The City of Portland has made a new commitment to daylight 200 more intersections over the next two years. The news comes in the form of a quiet update to the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s website.
Daylighting, or what PBOT refers to as “vision clearance”, is an intersection treatment that removes visible barriers like parked cars and trucks from corners in order to improve visibility. The treatment has gained popularity among transportation advocates nationwide because of how it can radically improve safety at intersections (where most serious injury and fatal crashes occur) and it’s extremely inexpensive. In Oregon it also has legal backing.
In 2020 nonprofit Oregon Walks launched a “Clear the Corners” campaign to ratchet up pressure on the City of Portland to abide by the Oregon Vehicle Code (ORS 811.550 section 17) which says drivers can’t park within 20-feet of a crosswalk. While the law allows cities to set their own level of compliance, road safety activists think PBOT isn’t doing enough. That same year, the City of Portland was slapped with a lawsuit brought by a person who was hit as a result of what his lawyer claims was negligence on the part of the city to enforce the daylighting law. Pressure from the lawsuit (which is still pending in the Court of Appeals) and advocates worked. In 2021, former Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty secured $200,000 to daylight 350 intersections.
But as BikePortland reported one year ago, there are still way too many intersections in Portland with terrible visibility due to people parking cars at the corner.
In fact, an analysis by Portland State University student and road safety advocate Melissa Kostelecky found that there are about 4,000 intersections in Portland that should be cleared of parking. At around $600 per intersection (the price for signs and poles at four corners), that would cost about $2.3 million. Kostelecky’s report analyzed 18,143 intersections citywide and looked at factors such as proximity to a school, presence of ADA ramps, crash history, speeding patterns, bike network connections, and so on.
Determining which corners to clear first is part of the challenge. PBOT’s standard practice is to apply vision clearance standards (no parking within 20-feet of the corners) on all major paving and capital projects. But when they find extra funding, they have expanded that scope to include more locations. The upcoming treatments will be targeted near schools, neighborhood greenways, and in designated pedestrian districts (as identified in city plans). PBOT will also respond to specific locations based on complaints. Anyone can call PBOT Parking Enforcement at 503-823-5195 (and wait for option 3) to report a dangerous corner for consideration.
The latest promise from PBOT to daylight 200 intersections will be funded from a $50,000 commitment from the Fixing Our Streets (local gas tax) program and from a portion of PBOT’s General Fund allocation for safety improvements.
View a map of eligible daylighting corridors and learn more on PBOT’s Vision Clearance website.
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This is great news (20FT set back vs 0FT citywide or 5FT Alphabet District), BUT only a first step, as few trucks / cars made today are under 6FT in height for the 50FT set back. [And most pedestrians are not tall enough to have an eye height over 6FT too.] In reality – unless traffic speeds drop AND enforcement [self / auto enforcement or police] becomes commonplace then the set back for full compliance to see a ped crossing [esp. elderly] is at least 100FT per approach to a crosswalk [without a signal or stop control] in a downtown setting.
https://highways.dot.gov/safety/other/older-road-user/handbook-designing-roadways-aging-population/chapter-7-intersections
I’m gonna dump on this even though I support it. Without rolling parking enforcement this is performative trash. On this site I can find articles regarding traffic enforcement coming back (May 9, 2023) and parking enforcement going on the offensive (June 25, 2024). The last car I saw pulled over was, I believe, summer 2023. I see cops all the time, and *endless* traffic violations, but somehow the cops don’t. I see loads and loads of cars with no plates, expired tags, parked on sidewalks, parked the wrong way, blocking the bike lane (OUTSIDE ROCIO’S ON GLADSTONE ALL THE TIME), but I never see anyone buzzing around in the little parking cop vehicles. Sure, daylight every intersection in the city, it won’t change anything if no one pays a price for violating the daylighting laws. So tired of all of this.
Todd, I didn’t mean to post my cranky rant as a reply to your comment. I have no gripes with your comment or Jonathan’s reporting, just the city at large.
Crushing blow to people living in dense neighborhoods with no off street parking. This is going to be interesting.
Hopefully they prioritize Safe Routes to School corridors.
Ironic metaphor you choose. Daylighting is supposed to help avoid the crushing of vulnerable road users and also help drivers avoid crushing each other. Loss of curbside parking for gigantic vehicles is hardly more than an inconvenience in comparison.
When I was looking for a place about 9 years ago, we visited a house in Lents that didn’t have off street parking… the house was amazing. The lack of parking quickly made us move on. Eventually settled in the still barely affordable Brentwood Darlington. All that say, I live in a tiny house in the woods now. Life is good.
I think you mean “huge improvement for people living in dense neighborhoods and imperceptible inconvenience to people who store their private property easily and freely on public land”
If you are right, this will be an utterly uncontroversial action, and everybody will love it.
A number of the roads on their map have already been daylit and have been for years. Burnside between 71st and 82nd for instance. Parts of Clinton and Lincoln greenways as well.
Will this enforcement also apply to moving pods? A pod had been parked within 20 ft of the intersection at NE Going (a bike thoroughfare) and NE 23rd for at least 6 months and is an absolute safety hazard.
Awesome, only 17,943 left to go.