A few days ago I took a closer look at the exciting progress by the Portland Bureau of Transportation on their SW 4th Avenue Improvement Project. This is the $21 million investment that will transform SW 4th from a car-centric arterial to a street that respectfully services bicycle riders, transit users, and walkers. Plans call for a protected bike lane, new bus islands, a bus priority lane, ADA upgrades, safer crossings, updated traffic signals, and more.
Envisioned as a northbound couplet to the existing protected bike lane on SW Broadway, 4th Avenue was a top priority in the city’s Central City in Motion Plan that was adopted by council in 2020. Funding comes from a mix of the 10-cent local gas tax (Fixing Our Streets program), transportation system development charges (SDCs), TriMet
The scope of the project is a 1.3-mile segment of 4th from SW Sheridan (just south of I-405) to W Burnside. My tour looked at SW College (where the big food cart pod begins) to the current extent of the construction at SW Mill.
The first thing I noticed was the wide concrete medians between the new bicycle lane and other lanes. I’m not entirely sure yet why PBOT chose such wide medians instead of making the bike lane wider (I’ll update this post when I find out and/or include it in future stories); but I assume it has something to do with improving visibility at intersections and increasing the angle of drivers’ left turns. The wide medians also shorten the crossing distance for people on foot and will act as traffic calming as they effectively constrain the amount of space drivers have.
This project is exciting because it’s an extremely rare example of PBOT having ample budget to do high quality work — instead of cutting corners and compromising with plastic posts and paint. When complete (before the end of this year), this could be the highest quality example of modern street infrastructure in the entire city. (SW Moody in South Waterfront comes to mind, but that street is nowhere near as high-profile as 4th and is sort of a contextual anomaly.)
At SW Harrison, the (existing) curbside streetcar tracks block the bike lane and PBOT decided to route the bikeway up onto the sidewalk. There are pavement markings to delineate the walking and biking spaces. At the next intersection with SW Montgomery, the bike lane leaves the sidewalk and crosses over two lanes with streetcar tracks embedded in them. As you can see in the images and video, the bike lane crosses the tracks at an oblique angle — a rarity in Portland where planners prefer to either avoid streetcar track/bike lane crossings, or cross them at as close to a right angle as possible.
I ended my observations at the intersection with SW Mill.
Overall, it’s extremely exciting to see this project coming together and I can’t wait for it to open. I don’t want to talk too much about the design and whether I think it will work well or not — because we should wait until it’s 100% complete before making assumptions and forming opinions.
For more on this project, peruse the BikePortland archives, check out the official PBOT website, and of course stay tuned for more coverage.
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.
So amazing. Thanks PBOT!
This project is very close to my workplace. I’m excited to see it taking shape. I don’t like the left side bike lane alignment. But I welcome the transformative impact this will have on SW 4th and the whole neighborhood.
One issue that has always been a concern, even before pbot broke ground in this project, is the demand for short term parking in front of the high rise apartments near the street car tracks is extremely high. Residents get picked up and dropped off by Uber and Lyft drivers or private vehicles, delivery trucks and food delivery vehicles make frequent stops… There are consistently anywhere between three and ten vehicles that idle with their blinkers on in the vehicle travel lanes. When parking has been closed to facilitate construction, people have just gone ahead and parked in the closed parking spots, blocking temporary travel lanes.
There is metered parking at the curbside, but time limits are long, and because parking enforcement is non existent, people occupy the spots all day. Because this project is reducing the number of vehicle lanes, it has made these idling vehicles a major obstacle that causes constant traffic backups. Pbot needs to do something to free up space for short term parking and to enforce parking time limits in this area. Temporary, short term parking with enforcement of parking time limits is sorely needed.
I mostly travel through this area on bike or on foot, and am therefore not really impacted by the parking issues. But I see it and the related traffic issues everyday, and it seems to be a significant problem.
To keep the spotlight on this issue, it also directly affect bikers if you’re biking in traffic. In fact it is incredibly hazardous as it requires merging into heavy, fast-moving traffic just because a handful of people are deciding to illegally stop in the traffic lane.
Sorry but I’m not excited about this project. I hate being directed onto sidewalks where I have to slow down to avoid peds with heads in their phones. And I’ll bet that a red signal will stop bikes every two blocks and make us wait for a dedicated signal so we’re SAFE to move. This treatment is par for the course in Portland: each mode has to stop and wait for all other modes before getting its own dedicated signal. Everything takes 2-3X as long.
My old approach on 4th was head down and pedal hard, and I could stay with traffic b/c it’s downhill. It worked for me but yes – not as well for 8-year-olds. We’re all 8-year-olds now.
Plenty of adults ride slower too. I’m a big boy and will use this facility regularly. Not everyone is a “head down pedal hard” vehicular cyclist. Sorry you will have to pay attention to pedestrians now.
Correction: No one is allowed to be, anymore.
I’m aware Portland law says bikes must use bike lanes if available, however there are exceptions for avoiding hazards and overtaking pedestrians. One could argue that at the speed limit this infrastructure qualifies as hazardous, and you could continue to take a full lane as you were doing before.
Personally I’m going to wait and see how this project turns out. Maybe we’ll get lucky and all the bike lights will be timed with the flow of traffic while left turning cars have to wait at a red arrow.
Good luck with that one!
I bet they’re leaving a few car lanes open for ya if you want to do what you were doing before and bike in traffic. They’re literally just opening a new, safer option for everyone else.
Riding in the car lanes will be illegal when this facility opens.
I don’t think it’s that clear cut Watts. As I’m sure you know, there are exceptions to using a bike-specific lane. And a judge is likely to listen to reason if someone is ever cited for this. Also, in a few years I bet we repeal that dumb, outdated, unfair and discriminatory law so I actually think it’s a good idea to push the envelop a bit.
I’d take that bet, and give it a decade. As for exceptions to the bike lane law, there are some, but none of them are “designed wrong; too slow”.
I’m curious where else in Portland there are mode-separated phases on traffic signals?
Eugene has built two protected bike facilities in the last few years that have mode-separated phases at ALL signals, and there are signals almost every block on these facilities. The result, of course, is that you stop every block and spend more time stopped than riding (the signals rest on green for cars and are camera-actuated, so this is true for 8 year olds and spandex warriors).
Meanwhile, I rode the new sidewalk level two-way bikeway on Bryant Ave in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, and there were no mode-separated phases on the many signals. In case anyone’s wondering why bike mode share is decreasing in Oregon but increasing in Minneapolis…
Alex B.- there is bike signal on the broadway bridge for west/southbound cyclists. There is zero dedicated time for cyclists, meaning unless someone has arrived ahead of you to trigger the sensor and sit and wait, you will have to trigger a sensor and sit and wait. People driving will often catch a green light, but cyclists never will.
I live in Victoria (Canada) and our mode share is booming and we have a lot of signal separation of turning vs through bikes, including on the two major east/west arterials downtown. Portland’s challenge is the network is disconnected and (from my external opinion having ridden there one day in 2023) not very good compared to other places.
Great to hear from Canada Corey. I’ve heard Vancouver’s doing ok as well.
Thanks for replying, Corey. I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. In Eugene, Oregon, the bike facilities NEVER have a green at the same time as general traffic lanes. There is even a standard painted bike lane next to a general traffic lane that had a signal installed recently, and the signal is timed so that the bike lane is always red when the general traffic lane has a green, and vice versa.
In contrast, a standard practice for protected bikeways is to use a protected phase for the general traffic movement going across the bikeway. So if the bikeway is to the left of the general traffic lane(s) on a one-way street, a left turn lane will be installed. Then the signal will be programmed so the left turn lane is red while the bike signal is green, and the bike signal is red when the turn lane has a green. Typically the general traffic lanes and bike signals both have greens for the longest phases, maximizing convenience for the most people.
I haven’t been to Victoria since 2018, at which point I believe only the Pandora protected lane was complete. As I recall, it operated in the standard way, where the general traffic lanes and bike lanes would have greens at the same time as long as the protected turn lane had a red. I apologize if my memory is failing me. Similarly, I rode Naito Pkwy in Portland a few weeks ago and it operated in this more standard fashion, and even allowed turns across the bikeway while all had a green in certain low volume locations (Salmon St is the one I photographed).
The reason I’m being very particular about this is that I’ve never seen a protected bikeway anywhere in the world that’s operated the way Eugene does it, and it sucks to bike on, frankly. (It’s even worse for pedestrians, because they added actuation for pedestrians on 3 downtown streets.)
You can still take the lane and pedal down 4th. Yeah, you might get a ticket, but odds are you won’t (especially if you’re keeping up with traffic).
Infrastructure that requires illegal riding to rationally traverse is not designed right.
This is a legal issue, not an infrastructure one. I reckon that more people would prefer a short sidewalk jog than the current conditions, so the solution should be to get rid of Oregon’s bogus mandatory sidepath law not to design infrastructure that works for fewer people so that Fred can rip down 4th at 25 mph
Exactly. And beyond what you said, the current law also at least has the potential to restrict new infrastructure designs since designers don’t have the ability to say, “We’re going to focus on making less experienced riders comfortable because more experienced ones who may feel hampered by how we approach that can ride in the vehicle traffic lanes”.
Also, I’d guess there are at least some drivers who know about the current law, which frees them in their minds to drive with the attitude that “Since you’re breaking the law by riding in my lane I don’t have any obligation to give you any courtesy”. One of the worst things for bike rider safety might be if more drivers knew riding in bike lanes was legally required.
Perhaps, but the infrastructure has to take the legal framework in which it exists into account. Designing for alternate reality isn’t helpful.
Both the infrastructure and the law should accommodate whatever we collectively feel is safest and most fair. We (in the broad sense) feel that concrete protected bike lanes are best practice, so we should build with that in mind. There are specific constraints on this corridor owing to a frankly bad streetcar junction design (don’t get me started), and the compromise they made is justifiable on the grounds of safety for as many users as possible.
The fact that building this bike lane makes taking the lane (generally) illegal is not relevant in the design per se, since any type of bike infrastructure on the corridor would preclude taking the lane. We should build good infrastructure, and we should have good laws. No amount of design will get around the fact that the mandatory side path law is incredibly stupid.
“Safest and most fair” is much less important that “legal and usable” in the context of designing public infrastructure. I’m not defending the law, but it is a reality we have to contend with. And “safest and most fair” might mean walk on the sidewalk like everyone else.
I completely agree!
And don’t worry… I know all about the bad track design in this location. It’s frankly awful.
Not arguing that. But I’m also not 100% convinced that “illegal” riding will be necessary.
Wait, are we required to use a bike lane if one exists? Seems unfair as motorists never feel they have a responsibility to stay out of the bike lane.
The law has stipulations for obstacles and hazards.
But, also, don’t worry about it.
Yes.
It doesn’t require illegal riding. “Rationally” does not mean “as fast as possible”.
I agree; but it does mean “at a reasonable speed”. I haven’t ridden this section yet (obviously) so I don’t know how it feels in practice, so maybe the problem Fred identified won’t manifest itself.
Would you want your own child to “head down and pedal hard” in mixed traffic? How about your elderly parents? Should only the “strong and fearless” bicycle on city streets?
Do you have elderly parents who rides bikes? I have one (late 80s), and what I hear from him is that he absolutely hates infrastructure that requires him to ride slower than is comfortable, especially when it requires losing momentum on a hill.
So maybe let’s ask older cyclists what they want rather than making the infantilizing assumptions that people who claim to speak for them often do.
Why can’t we have infrastructure that safely accommodates multiple demographics? The way I ride solo is vastly different than if I were riding with my kids, and I want both to be safe.
Not that Fred needs anyone to speak for himself, but I doubt Fred is saying that.
Lots of people would like infrastructure that protects a range of riders,. And if it doesn’t, and does things like Fred mentioned–mixing with people walking on sidewalks, etc.–then people should have the option to LEGALLY opt to ride in traffic instead of being forced into the bike facility.
A related question–would you want your child or elderly parents (assuming they’re not “strong and fearless” riders) being forced to share a bike lane with people who want to ride much faster, and are frustrated they can’t because of the presence of your slower family members and the way the infrastructure is designed, while meanwhile there’s a street five feet away that would work well for them, but it’s not legal for them to use?
I wonder if they could put something in the streetcar tracks so that there is not such a gap to make it safer for bikers at that crossing? Seems like there should be something relatively cheap that could be installed just around that crossing since it will such a high-volume crossing.
Seems difficult to close the gap in such a way that the trains can still use the tracks.
The angle of the crossing is perfectly safe. The crossing angle has to be very shallow for tracks to actually be an issue.
Some places use a compressible rubber plug — bikes roll over it, but trains deform it and drive normally.
Yea Grant heard. I did a nosedive on the UP tracks long ago. So there is a bumper called a “flange filler” that gets used on freight lines to fill the gap for peds/bike tires. Someone more informed than I can talk about those, but generally crossing at a right angle mitigates track traps. I think the MAX uses them in some places.
Flange fillers are generally harder to implement for high traffic freight lines (because the cars are so heavy and degrade the fillers), but are common-ish for streetcar and other light rail systems. If you search “flangeway filler” you can find a variety of products, or see page 33 of this USDOT report.
Looks great! One thing I hope they can adjust in the signals that they do poorly in my opinion in general, is when cars have a right arrow to cross over a bike lane going straight with a signal, the default is basically for the right arrow to be green and the bike line to be red when the green lights for cars going straight is green.
This is super annoying and really feels like prioritizing car traffic over bikes where it happens, and on red you have to hustle to trigger the signal or else sit through a whole light cycle. This happens a lot on the East end of the Broadway Bridge (going EB to SB) and on Rosa Parks at Greeley. A better example of a signal that’s more responsive to bikes hitting the sensor is on Greeley at Going. It feels to me like the sensors are timed better to give bikes a green without stopping more of the time than in the other spots.
Agreed on the signals! I commute through Division & 82nd and they are totally set up to default to a green arrow while bikes and peds have to wait through another light cycle. What I see happen a lot is cyclists go with the car green if there’s nobody turning right, then the next signal cycle, the bike light turns green for nobody and drivers waiting to turn right get frustrated.
I agree Blake! When PBOT threatened to stop maintaining signals and replace them stop signs, I got excited at what an improvement that could be!
Nowhere in Portland (or perhaps the world) can compete in the jacked-up signal competition with SE 8th/11th/12th. It is easy to ride safely through the area if you simply ignore the signals. Following them doubles the time (often more), quadruples the frustration, and adds not an iota of safety.
At the very least it looks like they’ve forced that northernmost food cart (I’m assuming it belonged to Portland Gyro) to move that inflatable flappy guy (thwap thwap thwap thwap all day), and for that I salute them.
It’s great to see this finally getting built. It will be interesting to see what the effects are from Market onwards, as a lot of people use that part of 4th as a shortcut eastbound from the 26 tunnel exit, through downtown, and over the Morrison or Burnside bridge and back onto 84. Likely Everett street/steel bridge route will see more traffic.
It’s silly that it is often quicker to shortcut through downtown than it is to be stuck in traffic on 84 or 405/5. There need to be more projects that make downtown pedestrian and cyclist centric, and not just another cut-through. Though it will make commutes longer, I support these changes that are made for pedestrian and cyclist safety.
I’m not sure when I’d choose to take this route. Naito and SW 6th both seem like better options.
Safety and comfort are often largely dictated by intersections IMO. On Naito you basically don’t have any. For 6th, I feel like it’s a bit of a hidden gem. The lane you bike on is on the far left. You’ve got bus or MAX to your right that are going straight, so there’s no cars that will be hooking you. And I think most of the intersections are signaled. I find it to be very comfortable.
What I’d really love is a north-south biking option further west, like 12th or 14th. 13th is good north of Burnside but not south of Burnside.
Sorry to be negative here. I’m happy the 4th avenue protected bike lane is being built and such progress should be celebrated, but it seems appropriate to be constructive as well.
I’ve long wondered why the 5th and 6th streets were not turned into mostlh bike, bus, and train streets. You could make every turn a forced one for cars so cars are never there more than one block and we’d have an awesome shared streets thoroughfare.
Ironically, you are describing the state of the transit mall before the Green Line was built starting in 2007. It’s a crying shame that TriMet gave in to an extremely dubious study which consisted of a disingenuous comparison between 4th/5th/6th/Broadway and retail vacancy rates (peramlink here), alongside asking business owners what they wanted (free parking out front). So of course, TriMet capitulated entirely and I would be shocked if the changes substantially improved retail conditions. The larger problems with retail in the heart of the CBD in Portland are not related to a lack of automobile access, of which there is no lack.
Anyways, this decision was also related to having the MAX and buses share space – something which any bus rider can tell you causes delays. It was a poorly planned project, and one that permanently slowed bus service in downtown all to serve a bunch of retailers who almost certainly are out of business now. The best solution would be have been to make one of 5th/6th a dedicated bus street, the other a dedicated MAX street, and to put high quality bike facilities alongside the MAX (since there would be more space), but instead we had to serve auto access interests. If I seem bitter it’s because I am! (I didn’t live in Portland until 2021)
Oh man, I didn’t know this. SMH. Back when I went to PSU, I almost always took 5th/6th because of the low traffic (and cordial bus drivers) as well as the grade comparison to Bway. Hindsight 20/20.
The transit mall was an even more sucky and less pleasant place before the redo than it is today, well before the dawn of tent handouts and the river of cheap fentanyl. It was basically a pair of dead streets running through the heart of downtown.
I think it has more to do with the presence of TriMet rather than the absence of cars, but the Transit Mall was definitely not working for the city. I’m not sure it is even today.
I obviously can’t comment on the state of the transit mall those days, though from my reading I do recall a fair amount of discussion about the specifics of the bus shelter designs. I think the shelter we landed on (that provides no functional cover) is not very good, but I can see some of the justification for it, but I see no good case for the current car traffic configuration.
Transit malls tend to be transient places, and have genuine urban design problems, but I think the solution TriMet went for was lazy and unjustifiable. I also think the sine qua non for the transit mall’s somewhat poor conditions as a streetscape relate more to the domination of office buildings and little else (especially relative to Broadway).
I sort of agree that the transit mall isn’t working, but mostly that it doesn’t really work for bus riders, and that it’s poor network design. 5th/6th isn’t the only place people need to go downtown, and there is a serious lack of service to the west end of downtown, Goose Hollow, and NW at least partly as a result of the transit mall. Still, improving it seems like the easiest place to start.
COTW
With new asphalt, why not make a new Oregon law to ban metal-studded car tires?
No need to ban, we should sell stud tags that go on your plate next to the registration sticker. Let every county set the price that makes sense for them – $15/year in eastern Oregon, $400/year in Multnomah county.
Can’t wait to ride this!
It looks like they have failed to consider actual practical needs of cyclists again. This lane is too narrow for safe passing, and the big wide concrete barriers make it impossible to leave the bike lane to safely pass a slow moving bike. This introduces unnecessary conflict. I commute down Broadway these days, and I frequently leave the bike lane and move into the driving lane for a half block or a block to pass someone going more slowly than I want to travel. There are a lot of people who want to go 5-10 mph in a bike lane and I think that is great, but I do not want to ride behind them. Also, intermingling cyclists and pedestrians should be a nonstarter. This looks like a lot of money spent on infrastructure that will not work very well for cyclists. PBOT has really lost their ability to design infrastructure: when designing a cycling safety project, they failed to balance the safety of pedestrians and the function of the bike lane. This looks like more ill-conceived, poorly-designed bike infrastructure.
PBOT is always willing to force cyclists to travel at pedestrian speed but never willing to force motorists to travel at bicycle speed.
One thing that I found interesting in the development of PBLs in NYC was the flexibility of the design for expansion. First put in boulders and paint to claim the space for bikes/peds. (That’s a cheap fix that functionally works pretty decent compared to the final capital project.) Then, after a critical mass of people fill up the existing protected bike lane space, they widen those. Finally rinse and repeat. So some of the Ave PBLs are 10 feet wide. In other places in the world where the NYPD don’t purposely park in the bike/buys lanes, these can also serve as emergency vehicle lanes (like in the Netherlands). Not sure why PBOT doesn’t have a more iterative aproach like the NYCDOT, and why they opted for so much concrete and narrow lanes, but it could be a loooot worse.
Well said, maxD – though I’m sure someone here will point out your extreme selfishness for wanting to pass slower cyclists. Remember PBOT’s First Commandant: Thou shalt all ride like eight-year-olds.
This is looking great! I am excited to ride this. I have a bunch of friends who aren’t comfortable riding downtown from Northwest and the changes on Broadway were a big help. This will make heading back north so much more pleasant.
Just in time for me to finish up at PSU. I’ve been riding down 4th for the last couple years since it’s easily the best way back to the Hawthorne Bridge, so it’ll be nice to have a better facility, even if the timing isn’t great for me personally.
Something that grinds my gears about this whole thing is the planning of Broadway and 4th as one-way couplets despite being multiple blocks apart. It really makes for an unintuitive navigation experience, and is a complete own goal. Based on the widths of those medians, and the fact that they took up a full travel lane, I can’t think of a compelling reason why they didn’t make 4th a two-way facility (ala Naito or any of the dozens of non-Portland examples I’ve ridden). If we want people to navigate downtown effectively and intuitively on a bike without a ton of lived experience, we need to have easy to understand routes. Having any improvement over what we have had in the past is nice, but it just seems like every other city building bike infrastructure in their downtowns has two-way paths – why don’t we?
This is an interesting point, although two-way cycletracks bring in a lot more potential conflict, yet they’re also super convenient. That’s why you see so much salmoning in NYC on the ave PBLs. The ave’s are comparably wide as the distance between Bway and 4th. It’s inconvenient certainly. On the other hand DC has had two-way cycle tracks for a while on two way roads and they are/were (it’s been a while) frenetic, for lack of a better word.
As you probably know the best enviro for cycletracks is against a park, for example, to minimize conflict (e.g., Chrystie in NY, Naito in Pland). It might be doable downtown (particularly on the Park Blocks), but it would probably require some traffic removal/pattern changing. In any case downtown needs this badly.
Maybe the best cycletrack environment is against a park, but I think that two-way facilities in urban settings work just fine. Someone in this thread has complained about light timing on 13th in Eugene, but I’ve ridden this (contraflow) lane on University in Madison about 1,000 times without issue.
Portland could achieve a high-quality two-way protected bikeway network in downtown through only the removal of some street parking (and adjusting curb bulb outs in some locations). I’m not 100% sure on how contraflow signal timing would work with bikes, but tweaking signal timing is easy enough. It just feels like a waste to use all this space on mega barriers to improve driver sightlines rather than making an extra wide or two way facility.
Because every single street downtown (not Naito or Burnside) is one-way, so people won’t know to look for two-way bikes and will be mown down??
That’s all I can think of.
It’s pretty common to have contraflow or two way protected bikeways on one way streets. University Avenue in Madison WI has one, as do 13th in Eugene and 2nd in Seattle.
Check out the 2-way cycle routes on Richards and Hornby in Vancouver, BC
https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/map-cycling-vancouver.pdf
Those comical mega-medians with an oh-so-narrow bike lane suggest that PBOT assumes little future cycling mode share growth (that would necessitate passing space).
ha ha, good point- the current rate of cycling is now literally set in concrete- no room or hope to grow!
Those are the bus stops
$21M for a central planning cattle chute across wet street car tracks designed for cubicle farm residents who don’t exist anymore all to solve coasting downhill hitting every green light. PBOT at its best.
Once the millions of square feet of empty office buildings are converted into AI induced re-education camps for UBI recipients this will probably get some use, at least until the earthquake hits.
I would presume most of the use will come from PSU, which is certainly not the best situated institution of higher learning in the country, but probably will continue existing. I ride 4th as it exists now with some regularity, but I think having a dedicated facility is an improvement for people who don’t enjoy ripping down 4th with the perfect light timing (while potentially passing cars) to get from PSU to the Hawthorne Bridge in like 1 minute. If we want people to ride more, we should build facilities they will want to use.
So reducing car lanes in an already overcrowded corridor does not make for safe or serene streets. It leads to gridlock which is what regular users of this space have seen happen. They built up huge apt buildings with no parking. One lane is used for deliveries, uber/lyft as well as fedex/amazon/UPS and trucks that stock CVS and various other businesses. Let’s TAKE AWAY A LANE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS WEEEEEE
They removed a lane for Better Naito and there’s been no gridlock. Induced demand means that cars will take up all available road space whether it’s one lane or twenty.
I haven’t looked into this very deeply, but I do know that left turns from Naito onto the Morrison Bridge are painful. I have no idea if that’s related to the Natio bikeway, but I’m sure it’s frustrating to sit in that traffic.
This is not strictly true, and its trivial to think of counter examples. Building a twenty lane bypass of Burns or Lakeview will not induce more driving, nor would widening a dead-end road in SE Portland. Those are obviously stupid examples, but traffic exists at the nexus of regional transportation networks and regional land use patterns, and without changes to both, additional traffic may not accumulate. The unstated thing with “fixing congestion” is that it is usually in reference to high-volume trunk routes with a ton of latent demand, especially at peak hours, where land use patterns have historically (and still are) trending towards more intensive use of those trunk routes (i.e. suburban sprawl in Clark County).
For the specific case of SW 4th, a part of a dense network of roads in a downtown core, it probably is true that cars will take up as much space as we will allow, but induced demand is not a deus ex machina that renders all roadway and traffic questions null. It’s important to have a measured, relative approach, and to consider latent and induced demand issues when weighing if a “fix” will help or not.
SW 4th is not a very busy street. I regularly ride it on my way home from PSU, and even at peak rush hour times I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car wait for two cycles. Those apartments near PSU are almost all rented by students, who don’t really own many cars (source – more than half of renters in that census tract have no access to a car).
Having space allocated for deliveries and loading would be very useful at 4th and Mill/Montgomery. Not really sure if that’s in the final plans or not, but it should be
I didn’t see any bollards in the pictures – what is PBOT going to do to keep small cars from trying to drive or park in the bike lanes?
Even Atlanta puts bollards in their two-way protected bike lanes, at every curb cut, driveway, and intersection.
Too narrow, wrong side of the street.
Looks good. Next I’d like to see a similar treatment on 2nd Avenue in Old Town, especially concrete refuge islands at every intersection (like the one in the photo). Because there’s nothing to stop people parking in the bike lane, it’s always blocked by parked cars when the bars get busy.
The wide medians are the future bus stops! The bus lane is on the left because because buses turn left on Mill. I assume that’s also the reason the bike lane is on the left.
i work at PSU on the corner of SW 4th and Market. I‘m so excited for this to be finished. Not just for people biking, but even more so for people trying to cross 4th Ave (remember that there are several PSU buildings on the east side of 4th, including the College of Engineering, the Transportation Center and central administration). Trying to cross on the crosswalks without lights to get to the rest of campus was always a suicide mission, because of the many wide lanes and downhill slope. There were no traffic lights between Harrison and Market, allowing people to speed.