The Portland Bureau of Transportation is finally making good on its promise to upgrade and harden bike lanes throughout the city. About 3.1 lane miles of bike lanes at nine different locations that currently use plastic posts to separate bicycle riders from other road users will be replaced with concrete curbs.
Earlier this month, crews replaced plastic posts on a section of the two-way bike lane on Northwest Naito Parkway between NW Davis and Hoyt (between the Steel and Burnside bridges). Later this month they’ll finish the work on Naito with new concrete curbs between Ankeny and Couch. The work on Naito cost the agency $232,000.
The move comes in response to a March 2024 memo from the City Traffic Engineer related to the agency’s use of temporary materials, which have been found to have increased maintenance costs and fall short of the city’s goals for bike network attractiveness.
The first batch of locations (see below) are a subset of a longer list I shared back in August 2024. According to PBOT, they will upgrade nine locations using funds from their General Transportation Revenue account. (GTR is made up of the city’s share of the State Highway Fund (gas taxes and vehicle registration and title fees) and parking revenues.)
For more information and to keep track of when specific locations will be completed, take a look at PBOT’s Bike Lane Upgrades: Concrete Separators website.
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I’m so glad these curbs went in. They look bad and they’re too low and easy to get over, but they’re better than nothing, although I wish the posts had remained on top of the curb. I am concerned about cars jumping the curb to try to turn around if there’s a big train delay, which happened occasionally wherever there were gaps in the flex posts.
One thing that irritated me about the installation was that the construction workers parked IN THE BIKE LANE every morning while they worked on it, and before they had flaggers out or signs up directing users to the waterfront path. It’s so typical with any work on or around the Naito Greenway, and it’s my biggest pet peeve with how the city does bike lane upgrades. They need to talk to their contractors about it, my god.
I was in Victoria, BC recently and the curb protection they’ve put in there was aesthetically pleasing AND extremely functional. I’m grateful for what we have in terms of bike infrastructure, but seeing what’s possible made me wish for more.
Even Seattle uses regular curbs when they harden their bike lanes. I don’t know why PBOT builds these with the intent purpose of being able to be driven over so easily.
Lawsuits. My guess is that PBOT wants to avoid the even small chance of having a court case go against them when some poor defenseless driver veers out of their lane while texting and gets their car damaged.
Are there no lawsuits in Seattle?
Likely for an emergency route. It’s a tradeoff, but it’s a huge benefit in the Netherlands, for example, where bike lanes are often dual purpose slow lanes for bikes/wheelchairs and ambulances on occasion. Bollards would certainly be more effective in keeping drivers from potentially using the bike lane
Nearly all the bike lanes being put in DC and Charlotte are curb-protected now, hardly any of the painted or candlestick variety anymore.
Hopefully with better-quality curbs! Enjoy!
When I was in DC a couple weeks ago I saw a set of expensive Dutch-style bike lanes on North Carolina Street NE and C-Street NE, which the current Google aerial photos show but not yet in Street View, with a sidewalk, street trees on a berm, then an exclusive protected bike lane, AND then a second planted berm, then a parking lane, and one or two car travel lanes, then a center median, from 13th to 21st. It was both beautiful and felt very safe.
Will these curbs include the exclusion of cars using the bike lanes as a loading zone for Saturday market? If the City still allows the takeover of the bike lanes without a detour, these curbs are a performative waste of money. There is a clear and well known conflict of interest that should have been addressed during design but was not. Now there is a recurring conflict and the City simply ignores it and lets vendors and bike just duke it out.
I appreciate that these are more permanent, but am I the only one who feels worse about it? The poles were effective as a visual deterrent (even if the physical resistance was nothing), but after driving and cycling along Naito many times since then, I can say these curbs are practically invisible. And it’s extremely easy to drive over those curbs (I literally saw a city employee do it near Skidmore Fountain yesterday). Would some yellow paint make this better?
Matthew, PBOT definitely knows how to design curbs or barriers to exclude cars and protect bike lanes, and effective protection could be accomplished within the same budget as these curbs. So why, when we are facing severe budget limitations, is PBOT spending precious resources on a solution that will not address the problem? I believe PBOT is showing us what they care about. Ignore what they say and focus on what they deliver: PBOT cares about the comforts and convenience and speed of people driving. The bike and ped money is limited to keeping them out of the way of cars, but they will NOT keep cars out of the way of bikes or peds. PBOT is a cars-first organization.
The new 4th ave PBLs have curb protections that are bevelled on the bike lane side and flat curbs on the car lane side. So it’s certainly not alien to PBOT to make separation less “mountable.” I have no evidence for this, but my guess is the main difference here is the likelihood of emergency vehicles requiring the bike lane to bypass cars in traffic on Naito vs 4th.
I had the same thought. Do they really not even have reflectors on the top? Or at least reflective paint? Ya know, like any lane divider should have? Anyone know if there is any plan to improve visibility?
Rode by it today and they have little retroreflectors on them now.
I love these and was happy to ride on Naito earlier this week because of them.
I did notice however that they didn’t install any gap for bikes entering from Everett St, which the Everett aproach at Naito has a big buffered lane complete with markings for bikes to take an eastbound left. Seems like kind of an easy thing to not forget…
I had the same reaction, Nic. I frequently use Everett to get onto the Naito bikeway after crossing the Broadway Br. There is a small gap that makes the turn (either to go N or S on Naito) feasible, but, as folks have said above, the new curbs are not very visible, so it seems unnecessarily hazardous.
All of these projects are in District 4; I wonder how the other councilors will feel about this?
I like these and am happy to see PBOT replacing plastic wands with concrete. These are the same type of curbs on Rosa Parks and outer Division; both of which I feel very safe riding on. I imagine the more “mountable” design probably had something to do with either the fire station just down the street or the railroad wanting to get large maintenance vehicles through.
What I really want to see is a good connection from Naito to the NW Flanders greenway. Currently it feels very much like the convoluted Ross Island Bridge situation for drivers.
This is false. NE Couch, SE Hawthorne, and SE Morrison are in District 3, and NE 102nd is in District 1.
Also, the idea that every single project has to have precisely equal impacts on every district is absurd.
Maybe they’ll feel like the cyclists in their district who commute to district 4 might have safer routes after the projects are complete.