One of my favorite cycling destinations is getting a big upgrade. Portland Parks and Recreation just announced that they are moving forward with the Kelley Point Park Trail Project, which will fill a gap in the bike path network and allow people to access the park without crossing N Lombard/N Marine Drive.
Kelley Point Park is a 105-acre oasis with a beach, wooded area, and large meadow at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. It’s also accessible from many north Portland neighborhoods via the carfree 40-Mile Loop, making it a perfect destination for all-ages cycling. But it could be better.
Currently a section of the 40-Mile Loop that leads into Kelley Point Park ends at N Marine Drive and requires you to cross the busy, high-speed freight route to access the park. Once inside the park, riders share the road with car users for the first few tenths of a mile before you’re able to hop on a paved bike path.
Many folks don’t realize it, but if you stay on the 40-Mile Loop path (named “Rivergate Trail” on Apple Maps) south of the Kelley Point Park entrance and go toward the Columbia Slough under N Lombard, you’ll come to the end of the paved path (red marks in map above). There’s room to enter the park there, but it’s dirt and has some rocks to get over. I typically go this way to avoid the Lombard/Marine Dr crossing.
This project will construct 1,400 feet of new, paved path that will connect to the existing path within the park. Parks says the path will be 10-feet wide with one-foot wide shoulders. According to a new map released by Parks, the path (circled in red above) will follow the road (unfortunate, but likely that alignment has less natural area impacts) for most of its length.
Funding for this $2.7 million project comes from a combination of $1.9 million from Metro in 2022 via their Parks and Nature Bond Measure awarded by Metro back in 2022 and $800,000 in Parks System Development Charges.
If all goes according to plan, Parks will break ground on the project this coming spring and open the new path in late fall 2026.
Learn more at the project website.
Thanks for reading.
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The Underpass to Nowhere has been there for, what, 15 years, whenever the slough bridge was re-built? Glad they’re finally connecting it up. I love KPP.
Cue up my usual moaning about how east of the river gets all of the bike-infra projects.
Am I wrong?
No, you are correct, you are usually moaning
This is a great project! It leverages existing infrastructure- trails, a park, an underpass- to provide a connection that multi[lies the recreational opportunities and will only improve the experience. This also connects to the trail along the slough that runs to the Smith/Bybee wetland. That trail was damaged by flooding, but the Port should repair that, and hopefully this will inspire some action. Even though that trail is closed, it is amazing to walk down to see turtles, herons, raptors, etc. Unfortunately, the path gets a lot of people driving down it.
This looks like a nice improvement, and I’ve recently commented that the community should be more supportive of whatever improvements we get and not worry so much about building the bike network in priority order. This project is convenient from my house, and I ride through here quite a bit. I will certainly enjoy it.
But I have to wonder why it is coming before work on the section between this project and the bridge over Columbia Blvd. at Chimney Park. Or the missing links along Marine Dr., or any number of more pressing needs on the routes to KPP. I would say PDX has done pretty well developing bike paths in NOPO. It’s just that there is so much more to be done to make what is already constructed live up to its potential.
PBOT should have world-class bike infrastructure planning expertise. They do have a capable communications department. I wish they would use this expertise to communicate where the city is going and what to expect. I’m not sure it’s appreciated within the city government how demoralizing the seemingly random episodic development is. Building a visibly expensive bridge to nowhere and letting it fester for decades screams disfunction. Simple communication, including acknowledgement that failure to target missing links has been costly in terms of network connectivity, would do a lot. Maybe the BAC could help PBOT develop flyers/web pages/something to let citizens know what the vision and plan for bikeways in Portland is. Right now we just wait for BP articles, which arrive stochastically.
The bridge between Pier and Chimney Park, the planned bridge over Columbia Blvd, the path around the St Johns Prairie, the future bridge over the Columbia slough, and this path in Kelly Point are all part of a larger vision call the NP Greenway
https://npgreenway.org/
There is also a section built below University of Portland and more planned as part of the Portland Botanic Gardens. It is moving very slowly, and some of these projects seem like overkill when considered in isolation, but the overall vision is thrilling!
That is, indeed, a good vision. Thanks for the link! I still maintain there’s a storytelling problem. (I’m a fairly informed frequent user of the area and I have never heard of the nonprofit nor the plan.)
I agree, they are not doing a good job of communicating the need or the vision
According to my math that $2.7 million for 1,400 feet of paved trail is about $1,928 per foot. No wonder our nation is in so much debt. Oh well, who cares? I’ve ridden out to Kelly Point about two to three times a month for the last year and never had any idea that the trail looped under the bridge/road. I don’t go into the park every time I’m out there, but when I do, I have not found crossing the road that dangerous, not $2.7 million dollar dangerous. Generally, I’m all for more bike infrastructure and even yesterday while cruising along the Willamette bikeway under the Hawthorne, I was thinking all this great biking infrastructure will be a boon for the city as we sink further and further into social and economic depression…. as long as we can keep the homeless from squatting where we ride.
Funny … I, too, have visited the park many times and failed to find the underpass.
I agree that crossing Marine Dr. is not so bad — you’ve already traversed much worse if you’ve gotten there by riding Marine Dr. (from the E) or Lombard (from the S/W). You may already be riding on that side of Marine Dr. In this light, this seems like a suboptimal development (costs a lot to avoid one easy crossing). I may still prefer to use the existing access road once this is built, e.g. On the other hand, I can see the usefulness of this development in the context of families riding up from St. Johns on a so-called ‘all ages and abilities’ route over the shiny bridges at Pier and Chimney Parks (assuming the latter is actually built), around the abandoned dump, around S+B Lakes, under the shiny bridge across the Slough from where the picture for this article was taken, and into Kelley Point. If you have a group that you do not want to expose to a big freight road like Marine Dr., this will be an important crossing. That is obviously the vision of somebody (it would be weird for that nice route to come about randomly). This vision has not been communicated anywhere that I’m aware of, and, additionally, there remain several unresolved stretches of this route. I have absolutely no confidence that the city will be able to get them usable. Emphasizing a larger vision would really help shore up support for these projects. Maybe PBOT doesn’t care about that, but I think they should in these tight budget times lest their budget gets shifted to sweeping campers off the paths or other uses.
In response to another of my snarky comments, maxD educated me about the NP Greenway project (thanks!), which supplies the mystery vision that provides a much more rational context for this project and the bridge over Columbia at Chimney Park.
Rather spend 2.7 million of tax dollars on this project than $160 billion dollars for lC€
KPP from my house is a nice 30 mile flat loop that is a fun way to get some fast miles under my belt on a weekend morning, (I avoid this place during the workweek for the most part)
I’m all for new infrastructure, but I might have thought that the bridge at Lombard and Terminal would be a higher priority than this.
But the “hook ups”? 😉 IYKYK
Thanks MaxD for the info on the N. Portland Willamette Greeenway Trail vision.
Note that there has been for decades a lovely mile of riverside trail on Swan Island. Metro is committed to restoration at Willamette Cove (approx 30 acres) which will include that section of trail. Decatur Street adjacent to Baltimore Woods gets you most of the way from Cathedral Park to Pier Park. As the song says “inch by inch, row by row…gonna make this garden grow.” Join Friends of NPDX Willamette Greenway Trail and help make it happen.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks as always for your excellent reporting! Could I ask that you make a small but important correction to this story? The $1.9 million that Metro provided was not from the Regional Flexible Funds Allocation but was in fact from the 2019 Parks and Nature Bond Measure. More info can be found here: https://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/metro-council-awards-20-million-trails-grants
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you!
Robert
ok Robert. I’ve edited the story to reflect that. Thanks for the note.