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.
