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.