster and continue to allocate the vast majority of space to cars. (Paving budget appears to be ~$1.3M here, estimated based on the lane-miles relative to the overall $23M “smoother streets” program.)
I am confused about why, if they are keeping street parking in some places, it is not configured so that it is a parking protected bike lane in those areas? That seems like it would be safer and cost the same amount?
That’s my question too. A parking protected lane would be better than the current configuration IMO. Better still in my opinion to remove parking entirely adjacent to the bike lane.
One reason is that there are a lot of parking bump outs on Broadway…
here are the roll plots to see the entire corridor:
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/ne-broadway-pave/documents/broadway-pave-and-paint-west-section/download
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/ne-broadway-pave/documents/broadway-pave-and-paint-east-section/download
I have other questions like:
Will there be any signal improvements at NE 26th ?
does Taco Pedaler outdoor dining get removed or improved?
What types of hardware will be used to keep people parking their cars is the right spots?
What happens to the Bus stop at 9th, 12th, does the bus just drive/stop in the bike lane ?
I have the same question. It seems like putting the parking between the bike only lane and the auto lanes has several advantages compared to the configuration with the bike lane running between the parked cars and auto lanes:
-parked cars serve as passive protection between moving auto traffic and people riding bikes in the bike lane;
-most frequently used driver-side door of the parked cars does not open into the bike lane;
-the proximity of parked cars calms the moving traffic;
-the ped crossing islands are beefed up by parked cars that effectively extend the auto exclusion zone.
The only apparent relative advantage of the parking-next-to-sidewalk configuration is that it is safer to enter/exit the parked cars because the cars are next to lower kinetic energy density regions (the sidewalk for the passenger side and the bike lane for the driver side vs. the bike lane and auto lane, respectively).
A similar design for the pedestrian islands was implemented on Killingsworth near a new apartment building on Cully. The design has been a complete failure because it is consistently blocked by parked motor vehicles and the city has refused to implement a level of enforcement that might make a change to that. I think this will likely be even worse on Broadway because there are many more rideshare vehicles operating in that area and rideshare drivers have a tendency to just pull into a bike lane for pick up or drop off. These islands create a more dangerous situation for people biking than a paint bike lane does because if a driver blocks the far end of the island and the cyclist doesn’t recognize what is happening there is no where to go as you are boxed in on both sides by curbs. Here is an example of a typical day at the install on Killingsworth. There are 4 vehicles illegally parked in the bike lane.
Sometimes I feel the same way about those bike lane islands, but I think the implementation on Broadway will be a net positive. The design as shown looks like a good way to daylight the intersection, while also reducing cornering speeds for turning vehicles.
Honestly think comparing to Killingsworth is apples to oranges. Kind of forcing a solution where it doesn’t really fit. If the city wanted to actually improve bike/ped (and vehicle) safety on near Hacienda CDC, they should close the slip-lane-esque connection to Lombard and revamp the intersection at Cully and Lombard.
I got into an argument with some people that were parked in the bike lane on Rosa Parks, several months after it was upgraded to a protected bike lane. They said they had been told by police that they were allowed to park there whenever they needed to when picking people up or dropping off loads.
I’ve also seen cars block the bike lane at NW 19th Ave where the bike lane jogs over and around the raised bus platform.
Lack of enforcement is, yet again, one of many reasons why more people don’t ride bikes.
While there is valid criticism that PBOT consistently under funds any bicycle improvements, paint is still a very power tool that can work out great if utilized well. Drivers drive inside the painted lanes, park within the painted lines, pedestrians generally cross at painted crosswalks, bicyclists ride within their painted lanes, etc…
Yet, PBOT continues to come up with unimaginative designs that affirm the status quo. Like, we really shouldn’t be making drivers cross over the bike lane in order to park. It is such an antiquated design, can you imagine if drivers had to cross the sidewalk in order to park? It’s unimaginable. The bike lane should at minimum be parking protected, or even just remove all the parking on the north side of Broadway and have a lane width buffer. That way the bike lane does not have to jog over every pedestrian crossing and the bike lane will be a car lane width away.
Try harder PBOT.
Cool to hear, and important to mention. We always hear about the cranky few opposed to projects like this, even when most neighbors are actually excited for these changes.
We also need to create some better N/S routes to get to Broadway. It’ll be interesting to see how they link up to 26th where Broadway is a two-way. I’d certainly prefer to see better connections on NE 21st ave and NE 24th ave. Preference for NE 21st, since this provides a connection to SE PDX. People bike on this stretch all the time to connect to the bridge south of Multnomah St, and its always sketchy with cars aggressively trying to get to the I-84 onramp on Irving St. I would love to see these streets get some sort of painted bike lanes.
Why not widen the sidewalk, make the bikelane “at grade” and place car parking against the curb? I get that it’s because of budget reasons. These lanes will absolutely be parked in by ride share cars.