A key section of the Naito Parkway bike lanes will finally be re-hardened after a long row of ornate, steel bollards went missing in 2023. As we’ve reported, the bike lanes adjacent to Portland Saturday Market between Ankeny and Burnside were left unprotected after the bollards vanished sometime in spring of 2023. It’s still unknown what exactly happened to dozens of bollards — some say they were stolen for scrap, others say they were simply damaged and then discarded by drivers and/or vandals.
After our story in 2023, the Portland Bureau of Transportation installed temporary orange traffic cones to help provide protection for the popular, two-way bike lanes. On Tuesday, PBOT announced that a crew of contractors will begin a project this week to install concrete curb separators to protect the bike lane. “They are expected to install about 210 feet of concrete separators along the outer edge of the two-way multi-use path, from SW Ankeny to the Burnside Bridge,” reads the PBOT statement. “The separators are intended to provide protection for people biking and walking, while requiring less maintenance than movable bollards that were previously used in this section of the path.”
The bollards (at right) were removable so that vendors of the Saturday Market could park in the bike lanes to load and unload their stalls. It is an annoying compromise (since it leads to people parking in the bike lane), but it allowed the Saturday Market to support the Better Naito project and be a willing partner with PBOT going forward. With the new curbs on the way, I asked PBOT if anything had changed in their agreement with the Market.
“Our agreement with them, and the loading operations will be unchanged,” said PBOT Public Information Officer Dylan Rivera. “Vendors will be able to enter Better Naito at the intersection of Ankeny or drive over the traffic separators at slow speeds to load and unload. The vast majority of the time (when vendors aren’t actively loading or unloading for the Market) people biking and walking in this segment of Better Naito will benefit from new concrete protection separating the facility from the northbound travel lane.”
PBOT expects the new concrete treatment to be much more durable than the bollard design they initially installed.
If you ride this section of Naito, expect a detour around the construction work and into the Waterfront Park path for about a week from yesterday.
UPDATE, 1/28: PBOT says this project has been postponed, “to allow time for county work on the Burnside Bridge” and that a new schedule will be shared in March.
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Tangential question: does anyone know what the plan is for the relocation of the Saturday Market if/when construction on the new Burnside Bridge starts?
Yes, it is currently set to be moved South slightly; half will be under the roof and the other half will be just south of the Bill Naito fountain.
Thank you!
I’m happy with this and would like to see it for more bike lanes. Curbs that cars can mount at walking speed are a good compromise here and should still provide good protection from inattentive drivers
They’ve been diverting bike traffic out of that section of Better Naito from about 7:30 a.m-5 p.m. all month due to Burnside Bridge work anyway (what one of the construction workers told me a few weeks ago), so I’ll keep going around on the waterfront trail to the fountains a while longer. Glad they’re finally putting in a curb there anyway.
“Protection” like this is about as protective as paint. Riding towards oncoming traffic in the dark with only a little concrete curb to “protect” me makes this the least favorite part of my morning commute. Especially with drivers trying to access the parking lot under the bridge. I suppose I could go back to riding through the waterfront. Jersey barriers may be less aesthetically pleasing but so is my body smeared on the pavement.
I still think the best solution to vendors parking in the bike lane is to close the travel lane during Saturday Market. It’s the weekend so there’s less traffic and drivers have seven other northbound lanes within three quarters of a mile. It’s fine for bike riders to go a half mile out of their way year ’round to keep them off of Hawthorne but asking drivers to go 500′ to 2nd ave on the weekend is asking too much.
1000% this:
Much more durable (and theft resistant), but much less effective if the goal is to deter parking in the bike lane, as it will be “open” 24-7, rather than just when the bollards are removed.
I predict a slightly more attractive bike lane (i.e. no orange cones), but no real functional change from today.
Proud Boys systemically removed them as their ongoing war against Portland.
No doubt the colorful Canadian state national guard units and Greenland state air national guard had a hand in it too, though why POTUS would be so eager to lose control of the US House to the Democrats so soon and so thoroughly is beyond me – Canada alone has more people than California and thus more congress members, all of whom including the Progressive Conservatives vote well to the left of our Democratic Party. It’ll be 30 years before the Republicans have a majority in the House again.
Eh, judging by some of the stuff I heard from the white gay party crowd in Vancouver BC about the Chinese, I’m not sure how progressive Canadians really are.
Also the stuff Canadians are saying online about the supposedly low-class Punjabis that have flooded the country during Trudeau’s utopian immigration policy are downright rude, and extremely racist. Worse than American reddit.
True, plus the appalling way Canadians treat Metis (American Indians of uncertain ancestry and/or tribes, over 10% of Canadians) is often worse that how badly African-Americans are treated here. I’ve actually met many right-wing redneck Canadians over the years, but the main difference between theirs and ours (aside from the accent eh) is they strongly believe in socialized medicine and parliamentary democracy, and ours don’t.
Everything looks better from afar. That’s why we hear so many people gushing about Europe after a 1 week visit to central Amsterdam.
I spent a week in Vancouver a year ago, and it was great (ignoring East Hastings Street). I can safely say that everything is better in Canada.
Groceries in Canada are a lot more expensive, but when you buy them you are funding your own healthcare.
Ah yes, of course, when Obama was elected there was no articles written about how the Republicans would never hold the senate or the white house again. Funny how in half a generation the left alienated every cultural demographic with an emphasis on family and annihilated their longstanding dominance of the youth vote.
Notable as well is that about 85% of Canada’s population live within 100 miles of the US border, you don’t imagine a couple might move south to the states once they have the opportunity?
Please, don’t confuse Democrats and/or liberals with the left.
What’s all this? We’re talking about the Proud Boys here!
You were, David wasn’t. Gotta keep up.
For the Saturday market vendors, would love if there was any sort of enforcement to prevent them from block the whole daggone bike lane (which has happened several times when I have ridden that way recently).
With the curbs, it will be challenging to ride around full-lane-blockers.
My favorite interaction on Nato was when a vendor was driving in the bike lane, but upset that I was in the traffic lane. I guess I need to learn to fly?
It is hard to get excited about these curbs when inviting cars to use it is part of the design. PBOT is pathetic to have made this compromise. They should make the center line drive able and let vendors park in the driving lane. Or just close northbound Naito driving lane for loading/unloading, It is simple to drive around this.
So we have a “compromise” in which the flow of pop-up commerce is assured even if it means more danger to bicyclists.
Why can’t the city require Saturday Market to hire flaggers or traffic-safety officers when the mobility lane is blocked?
Why are you all laughing??
Can we assume from the information officer statement (“Vendors will be able to enter Better Naito at the intersection of Ankeny or…”) that the new curbing will not extend across Ankeny? The picture in the middle of the article shows that the old bollards did. I agree with other commenters that the concrete curb is better than nothing or orange cones but worse than a physically protective barrier.
When I bike, I do not care about curbs because they do nothing to protect me from cars. When walking with my 2-year old grandchildren, I love curbs between the sidewalk and drive/bike lanes. Slow the cars down to 15mph and I do not mind sharing the road with cars while biking, but unless the traffic volume is very low, I think streets would have separate curbed sidewalks. Every street should have curbed sidewalks and the busy streets should also have protected bike lanes.
Perfect, just in time for Return To Office.
Y’all ready to boost those modeshare stats? I think we can 2.5% if we try.
I’m willing to bet money that if they prohibited vendors from using the bike lane (and ticketed those that did) that they would still have plenty of vendors to fill the market stalls. There’s no reason to let any (non emergency) vehicles park in the bike lane.
Who is “they” in this case? PBOT will not make any unilateral decision without consulting with the market folks, who in turn probably have considerably more political clout than you do.
There is a practical problem to solve — how do vendors load/unload an entire market each morning/evening, without interrupting the bike lane? Do you have an actual idea that would likely be acceptable to everyone, beyond just a blanket ban backed by enforcers? I am pretty sure that idea isn’t going to win the day, especially in the absence of any real victims.
What they do in many cities in Europe is to create a traffic-restricted zone on all sides of the “market square” (which is almost never square or rectangular at all), only allowing traffic to move through at 14 mph (20 kph) at the most, during the day and all night on most nights, with a series of hydraulic bollards, diverters, speed humps, and other barriers (I’ve even seen narrow medieval city gates), not to mention police speed traps. Then on market day(s), from about 3 am through 8 am and later in the evening, the bollards come down and there’s unrestricted access for people making deliveries, the garbage trucks, and so on. I’ve almost never seen marked bike lanes on these restricted streets – what would be the point of them? – but the bike and walk signs are up and very prominent, fines for violators, signs pointing to where car parking is available, and so on. It’s so common there, both in major cities and small towns, but still rare in the USA, I do wonder why a progressive city like Portland wouldn’t do something similar.
I’m familiar with what you are describing, but don’t see how it could be applied to the Saturday Market. Nor can I think of anywhere else in the city where it would make sense, probably, in part, because Portland doesn’t have the sort of medieval core where these solutions are often applied.
I wonder if there’s any way to quantify the problem — how many cyclists are impacted, and what level of danger are they placed in? Or is this really just an inconvenience where a small number of cyclists need to slow down and proceed cautiously around a parked vehicle?
PSU Farmers market in the park blocks managed to make it make sense and I think is the closest thing we have in Portland to a market square.
We can easily close down a block of Naito for a couple hours with some cones and still provide access to emergency vehicles.
Trying to “quantify the problem” misses the point. There is a single bike lane and three car lanes with a parking lot on the west side under the bridge.
If you close Naito, how will vehicles load/unload? Currently they can do so in parallel; by using the travel lane, it would be serially, making the process much slower and more cumbersome. Also, they would be loading across the bike lane (perhaps staging items there), so it’s not clear the situation would improve much for cyclists. It feels like the idea is to prove a point (close the car lane!) rather than find a real solution to a real problem.
I don’t really care on way or another how this problem gets managed, but I do see flaws in all the obvious solutions. I’m sure PBOT sees those as well, which is why all the easy options have been rejected and we have today’s situation.
As for closing the streets around the PSU farmer’s market, I think that would result in very little change from conditions today. Seems like a solution with a fair bit of expense and maintenance overhead looking for a problem.
From PBOT last night:
I happened to be down there yesterday and found the bike lane closed (no detour signs spotted), which is status quo. Rhe real problem is that there’s a steel plate in the bikeway with terrible asphalt holding it in place. My biketown caught air and less experienced riders could easily crash here. I wish they wouldn’t do things like that, it’s worse than the old expansion joints on the esplanade.