Do we have a new contender in the race for the best bikeway through a business district in Portland? With such a strong neighborhood greenway network, Portland has historically been relatively slow to install bike lanes on major commercial streets. I’ve long held that North Williams Avenue — even with its shortcomings — is the best example we have of a viable bike lane through a business district.
But after riding Northeast Broadway on Tuesday, I believe we might have another street that deserves consideration.
As I first reported 15 months ago, the Portland Bureau of Transportation once again seized an opportunity to make major striping changes to a street that was scheduled for a complete repave. The (very sensible and correct) thinking from PBOT is essentially (my words, not theirs): ‘We will have a blank slate after the repave, so we will restripe/redesign the street in a way that reflects adopted goals and visions.’ No specific changes are guaranteed on these “pave and paint” projects, and PBOT responds to what they think the community demands and will support.
In the case of the NE Broadway Pave & Paint project which PBOT began last summer, they had early support from both the adjacent business and neighborhood associations, so they were able to remove one of the general travel lanes and replace it with a bike-only lane.
Since the road is now fully open to traffic and PBOT has only a few more finishing touches to add, I felt like it was time to go grab a first look.
Please keep in mind while you look at these images (and when you watch my video coming out later today) that PBOT still plans to add: a few short segments of concrete curbs to separate lanes, more signs and pavement markings, and signal timing adjustments. The work is expected to be 100% complete by the end of September. (See their separate page for project construction for the latest updates.)
The scope of this project is NE Broadway from NE 7th to 26th. PBOT was intentional in choosing those boundaries because 7th and 26th are well-established neighborhood greenways. Starting westbound from 26th, the first change is a new buffered bike lane to 24th. The road is still two-way in this section and PBOT didn’t make any lane reallocations here — that starts at 24th. The old cross-section had six lanes: three general travel lanes, a bike-only lane, and two car parking lanes. The new cross-section has five lanes: two for general travel, a bike lane, and two parking lanes.
Kris Perry, a barber at Cutters PDX near NE 24th, said he supports the project. “It’s quieter,” he shared with me in a short interview. “The immediate thing I notice is the parking. The thing I hear from my clients the most is, ‘Oh, they took the parking away!’ It’s frustrating while it’s happening, just because of all the change; but honestly, I see the goodness in it. I’m excited for the safety of it, the families, the walkability of Broadway especially — it’s exciting!”
“I think it’s going to have a positive impact,” Perry added. “I think it might slow down traffic, but I don’t think that’s such a negative thing, not in Portland. Not today.”
Another barber at Cutters also shared how quiet the south side of the street had become and how he’d seen folks enjoying drinks at outdoor tables on the sidewalk. I talked to a group enjoying drinks at Swift Bar between NE 19th and 20th. They had a mix of feelings, and several of them were frustrated and angry about the changes. They said they wouldn’t use the angle parking because it was dangerous and they worried drivers wouldn’t stop as they backed out. Another person noted my “BikePortland” hat and remarked, “Oh you’re the one behind this. It’s you and the spandex mafia!”
Bike riders have almost double the space in the new configuration, while folks who use cars have one less lane, fewer places to park, and several blocks of angle-parking. Angle parking is something PBOT doesn’t do very often, but it was a compromise here as a way to maintain parking spaces in a way that calms traffic and creates a wider buffer between sidewalk users and people driving.
The other big compromise that everyone is talking about is the bike lane design. Unlike what has become PBOT standard practice of keeping the bike lane against the curb and making a “parking protected” bike lane — what we get on Broadway is a bike lane in the street with parking on the right and moving traffic on the left. I’ve reported previously that this was a budgetary compromise given the meager $500,000 budget (not including the paving work obviously) PBOT had to work with. (I’ve asked PBOT if they’d like to share anything else about that decision and will update this post if I hear anything new. UPDATE at 10:44 am: See end of story for PBOT statement.)
While the bike lane is not physically protected, PBOT has added two-foot buffer zones on each side, so at 12 feet it’s wider than the adjacent lanes for car users.
In addition to less space for driving and more room to ride bikes, PBOT has lowered the speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph. When you get west of NE 21st, the speed limit drops again from 25 mph to 20 mph.
The change with perhaps the biggest impact on the street are the five new crosswalks (at 11th, 13th, 17th, 19th, and 22nd) and numerous concrete median islands at intersections. These medians and crossings are a huge deal given the context of a bustling business district with a lot of foot traffic and bus transit use. To take just one example, I observed folks crossing at NE 19th — which has new concrete medians in the roadway, one at each corner — and drivers always stopped quickly. And what I loved was that they weren’t going fast to begin with. It’s an ironclad road engineering law that as space for driving shrinks, people drive more slowly. I have zero doubt the before-and-after analysis will show a significant drop in driver speeds.
Look at the before-and-after of NE Broadway and 19th:
From a cycling perspective, the new bike lanes are straightforward. There is a chicane at every intersection, where you’ve got to turn toward the curb to avoid the median, but that’s a great excuse to slow down a bit and be alert when crossing. My concern with this design is that some drivers will think this is a right-turn lane. I actually saw that happen twice while I was out there. I’m sure PBOT has prepared for this, and there will likely be more signs and markings to help prevent it.
The only real hot-spot I experienced on the route is at NE 16th. It’s a busy intersection because of a busy convenience store driveway on the northwest corner followed by a bus stop and new bulb-out waiting platform. Other than that, the fact that drivers have to cross over the unprotected bike lane to get into parking spots is not ideal. My hunch however, is that given the changes PBOT has made, combined with the presence of more bike riders in the future and the general caution people tend to drive with in dense commercial areas — the interactions between bike riders and car drivers will be more annoyances rather than serious injury or fatal collisions.
As I reached the western terminus of the project at NE 7th and was thrust back into the past in a narrow bike lane where I felt much more powerless and insecure, I couldn’t help but think of the Broadway Main Street project PBOT earned a $38 million federal grant for and was all ready to build. That project would have connected these changes all the way to the Broadway Bridge through the Rose Quarter — but the Trump Administration took that money back and the project is on ice.
I’ll take what I can get and this feels like a positive step forward. Prior to these changes, NE Broadway was not a very popular bikeway. I personally would almost never use it and preferred the NE Tillamook neighborhood greenway just a few blocks north. But now with a smooth road, more space to ride, slower drivers, and a design that tells me and everyone who uses the street that bikes belong on Broadway, I plan to use it a whole lot more.
And for what it’s worth, Mayor Keith Wilson is also a fan. He mentioned the project on my ride with him Wednesday morning, saying, “You have a dedicated bike lane on Broadway now. It’s beautiful.”
What about you? Have you ridden this yet? Have the changes piqued your curiosity enough to add Broadway to your bike routes?
UPDATE, 10:30 am: I asked PBOT to explain the rationale for implementing a buffered bike lane instead of a parking-protected bike lane. Here’s what they said:
The Broadway Pave & Paint Project is delivering a 12-foot-wide bike lane, one of the largest bike lanes in NE Portland, wider than the lane on N Williams Avenue, which has historically had among the highest rates of bike traffic in Portland.
This bike lane was designed to fit the $500,000 budget and tight schedule of a pavement maintenance project that also delivers extensive pedestrian safety and ADA access upgrades. This is the first significant change to the corridor in 30 years, though from a transportation perspective it is an interim improvement that sets up the area well for a new vision in the future, as funding becomes available.
Even with its limited budget, the design of the NE Broadway project makes it easier to install a parking protected upgrade at a later time. That’s because the design provides an immediate reallocation of space to bike and pedestrian safety and main street improvements, with a lane reduction for motor vehicle traffic.
We considered a parking protected bike lane for NE Broadway within the tight budget that would have been required.
On a high-traffic corridor, we need to provide vertical physical elements to provide effective protection of people using bicycles. Concrete separators and other civil elements would be required–which would add significant construction cost, and additional time for design and construction.
In our experience, lower-cost parking protected bike lane designs result in a low-quality project, with limited physical protection, unnecessary curb zone trade-offs and high maintenance costs.
When we use plastic delineator posts to create parking protected bike lanes, the posts are frequently knocked down. This creates an on-going maintenance cost for the bureau, diverting labor and funding from other needs.
In a bustling business district such as NE Broadway, plastic posts would also create a negative appearance of the bicycle infrastructure and the business district it is intended to support.
When it’s completed, this will be among the best “main street” bike lanes in Portland and a vast improvement over the previous condition. It places bike traffic in a buffered lane adjacent to two low-speed travel lanes and provides physical protection at intersections–where crashes, near misses and other conflicts are most common.
There is strong support from the businesses on NE Broadway for a corridor redesign to happen as soon as possible that includes additional improvements for people walking and biking, including a willingness to accept some on-street parking impacts.
Thanks for reading.
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I was sitting outside at St Simons yesterday, when 20 or so people on bikes rolled on past, shoulder to shoulder, having pleasant conversations. This couldn’t have happened a week ago. Love it. It’s even nicer to sit outside since drivers are rushing past at 40+ mph. In fact, people are so bemused by the new Weidler corner, a lot of drivers nearly come to a stop to ensure they’re doing the right thing. Serious progress here.
article needs a map with highlights of section 🙂
ask and you shall receive
Thank you for the reporting. This looks so much better than before! Here’s hoping they’re able to rework the section to the Broadway Bridge at some point, and Weidler could use an update like this too for people traveling East.
Pbot did add buffers to part of the weidler bike lane, and they narrowed weidler to one lane where it goes around the curve. But it’s still an inferior experience to biking on Broadway. I think the road cross section is narrower. It would be difficult to improve weidler all that much without going down to one vehicle travel lane.
Keep in mind Weidler has 5 vehicle lanes (including 2 parking lanes) and a standard bike lane West of 16th and 3 vehicle (including one parking lane) and a standard bike lane East of 16th. There’s certainly more than enough room for a separated bike lane along the entire ROW.
Good point on the confusion about turning right either at the intersection, or by merging into the bike lane. I drove this section of Broadway for the first time the other day and was wondering what to do. It is confusing, as the current arrangement at Broadway and Grand has you merge across the bike lane, and then turn right at the intersection. I’m hoping some signage and concrete strips ahead of the intersection will help make sense out of this.
This document shows the overall setup of the lanes, but doesn’t show all the details.
NE Broadway Pave & Paint Project
I live in the neighborhood and am as sensitive to the pedestrian issues as those for cyclists.
I went out yesterday and walked Broadway from 19th to 13th, crossing a few times. I know that not all the striping is there, so some of my concerns may go away when they are complete.
In the past, the lack of marked crosswalks at 13th, 17th, and 19th has made crossing Broadway challenging – especially for the long stretch from 16th to 21st.
There are now two striped crosswalks at 19th with concrete buffering. There is concrete buffering on the east side at 17th, but the crosswalks have not been striped yet. I hope they put them at both the east and west sides there.
16th already had striped crosswalks, and those remain (with some concrete buffering, I believe). Concrete buffering was added on the east side of the big intersection at 15th.
(I assume that the asymmetric buffering is to slow cars down as they enter the intersection from the east – on leaving to the west, it’s not as necessary.)
My recollection is that 14th is similar to 17th: some buffering but the striping is not yet there. 13th looks very much as it always has, which is scary. But it look they are planning to stripe a crosswalk on the east side. I suspect that they’re not planning to stripe a crosswalk on the west side of 13th, because there isn’t even a south-facing curb cut on the northwest corner. (There is one other intersection with this issue, but I forget which it was.)
Walking east on the north side of Broadway from Eb & Bean (between 14 and 15), I noticed a westbound car east of 15th pull into the bike lane and turn right from there. I think that’s going to be very tempting for cars because 15th is a major street, the westbound bike lane is very wide, and the concrete buffering makes a right turn from the rightmost auto lane awkward.
If PBOT doesn’t want cars in the bike lane there, I suspect that they will need either to mark that intersection “no right turn” (which would probably be unpopular) or somehow sign things to indicate that right turns should be made from what is essentially the center of the street (the rightmost auto lane). It might ultimately be necessary to add some special signals (like what was done at Williams).
As I walked farther east, I looked for the same issue at 16th, and I think it’s less of a concern there. The bike lane seems narrower (so less inviting to cars) and, of course, 16th is not a major street like 15th.
I welcome these pedestrian-related changes also as a cyclist who sometimes crosses Broadway. I used to cross at 19th as part of my commute to the MAX, and it was reasonably mainly because I did it early in the day before traffic picked up. I think that the new buffering and crosswalks at 19th will make crossing Broadway on a bike a lot easier.
in the past PBOT said they wouldn’t put crosswalks on a street with 3+ car lanes. I think this is going to be a huge step in the right direction for pedestrians and business customers
Looks like a pretty Broad(bike)way
The other night, I overheard a conversation between three fully-grown, adult men about this project. To them, the entire purpose of the project was to install bike lanes. Not surprisingly, it led to an angry 30 minute tangent of “cyclists don’t pay,” “they already have a place to bike,” “it’s too hard to drive,” and “failed government, blah, blah, blah.” Of course, it turns out that one of the men, who was not a child pretending to be an adult or three children in a trench coat, was driving a lifted monster truck.
Honestly, I have been very excited about this project since hearing about it, but the bike lanes are much less exciting than the reduction in speed and lanes, and the activation of this space for businesses and pedestrians. I always thought that turning this into a main street was the point and better bike lanes helped make this happen.
Lol. It’s always the “I’m a good driver bro” buys who break down when a street is anything more complex than a highway or six-lane suburban stroad.
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a while. You might be the new Bike Snob.
The “difficult to drive” thing really boggles my mind, and I do hear people saying it. In fairness, the last person I heard it from was an older person from Florida, so, I don’t know. Maybe anything you can’t do a full U turn from without leaving your lane counts as hard to drive.
It isn’t hard to drive, it’s hard to go 20 over the speed limit while posting on Twitter. It’s actually not hard at all to drive slower.
Reality check: Driving (and parking) in Portland is still too easy.
“Submitted for your consideration”: The one missing element* for commercial corridor projects with multilane arterials + diagonal parking, like this case, [that I have proposed in projects elsewhere] is to add speed cushions along the parking adjacent lane to limit top speeds (to 25 / 20 mph) to reflect where drivers will be backing out and to shift as much of the corridor traffic volume to the thru lane away from the parking. The speed cushions would create a quasi frontage road.
Nice to read that PBoT has formally embraced the concrete vertical separation tools versus parking lot wands…better long term safety outcomes (and more cost effective), plus maintenance staff should be happier too.
Pretty neat! Anyone have an idea when the sudden and shocking rip-out is slated for? Are we thinking Q2 2026 or…?
Need to give enough time for a shadowy city office that you’ve never heard of to do outreach to a dozen people that are not representative of the community to justify lane removal. That could take sixteen months to play out. I’m thinking Q1 2027.
I’m glad Portland is finally getting into the Vision Zero part of it’s long running plan. It’s really great to make these streets calmer and safer for pedestrian spending money sitting at and going into businesses. Portland has lost it’s throne as the best city for biking because other cities built more innovative and forward looking cycling infrastructure.
Still looking forward to seeing downtown where you don’t easily get lost on a bike and a solid bike lane on many other major roads.
Look forward to trying this out on my commute. I’ve always taken Tillamook (just to the north) for my east->west connection but plan to give Broadway a go when the dust settles in a month or so. I’m liking what I am seeing — this area has been crying out for improvements that make it feel like a neighborhood. It could use more but this is a solid start. Thanks for the photos and general coverage, JM.
MFW people drinking at a bar complain about how hard it is to drive to the bar and that they wont use the parking spaces near the bar.
I’ve been greatly anticipating this. I usually take Hancock to 26th, then down to Multnomah for my daily commute, but Multnomah is a tad sketchy between the bumpy road east of 21st, to the door zone bike lanes, to the part where I have to enter general traffic to make my left turn. I’m 100% going to give Broadway a try now.
Jonathan, question for you (I can’t watch the video yet, and I’m impatient lol): is the restriping between 24th and 26th finished yet? I.e. has the bike lane been extended to 26th? Or is that still to come?
Hi Michael. Yes it starts at NE 26th with a new buffered bike lane.
I used to live in Sullivan’s Gulch NA and served on the board for a couple years. We wanted both Broadway and Weidler converted into two-way streets with one lane in each direction, with bike lanes. It’s good the city has eliminated one out of three traffic lanes, but even two is too many going one-way, as East Portland crash history has proven.
What will prevent delivery folks (and ***holes in SUVs) from double-parking in the bike lane?
Nothing.
In fact, the 12-foot width of the bike lane + buffers may, unfortunately, encourage double parking, as anyone who actually bothers to consider the fact they are parking in a bike lane could look at it and tell themselves that bikes can still go around them…
You are advocating for bike safety, please wear a helmet.
Hi Bob. I’m not advocating for anything. And I’ll make my own decisions about what I wear! I’m a 50 year old man for heaven’s sake why would you think it’s OK to tell me what to wear?
True, but what a loss to the Portland cycling community when you are hit and incapacitated or even killed – which I realize could still happen with a helmet but why not do everything you can to protect that great brain of yours??
Bad wording on my part, I didn’t mean to tell you what you do, of course. We all know what helmets can do, I just don’t understand the reasoning to not wear one, that’s all.
Walking is unambiguously more dangerous than cycling in Portland. So I assume you must wear a helment when you walk, Bob. We all know what helmets can do, I just don’t understand the reasoning to not wear one, that’s all.
Don’t tell me what to wear.
But we all know what helmnuts do, right???
Traumatic Brain Injury is a thing JM. Remember you aren’t riding in Holland.
My friend who bikes a lot had a head injury–in the shower. What do you suggest for them?
I’d get him to the hospital rather than ask for medical advice here.
Stop. JM is a grown ass man (riding about 5mph) and can make that decision for himself.
Wearing helmets is great!
Calling strangers out for not wearing helmets, which is not a law and certainly falls under the personal responsibility category, not so great!
Chris,
I’m guessing you called out for strangers to get the COVID vaccine right? Doesn’t head injury also affect the whole society? (PS/Full disclosure: I’ve lost track of how many COVID vaccines I’ve received ,maybe 6 or 7).
I was not one of those people. No.
I think you are really stretching here, with the cost to society bit. He isn’t potentially hurting anyone else by not wearing a helmet.
Helmet use in Amsterdam and other places with high bike mode share is minimal. Helmets are very useful for kids, complete novices, and off-road cycling. But for city riding, where speeding motor vehicles are the biggest safety concern, helmets aren’t really going to make a big difference safety wise. I wear a helmet most of the time, but see no need to concern troll those that choose not to.
I’ve been riding with a helmet since I was 18 – it was “required” for a mountain bike class I took at the University of Oregon in 1986 – and quite frankly I feel naked without one. However, I agree with you, they are very limited on what good they do, mostly helpful on front-end and side collisions if you hit a car or an object, but not so helpful if a car hits you, especially from behind. The one benefit I’ve seen is that people who wear helmets tend to be more cautious bike riders in traffic, but I’m not sure if its because cautious riders tend to use helmets more or if it’s because people who buy helmets become more cautious.
Out here in NC helmet use tends to be more common than in Portland, but it’s hardly universal. At tonight’s Critical Mass ride about 75% of our riders will use a helmet and the rest won’t, which I think is fine, as we don’t go very fast and almost never confront drivers.
I wear a helmet 99% of the time, mostly to perform that I’m “one of the good ones” to drivers. At least when I eventually get eviscerated by a tricked-out Chevy Tahoe on my way to work the ensuing police report/article can’t condemn me for not wearing a helmet.
Why would you think that? If you fall on your head, it could make a big difference. It’s true that most crashes don’t involve landing on your head, but that applies to kids and novices as well. Most urban crashes don’t involve high speed impacts with motor vehicles, and those more frequent low speed crashes with cars or stationary objects can do quite significant head damage.
Helmets are not “concern trolling”.
Ask the hospital staff who treated a kid who smashed his head against a curb if a helmet would have made a difference.
The scenario you’ve made up aligns perfectly with Thorp’s original comment. What’s you’re point?
Will PBoT or PSU be doing any before/after studies related to cycling numbers, average speed, business profit, crashes etc.?
The new bike lanes on Broadway seem like a decent, if underwhelming improvement. However, citing N Williams as an example of good bike infrastructure through a commercial district is a sad admission (yes, I saw you acknowledge it’s “shortcomings”).
Williams is fine during low traffic times, but go through there at 5pm on a weekday and you’ll be overwhelmed by delivery vehicles blocking the bike lane, car doors, parked cars pulling in/out, drivers darting across cross streets, not to mention the chaos around New Seasons with lane merges, cars pulling out of the parking lot, etc. Viewed as a couplet with N Vancouver, it is a failure of imagination to actually make safe bike infrastructure. Vancouver is mostly fine but between Fremont and the I-5 on ramp is scary af with it’s narrow bike lane and freeway bound traffic crisscrossing. Yet, there is no way to avoid these roads unless you want to deal with the stops signs, poor pavement, jogs at intersections, etc that is N Rodney or risk your life on Interstate. The real solution is to close Williams to through traffic, provide a two way bike lane, and route cars to Vancouver or MLK.
I’m still waiting for a good example of a bike lane in a commercial district in Portland that one could, say, take an 11-year old on. Attached is a photo of Broadway in NY. Use that as an example.
stormcycler, please note that I’m saying Williams is the best example of a bikeway through a commercial district. I’m not saying it’s “good bike infrastructure.”
I was recently in NYC and was definitely jealous of many of their bike lanes. I saw so many protected lanes on roads that are the same width as Broadway in Portland. Frustrating not to have the same level of dedication to cycling in our city from elected leaders and PBOT.
It’s a mixed bag Liz. Where NYC has theoretically excelled in running physical separation as the default, they’ve historically been inconsistent in separating at the intersection to get cars to slow or stop before turning. That’s been a huge problem for right hooks. They’ve only recently adopted a policy of updating intersections. To boot, the NYPD and Mayor have recently criminalized any traffic violations, which has opened up people on bikes (but not in cars) to expensive court dates and a criminal record (often targeting deliveristas). It’s a mess.
I’d say in general in Portland we’ve underestimated the effectiveness of a continuous separated network. In New York they’ve underestimated the ability of an unscrupulous mayor to throw a wrench in the works and make streets actually less safe. Potato patato.
Williams is the one place in Portland where I was nearly killed by a LEFT hook. Too many drivers just do not expect bikes on their left.
Good bike infrastructure should minimize surprise.
That New Seasons left is going to kill someone. I’ve seen so many near misses there due to boneheaded driver inattention.
I live in this neighborhood! I will admit that I was upset with the plan for the project. As a biker, I really wanted protected lanes and am frustrated with PBOT’s decision. However, while that still is my preference, I concede that this is a pretty good project. In just the last few weeks, I’ve seen so many bikers on Broadway. I’m hopeful that there will be a mass of bikers that makes this feel even safer. As of yet, I haven’t ridden on it (I usually go up to Tillamook), but I am excited to try it out and hope it feels safe for me as a cautious biker. As a pedestrian, I am LOVING the crosswalks! It was so nice to not have to go out of my way to cross. Previously, I only crossed at 24th/21st/16th but now I can cross at 19th, no problem!
Thanks for your reporting on this project, Jonathan. As a pedestrian, I’m delighted with the changes PBOT made! When I used to commute on foot to my job in the Lloyd District, I had several “hands on hood” encounters with motorists while crossing NE Broadway. Interestingly, I had fewer close calls back when I was commuting downtown by bike.
I’ll be curious to see if and how the changes affect TriMet riders. For a few years before I retired, the two bus lines I took to the NW District traveled along NE Broadway. Coincidentally, today I took one of my grandsons on a “transit adventure” (bus → streetcar → tram → streetcar → bus). Our first and last legs were on Line 70, and although anecdotal, the trips didn’t seem any longer than I remember from five years ago.
For anyone interested, there’s been some discussion on Nextdoor about the NE Broadway improvements. I thought about commenting, but these days I mostly just lurk on that platform (and on r/Portland, etc.).
https://nextdoor.com/p/X-3gZC-ybrZq
What’s your camera and audio setup here? Looks and sounds great!!
My take also. Broadway was Car and Truck Hell, so I’m excited to ride the new street and see if it’s really better. I can’t see how it could be any worse.
now it’s just car and truck heck
The changes are “nice” for biking, but they’re really a major win for folks who live in the surrounding area and anyone who wants to spend time here on foot. I’d love if the bike lane was protected, but just having it there, bringing down speeds, reducing traffic noise, and making it safer to cross is a tremendous win for livability.
Amazing how much things improve when we prioritize the people who live in a place over cars that just want to fly through it as fast as possible on their way to somewhere else.
Exactly Matt. That’s one thing that people often miss with PBLs. They make the entire street more predictable. People walking have less distance to cross and more visibility in the islands. People driving have simpler options and don’t need to mix with other types of slower transpo options. People eating on the sidewalk have separation from noise and faster traffic. People cycling or others rolling (e.g., wheelchairs) have a more predictable lane that gets shared with others going somewhat the same speed. It’s safer for all modes and evidence often bears that out.
This is my neighborhood and I access Broadway from Hancock, a mellow street just like Tillamook.
From the south I use all the neighborhood streets in Sullivan’s gulch, Multnomah, Halsey, they are all no traffic mellow streets. You can connect to 26th from any of these streets to go north.
The new layout is better for everyone but I will still access the business’s I use from the side streets.
The new bike lane is still next to 30mph cars and a buffered car door zone and delivery vehicles.
It is mostly a pedestrian improvement which is Nice!
Yes the side streets are almost always where a bike throughway should be constructed
And yet you want diverters removed from “side streets” in NW Portland to make it easier for drivers to cut through on them.
The full size pickup blocking about 1ft of the narrow travel lane is a nice touch. And they have space to pull forward!
I see many new spots of congestion which is always the most dangerous type of traffic to interact with and that street is very heavily populated with car and truck traffic throughout the day.
The opposite is true. Slowed and stopped traffic is the least dangerous.
Don’t bother, this guy will oppose any attempt to slow or impede drivers one iota.
Except when vehicles are slowing/stopping at a light, with no cyclists in sight, and a cyclists starts to pass on the right (either in a bike lane or not), the light turns green, and you get hooked by a vehicle turning right. Triply dangerous if that vehicle is a truck that cuts off the corner as it turns (a cyclist downtown was killed this way a few years ago.)
That’s a very common scenario, and most drivers don’t check to see if someone is trying to go straight to their right when they’re making a right turn.
It’s much safer if everyone is moving at a cycling speed or faster, so you don’t approach a turning car in the driver’s blind spot.
Do you even ride a bicycle?
Most right hooks occur in MOVING traffic including the example you cited.
A person on a bike can easily approach a stopped car at an intersection and discern if the car is turning.
The right hooks occur mostly when the bike is moving and the car is moving at the SAME speed and the bike is in the blind spot.
If traffic is slowed, I as a cyclist are
in control.
I doubt you ride much…
Mostly you just described the same situation that I did, except omitting the bit where the bike is approaching from the rear as the light turns green and the car starts turning. Drivers don’t always signal so sometimes you get surprised (or at least inexperienced riders like myself do).
But basically we agree. Thanks for reinforcing my point.
I had this exact thing happen to me riding the bike lane on Lloyd at Oregon (Steel Bridge). There was a long line of cars stopped at the light, the light turned green just as I was passing the first car in line. They made an unsignalized right turn right into me! It scared the shit out of me and the 6 or so pedestrians that witnessed it, but I was OK, just scraped up.
Overtaking cars on the right is super sketchy, and I am super paranoid now. I have a number of close calls- one notorious intersection is Interstate and Mississippi. Drivers will take that corner really fast. There used to be couple of speed bumps to encourage drivers to not use this like a slip lane, but PBOT removed them and the highspeed cornering has returned.
this makes zero sense. do you think a car crash is less dangerous if you’re driving faster?
This is why I only ride on I-5. Much safer than these woke gReEnWaYs and bIkE lAnEs
I actually prefer this configuration to a parking-protected lane, which tends to make me feel that motorists really can’t see me / don’t know I’m there. Am I the only one who feels that way?
Certainly not. And your worries are sometimes well founded when cities fail to follow safe streets design (e.g., separated intersections, daylighting etc.).
But should we base our policy on your personal preferences, or should we base them on the needs of the wider community including people in wheelchairs, people walking, people driving, people skating, elderly cyclists, disabled cyclists, kids on bikes etc.
Should we based our street safety design on your personal preference or the vast amount of evidence acquired over decades of safe street design and followed by hundreds cities around the world?
You’re both right — we shouldn’t build parking-protected lanes in such a way that riders are out of view of drivers.
If anyone knows of data that shows this doesn’t actually create a risk, I’d love to see it. If we don’t have such data, then it seems reasonable to start with the information provided by experienced riders.
HA! Yeah, uhhh… someone who hasn’t learned their lesson yet find “data” for Watts. He’s first in line offering up his “experienced rider information.”
You claimed there was a “vast amount of evidence” that Dan was wrong, and then got mad at me for not proving it didn’t exist.
Please have some sympathy; It’s hard for a simpleton like me, who probably doesn’t even ride a bike, to live up to your high standards.
So nice! I really appreciate the reduction in car noise levels due to increased distance of the driving lanes from the sidewalk tables at St Simons Coffee at 20th. (Slower speeds might also be helping to quiet the traffic, I guess.) And you don’t have to be a daredevil car lane bicyclist now to ride down that section to find the shop you know is around there somewhere.
It’s pretty comical how out of touch with the average Portlander you and the Bike Portland comment crew are Jonathan. Does make for good reading though. 🙂
One sentence from one comment on one story represents Jonathan and everyone who has commented on this site?
I am the average Portlander. I am the golden mean. All viewpoints will regress to my extraordinary averageness.
“Extraordinary averageness,” that’s pretty funny
Pretty sure the neighborhood is going to love how much easier it is to cross on Broadway without it feeling like a game of Frogger.
But please do tell how we should design our main streets to satisfy drivers trying to avoid I-84 traffic.
Huge win. This section of Broadway was, as a commercial area, seriously hampered by lack of crosswalks, high speed traffic, and noise.
I find complaints s out parking funny. Because I guess there’s less parking. But also in some areas you had to find a space on the same side of the street as your location which could be difficult. Unless you liked to LARP as Frogger.
Look, it’s great that crossing Broadway doesn’t feel like a game of Frogger anymore — but let’s not pretend that slowing traffic on a major corridor is some win for everyone. It might feel lovely for folks living nearby, but it’s low-income and migrant communities out in East Portland who cop the brunt of it.
These are people who have to drive — often long distances, with bugger-all public transport — and now their commute just got slower and more painful, all so the inner-city crowd can enjoy a quieter stroll. Sounds a lot like Portland doing what it does best: banging on about equity while pushing the real cost onto people already doing it tough.
If we’re serious about fairness, we need to design streets that work for everyone — not just the ones lucky enough to live close in.
Give me a break… the traffic on NE Broadway is local NE neighborhood traffic.
The amount of people in East Portland using it as part of their commute is minuscule, it
would laughable if measured.
Tell me you live Nowhere near this street……
You do realize Broadway feeds right into Sandy Blvd one of the major thoroughfares to East Portland right?
Tell me you live Nowhere near this street……
I have lived in the area 25 years and the amount of commuters that turn off Sandy onto Broadway is so little it cannot be measured.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Let me guess you live in a privileged area and profess to care about the POC and poor that don’t live near you. Until they might make your life even a bit worse. Such hypocrisy I see often in the privileged white middle class progressives we have here in spades in Portlandia.
Let me guess, you don’t live anywhere near this stretch of Broadway.
The street works better for all people now.
If you or Angus had a clue about the area you would know that the adjacent streets are full of lower income apartments with people who Walk in the area.
You right wing trolls with your stupid tropes are ridiculous.
You have no idea of what my economic status is at all.
I bike everywhere, barely use a car.
How about you and Angus?
Maybe get your ass on a bike OR in a car and drive or bike the new layout before you spout your talking points.
Sandy blvd. Is busy from I-84 east , there is much less traffic on inner Sandy.
NE Broadway is busy from downtown to MLK and Grand. The traffic greatly decreases East of those streets.
The busiest traffic between NE 26th and NE 7th is in the middle of the day, not Rush hours.
You clearly have no clue of Traffic patterns in NE Portland.
…is there not a freeway a quarter mile south? All the traffic studies pointed toward the car lane that was repurposed being extremely under-utilized. I just truly cannot fathom looking at a project that made a busy commercial street more pleasant and thinking “yeah actually this sucks”. But sure I guess you can just invoke the “poor people who have to drive” strawman when you’re playing with your ‘own the libs’ dolls in your head.
There is a highway literally 600 feet south of Broadway. One that connects nicely to East Portland. And West Portland. And South and North.
Angus, about 10-12 years ago the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability did a study of city commuter patterns. It wasn’t a random study, instead it was based upon actual employment data which the state records from all businesses, of where employees live and where they work (those who are employees – the self-employed and unemployed were also recorded but not mapped.) It was done in aggregate so that no personal records could easily be exposed. What they found was that East Portland residents east of I-205 mostly worked either in East Portland itself, in nearby Gresham/ Troutdale/ Cackamas, to Vancouver WA, or along the Columbia Corridor (airport, NOPO, & Swan Island, and that very few (less than 6%) actually commuted downtown. Inner Portland residents however overwhelmingly commuted downtown and hardly at all to the Columbia Corridor and the suburbs.
Mind you, this was before the pandemic and the huge shift to work-from-home.
i hope that not too many frustrated drivers start using Tillamook instead.
Well since the new street layout is Better for people who drive cars, why would they?
You obviously have not been on the new street to make that statement.
The concern trolling here about some street improvements is ridiculous.
I rode on 21st north across Broadway this morning and saw a car in the westbound bike lane about to turn right on 21st. Similar to what I saw last week at 15th.
It’s not going to feel safe on that bike lane if you know that a car might jump in any time to avoid having to take a right turn around the new concrete.
Is there anything that can be done about this?
Of course, even if cars do go around the concrete, there is still an issue if there is a cyclist coming in the bike lane (which is well separated from the auto lanes and harder to see).
Would it make sense to put in separate bike signals at 15th and 21st (at least) to hold th westbound cars while cyclists go through. That was done at Williams, and I have found that it works for me.
My comment didn’t seem quite right after watching Jonathan’s video again, so I went out and rode Broadway from 26th to 7th.
There is no concrete median at 21st – so that car had turned from the bike lane just to be closer to the curb (not to avoid the median).
Maybe the bike lanes need a coat of green paint, at least on the east side of intersections like 15th and 21st.
I saw the same thing happen as I rode home from bike happy hour yesterday: a westcound car turning right moved into the bike lane before turning and went on the bicycle side of the ped island. My impression was that the driver of the car thought that was the correct way to navigate the intersection, which is a reasonable interpretation when there are no cars parked on that side of the street (it looks like a great big right turn lane for cars). I did not find it appreciably more dangerous than the designed turn from the car lane (classic right hook setup). Need to keep your head up either way. But overall, my, what a great improvement for Broadway!