When the pandemic hit in 2020, one of the most consequential actions taken by the Portland Bureau of Transportation was to create a process for restaurants and cafes to quickly transition into sanctioned, outdoor dining areas (what PBOT called the Healthy Business Program). Fear of the virus was widespread and having seats outside was one way business owners held on during those chaotic years.
For transportation reformers, it was an exciting time because the tables and chairs provided natural traffic calming and helped give many people a new perspective on how we could use streets. And on blocks where a full street closure was permitted, we saw community life emerge as it always does when people are given space that’s free from cars.
That’s what happened at SE 31st and Division. Imperial Tap Room was eager to have the extra space and customers flocked to the carfree block. One reader who contacted us recently said the plaza, which accommodated patrons of Imperial and other restaurants in the area had been, “a great carfree gathering space, attracting large crowds, families, etc. with live music, food pop-up events, and a place to sit.”
So when he heard PBOT had ordered the removal of the plaza and noticed the tables were gone and car drivers were back in the space, he reached out to BikePortland. Why? he wanted to know: “The removal of a carfree public space on a heavily pedestrianized corridor is a bummer,” he shared.
I agree!
According to Megan Doherty, part of the public realm and street activation team at PBOT, the plaza outside Imperial Tap Room was never an official plaza. It was one of the last holdovers from the pandemic when PBOT would allow one restaurant to close a full block to car traffic. PBOT’s new Outdoor Dining Program (the permanent version of the pandemic’s Healthy Business Program) allows businesses to use only the parking lane.
Similar to the situation I reported on in Kenton, where an adjacent business owner fought back when his pandemic-era plaza was at risk of being lost to the new, updated policy, PBOT says they were initially willing to work with the owners of Imperial Tap Room to transition the space into a more permanent (carfree) plaza. However, according to an email from Doherty to another BikePortland reader who asked about the status of SE 31st and Division, city fire codes deemed the location unfit for a plaza.
“A fire in the duplex behind the building of Imperial [Tap Room] set off a Fire Review of the site and it was determined not feasible for a street closure. Imperial will still have some space in the street and have sidewalk café seating as well,” Doherty wrote.
As much of a bummer it is to lose this plaza, it’d be an even bigger one if the City of Portland cuts funding for the entire program. At a meeting of the Portland City Council Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on April 21st, PBOT staff said their plaza program could be eliminated as part of a $5.3 million reduction required to balance the budget for their project planning division. (In locations where plazas are feasible, like the one coming to SE Hawthorne and 37th, they can happen regardless of the city budget because their funding comes from outside sources.) UPDATE: I’ve learned since publishing this post that, even if private funding can be found, PBOT would still need some funding to oversee the plaza since it’s on public right-of-way they own. That means if the plaza program is fully defunded, there can be no plazas. In the case of SE Hawthorne and 37th, it’s on a six-month pilot, so if the plaza program is not funded in the budget, that plaza would be taken out at the end of the six months.
The fate of PBOT’s plaza program is still uncertain. All eyes will be on Mayor Keith Wilson’s budget, which is expected to be released May 5th.
CORRECTION, 5/2: This article originally said the plaza on SE Hawthorne would be at SE 34th. That was a typo. The correction location is SE 37th. I regret the error.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Wow. What a loss for the community.
The first thing I notice is a fire truck could have easily gone through the plaza as it stood. Second, how on earth does a plaza cost PBOT money when that’s hundreds of square feet of roads it no longer needs to maintain? Let’s look at this holistically, please.
A loss for the community is another renter having to live in unsafe or deficient housing because NIMBYs and YIMBYs both come from a culture that worships money and those who derive power from rent-seeking.
A loss for the community is a houseless person suffering due to lack of city-funded and city-built public housing because NIMBYs and YIMBYs both distrust government and believe its revenue should go to profit-mongering development corporations.
A loss for the community is another human being being severely injured or killed by a reckless or negligent driver because so many Portlander do not give a **** about traffic safety and more sustainable transportation options.
This particular plaza was especially poorly executed, as the photos attest.
The city seems to be cracking down on sidewalk shelters as well. Blank Slate on Glisan had to take theirs down.
The lack of imagination about fire safety is pretty ridiculous. PBOT could easily develop a prescriptive design (man portable barriers, pavement marking for fire lanes, etc.) rather than cater to every demand of the fire bureau under the umbrella of “safety”.
City Fire Codes provide exactly that, in writing, and approved by City Council.
PBOT could have easily used staff expertise to translate “City Fire Code” it in to an easily accessible compliant plan (prescriptive design) for communities and businesses desiring street closures but has not decided to do so.
The Fire Code states the rules. A prescriptive design would be a basic design that can be applied in typical situations, that meets the Fire Codes and PBOT regulations. Plaza project proponents would know that if they used the prescriptive design, their project would meet those requirements, streamlining the design process. And the City review process would also be streamlined, since the prescriptive design would have already been reviewed.
I’m not sure how “easily” it could be done. But there’s lots of precedent for it. Prescriptive designs have long been available for things like decks, ADA restrooms, rowhouse details, ADUs, duplexes, etc. They eliminate the need for projects in common situations to be designed and reviewed from scratch.
I see… Sort of like if you stick to this design, you should be good to go?
Do you think that could be done with a street plaza project, or do you think the rules are too context specific? And do we know that such a prescriptive design doesn’t already exist?
Part of the problem might have been that these plazas were deployed rapidly with very little input from anyone. It sounds like on this particular project, no one even thought to check the relevant fire code.
I’m really guessing, but it seems like a fully prescriptive design might be difficult due to differences in sites. But a variation of that–more of a checklist with diagrams showing various components–“here are the signs needed at each end, here are the pavement markings which must delineate a clear path 16′ wide, etc.” might be readily achievable. It wouldn’t be as easy as “just take this diagram to the reviewers and they’ll stamp it” but it could be a major streamline.
I agree about some of these projects possibly happening without proper code checking. City agencies (at least some people in them) often don’t know code requirements–even of their own bureaus, let alone others.
Whenever I see curb-side dining areas, like those along 28th and Burnside, I wonder how long it’s going to be before a drunk driver takes one out and the injured diners sue Portland for everything it has. They’re death traps.
Then sidewalks are death traps.
So true. The death trap street seating along the east side of NE/SE 28th really scare me (near Whole Foods). It’s only a matter of time until something bad happens on that street.
Yet the street seating has been up for years in many places, and I haven’t heard of one where a driver hit them and caused any injury to diners. So, NOT a death trap. (we reserve those for crosswalks)
We’ve had dozens and dozens of parklets in parking lanes in San Francisco for over a decade now, and very very few instances of them getting hit or people getting hurt. It happens far less often than you might think.
Imagine a city where the streets are for people, except for a few streets that are reserved for climate-destroying and health-destroying motor vehicles. But alas, we opt for cities in which the streets are for climate-destroying and health-destroying motor vehicles, except for a block here or there on a few streets reserved for people.
When have American city streets ever been for people? It seems people have been second (or third) to livestock, horses, wagons, carriages and now cars for a long time
All those things are “for people”; horses and livestock didn’t just mosey in for a cup of tea, and carriages and cars are instrumental to… people.
By your definition of what for the people means then we are living in a modern paradise?
No, I didn’t think we are living in a modern paradise, butI do think drivers and passengers in cars count as people. I don’t see the connection between those two ideas.
I’ve never really thought of people in cars, transit or on bikes as people in terms of transportation. People are on foot maneuvering around the world as nature provided for. People in cars, in transit and on bikes (or horses) are a different category, have different needs and affect the world in different ways.
Yes, everyone are people trying to get places, but I think to equate a lifted truck with people in it with people on the ground walking is a bit much.
Sorry, I don’t understand. What is it about our cities that are “as nature provided for”? They are completely artificial environments, and even walking is mediated with artificiality, with concrete and shoes for example.
That argument would go further with me if we were talking about opening wilderness areas to bikes, for example.
I know your are a smart person. You know I’m not equating trucks to pedestrians; I’m just saying “streets are for people” as a way of excluding vehicles doesn’t make sense because people use vehicles to move around.
Just say “imagine a street with no motorized traffic”.
“ You know I’m not equating trucks to pedestrians; I’m just saying “streets are for people” as a way of excluding vehicles doesn’t make sense because people use vehicles to move around.”
Sounds good to me! I thought that’s where you were going, but sometimes things take an esoteric trip into the weeds:-)
Look at old film and photographs. People weren’t second to horses, carriages, etc. They mingled.
https://smartwatermagazine.com/blogs/agueda-garcia-de-durango/new-york-manure-and-stairs-when-horses-were-cities-nightmares
This is a fun topic to research. There is a lot of info on what cities were like back when that explains the rise of the automobile and the problems they brought.
There was no mingling with lakes of feces or piles of rotting draft animals or the flow of industrial carriage traffic to fuel the brutal, manual labor that so many city inhabitants spent their lives doing.
Films were entertainment then as they are now and it is no surprise they showed happy, pleasant scenes.
Horses also tended to freak out and run wildly out control, sometime trampling people in the process or crashing into them with their carts.
Imagine two horses tied together and attached to a cart and one gets spooked and panics. It’s not going to end well for the horses or anyone in their path.
Transportation in cities didn’t go directly from horse to automobile. You’re skipping several decades between horses and private automobiles where transportation was provided by streetcar and railroad. Heck, there are entire countries where transportation isn’t primarily via car and never has been, for example: Japan.
“Rise of the automobile over the horse” is car brain nonsense sponsored by the auto industry.
Some cities still have streetcars to this day, forever in that twilight phase between horses and automobiles.
Streetcars did not replace horses, they coexisted for many decades, just as streetcars and automobiles did (and do). But motor vehicles largely did replace horses for transportation, first in cities, then everywhere, largely because a critical mass of people found them to be a better alternative.
We can’t win if we don’t know our own history and how we got to where we are now. The reason automobiles became ascendant (among other reasons) is that they required less care and didn’t cause blatant life threatening pollution when alive or dead. Knowing how and why they replaced animals will help us replace them. If one hides behind the blinders of propaganda then we’ll never be able to replicate the reasons or conditions of why cars won, but with what we want to win.
I agree that we need to understand how we got to where we are, but we seem to be disagreeing about where we are.
Automobiles are “ascendant” because they’re massively subsidized by tax money and poor land use. There are many cities around the world right now that do not have a transportation mode share dominated by cars. These are functional, modern cities that do not subsidize cars to the extent we do, and cars are not “ascendant”.
I suspect the next thing you’ll point out is freight movement, but there again we’re talking about mode shift due to subsidy. There is freight moving around via water and via rail all across the world. The choice has to do to with cost. Automobiles are not required for freight movement – it’s a question of which mode gets subsidized to lower the cost.
Our transportation system uses big machines to move around small amounts of freight at extremely high speeds. It is cheap and easy to do so because we spend a ton of tax money and public space to subsidize those vehicles. We are the absolute worst in the world for car subsidies.
That’s where we are. To steal a quote from Moneyball:
There’s rich teams, and there’s poor teams, then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’s us.
Now on to history and horses. The switch from animal power to machine power was a big shift. In this country, that shift happened near simultaneously with the introduction of the automobile. Yes, the automobile is a machine, and machines replaced animal power, but that doesn’t mean that the automobile is the natural replacement for the horse. The correlation doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Horses were never a common mode of transportation for regular people, they were only for rich folks. You’d be more accurate to argue that cars are a natural replacement for walking shoes.
Additionally, in most cities outside the US, auto transport is not the “ascendant” mode share, and even in the ones that are, that shift happened *long* after horses were common on city streets. Horses didn’t get replaced by cars in any of these cities.
When we subsidized canals, freight moved by water and horse. When we subsidized railroads, freight moved by rail. Now we subsidize roads and freight moves via truck. The correlation is the subsidy, not horses and cars.
Cars have very little to do with horses, and everything to do with subsidy. Until we deal with the subsidy, we’re gonna be stuck with the cars.
It’s probably worth noting that the US moves a larger share of its freight by rail than any European country except Estonia, Latvia, and Switzerland. I know of no city in the world where freight is distributed by train; it’s always by truck, and there is a huge amount of intranational and international freight moving around on large trucks all across Europe.
So, clearly, subsidies, even including the rather broad definitions you appear to be using, aren’t the entire picture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage
Really awesome points Kate. I love it.
One small subject was left out. Prior to the adoption of autos, most of the “nice” roads that were built were done so as a result of advocacy from–yes–cyclists. The “League of American Wheelman” was the catalyst to start covering cobblestones using bitumen and concrete in cities. That combination of smoother roads and the intro of the “safety bicycle” in the 1880s, made cycling extremely popular (unfortunately the mountain bike wasn’t invented yet, or we may have had a different history :)).
The idea that cars were instantly successful is also a bit of a rewriting of history. Cars did not work well when introduced in their various iterations compared to walking and biking. Despite the fact that roads were essentially mud, there simply was little use for them, i.e., it wasn’t until a group of people (largely rich, white cyclists like Ford, Dodge and Chevrolet) advocated for roads in order to use their new toys.
That subsidy continues today as Kate pointed out. The US spends >$250 billion per year on just maintaining/building roads, almost entirely for the use of cars. The overall subsidy our culture provides for car use in the US is around 40%.
“The idea that cars were instantly successful is also a bit of a rewriting of history.“
No one is saying that. Where did that come from?
I am curious to hear of some of these countries that provide transportation with a minimum of auto travel. The countries I’ve been in with relatively low auto use were because of financial reasons and not by any choice. All the people I talked to in those places were eager to have their own cars to distance themselves from the grinding poverty and were eager to hear stories of car use.
Just so we’re on the same page,
ascendant
/ə-sĕn′dənt/
adjective
Inclining or moving upward; ascending or rising.
Dominant in position or influence; superior
You might not like it and I might not like it, but the auto in all its forms of car, truck, bus, semi are indeed the preeminent mode of transportation. Whether it’s subsidized or not (and I agree with you that it is) matters not at all because they are in the here and now. Reality matters and the auto is ascendant in the moment.
Horses were not just for Virginia nobles to race and play on. They and donkeys and oxen moved people and supplies throughout this nation in its cities and backwaters and anywhere in between. The Native Americans didn’t see horses as shoes when they were introduced via the Spanish and our ancestors didn’t either. They were transportation other than walking just as cars are transportation other than walking.
It always nice to find a fellow anti-globalist as well. The idea that we have massive cargo ships constantly going back and forth spewing pollution with literal slave and near slave conditions in foreign lands producing our trinkets, electronics and machines still blows my mind.
Whoa Jake9. Kind of a large paintbrush. Certainly, there are countries where auto traffic is very rare due to financial reasons (e.g., Albania, Cuba). And those places incidentally are some of the safest places I’ve ridden a bike. There are some middle-ground places where there is a mix of financial and geographical constraints. Medinas in N. Africa have near-zero SOV traffic, with most of the deliveries done within the Medina by smaller things like bikes, moped or carts. Kotor and Venice are other such place with near zero car traffic due to geographical constraints. And they all function quite well largely without SOVs.
Cities in developed countries such as Tokyo have a SOV mode share of around 27%, Amsterdam 20-25%, Copenhagen ~30%. There are a lot, particularly if you’re willing to look for smaller cities (or car-free city centers). I don’t want to put words in Kate’s mouth, but one of the points here is that cars are often both incredibly inefficient, and detrimental to the quality of life and economic viability in dense urban settings.
Okay, first….
“Whoa Jake9. Kind of a large paintbrush. “
When I travel it’s not for vacation or flittering around the wealthy and quaint spots of the civilized world. I was either teaching or doing military work so have had an opportunity to have real discussions with real working people where and how they lived. As I said, those that didn’t have cars wanted them. I didn’t talk to the whole country obviously, but all the ones I talked to wanted a car/truck.
Second…
“Cities in developed countries such as Tokyo have a SOV mode share of around 27%, Amsterdam 20-25%, Copenhagen ~30%”
Kate and I were discussing countries, you’re talking wealthy cities. It’s not helpful since you’re not Kate who was expressing some intriguing ideas and I was curious to see what countries they considered car free.
Third….
If you’re going to answer questions no one asked you, perhaps answer a question someone did ask you….
“The idea that cars were instantly successful is also a bit of a rewriting of history.“
No one is saying that. Where did that come from?
I’m still waiting for an answer.
This rhetoric is counterproductive. It purposefully misconstrues the word “people” to ignore that people are inside, using and deriving utility form cars and the “climate-destroying and health-destroying” verbiage is overblown.
Until you can come up with an alternative in a metro-area with jobs spread all around and densities of 2-4,000 per square mile you’re not doing anyone any favors with this type of comment. Lets clean up the public transport–make it go more places, increase density–not shame people for driving to get around.
In this age of hyperventilating activists, overblown language is just ignored–white noise.
I think this kind of response misses the point. Very expensive, invasive accommodations need to be made to support automobile accessibility on all four sides of every city block. It’s this huge complex thing that all but dense cities can barely (if at all) afford. All this is done to support the cars. If all it was for was supporting people, it wouldn’t be as big and expensive. A dirt path supports people. A bus line supports people.
Maybe put another way, automobile infrastructure supports people in the least efficient way possible of all the options.
It’s not overblown language, it is literally true, and this forum is more or less an in-group of people who should be able to give the benefit of the doubt. It’s not like Lois’ comment is a first draft of an ad campaign to go out to the general public.
I’m guessing Lois–and everyone who’s ever said, “streets are for people” understands that vehicles have people in them, and aren’t “purposely misconstruing” anything. They’re contrasting streets whose designs prioritize vehicle movement over everything else to those that don’t.
Why? Isn’t imaging what a city where “streets are for people” a necessary step towards achieving it? How can you achieve a goal without visualizing what the result would look like? That pretty much what a goal is.
Cleaning up public transport, increasing density…it looks like you’re imagining a city whose streets can be less focused on moving large numbers of vehicles around. In other words, streets that are for people. You’re doing exactly what Lois suggested people do!
And in your own imagining of a city where streets are for people, you didn’t shame anyone for driving. And a city designed with higher density and better transit could reduce driving without shaming people who drive. Lois may or may not believe people should be shamed, but her comment didn’t say or even imply that that’s necessary.
While I’m a fan of these closures in general (the nearby one at Clinton and 26th is great), this one always struck me as poorly executed. It’s useless from a cycling standpoint since there is no 31st north of Division (and 28th would still be a better route even if it did go through). The roundabout makes it crappy for drivers, especially those who live on 31st. Plus the outdoor seating there gets virtually no use from November until April (I live one block away and walk by daily).
The seasonality of the street plazas is a fair point. No one wants to eat outside in the winter, but just last week this plaza was packed. Perhaps the smaller plazas could be setup on seasonal basis, and perhaps they could be classified as a street event which may provide a more flexible set of rules.
How are cars expected to drive through when the road is blocked off for a plaza? Is there a detour? To me, the idea of these plazas seems insane. Why not expand parks instead of snarling traffic?
Our city is a grid, so there’s a detour in either direction. The blocks are tiny, too, so these detours are only 250ft away.
Cars aren’t expected to drive through them. The detours are the adjacent streets.
Where will parks be expanded to?
It makes sense that there are places currently occupied by streets with vehicle traffic that would create more public good if used for other uses. You can even think of these street closures (to vehicles) as parks that were placed on land the City already owns.
No snarling observed. No insanity observed. Where did you see that?
Won’t someone think of the nine total properties that had a minor detour when turning onto 31st from Division? They had to go a whole 700 to 900 feet out of their way!
Honestly, based on parking near Division, I would guess that the inconvenience to drivers potentially had a positive impact for parking on that block specifically, since it was harder for people to drive to. If I lived there and had to park a car on the street, I’d certainly prefer the former situation to the latter
I just spent the weekend in Portland with several friends as bicycle tourists. We thoroughly enjoyed e biking around the city eating food all the while. We stayed in someone’s basement ADU below their primary dwelling. It was a lot of fun and we want to do it again. The reason why is the infrastructure. The neighborhood greenways, traffic calming measures in intersections , street plazas, and food truck courts just make your city groovy. I really think that if you haven’t biked Portland, you haven’t been to Portland.
This is such a great comment to read. Sometimes we forget how special Portland is.
Many Portland AirBnBs and VRBO rentals are illegally listed by predatory tech companies and immoral property owners. We are also in the midst of chronic long-term housing emergency so the use of ADUs/apartments for short-term rentals should be illegal.
If Portland leaders really took the housing crisis seriously, they would ban short-term rental of viable long-term rental units, at least until the crisis had passed.
I agree too much to just hit “like”.
Also, one of the dangers to people biking near me have been short-term renters (legal and illegal) driving and parking obliviously and dangerously, at least in part due to being unfamiliar with the neighborhood. It does no good to tell a short-term renter to drive or park safely, because they’re gone in 3 days and replaced by several dozen more of them each year at each short-term rental.
If only PBOT could push bike safety projects through without any input from anyone in the name of safety too. Every bollard or bike lane seems to require the input of everyone everywhere first but removing a plaza can be done on a whim.
There was no process for installing them either.
Portland’s Outdoor Dining Program https://www.portland.gov/transportation/permitting/portland-streets/outdoor-dining is different from the Portland Street Plaza Program https://www.portland.gov/transportation/planning/plazas.
SE 31st and Division was being considered for the latter, before a fire in the duplex behind Imperial Pints set off a Fire Review.
Some other pandemic street closures, like SE Clinton at 26th, have become official plazas https://www.portland.gov/transportation/planning/plazas/plaza-directory
Don’t the fire trucks have a map with constrictions to the road noted? SE 31st, north of Hawthorne has been blocked completely for several years, for the construction of an adjacent building (NW corner), and the duplex just north of the closure was just as much endangered.. If closures are allowed for construction, for several years, why not for seating, especially in this case, where seating can be rearranged to allow a truck to come through if necessary.
Less cars! More bikes and humans!!! More public spaces.
The disappointing part of this for me was that the plaza served multiple businesses. Before the plaza, Imperial was off-limits to minors, but with the plaza, parents could bring their kids until 9pm and have an adult beverage while the family enjoyed a meal from Tight Tacos or PDX Sliders.
Because of the parking lot across Division (meaning no thru access for SE 31st), the plaza was in a good spot. Sure it probably could have been executed a little better, but the location was great.
Let’s call these what they really are: ceding public space to a handful of well-connected business owners for private use.
Then there’s the class / race angle which nobody has mentioned: you won’t find these east of 82nd, they primarily serve moneyed white neighborhoods where remote workers can sip a pint after logging off from their tech jobs at 3:30pm. If you tried to put one of these adjacent to 122nd or whatever, PBOT would likely laugh your permit application our of the room.
But don’t let that sour the feel-good-vibes of being constantly catered to by a city that works for some, but not others.
Just because something doesn’t work everywhere doesn’t mean we shouldn’t allow it anywhere.
Downward “equity” holds everyone back.
These particular iterations of street plazas are mostly clustered around old streetcar neighborhood mainstreets. But this has more to do with those being places with a lot of small businesses and dining establishments and a safe enough feeling streetscape to make it practical. In places where those characteristics are further east (or north), you’ll find plazas in places that aren’t as bougie as SE Division (Montavilla and Kenton come to mind), and they seem to do okay. The reason that a place that urbanized around the automobile is less likely to have a street plaza from the Covid era has more to do with function than socioeconomic status of the neighborhood. Why would a restaurateur in a strip mall bother with a street plaza if just about everyone drives there? The problem isn’t that PBOT would laugh someone out of the room for applying for a street plaza on 122nd and San Rafael, it’s that no one would even consider applying for that street plaza because there’s no business case to do so.
To the extent that the “old” urban fabric (pre 1950) of Portland is largely richer than and whiter than the rest of the city is only partly true. Yes, lots of those areas are richer and whiter than East Portland writ large, but East Portland is not the only place that urbanized after 1950. Most of the southwest hills fits the same urban form criteria and has no street plazas of this kind, but is largely whiter and richer than the rest of the city.
If you posit that these places serve rich, white people by design, then you should have some explanation as to why one of the richest, whitest parts of the city does not have any of these. The dynamics of gentrification in inner Portland are interesting, but they are not the only thing that explains the city. We can and should use race and class to consider how things operate within Portland, but we should also be correct when we do so.
How can you be unhappy about both? If they’re just serving well-connected business owners for private use, isn’t it GOOD if they’re not east of 82nd?
FWIW, the Business Tribune article in the Monday Roundup says the Hawthorne plaza is set for SE 37th, not 34th. I hope it’s true, for purely selfish reasons I mentioned in my other comment.