Car abuse continues on a section of the I-5 bike path north of Marine Drive.
Last Thursday, BikePortland reader Israel L., was headed back to Vancouver from Portland and had just left Delta Park en route to the Interstate Bridge. As he crossed the I-5 offramp toward the bike path he noticed the driver of a large, black tow truck turn left (west) from N Union Court. That seemed odd to Israel, since the truck driver was headed onto a one-way off-ramp. “I thought, ‘Oh they might be doing some kind of weird highway access maneuver,'” Israel shared.
“Then to my horror, they did not go onto the off-ramp, they went onto the bike path.”
Israel was on an electric bike and kept riding while he tried to process what he was seeing. “Then it dawned on me: The truck driver just used the bike path to get around traffic.”
Israel said the driver was honking their horn to warn possible path users of his presence.
The driver stayed on the path and headed north under NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd and then twisted around toward the underpass of the I-5 freeway ramps. Israel didn’t think the truck would fit under the short tunnel, but it did. He pulled out his camera and took video of the driver on the path inside the cloverleaf of freeway ramps just as he exited the path and continued onto I-5.
Here’s the path the driver took (according to Israel):
Despite being on an electric bike, Israel said he wasn’t able to catch up and get close enough to get a license plate.
Chalk this up to yet another breach of what is supposed to be safe infrastructure for non-drivers. The Oregon Department of Transportation must do more to prevent drivers from using these paths. What’s next, it shows up on Google Maps as a way to bypass traffic?!
According to readers, car and truck drivers use these paths very often. This is the third instance I’ve shared. In July 2024, someone was driving northbound on the path over the Columbia River, and earlier this month a BikePortland reader was forced off this path by the driver of a large SUV. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is aware of this problem, but has so far not shared a plan to prevent it from happening.
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This is NOT the first time this driver has done this! I encountered the same vehicle while biking on this path within the last month. At least he has started honking to warn people.
Good job, Israel, for getting photos. I was too stunned to react quickly enough.
Thanks for reporting, I saw the same thing, probably the same person do this a couple months back. I’ve repeated contacted ODOT to place bollards back here but thus far, no change.
Most paths, including bridges and tunnels, built by state DOTs are specifically designed so that police cars and (bulky) ambulances can access them “in an emergency”, so I rather doubt ODOT will ever put up bollards on them.
At least when I get obliterated by a tow truck driving on the bike path the ambulance will be able to skip 0.2 miles of I5 traffic by using the same bike path.
No doubt the city will send in one of their tiny cute little street sweepers to clean the resulting debris after the police are done with their investigations, including the witness driver’s “He came out of nowhere!” statement.
And Portland Police will issue a statement saying, “The driver stopped and is cooperating with the police investigation.”
At least when a serious bike accident happens, or another medical issue, the ambulance will be able to reach the injured and get them to the hospital.
Towing is a state regulated industry so the business could potentially face non-criminal consequences that wouldn’t apply to other commercial vehicles if the vehicle or company is ever identified.
Portland Police or Oregon State Police could identify this truck and driver in five minutes. They just don’t want to.
Prove it.
It would seem like any commercial vehicle being knowingly operated in a reckless manner like this should incur penalties for both the driver and the company. But hey, it would also seem like human life is more valuable than expedience of one driver, or one thousand drivers.
In lieu of bollards, perhaps a few large rocks or pieces of concrete could “somehow materialize” on the path, the sort of things that bicycles can easily steer around but a large freakin’ motor vehicle cannot. Wonder how such things might happen to get to that location.
It sounds as if you don’t think emergency vehicles need access to the path. Is that correct?
A cost/benefit analysis would be worthy:
extremely rare emergency vehicle access vs increasingly prevalent motor vehicle incursion onto bike paths.
I’m not in favor of a free-for-all.
Nor I.
How would you quantify the cost and benefits of the current situation?
Not surprised. It seems traffic enforcement is not a priority in Portland. Why is that?
It’s not a law enforcement problem for practical reasons: there will never be enough sworn officers, police or sheriff’s deputies, to watch all the places that motor vehicles might enter routes intended for bikers and walkers. The clear answer is to build things that private vehicles can’t pass without damage. It’s a design failure, and ODOT won’t take action.
Nor will the ODOT regulating body that oversees ODOT (the governor and state legislature) take any action, nor the voters who keep electing the same clowns in every election and expect different results, not the 40% of potential Oregon voters who completely fail to vote in spite of Oregon’s really easy vote-by-mail voting process.
Replace ODOT with “any local government organization” and David has pretty much penned the Comment of the Year.
I totally agree — the solution has to be some sort of physical restriction. But what? If we have to allow access for emergency vehicles, what practical solutions are there? We’ve seen what campers do to lockable bollards and gates in this city, and folks have even demonstrated the willingness and ability to move large concrete barriers.
What should we be advocating for?
One solution, perhaps the only one, is lockable bollards coupled with the complete elimination of camping along bike paths.
You know there were a string of break ins back in the late 70’s on the rural road I lived on.
Turns out that a bunch of shotgun toting rednecks patrolling makes people think twice about that sort of thing.
Not suggesting anything – but imagining that guy running into one of my old neighbors toting a 12 gauge loaded with slugs makes me smile.
The thought of a bunch of good ol’ boys armed with shotguns patrolling a bike path to keep drivers off it makes my head want to explode a little bit.
Agreed!! IMO the ending of Easy Rider says it all about good ole boys with shotguns and anything resembling counter culture.
People all over this world, Join hands, join in a love train. O’Jays.
Yes, lets harm the unhoused population while making it harder for emergency vehicles to use these paths when needed.
There are electronically retractable bollards, but who would pay for that…
And who would maintain them when they inevitably broke?
I’m also not entirely convinced that allowing camping along bike paths actually helps homeless folks. That said, I do think we need emergency vehicle access along the bike paths.
Maybe we could have emergency motorcycles or bicycles?
Portland’s weird obsession with accommodating abusive drug enthusiasts has had devastating impacts to just about every aspect of our daily lives, but cyclists feel it more acutely than most. We interact with hostile, unstable and intoxicated persons on a daily basis, have been driven from protected infrastructure onto unsafe street routes, etc., and somehow the bike activists still find a way defend the madness. It’s absolutely depressing that anyone can take someone who wants a bike friendly city— and a landscape of burnt tents and scattered trash— seriously, even for a second. These voices do not deserve the attention that is paid to them by this outlet and many others.
Retractable bollards. And yes, we should solve the homeless situation, preferably with a wealth tax.
Do you know anywhere else that ODOT has successfully deployed retractable bollards?
I don’t see how you can build them that way, motorcycles for example are as narrow as bicycles.
Because it’s racist. People were not being pulled over at equitably proportional rates.
The evidence demonstrates the traffic division was pulling folks over at rates demographically proportional to their propensity to die in crashes, so maybe not so racist.
99% of these situations are easily fixed with … [drum roll] BOLLARDS!
They can be used to not block any cargo bike or such and can fully block any nonsense like this.
Bike path planners hate this one trick!
This wouldn’t have happened if we had built the CRC already!
Flag him down and tell him you actually have a vehicle that needs towing and can pay in cash…see if you can get the name of the company or drivers name. Acting polite and thankful may dupe them. Worth a try…
This happens way too often. Here’s an idea for a protest: get a bunch of folks to decorate their cars with “Bollards Now!” signs and drive in this same loop during rush hour. At a crawl, of course, and with spotters on foot to get people walking and biking through safely. If PPB/MultCo Sheriff/OSP can’t be arsed to bust people doing this regularly, they certainly wouldn’t arrest everyone participating in a protest like this. Or maybe they would? IDK. I’m pretty sure driving on a bike path only nets like a small fine, a risk I’d personally be willing to take.
It would be disruptive and annoying to people using the path as intended, but so is a tow truck or McSUV ripping through to skip traffic. The point is to show ODOT how stupid easy it is for drivers to invade the teeny tiny little slivers of space dedicated to people not in cars. Though I suspect ODOT management would respond by spewing some word-salad slop about how they are monitoring the situation and how this demonstrates the need to fast track the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program and its associated active transportation improvements.
Expect other motorists to start to take notice of the “shortcut” and follow suit
The livability of Portland is truly undergoing a death by a thousand cuts this decade. Portland is my home and I think the natural beauty of our city is hard to beat. But when you go pretty much anywhere else and there’s no trash piles everywhere, cars have plates, businesses are open all day, the city center is vibrant, etc., it’s hard to come back here. Portland doesn’t have to be this way, but here we are!
You kind of get used to it after a while, but other cities are not like this. There’s something unusually dysfunctional about Portland.
Yeah I agree with you. It’s really frustrating though and it’s not how I want to live. I have too many days where I feel like I’m gonna blow my top. It’s exhausting.
I find NYC, SF and LA worse than Portland. In LA I couldn’t even use a lot of bike paths because there were tents across them in places.
Not saying this should be acceptable just saying I’ve found it worse in other cities.
DR. Word Smith reported that each of the 25 plus cases are judged to be
” an isolated incident”.
Some time ago, we had multiple vehicles regularly entering the I205 path where it leaves the City of Maywood Park and heads south along the edge of Gateway Green, driving along the bike path, then veering off through the park to an area where homeless camps kept popping up on ODOT property under NE 102nd Ave. It took a long time, but we eventually persuaded ODOT to put up bollards at the access point to keep the cars off the path and out of the park.
This fires me up something fierce and while I won’t be posting up with a 12 gauge as someone suggested I will make sure to have my GoPro on me next time I ride across to the ‘couve to get a license plate or business name of these scofflaws! Grrrrr
I’m a lot more concerned with the now ever-present e-bikes going 30 mph on Bend bike paths than I am of the occasional emergency vehicle. I do see occasional cop cars, looking for a perp, driving at 10 mph. Can’t tell you how many times I have been almost run over by e-bikes. Not excusing a tow truck, though, unless it was a true emergency.
There is an easy, non-bollard fix for this: just extend the Jersey barrier around the full length of the freeway on-ramp at the other end of that “short cut.” Getting stranded in that field with nowhere to go but back will be deterent enough for folks looking to bypass traffic. Looking at Google maps street-level photos, it appears enough vehicles have used this “alternate” route to wear a path in the field. The Jersey barrier solution is not sufficient to prevent access to that field (say to build an encampment), but it would block the folks trying to cheat traffic rules.
Tow trucks are considered emergency vehicles if he was responding to a crash on i5 and needed to drag vehicles off the road to open traffic flows.
Do you know if emergency vehicles can use bike paths tho? I don’t think so but am not 100% sure. That’s what freeway shoulders and sirens are for.
Didn’t you do a story on this recently? Where private service vehicles (not even remotely emergency vehicles, and not specially trained drivers) we’re able to use bike paths as long as they had their flashers on and drove slowly?
I am quite certain an ambulance could use the path if the need arose.
Seem like a good case for putting up some camera’s on the bike path.
If they can put up red light camera and speed camera, why not wrong way cameras?
Might even catch some other illegal usage of bike paths.
Do you think driving on the bike path is more dangerous than speeding or running red lights?
If you could install one more camera, wouldn’t it be where it would have the greatest safety value? And if you could install two more, wouldn’t you put them both where they would have the greatest impact on safety?
Maybe a year ago I was on foot working on getting to the bridge to get into Vancouver, and some driver on the road yelled to me “watch out behind you.” I turned around and saw a car barreling towards me on the sidewalk/bikepath. I do not think she was going to stop if I didnt get out of the way.
Car drivers love to complain bikers are entitled for wanting bike infrastructure, then they do this crap.
My only question here is how the heck did they figure out the right navigation from the dropped spaghetti noodle that is the bike path there? I have to re-figure it out every time I go, and I’ve done it dozens of times. I always end up on a desire path.