The Portland Bureau of Transportation plans to make significant changes to a northeast Portland intersection where a 12-year old was struck and injured by the driver of a car.
Back in November 2023, two 6th graders at Laurelhurst School were crossing NE Glisan at 41st when the driver of a car sped through the intersection and hit one of them. The driver was going well over the speed limit (25 mph) and didn’t stop to see what happened (I don’t know if they were ever caught). The 12-year-old suffered a broken bone in their leg and various bruises and scrapes.
Now PBOT is ready to spend $150,000 on a project that aims to calm traffic and make crossing NE Glisan safer. PBOT’s planned changes will shorten the crossing distance, add a push button-activated bike traffic signal, stripe new bike lanes with some concrete curbs for protection (the bike lanes will connect to existing one east of 41st), and reducing driving space. PBOT says the new design will “increase driver awareness of the crossing.” On the project website, PBOT says people driving on Coe Circle, “may not expect people walking and biking to be crossing at this intersection.”
This intersection is just one short block east of Coe Circle and it’s currently 65-feet to cross from one side to the other. NE 41st is a neighborhood greenway route and is classified as a Major City Bikeway in Portland’s Transportation System Plan. This crossing is just 0.4 miles south of the bike/ped bridge over I-84 that connects the Laurelhurst neighborhood to the Hollywood Transit Center at 42nd Ave.
In addition to the changes listed above, PBOT will also remove 127 feet of on-street parking on the south side of Glisan and 71 feet of on-street parking on the north side. Car parking will also be removed on both sides of 41st north of Glisan. The new signal will complement the existing HAWK (high-intensity activated crosswalk beacon) signal PBOT installed just four blocks south on NE 41st and Burnside in 2006.
Final design should be complete this month and PBOT expects to build the project this summer. The funding comes from the Fixing Our Streets program.
