The Portland area has a big problem with people driving cars where they’re not supposed to. On March 19th, BikePortland reader Joe R. faced that reality head-on when someone driving a large SUV entered a bike path he was riding on and nearly forced him off the pavement.
It happened just after four o’clock as Joe was heading northbound on the bike path located in between I-5 bridge on-ramps and the Residence Inn hotel just north of N Marine Drive. “I was enjoying my ride and began to accelerate when I saw the large black vehicle pulling onto the path,” Joe shared in an email with BikePortland. The driver turned onto the path at the culdesac of N Anchor Way.
Back in July, Joe read an article on BikePortland about this exact location. In that article, I reported that the Oregon Department of Transportation has been aware of “ongoing issues with bollards being stolen or ran over” as far back as spring 2023. Despite this acknowledgment of the problem however, a representative from Ask ODOT said, “Staff is exploring options for better bollards or a fix to the problem and do not have plans to reinstall them at this time.”
It appears ODOT has done nothing to improve the situation. In fact, when I shared a video about Joe’s run-in with a driver, several folks said they routinely see people driving on the path at and around this same location. “I see it a lot,” said one person in an Instagram comment. “Same has happened to me there… it nearly took me out,” said someone else.
Thankfully, Joe was riding carefully and managed to stay safe. “I realized there was nowhere for me to go except off the path if I didn’t want to be killed,” he recalled.
After the close call, Joe pedaled over to the opening in the path the driver used. He saw no bollards or other preventative measures in place. Joe frustrated and he sees this problem as another example of the “destruction of Portland” that “horrible leadership” has let go for far too long.
Hopefully the actions taken by ODOT on the I-205 path several miles away will be expanded the entire path network. ODOT, Portland Parks, and PBOT need a coordinated strategy to defend and protect these spaces. Until then, we cannot let this type of driving behavior become normalized. These drivers — and other illegal activities like blocking the path with tents and other personal belongings, dumping trash, starting small fires, and unsafe behaviors — endanger individuals and also send a chill through the entire region that results in many folks giving up on using them altogether.
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I wonder what would happen if you ask Rian Windsheimer and Kris Strickler to be interviewed in the shed or to speak about why they seem to care more about IBR than the safety of vulnerable road users.
They would probably gush on and on about how the IBR improves the bike path here and how it’s impossible to fix anything without the megaproject.
No plates and probably illegal window tint to boot
Pretty new vehicle and not at all dirty. Maybe an unmarked police patrol?
They stopped making this body style in 2006. Seems unlikely it’s a police vehicle.
Definitely not a police patrol. Joe said he saw the driver laughing with a passenger as they went by. Joe said he thought they were drunk or high or both.
It looks like a 9th gen Suburban/Tahoe – produced between 2000-2006. Unlikely to still be in service with a local PD.
Why not put a few of boulders that are being installed at the western terminus of N Victory Blvd (at N Expo Rd) to guard the inlet from the motel parking lot? There are already many of these boulders under the overpasses…. BTW, who funds the boulder installation projects? Boulder fields to discourage urban camping seem to go in all the time without a hitch, but traffic diverters on greenways (much smaller scale) take forever.
You can see on streetview that ODOT makes generous use of bollards and protective hardscaping at their offices in Portland and Salem. They understand how to use actual (not paint) infrastructure when they need protecting.
This is the best argument for camera’s, I run them as well as lights front and rear, GPS, helmet and mirror 24/7, 365 period.
They can win the lawsuit and force insurance payout hands down as well as give law enforcement what they need to pursue this.
With out it they may not be inclined to bother at all.
This is also an argument for PPB not pursuing any car theft complaints until such time as drivers become human.
The cyclist somehow avoided being killed without getting off the path (or even coming to a stop), and the vehicle involved in this incident was probably traveling at 5MPH. More “annoying” than “harrowing”.
The SUV driver was clearly in the wrong, and absolutely should not have been there, but no one was in danger of being killed. I am glad there was no collision and no escalation.
This was a categorically different type of incident from the blue truck posted yesterday; that driver really is life threatening.
What is wrong with you? Why do you insist on playing this BS devils advocate? It adds nothing to the conversation. I’ve been in low speed collisions with drivers and have had significant injuries. Minimizing this is gross.
Just Watts being Watts. Sometimes I wonder if JM invented Watts to increase engagement in this space.
hahaha LOL that’s a good one. And I thought I’d heard it all.
I know Watts bugs a lot of people. But they have a right to comment IMO and as long as they stay within certain boundaries I’m not going to stymie them. If you don’t like it, just keep scrolling, just like you’d do w any other content on the web you don’t like.
I’m not “minimizing”, I’m saying the threat was exaggerated. Obvious exaggeration does not lead to people taking the concerns of cyclists seriously. Am I allowed to say that? No one is going to see that video and think they saw someone almost die. Not even you.
I thought I was clear that I was in no way defending the driver. If that wasn’t clear, let me say that I’m in no way defending the driver or minimizing his actions. They were in the wrong and absolutely should not have been there.
I agree, there is some hyperbole here, but the bigger point is that “going off the path” to avoid being “killed” is exactly what the rider should have done.
Before I saw the video, I assumed this must be on a stretch of MUP with no escape – fences or walls on both sides of the path.
The moment the driver turned onto the path, the rider should have rolled right down that gentle grassy slope and shielded himself among those big trees.
Being prepared to bail, or make a quick evasive move, could save your life.
It was the hyperbole I was remarking on, especially when the rider said that they had to get off the path to avoid being killed when the video showed they did not get off the path, and made no effort to do so.
I for sure would have got off the path.
What are the odds the vehicle is associated with the local urban campers bivouac?
Maybe it’s a bike parts dealer looking for some of those upstanding open air bike repair shops that are open in many locations in the City.
Does this kind of thing happen elsewhere, like the Corvallis Bike loop? Just wondering how common this behavior has become outside of PDX…
It’s actually pretty common in small towns where a path goes through a large park with ball fields and sports events, where there is never enough car parking and attendees feel free to park on the grass and drive on the path to get to patches of open grass. It’s generally tolerated by the police and parks officials. It’s also common where a path goes by a fishing stream – I saw it often enough in Portland even when there wasn’t a major homeless problem, on the Willamette and Columbia rivers – and I’ve seen it in so many other communities including in Canada and Europe. None of this is new, in fact it’s very old, it’s really the same issue with the commons, who owns it and has control over it.
Not the main issue here, but communication often suffers when organizations create a separate group of staff for communication with the public, as ODOT does with AskODOT.
I’ve used AskODOT several times. Invariably, the staff is polite, and almost invariably, they don’t answer my questions,–not through any fault of their own, but because the engineers or maintenance people responsible for the issue don’t give them meaningful responses. They use AskODOT to buffer themselves from the public.
The same thing happens with Portland bureaus when they use public liaison staff. Fortunately, most bureaus don’t wall off their staff from the public the way ODOT does with AskODOT. I understand the need for gate-keeping to some degree, but it can also be frustrating and counterproductive for everyone.
I agree with you. When I worked at PBOT as a low level technician 2000-6, I would work with planning, design, and engineering staff but never the public. Later when I was a volunteer advocate for East Portland 2008-15 I found that it was hard to connect with the same engineers I had worked with, that planners would act as a wall in between, and as an added layer there were various outreach sections that dealt with the public, including the PBOT director, Smart Trips, etc.
What I have learned over the years is that at engineering-dominated agencies like city and state DOTs (as well as water and sewer departments) is that engineers are numerically a small minority in such agencies but ultimately hold the pursestrings for any project funding – they decide what gets put in front of elected officials who pretty much rubber stamp whatever they see – and so I find it more productive to advocate with city engineers than any other type of city official including politicians.
One of the few things I really like about living in my current (highly mediocre) city of Greensboro NC since 2015 is that we volunteers can easily connect with the city DOT engineering staff directly as our transportation planners are pretty useless and incompetent. Our engineers still mostly say “no” to anything safe or progressive, but they immediately and patiently explain why they aren’t going to do it or can’t, rather than wait 15 years to cancel the project for the same reasons as they do in Portland. Essentially I’ve learned over the last 9 years from staff here in Greensboro both why the projects I helped get funded in Portland were delayed for so long and later done not the way I thought they would, and why so many otherwise reasonable projects are never approved in the first place by Portland or ODOT. It’s not just AASHTO, MUTCD, and engineers being generally conservative in their outlook (all of which is true), but also for practical reasons having to do with driver behavior, the physics of moving cars and trucks, an chronic lack of police enforcement (police and engineers generally avoid each other), the irregular funding, the many expensive years it takes to train engineers, and so on.
The most progressive engineers I’ve ever met are the very few who have ever traveled overseas and the even fewer who have attended foreign exchange engineering opportunities to work at other cities outside of the USA (they exist).
I agree that AskODOT is largely useless. In the event you get an actual answer, they will parrot autonormative rhetoric about how their facilities are allowed to be dangerous for bikes, peds, and other non-auto uses – they are all about moving cars and trucks and seem really annoyed that anyone would waste their time asking for basic bike-lane maintenance.
My favorite AskODOT response of all time, to my question about safety of a walking path that crossed an ODOT highway:
“We are not maintaining the path because we are not required to.”
WTF?
The missing bollards is what enabled the Islamic terrorist from Texas to cause a mass killing December 31, 2024 in New Orleans.
Terrorism is not Islamic. Would you call Robert G. Bowers (the Pittburgh synagogue shooter) a “Christian terrorist”?