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.”
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.