BikePortland

A driver racing their car on SE Stark killed a woman waiting for the bus

Ashlee McGill was standing at that TriMet bus stop on the right.

“McGill was an innocent bystander walking in the area when she was struck by an out-of-control vehicle.”
– Portland Police Bureau

Note: This article contains opinions.

Last night dozens of people gathered on Southeast Stark near 133rd to remember Ashlee McGill. The 26-year-old was standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the Line 20 bus around 5:30 am this past Saturday when she was hit and killed by someone driving a car.

Police initially assumed the deceased person they found at the scene was the driver. But in an updated statement released Thursday they shared that upon further investigation, McGill was just an “innocent bystander…. struck by an out-of-control vehicle.” Local news stories confirm that McGill was just waiting for a bus to take her home. PPB also says the driver who hit her was racing another driver prior to the crash that killed McGill.

It’s just the latest tragedy caused by the tragic mix of illegal street racing and deadly road designs that make it possible.

(BikePortland graphic using PPB and PBOT data)

SE Stark is a drag strip. It’s tailor-made for doing one thing: going fast in a car. Nothing excuses what these criminal drivers do, but we are fooling ourselves if we think road design doesn’t play a factor in these terrible outcomes.

Since 2016, thirteen people have died in traffic crashes on SE Stark in just a 1.8 mile section between SE 122nd and SE 160th. 13 people. Dead. On the same stretch of road. And these weren’t drivers just making a mistake on a tricky stretch of road. The profile of Stark in this location is wide, straight, and the visibility is excellent. Reading through the causes of these deaths almost all of them were some combination of criminal negligence, hit-and-run, or drunk and reckless driving. Or in this latest case, street racing.

The City of Portland is well aware of these dangers. According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Stark is a designated high crash corridor where high speeds are common. If the 13 deaths mentioned above, seven of them were people walking. PBOT says speed was about three times more common a factor in pedestrian crashes on SE Stark Street as it is citywide.

PBOT lowered the speed limit on this section of Stark to 30 mph in April 2018. They also deployed photo radar vans after the changes and worked with Portland Police Bureau to enforce the lower speeds. But it hasn’t been nearly enough. Nine people have died since the speed was lowered.

In April of this year PBOT installed it’s first-ever “intersection safety camera” at Stark and SE 122nd. But that’s just one intersection, and it’s 11 blocks from where these drivers chose to race their cars.

Nine people have died in the past four years on this section of Stark. We are on pace to see five more people killed by the time this project wraps up.

These were just PBOT’s first moves to tame Stark. They’ve got $20 million lined up to do more. Their plan is to spend half the money on new pavement and the other half to add bike lanes, signal upgrades, ADA ramps, two protected intersections, better crossings, more street lights, and so on. The Outer Stark Safety Project will go from SE 102nd to Portland’s eastern border with Gresham at SE 162nd. Open houses for the project were held in 2019 and PBOT had planned to install some of the initial elements this past spring.

But in a phone call with PBOT Interim Communications Director Hannah Schafer this morning, I learned that the project hasn’t started yet. PBOT is still finalizing the project scope with their consultant and the design phase of the project will begin this fall. Schafer said construction won’t begin until 2024.

Nine people have died in the past four years on this section of Stark. We are on pace to see five more people killed by the time this project wraps up.

Can you tell the difference between the before and after?

And will the changes even do anything? The new cross-section proposed by PBOT looks a lot like the current one. There will still be five lanes for driving. Yes they’ll be narrower and we’ll have protected bike lanes instead of parking lanes, but the overall space for driving won’t change that much. It will still be very easy to speed — even to race — on the new SE Stark we will have waited over six years for and spent $20 million on.

I worry that even though PBOT means well, their designs for these east Portland arterials are much too timid. Despite all the back-patting at ribbon cuttings, the aggressive, dangerous, criminal, dysfunctional driving behaviors will remain. I’ve been saying this for many years, but I still see the same approach where we focus efforts on improving conditions for walkers and bikers, but we fail to grab the bull (drivers) by the horns. The politics to “improve bike and ped safety” are easy. The politics to make it harder for people to drive like they’re in a car commercial, are not.

We design streets to be safe for politicians, and to be unsafe for people. This must change.

UPDATE, 2/16: Portland Police have arrested the driver who killed Ashlee McGill. The driver has been charged with Manslaughter. More info on PPB press release.

Weekend Event Guide: Biketown, Het Meer, a walk, and more

What an amazing Bike Summer we just had! While Pedalpalooza is technically over, the rides and events will continue forever. Because that’s just how we roll. Don’t miss our selections for the next three days below…

As you make plans, consider grabbing a Gorge Pass. It’s just $40 for unlimited rides for you and your bike on any of the Columbia River Gorge transit shuttles. Find bike routes and custom itineraries at GorgePass.com/bikes.

Friday, September 2nd

Biketown for All Ride – 6:00 pm at Moda Center (NE)
Come and get signed up for Portland’s reduced-fare bike share program and/or learn more about how it’s helping more people get rolling. More info here.

Cyclocross Playground – 6:00 to 7:30 pm at Rose City Park (NE)
A beginner-friendly ‘cross clinic led by the wonderful Mielle Blomberg. Come for the skills and learning, stay for the cold drinks and chance to win free entry at an upcoming race. More info here.

Saturday, September 3rd

Multnomah Falls Ride – 8:00 am at Gateway Transit Center (NE)
Led by an experienced rider from Portland Bicycling Club, this jaunt into the Gorge will take you onto the Historic Highway, where car users need a permit but ride riders don’t! More info here.

Word is Bond Community Walk – 10:00 am at Japanese American Historical Plaza (NW)
A 5K walk to illuminate stories of Black Portlanders, led by Black Portlanders. Get educated and get healthy at the same time. More info here.

Sunday, September 4th

Het Meer Cyclocross Race – All day at Vancouver Lake Park (WA)
Cross is here! Kick off the first local race with a bang by rolling over the river to Vancouver Lake to watch and/or race this classic course that features the legendary Sand Pit of Doom. More info here.

Rocky Point Trails Ride – 4:30 pm at Rocky Point Trails Area (NW)
NW Trail Alliance and River City Bicycles are teaming up to lead you on a two-hour shred of the super-fun and always-improving Rocky Point Trails out in Scappoose. More info here.

Have fun out there this weekend! And remember to check out the Gorge Pass and thank them for supporting our work.

Have PBOT’s changes to SE Hawthorne made a difference?

Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, with its plethora of artsy thrift shops, cafes and bars, may be one of the first streets to come to mind when you think of quintessential Portland. Hawthorne is always buzzing with activity and people walking up and down the street, perhaps enjoying a cup of coffee from Grand Central Bakery, lugging bags of books to sell at the Hawthorne Powell’s outpost or simply grabbing groceries at Safeway, Fred Meyer or New Seasons.

But for the amount of foot traffic Hawthorne gets, navigating it while walking, biking or rolling isn’t always a breeze, and its safety problems have had deadly consequences. In 2016, 15-year-old Fallon Smart was killed by a reckless driver while crossing Hawthorne at 43rd ave. At the time, there was no dedicated crossing at that intersection or anywhere nearby. After Smart was killed, the Portland Bureau of Transportation installed a crossing at that intersection – but advocates said more was needed to avoid another tragedy.

PBOT’s big response came in the form of the ‘Pave and Paint’ project they debuted last fall on Hawthorne from 23rd to 50th avenues. In addition to a full repaving, the project brought new crossing treatments with increased signage and visibility measures to the street, as well as a reduction in the number of lanes and reduced speed limit (to 20 miles per hour).

Looking west at SE 34th. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

While significant, the project was a letdown for many who wanted PBOT to go even further and add dedicated bike lanes.

But how successful are the treatments PBOT did make? I went over to Hawthorne yesterday to ask people what they think of the new streetscape almost a year after it was completed.

“I don’t want to push [my son] out in front of me. It doesn’t really feel super safe. But it’s an improvement.”
-Sarah, a neighbor in the Richmond neighborhood

Though opinions differed, the general consensus was that the new Hawthorne is better than the old one – but it could be a lot better. The first person I talked to, Emily (and her dog Owen), was heading into Safeway at Hawthorne and 28th. Emily has lived in the area for several years, and she said she avoids walking on Hawthorne except when she has to.

“Cars don’t stop,” Emily told me. “People will see me standing [at a crosswalk], but like three cars will pass by before anyone stops for me.”

Sarah, who was walking while pushing her young child in a stroller further east on Hawthorne near 36th, told me she likes the median treatments at the crosswalks, which give people crossing a chance to safely rest and look both ways before crossing the street. But that’s only if people driving actually stop for her – and that’s not a given.

“Most people just don’t want to stop,” Sarah said. “I don’t want to push [my son] out in front of me. It doesn’t really feel super safe. But it’s an improvement.”

Though I watched and waited for a while, I didn’t see very many people biking on Hawthorne. This isn’t unusual – it’s often a very unpleasant experience to even cross the street by bike, let alone attempt to ride any substantial distance on it. I did spot one person biking on the sidewalk: Zach, who works nearby and bikes this street often. He spoke highly of the Hawthorne bike lane concept, and said he’d recently been hit by someone driving a car on the easternmost part of the street, injuring his leg.

“Bike lanes would’ve helped, 100%,” Zach told me.

Finally, I chatted with Sierra, who works as a nanny in the neighborhood and was crossing Hawthorne with two babies in a stroller. Sierra said she walks around the neighborhood with the kids every day, and she would like to see more designated crossings on the street.

“As a driver, It’s annoying [to have all these crosswalks],” Sierra said. “But as a walker, I need it.”

Been a pedestrian for 38 years and finally got got by a Volkswagen while crossing Hawthorne at 38th. The driver took @PBOTinfo ‘s fancy new zebra crossing as a suggestion, I guess. pic.twitter.com/OEjgtSAtzt
— Nicole Funke (@nicolefunke) August 16, 2022

Up until a few weeks ago, I lived one block south of Hawthorne on Cesar Chavez Blvd, and I echo the thoughts of people I talked to today. Over time, I grew more confident when dealing with the people driving who didn’t want to stop for me – but the most I had to protect (other than myself) while crossing Hawthorne is ice cream from Fred Meyer, not kids in a stroller.

You shouldn’t have to be a seasoned traveler to feel empowered enough to use your right-of-way at a crossing on a street like Hawthorne. It should be a no-brainer that people driving will stop. Unfortunately, that’s not the case – even at intersections with medians and very visible signs. And especially after PBOT redesigned the street with a specific focus on pedestrian safety.

Just ask 38-year old Portlander Nicole Funke. Just two weeks ago, she was walking across Hawthorne at 38th and was hit by a driver. “The driver took PBOT’s fancy new zebra crossing as a suggestion, I guess,” she posted to Twitter from the hospital while forcing a smile behind a mask and neck brace.

Hawthorne is a street for strolling. Someone living nearby can get the majority of their needs met in less than a 10 minute walk, and yet people driving cars still feel entitled to dominate the road. And if this street, located in a walkable (and wealthy) part of Portland, still has these kinds of problems, where’s the hope for improving big arterials in east Portland like 82nd or 122nd Ave?

That’s the question I asked myself as I watched people navigate Hawthorne.

What do you think of the changes on Hawthorne? How do you think we can further improve this street for people walking and biking?

PBOT unveils project ideas for North Portland in Motion plan

One of the proposed projects would build a new path on this stretch of Columbia Blvd to connect the Peninsula Crossing Trail to the Columbia Slough. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The big reveal is here!

The Portland Bureau of Transportation has spent the last 16 months learning about the needs and nuances of our city’s northern peninsula and they just released a list of projects they’d like to build in order to make it nicer for biking, walking, and taking transit.

North Portland in Motion is a planning process that launched in April 2021. After doing a bunch of outreach, PBOT said in a statement today that, “We have consistently heard that North Portlanders would like to see an emphasis on safer speeds, crossings and biking options for community members of all ages.”

Also today, they launched an online open house that shares 38 different projects to accomplish those goals. The projects are broken into four categories: Corridor Improvements, Critical Connections, Neighborhood Greenways, Public Spaces and Mobility Hubs. There’s a map (below) where you can click and learn about each one.

There are several very exciting projects on the list. Imagine if we got:

new bike lanes on N Willamette Blvd from the railroad cut to downtown St. Johns;
a new north-south neighborhood greenway on N Montana between Alberta and Rosa Parks Way (as an alternative to Interstate Ave);
new bike lanes on N Interstate between Killingsworth and Lombard;
traffic calming and safer crossings on N Portsmouth between Willamette and Columbia;
or a new path along Columbia to (finally!) connect the end of the Peninsula Crossing Trail.

And beyond traditional infrastructure projects, they’ve also included six potential plaza and “mobility hub” locations:

Downtown St. Johns Plaza
Charleston Street Plaza
New Columbia Mobility Hub
University of Portland Mobility Hub
Downtown Kenton Mobility Hub
Arbor Lodge Park Plaza

It’s all possible with this plan. ~~Of course, there won’t be any money directly tied to NPIM~~; but PBOT has a track record of spending money (as it becomes available) as directed by these “In Motion” plans (*See exciting update below. There is money!). The adoption of a plan like this also helps create the political urgency required for funding to appear — so it’s a positive feedback loop all around.

*UPDATE, 12:20 pm: Turns out, PBOT actually does already have money lined up for this. So far they’ve set aside $500,000 from the Fixing Our Streets (gas tax) program, $100,000 from their Pedestrian Network funding program, and $80,000 from the Missing Links program. That’s $680,000 to jumpstart NPIM. PBOT tells me they plan to spend this money in the first two years after the plan is adopted.

How do we tell PBOT which ones to build first? Visit the online open house and make your priorities and insights known.

PBOT will take this feedback, mesh it with their other core values (like equity, feasibility, and so on), run it all up the political flagpole and come up with a “Top Tier” project list later this fall.

According to their latest timeline, they’ll continue to refine the project list and find funding sources from fall through spring of 2023 and then get the plan passed by council that summer.

If it all goes according to plan, I bet we could see some of the best projects in NPIM get installed early next summer. So get to that open house and help make it happen. The open house closes September 30th.

Bike-Thru: North Lombard Ave Bike Lanes (Video)

Yes I realize I’ve already covered the new bike lanes on Lombard; but I feel like this video gives you another important perspective on what they are like.

Have you ridden them yet? Are the new lanes enough for you to make this part of your personal bike network? Or will you stick to the sidewalk?

Be the first to see our videos by subscribing to the BikePortland YouTube channel (help us reach 1,000 subs!).

Mass family transit dreams, and our first multimodal adventure

We made it from Hillsboro to Sunday Parkways in east Portland! (Photos: Shannon Johnson/BikePortland)

It is with a touch of envy that I read Shawne Martinez’s account of an epic carfree multimodal adventure to Seattle with his kid. How exciting! And yet for me – a mother of five – how impossible!

As Shawne recounts, part of his trip was dependent on getting a bus with an empty bike rack, because he and his daughter both had bikes, and Trimet buses are only equipped to carry two bikes at a time. Thus, his trip was not only dependent on an empty bus rack, but also on him having only two people in his traveling group. Such a family trip, it would seem, is limited to families of two. This is the case for almost all multimodal trips that combine bikes with Portland area transit. Buses, including Trimet’s new FX line only carry two bikes at a time. MAX trains can carry more bikes, with train cars equipped with two bike hooks at each end, and the possibility of squishing in an extra kid bike, or using (when empty) handicapped spaces for bikes. Thus, in circumstances of an empty MAX, it could be possible to travel together with four bikes on the low-floor trains, with two hanging from the hooks, and two in the wheelchair spaces.

Still, that doesn’t accommodate a family as large as mine. With five kids and one or two adults, we’d be needing space for six or seven bikes.

This uncomfortable truth is why the Gorge Express buses caught my attention: they are equipped to carry nine bikes at a time. Does this mean, Gorge Express aside, I should give up on multimodal travel dreams? Is multimodal a no-go for big families? Or are there solutions for families like mine?

Our big-family transit needs are mass transit needs

As I’ve mused over this big-family transit conundrum, I’ve begun thinking about the mass usage of multimodal transit. Our current system of two-bikes-per-bus doesn’t take mass usage seriously. It feels like a token system, which is actually reliant on the idea that few people will seek to use it. Workers certainly can’t try to take a bike on a heavily traveled morning bus commute, as Cornelius Mayor Dalin explained a while back.

If we are serious about encouraging multimodal travel, we have to think about ways to make it accessible and workable for mass usage, making it a reliable option for big families and large numbers of commuters. What would that mean? How could that be done?

My first question is, why aren’t all buses equipped to carry nine bikes? For many commutes, a nine-bike carrying capacity would make multimodal trips a realistic, rather than very tenuous, option. (Even our big family could do it!) Still, that’s only nine standard bikes, and a lot of bike-loading time, slowing down bus trips.

Cargo bikes, especially box bikes, are obviously not an option for taking on the bus or train – though I fantasize about the last MAX cars being emptied of seats to allow cargo bikes to roll on and ride during non-peak hours, and accommodating standing-room people rides during the peak. A cargo-bike MAX car would be life-changing. But I recognize that we need to be thinking about systems that work for the masses, not just for me personally. In Amsterdam, where almost everyone bikes, buses don’t permit regular bikes at all, but only foldable bikes carried on as hand-luggage. The token system of a two bike rack would be ridiculous in such a bike-heavy city. Instead, I am told that there are large bike parking facilities at transit hubs, along with easy, frequent, and accessible bike rental options, so that multimodal bike-transit trips typically mean parking your personal bikes, then renting at your destination stop, including family cargo bike rentals.

What works in Amsterdam might not be the solution for Portland (I think most of us around here are pretty attached to our personal bikes, so that rental bikes feel like a hard pill to swallow, but maybe that’s an adjustment we need to make). And what we should do today, in the “meantime” between current usage and hoped-for-mass usage, may also look different from future days where mass options exist or are mandatory.

At the moment, I’m dreaming of a small family fleet of foldable bikes for multimodal family trips. That’s not in our current budget, and I still have children too little to fold and carry their own bikes, or even to ride independently. I can’t take my cargo bike on the MAX, which is my only bike that can carry my infant. That pretty much eliminates the multimodal options for us….except for a little extra creativity.

Using what we have right now: Our first multimodal family trip

I wanted to attend the recent Sunday Parkways via MAX and with rolling options for the kids when we arrived, so this is the option we came up with: Compact Double Stroller + 3 Scooters, all fit into the space of one hanging bike!

Which means, we just made our first ever multimodal family trip! It was a bit of a dance, getting everyone on and off, and I’ll be the first to admit that a stroller isn’t a great scooter companion (my apologies to everyone at Sunday Parkways who had to contend with me following slowly behind scootering children). But I’m happy that we did it. In the future, I hope to get a MAX-friendly bike outfitted with a child seat, or two (handlebar seat and back rack–has anyone managed such a bike on the MAX? Send photos, please.) And then, I guess we need skateboards or mini-bromptons for the rest… Wouldn’t it be fun to be a folding-bike family? Maybe someday…

Starting next month, car parking in the Lloyd will cost more during big events

PBOT says this is to “encourage less driving and more use of public transit, biking, and other means of transportation.”

There are many transit options people can use to travel to the Lloyd District and attend a Trail Blazers game at the Moda Center or an event at the Convention Center. The Lloyd is one of the city’s top transit hubs – all MAX light rail lines pass through the area and it’s a hotspot for TriMet buses and the streetcar . Yet people still choose to get to their by car. With a new increase in parking fees, the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) hopes to change that.

Starting in September, PBOT will implement an event parking area in the Lloyd, raising the price of on-street car parking from $1.20 to $3 an hour during large events with more than 10,000 people in attendance, such as concerts and basketball games. PBOT says this is to “encourage less driving and more use of public transit, biking, and other means of transportation” and “relieve pressure on people who live in the area, reducing traffic, and making it easier for residents and other visitors to find on-street parking.”

The event rate will apply from 8 am to 10 pm during large events that start at 5 pm or earlier and from 5 to 10 pm during large events that start after 5 pm. Right now, parking meters in the Lloyd east of NE Grand Ave only run until 6 pm, including during large events, so people who park on that side of Grand to attend an evening basketball game may be able to park for free. The increased rate will also apply on Sundays when there is an eligible event – right now, meters in the Lloyd don’t run on Sundays at all.

However, the new policy will also change the meter hours on non-event days to end at 6 pm in the entire district, including in the area west of Grand Ave, which currently runs until 10 pm. It will also increase some meter parking windows in the district from 2 hours to 5 hours.

Event district parking has been in place around downtown’s Providence Park since 2011, where it costs $4 an hour to park a car on the street during Portland Timbers and Thorns games. Proponents of the Lloyd District event parking area have been advocating for the same treatment to the area surrounding the Moda and Convention Centers for years, but Portland City Council only agreed to go forward with it this past April.

Local car parking reform advocates say the Lloyd District is particularly egregious for its abundance of car parking, both on and off the street. While this fee increase won’t solve every car parking problem plaguing the area, advocates say this kind of demand management is necessary for pushing people toward alternative modes of transportation.

But some people weren’t thrilled about the parking fee increase. In April, Oregonian editor Brad Schmidt prompted an impassioned Twitter discussion when he tweeted about the event parking district plan, calling it a “money grab.” From Schmidt’s perspective, PBOT should have first tried simply increasing the meter hours and charging normal rates from 6-10 pm and on Sundays before increasing the fee to $3. Others had the opposite opinion and called on PBOT to increase the fee even more.

PBOT is open about using parking revenue to manage the bureau’s budget deficit. In July, parking fees citywide were raised $0.20, with extra revenue devoted to funding a new Transportation Wallet program to increase access to multimodal transportation for low-income Portlanders. The extra revenue generated from parking in the Lloyd District will also go toward this program.

Another point of contention is due to the fact that the fee increase in the Lloyd District will apply to everyone who happens to be using on-street parking during applicable hours, not just the people attending the events. To mitigate some of this concern, PBOT will allow Lloyd Center residents with vehicles to opt-in to a no-citation list with parking enforcement during event days.

Regardless, the new fee increase won’t send people scrambling. The Lloyd District is rife with parking garages and lots: if residents or frequent visitors of the transit-rich, walkable area feel they need to drive a car, they’ll still have a place to put it.

Like UCLA urban planning researcher (and father of the modern parking reform movement) Donald Shoup foretold, the numbers show that pricing on-street parking according to demand – instead of subsidizing it like cities have been doing up until now – can be an effective tool for reducing car dependency. People won’t like it, because they’re used to parking their cars for free or very cheap. But if we want to get people out of their cars and onto transit, bikes and other sustainable modes of transportation, something’s gotta give.

The first event that will activate the event district parking fee increase is the Rose City Comic Convention on September 9th. After that, the rates will be in effect about 90 days a year – you can check out PBOT’s calendar of events that will trigger the fee increase on their project website.

PBOT seeks budget committee members

From Portland Bureau of Transportation:

(August. 24, 2022) Help shape the Portland Bureau of Transportation Budget choices! The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is currently accepting applications for its Bureau and Budget Advisory Committee (BBAC). The committee advises PBOT Director Chris Warner on the direction of the budget and bureau priorities.
The BBAC application deadline has been extended to September 5, 2022.
The BBAC is a 24-member committee. Members meet monthly and serve a two year term, which may be renewable.
To be eligible for the advisory committee, members must live, play, worship, go to school, work and/or do business in the City of Portland.
We are looking for people from every part of Portland to share their voice on this committee! If you want to serve your community and inform PBOT’s transportation budget choices, we strongly encourage you to apply. Learn more and apply today at: https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/portlandor/jobs/3655302/volunteer-non-paid-position-pbot-bureau-budget-advisory-committee-bbac
Please direct any questions you may have about this volunteer opportunity to marianna.lomanto@portlandoregon.gov or 503.823.7041.

Guest Article: Why PBOT’s top maintenance staffer joined us for a bike ride

Story and photos by Cathy Tuttle

People who bike every day are the folks who ground-truth poor maintenance. We intimately experience gutters filled with leaves and plastic bike lane wands broken in the same locations day after day. We see street trees dying, and giant potholes reappearing over and over on what look like war-torn streets. Then there are the piles of slippery leaves, illegible street signs, shattered glass, chunks of concrete, thorny brambles and so on. These hazards could injure or even kill someone. And they always make us uncomfortable.

Yet as important as it is, a well-maintained stretch of asphalt isn’t much of a photo op or ribbon-cutting opportunity. Maintenance just doesn’t have the same political oomph that “new” has. That means repairing, upgrading, and fixing streets is often overlooked, underfunded and understaffed.

The City of Portland wants to change that.

Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) Maintenance and Operations Manager Jody Yates shared her time, knowledge, and experience with us on Friday August 26. Yates headlined the eleventh monthly BikeLoud PDX Policy Ride I’ve hosted, and her topic is what I’m personally most interested in as we retrofit our cities for the future. As a city planner and project manager, I have always been dedicated to building infrastructure we can maintain easily, rather than spending money on streets that need to be constantly rebuilt. Yates is too.

Jody Yates spent Friday afternoon riding in a three-wheeled electric pedicab piloted by Go By Bike founder and BikeLoud PDX Board President Kiel Johnson. Yates and the group who came to this Pedalpalooza ride talked for three hours about the materials under our feet (and wheels) and we barely scratched the surface.

PBOT is responsible for the maintenance of hundreds of millions of square feet of pavement – streets, sidewalks, bridges, staircases, plazas, and more. Though she started just in February 2022, Yates is up to speed on leading a maintenance and operations division of several hundred people. She brings a wealth of practical experience. A civil engineer for the past 25 years, Yates worked mainly for governments in Clackamas, Portland, and most recently in Beaverton. A thoughtful engineer, Yates was instrumental in getting programs started in creative street activation and rigorous asset management. Yates is putting significant energy into assessing where and how streets are failing, and smart ways to improve them.

There are three main culprits of pavement destruction. In order of severity, streets are damaged by: poorly repaired utility trenches, extra heavy vehicles, and tree roots.

Though PBOT’s Maintenance and Operations Division does repairs and implements designs generated by other PBOT divisions, Yates talked about street maintenance as a design issue in and of itself, of how maintenance should be a first consideration and built into designs of new and upgraded streets. Streets need to be easy and affordable to take care of.

Yates said there are three main culprits of pavement destruction. In order of severity, streets are damaged by: poorly repaired utility trenches, extra heavy vehicles, and, far back in third place, by tree roots.

Utility trenches are made by gas, sewer, water, telecom, and other utilities. Yates called out telecom companies for doing a slapdash job repairing the roads they rip up when installing cables. Yates made the analogy of the process of utility cut and covers to a shirt that has been torn again and again; sometimes repaired carefully, but often too quickly. And all the tears and repairs eventually destroy the “fabric” of the street.

On our tour we looked at old streets cobbled with ballast blocks, pocked and pitted asphalt, concrete panels, and even some 100-year-old mixtures of paving material that still are intact because they hadn’t been cut into very much.

Road repaving can cost upwards of $6 million a mile, and with Portland on the hook for taking care of over 2,000 miles of roads, keeping what we have in good condition is very sensible.

Heavy vehicles can and do quickly destroy roads too. Transit stops are reinforced with heavy duty concrete panels instead of a few inches of asphalt that tends to quickly deform under heavy wheels. People walking and rolling do virtually no damage to streets, but cars also quickly wear off paint and thermoplastic, damage curbs and street furnishings, and wear down pavement too. A few divisions of PBOT staff under Yates are responsible for repairing damage to paint, furnishings, and other public street elements.

Street trees are vital to a healthy resilient city, but their roots can also lift pavement as they search for water and nutrients. Streets that have minimal or no car traffic — like the Park Blocks on the PSU campus — have plenty of room for mature street trees. Low-car streets also need much less maintenance to repair paving, paint, and street furnishings. Another reason it’s smart for us to invest in streets that prioritize people walking and wheeling? They never do as much damage to the right of way as cars do.

People who bike care about safety and comfort. That’s why road maintenance is so important to us. Smooth roads, clear sightlines, few conflict zones along routes including door zones and safe intersections. We need clear directional signs to guide us while biking. We need enough room to avoid obstacles and wide enough lanes to ride side by side together or to pass other people biking.

For all these reasons and more we look forward to learning more and working with Jody Yates and PBOT on these issues in the future!

Interview-by-bike with Breakfast on the Bridge volunteer Lily Karabaic

For the past 15 years, Hollywood neighborhood resident Lily Karabaic has woken up around 4:00 am on the last Friday of every month. Like you, the first thing she does is make coffee. Unlike you, she makes 42 cups. And then she straps a percolator, a few dozen donuts (a vegan sampler from Doe Donuts), a bunch of mugs, and sometimes even pancake mix (gluten free if you choose) or freshly baked muffins onto her bike trailer and heads out to stand on a bridge and gives it away to anyone who passes by.

Lily Karabaic in “full donut regalia” (she even has matching donut earrings!).

Why? Because Lily is a dedicated volunteer of Breakfast on the Bridges, the cherished Portland tradition that celebrates its 20th anniversary this month.

The event means so much to Lily that every time she gets a new job she makes sure to negotiate for Fridays off.

I met Lily at her apartment last Friday morning around 6:30 am so we could ride together to the Tilikum Crossing for the birthday B on B. When I showed up, there was spilled coffee on the counter and she and her spouse Aaron Parecki were fussing with straps in her small living room, trying to get several boxes secured onto a Burley Travoy trailer.

Once we were all ready to roll, we took the lane on Northeast Sandy Blvd while drivers sped past and my camera rolled.

“It’s more about community-building, where we happen to have coffee,” Lily explained. “We use it as a tool for community building and connecting. People that ride bikes, scooters, people that walk, the morning runners on the waterfront and Esplanade — I think we spend a lot of time going past each other in those spaces. B on B is a meeting place.”

And for as many people who see this unexpected display of public hospitality and altruism for the first time and are taken aback, there are just as many regulars.

“I think it’s one of the foundational pieces of bike culture in Portland,” Lily said. Is that what keeps her getting out of bed so early every Friday morning? To keep the tradition alive? “Now [that it’s been 20 years] we feel like we can’t [stop]. You don’t want to be the one who ended B on B.”

Watch the full interview above or on YouTube (thanks to Aaron Parecki for shots of us riding together and the drone footage).

See our TikTok for another look at this story.
Breakfast on the Bridges on Instagram

Southwest update and dispatch from PBOT Bicycle Advisory Committee tour

New bike lane along SW Bertha Blvd at Vermont.

From right to left: Roger Geller, Keith Liden, Marianne Fitzgerald.

The Portland Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) and community members gathered on Sunday for a tour of some of Southwest Portland’s most recently built bike infrastructure. Leading the group was Portland Bureau of Transportation’s (PBOT) Bicycle Coordinator, Roger Geller.

The event had a bit of a “passing the baton” feel to it—or at least a sharing of the baton. The BAC has a new chair, Ally Holmqvist (who was along for the ride), and an infusion of fresh faces on its roster.

On hand were two longtime SW neighborhood activists, Marianne Fitzgerald and Keith Liden, to bring folks up to speed on area issues.

The group gathered near “the crossroads” intersection of SW Barbur Blvd and Capitol Highway. As BikePortland has extensively covered, the crossroads is one of the worst intersections in Portland, and is the location of a large gap in what is soon to be an important north-south bikeway running from Lake Oswego to Hillsdale.

Geller said that PBOT was aware of the problem gap, and explained that even though Capitol Highway is under city control, the nearby I-5 freeway ramps give ODOT authority over any PBOT design. He hinted at a possible approach for cyclist safely between Barbur and Huber, and said that the two agencies were working together.

Fitzgerald then spoke about lack of stormwater management as the key to understanding southwest active transportation issues. The land on which the group was standing, she pointed out, was the site of the future West Portland Town Center, a zoning and urban development plan which she criticized for only paying “lip service” to transportation.

Stormwater facilities are expensive to build, private developers fight building them, and the city ends up letting them off the hook for required active transportation improvements. That’s one of the main reasons SW Portland has the least sidewalk coverage of any area in town.

Fitzgerald concluded by saying that the city needed to build more stormwater collection and treatment basins, like the four that BES has built to accommodate runoff from the Capitol Highway project.

And with that, the group set off on its tour. (I wasn’t able to join them as I’m not riding my bicycle these days.)

Stormwater basins

Stormwater basin at 42nd Ave and Woods Creek. (Photo: Lisa Caballero/BikePortland)

It’s been almost a year since we last looked at the stormwater collection and treatment basins that make the multi-use path along the Capitol Highway project possible. Last November, BES contractors had finished the basin at 42nd/Woods Creek, and it was waiting to be filled with soil and for native, water-filtering vegetation to be planted.

As you can see in the photos above, now they’re just waiting for rain!

SW Capitol Highway Project

The multi-use path on the west side of Capitol Highway, looking north. (Photo: Lisa Caballero/ BikePortland)

The Capitol Highway project is in full swing, the entire street is in a state of almost … well, kind of like when the contractor has done the framing, and the drywall is up, and you can see where it’s going — but there is still a lot of work to do.

That gnarly ADA ramp

Finally, BikePortland ran a couple of stories last month about the struggle BES contractors were having in Portland Heights building ADA ramps to meet the city’s standards. More concrete pours followed and it looks like these ramps are acceptable.

Newly built ADA ramp at SW 16th Ave and Elizabeth Street. (Photo credit: Lisa Caballero/BikePortland)

And that’s a wrap!

Taking a ride on TriMet’s new FX line

Hey good lookin’! (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

TriMet has spent six years and about $175 million to establish a new kind of bus service on Southeast Division between downtown and Gresham. Now it’s finally time to see what this thing can do.

The Division corridor has been the poster child for our region’s struggles with climate killing car dependency, traffic deaths and poor transit service. When it opens on September 18th, TriMet hopes its new Frequent Express (FX) line starts a different narrative; one where Division is more humane and welcoming, and where buses finally move out of the shadows of light rail and take a starring role in non-car travel.

This morning TriMet hosted a sneak peek of the FX Line 2. I hopped on board one of the 31, 60-foot articulated buses that will soon serve 84 new bus platforms on the 12-mile corridor.

As we motored eastbound on Division from Portland Community College at SE 82nd, TriMet Division Transit Project Director Michael Kiser held court with several reporters. He detailed how the agency was able to speed up bus service, serve more people and improve safety in one fell swoop (and with a big assist from the City of Portland).

It’s really just a regular bus, but longer.

“Prior to this project we were passing up people just because we simply didn’t have the room on the bus.”
– Michael Kiser, TriMet project director

The FX lines boasts 12-minute headways and will shave significant seconds off trip times. TriMet Public Information Officer Tia York said the agency estimates the average rider will experience 20% faster trip times through the corridor (and it would have been even faster if the route didn’t divert south to the Tilikum Crossing instead of using the Hawthorne Bridge, but I digress.)

TriMet used a variety of methods to boost bus speeds.

One “very big lift” according to Kiser was collaborating with traffic engineers at the cities of Gresham and Portland to use machine-learning software to estimate arrival times and adjust signal timing at intersections accordingly. This transit signal priority will give bus operators a leg-up on the busy corridor.

The FX line will also have all-door boarding and fare validator machines at all three doors. The buses also don’t have to pull out of a traffic lane to pick up passengers. This means they can stop and get rolling much faster without having to wait for a break in traffic. There are also fewer stops along the route. Some sections of red bus-only lanes we see on the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Rose Lane projects are coming too. They aren’t on the ground yet, by Kiser said they should be by opening day (red lanes as a design standard wasn’t in use when TriMet design this project, hence the late implementation).

These time savings are combined with buses that can fit 60% more people. “Prior to this project,” Kiser shared, “we were passing up people just because we simply didn’t have the room on the bus.”

“This is a huge improvement for biking in east Portland,”
– Dylan Rivera, PBOT

Every time someone takes the bus instead of their car we reap major safety benefits. But there are other changes to Division meant to make it safer. Many of them, about $13 million worth, were concurrently installed by the Portland Bureau of Transportation as part of their Outer Division Safety Project.

PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera was on the bus with us. He rattled off an impressive list of project elements: three protected intersections, 4.5 miles of protected bike lanes with physical separation, bike only signals with bike detection, 81,000 square feet of new sidewalks in the whole project, almost 60,000 of which are in Portland, and 11 new marked crosswalks with stoplights, median islands and flashing beacons.

“This is a huge improvement for biking in east Portland,” Rivera said.

But a bike lane is only a bike lane if PBOT can keep people from parking cars in it. And on Division, PBOT and TriMet have a lot of work to do on that front. Kiser with TriMet said, “Parking in the bike lane will be an ongoing challenge,” and added they are partnering with PBOT to come up with a solution. But it didn’t sound promising. “Obviously, we have a lot of enforcement issues across the city right now,” he added.

Access managed, thanks to a center median.

Drivers have lost curbside parking spaces and they’ve lost the ability to turn into any driveway anytime they want. That’s because of new “access management” medians added for safety. This is another name for curbs in the middle of the street installed to prevent people from turning left out of — or into — driveways along the route.

“Transitioning to this changed environment is going to take some time. And access management is a big part of that,” Kiser said. “At times it has made it less convenient for motorists, but it’s safer for pedestrians. The pedestrian fatalities we’ve seen along this corridor is a big piece of how we approached the design.”

The Division streetscape feels very hectic. There’s just a lot going on. The medians help chill things out a bit. They also reduce available space on the road — something TriMet and PBOT had more flexibility on in the design of this corridor because it’s a bus route instead of light rail. If MAX was the chosen solution, there would have been very little room left for anything else after the tracks went in (see East Burnside or North Interstate).

I asked Kiser why this corridor gets a bus while TriMet has favored light rail almost exclusively in the past.

“We’re really asking a lot of this particular corridor, Division is a real workhorse,” Kiser said, rattling off all the different users like freight truckers, errand-runners, walkers, and bike riders. “And we don’t have a parallel route for bicycles out here because the adjacent street network is discontinuous,” he pointed out. “If we would have put in light rail, something would have had to go, there’s not room for every mode. So maybe bicycles would not have been a component.”

Unlike every existing corridor with a light rail, there’s no parallel route for drivers on SE Division either (which makes me think if we would have built the Mt. Hood Freeway, this would probably have been a MAX project.)

I asked Kiser if he thinks Division Transit Project elements will trickle-down to other lines. He said it will and specifically mentioned upcoming “BRT” (bus rapid transit) projects on 82nd Avenue and Tualatin-Valley Highway. “Barbur too perhaps?” I asked, and he nodded in agreement.

The advancements in transit signal priority are especially exciting, Kiser said, because the software they’re using is backwards-compatible to every other bus in their fleet. “All the other buses have what they need to plug into that system from a technological standpoint,” he said. The new bus stations with raised bike lanes through them are another thing TriMet is excited to debut in this project that we could see elsewhere as time goes on.

What about the bike racks?

Gone are the front-loading racks. Those waste precious time and weren’t the right fit for an FX line, Kiser said. The new racks are a model known as Spinlock made by Sportworks. They can fit wheel sizes from 26 to 29-inches (yes that includes standard road bikes) and tire widths up to 2.75-inches. Click the spec sheet on the right for a full rundown of the features.

There is space for just two bikes, the same amount TriMet buses have had for about three decades. C-TRAN’s similar buses on the Vine BRT route up in Vancouver, Washington have three racks. So why just two on FX? TriMet considered three racks, but didn’t go that direction. Kiser and another TriMet planner said it came down to competition for space between humans and bikes.

“It’s a balancing act,” Kiser said. “You want to be able to move as many people as you can and make sure they can get to their destination and then balance that with the need of bicycles.” If TriMet sees more demand for bike capacity, Kiser said they could revisit the issue in the future.

(See how easy it is to roll a bike into the racks in our TikTok.)

Car users and their large, inefficient vehicles, are the thing that slows FX down the most.

That’s not the only aspect of the FX TriMet might reconsider down the line.

12-minute headways are nice, but even more frequent service would be better. Is it possible TriMet could speed things up in the future? “I think so,” said Kiser. “With ridership levels being a bit lower now, with our shortage of operators, these things put strains on the service that we can put out. As things kind of get back to a more sustainable state, I think we we could see an improvement in the service.”

The new FX line is a big deal for TriMet. It’s their first major corridor project that isn’t a light rail line, and it feels like there’s a lot of internal buzz about what the means for the future of the agency. Bus projects are easier to implement, quicker to build, more flexible, and cost less than light rail. Does Kiser think FX marks a renaissance in bus service for the region? Not wanting to paint a picture of competition between the two transit modes, Kiser said, “It gives us another tool in the region to reduce our reliance on vehicles. So certainly we are going to see more of it. Because of what doors this project opens up.”