The City of Portland is ready to spend $11.5 million on dramatic changes to a busy section of the Southeast Stark/Washington couplet. Their SE Stark & Washington Street Safety Project will reduce space for driving, add protected bike lanes, install bus-only lanes, and upgrade bus stops and traffic signals between SE 92nd and 108th. The project aims to make it safer to walk and take transit along the corridor, while enhancing bikeway connections east and west of I-205 between Montavilla and the Mall 205 shopping center.
The new bike lanes will offer safer and more convenient connections to destinations, including the I-205 bike path.
This section of Stark and Washington are very driver-centric at the moment and PBOT wants to encourage a more diverse mix of modes — while taming car traffic at the same time. Their plan is to re-stripe the roadway to make space for wider bike lanes, while removing one of the existing driving lanes. As a nod to how people use the corridor, PBOT says they’ll maintain the turn lanes and freeway ramps as well as add 47 new on-street parking spaces.
PBOT has chosen to invest in this project primarily because of how dangerous the current design is for humans. An analysis by their Vision Zero team found that there have been an average of about five serious injury crashes along this corridor per year since 2015. Of those crashes about half of them involved someone walking, including one person who was killed while on foot. A bicycle rider was the victim in 14% of the crashes in the past decade, with two of those being fatalities. Between 2015 and 2022, PBOT found that there was a serious injury crash at every intersection along the corridor.
Why are there so many crashes? The car-centric design encourages people to drive fast. One-third of all car users in the corridor drive over the speed limit, and at the SE 105th intersection that number rises to 40% and 60% (on SE Washington and Stark respectively).
Changes coming to the corridor include (taken from PBOT website):
- Safer pedestrian crossings between 99th and 106th avenues
- Enhanced bus stops at 92nd, 99th, and 105th avenues
- Signal upgrades at 99th Avenue, 102nd Avenue, and 103rd Drive
- Safer bike lanes from 92nd to 108th. Wider bike lanes protected from vehicle traffic with buffers, parking and concrete barriers. This would be a huge improvement over the current bike lanes which are 5 feet wide (or missing) and have no buffers or physical protection.
- Signal upgrades. At key intersections, PBOT will modify timing and add new bike signals to eliminate conflicts between bikes and turning vehicles.
- Pedestrian safety and access. New curb extensions, curb ramps, and pedestrian push buttons that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will make the corridor safer for pedestrians.
- Safer crossings. Work will include new marked, enhanced crosswalks as well as safer signals where pedestrians get a walk sign ahead of vehicle traffic, known as a “pedestrian head start.”
- More parking. Plans call for adding on-street parking on SE Washington Street and SE Stark Street to serve businesses and support the area’s Main Street designation. This will mean about 47 more parking spaces along this corridor.
- More trees. Planting street trees on SE Stark Street will provide shade for pedestrians and people biking as well as add to the overall tree canopy in East Portland.
PBOT expects to spend this year finalizing the design and engineering and will begin construction in 2028. Funding for the project comes from a mix of funding including: federal (distributed through Metro), local gas tax (Fixing Our Streets), and the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund. For more information, check out the project website.
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I like the conceptual illustrations a lot. Particularly, the way the turn lane’s stop line is well behind the bike lane’s stop line and the no-man’s land is clearly marked as such.
Barriers between the parking and bike lane is a nice touch too.
Here’s hoping the implementation goes well.
I expect this will be about as well received as the Halsey/Weidler re-design. Although maybe there will be less false claims about drivers cutting through the neighborhood since there are less houses adjacent to this couplet. I assume the regular parade of business owners complaining about lost revenue will be present. No mention of a speed limit change but if they drop it down to 20mph like Halsey commuters will likely lose their minds.
All that aside I think it looks great and will greatly improve my commuting around there. With the improvements on Washington up to 92nd it will be a much better ride from Montavilla.
It has been great to see SE Washington St getting improved from Montavilla eastward. Making these major changes east of I-205 should help calm things down even more on Washington St, and especially for people heading West on Stark and into Montavilla proper. Maybe someday the Montavilla drag strip will be made into one lane only…ahh, to dream.
It is also great to see the new sidewalk treatment around Chick-fil-A at 99th & Stark/Washington. Say what you will about the new biz, but the wide sidewalks look to be setting a great tone for the future design of the area.
https://montavilla.net/2026/01/05/new-pedestrian-infrastructure-opens-around-chick-fil-a/
Long overdue.
Concept looks and sounds great. That area really needs something like this! Best wishes!
I can never understand the schedules. 2025 Outreach, 2026 Design and engineering… What happens in 2027 that they wait until 2028 to start construction?
Design, permitting, procurement… lots can happen that can eat up a ton of time. I’d say 2028 is a reasonable-to-optimistic schedule to break ground at this early stage and knowing that ODOT may be involved due to I-205.
Hopefully less auto-oriented land uses will follow over time. Redevelopment of the moribund Mall 205 would be a huge jumpstart.
Good for them. Yet again, more and more east of the river while west of the river gets nothing. <Sigh.>
You post this same thing on every article about an east side project.
It makes sense that the east side would be prioritized because of all of those things. In this case it’s literally East Portland which has been as neglected as the Southwest hills over the years.
Also saying west of the river gets nothing is a bit dramatic wouldn’t you say? It’s literally not true. The list of projects for the 2024-2028 Fixing Our Streets funds include 11.3 lane miles for District 4. District 1 gets 10.2, District 2 gets 11.2 and District 3 gets 10. Seems pretty equitable to me. Is it really the east side’s fault that the majority of roads are over here?
On the West Side, downtown gets everything, and most of downtown is in District 4.
All of downtown is in District 4 and some of the east side. Did you look at the list of District 4 projects in the link I provided? Unless you’re using a really loose definition of downtown (including all of NW) only one project is in downtown. Even that project isn’t in proper downtown Portland.
If you visit any city outside of Portland, most people would regard everything in NW as part of “downtown” since it’s all urban and built up, not just the stuff within the I-405 & I-5 loop. Of the projects listed, only the one on the B-H highway is “suburban” and firmly outside of downtown. In most other cities, everything from the river east to NE/SE 24th and in the Lloyd District would also be regarded as part of downtown.
Why do you care you hate protected bike lanes
$11.5 million for bike lanes? Really?
Its much more than just bike lanes, and taking the few minutes to read the article will enlighten you to everything that is included.
I live in Montavilla. I never cross the freeway at Stark/Washington on my bike; it’s too damn scary for me. I either detour north to Burnside or south to the Main Street viaduct. That may change once this project happens.