Police say it happened near this intersection of the Parkrose neighborhood just east of the I-205 path and north of Sandy Blvd.
A bicycle rider died in a traffic collision in northeast Portland this morning. It happened around 9:00 am — less than seven hours after a separate fatal collision involving a cyclist this morning.
According to the Portland Police Bureau, this crash happened in the area of Northeast 105th and NE Marx. The driver remained at the scene and the investigation is ongoing. No other details have been released at this time.
Looking north on 105th at NE Marx.
Two cycling deaths so close together is rare and will likely lead to a large response from local bike activists. Beyond the timing, what’s also notable is the locations. This more recent fatality happened just 3.4 miles north of the one on NE Glisan earlier this morning.
NE 105th and Marx is an industrially-zoned area of the Parkrose neighborhood just a few blocks north of Sandy Blvd (US 30). 105th is known to some bicycle riders because it’s the road that runs adjacent to the I-205 path just south of where it connects to NE Alderwood Road. I’ve hopped onto 105th to access this industrial area. There are no bike lanes, sidewalks, or curbs, and the shoulders are often full of gravel.
This is the fifth person killed in a bicycle crash on Portland streets so far this year.
I’ll share more as I learn what happened. For now, if you have any information about the incident, please contact crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov, attention Traffic Investigations Unit, and reference case number 24-269938.
Looking west on NE Glisan where it crossings 128th. Menlo Park Elementary School is on the left. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
A man riding a bicycle was killed by a driver near the intersection of Northeast Glisan and 128th this morning. The Portland Police Bureau say it happened around 2:37 am. By the time officers arrived they found the bicycle rider dead and the driver had fled the scene.
This is the third fatal collision involving a bicycle rider so far this year.
While we don’t know many details about what happened yet, this location is notable for a few reasons. This section of NE Glisan east of I-205 was significantly reconfigured by the Portland Bureau of Transportation in 2019. Once referred to as a “raceway” in a PBOT slide presentation, the street was converted from a classic east Portland stroad into a more humane design with protected bike lanes, enhanced crossings, and other safety-related features.
Glisan at 128th is also where the 130s neighborhood greenway crossing from north to south. It’s an off-set intersection, so PBOT built a two-way protected bike lane and median island crossing in order to help get bicycle riders safely across the intersection. Another reason PBOT paid special attention to this crossing is because it’s right outside Menlo Park Elementary School.
PPB is still investigating the crash and said in a statement his morning the incident could impact the morning drop-off.
According to our Fatality Tracker, this is the 47th fatal traffic collision on Portland streets so far this year, down from 55 at this point last year.
If you have more information about what happened, please let the police know so they can track down whoever did this. If you saw or heard anything, please email crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov attention Traffic Investigations Unit and reference case number 24-269766.
UPDATE, 10/22:Video from the scene by KPTV (Fox 12) shows that the bicycle rider and driver were headed west on NE Glisan, just before coming to the overpass outside the school. The rider was in the general travel lane and the driver hit him from behind at a high rate of speed.
Hold onto those ballots! Especially if you live in City Council District 4. Because I’ve just uploaded a new podcast episode where Lisa Caballero and I dish and debate the D4 race.
Barring any changes in plans, I’m done with individual candidate interviews as we are in the final few weeks before ballots are due. Now I want to focus on more general analysis of each district and the mayor’s race. So I asked Lisa to join me in the Shed yesterday because she’s lived in D4 for over twenty years and just as obsessed with this election as I am. Lisa has also done neighborhood-level activism in those years and she’s hosted and attended a bunch election-related events in recent months.
In this episode, we talked about who we think are the 12-13 most viable candidates in the field. Since Olivia Clark, Eric Zimmerman, and Eli Arnold nabbed endorsements from the two biggest media outlets in town (The Oregonian and Willamette Week), we talked about them the most. “I think it’s hard to ignore those endorsements,” Lisa said about how those three candidates have emerged this week. “If I were another District 4 candidate, I would be feeling a little down right now.” We also shared our thoughts on other front-of-the-pack candidates like Mitch Green, Chad Lykins, Lisa Freeman, Bob Weinstein, Stan Penkin, Moses Ross, Ben Hufford, Sarah Silkie, and Tony Morse.
How are they on transportation issues? It’s a mixed bag and we didn’t share all their positions. I used a question The Oregonian asked every candidate as a jumping-off point: “Which would you prioritize: Creation of more protected bike lanes and priority bus lanes or improved surfacing of existing degraded driving lanes?” I realize that’s an annoying binary that doesn’t appreciate the reality of funding, but it was fun to see how the candidates answered.
In Lisa’s mind, what’s important isn’t whether or not a candidate nails a bike-related question. She wants someone with experience and the political moxie to make progress — and most importantly someone who can work with others so the sum of council is greater than it’s individual parts. “We have a lot of candidates with experience, and especially Eric and Olivia, they’ve got more experience than anybody running for mayor,” Lisa said. “We don’t have someone who can design a bike lane… So I have a fantasy of Olivia Clark having a weekly breakfast with (D1 candidate) Steph Routh… Likewise, I think it would be really cool if Eric Zimmerman and (D1 candidate) Timur Ender had coffee every once in a while.”
A red flag for Lisa is anyone she feels is too dogmatic. “I don’t want people with purity tests. I want someone who can talk to someone who doesn’t see eye-to-eye, listen to them, perhaps learn from them and persuade them.”
No matter how things turn out once all the votes are tallied, Lisa is sanguine about the new form of government and the influence on ranked choice voting. Beyond the three who win seats, Lisa says, “We’ve got another nine who are going to be very well-informed about the district. And what a wonderful process this has been! It has created nine people who are not going to be on City Council, who are going to be able to advocate, and who have spent a lot of volunteer time really getting to know this area. That’s a win-win for everybody.”
Listen to the full episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Steve Novick at Bike Happy Hour last night (with a free, day-old croissant from Crema someone gave him, securely placed under his arm). (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Steve Novick has been out of Portland politics for eight years, but you wouldn’t know that if you’ve watched him on the campaign trail. Novick, who’s running for one of three seats in City Council District 3 (Southeast), has landed back on the scene and finds himself atop a very competitive race. This week he wrapped up the big trifecta with endorsements from The Willamette Week, The Oregonian and the Portland Mercury.
And last night he walked onto the Gorges Beer Co patio to join us for Bike Happy Hour. In his typically demure style, Novick didn’t announce his presence and he didn’t even tell me he’d be there. But he was prepared and on a mission to find good answers to specific questions about bicycling that could inform his platform and politics going forward.
Before I share his questions, let’s go back in time a bit…
For anyone around during his previous tenure as a city commissioner (between 2012 and 2016), you’ll recall Novick’s relatively solid record on bicycling and transportation. Two weeks after he received the PBOT bureau assignment, Novick made time to stop at Breakfast on the Bridges where he mingled with local bike lovers and advocates. As PBOT commissioner his entire term, Novick was the tip of the spear when it came to pushing the 10-cent local gas tax increase. Novick even earned a Comment of the Week nod here on BikePortland for his acerbic rebuttal of economist Joe Cortright’s concerns about the tax. Portlanders have voted in support of the tax three times since, so it might seem like a no-brainer, but Novick likely sacrificed his re-election by standing up for more local transportation funding. Novick was also in charge when we launched Biketown, and he was an ardent supporter of Better Naito.
The one quibble I recall about Novick is that he didn’t push hard enough to improve bike safety on SW Barbur when the opportunity presented himself. I felt like he deferred too much to Oregon Department of Transportation Region 1 Director Jason Tell. When I learned Novick’s chief of staff Chris Warner (who’d go on to become PBOT director years later) was a close personal friend of Tell’s and it felt like Novick was parroting ODOT’s position on the issue, I emailed Novick to ask about the Warner-Tell relationship. Minutes later, Novick picked up the phone and called me. When I answered, he chewed me out and warned me to never question the integrity of one of his staff again and then hung up before I could respond. I was shocked, but chalked it up to just another interesting day on the job, and moved on.
Here are the questions Novick posed to the crowd last night (I’ve also posted a video of his speech at the end of this post and on Instagram):
“A question I have for the bicycle community is, we have seen this really unfortunate drop off in bicycling as a percentage of trips over the past nine years. We sort of reached a peak in 2015 and we used to have this idea, ‘If we build it, they will come.’ If we keep on improving the bike infrastructure, the bike mode share will increase. And obviously we should do a lot more to improve the infrastructure, but the infrastructure is better and more extensive than it was in 2015 and we still have lower ridership.
So my question is: What should we focus on to get ridership back up? How much of it is simply safety — the fact that drivers went insane during the pandemic and they’ve stayed insane and people are scared to be on the streets? How much of it is enforcement?
How much of it is that… bicycling was like this sort of hot thing that in the mid-2010s every city was competing to have the best bike program. Then it sort of faded as a cause. To what extent can we just say, ‘Hey, this is a critical cause. It’s vital for climate change. It’s vital to reduce people’s spending on transportation. Is vital for health. How much could we recapture by just sort of being more aggressive cheerleaders for bicycling?
How much of it is education? Our primary tool is the greenways, but you have the population changing all the time. To what extent could we do a better job of educating new people who come here where the greenways are?
And to what extent is it improving the infrastructure? Are there some dramatic, disruptive things we could do in certain places where it’s an infrastructure improvement that makes everybody stand up and pay attention? What are some key places where we could do some big things in order to jumpstart things again?”
Then Novick shared a new (to me) plan to boost the share of transportation-specific funding in the Portland Clean Energy Benefits Fund (PCEF) from its current level of about 17% of the $750 million total to a “majority”. Novick said he’s been pushing PCEF leaders to spend more on transportation because it’s the largest source of carbon emissions. Then he shared a related question:
One argument you will run into is [PCEF funding] is supposed to be for reducing carbon emissions, but it’s also to be supposed to be benefiting low-income people and people of color. Does that mean we have to spend all of the money specifically in communities that have a large proportion of low-income people and people of color? Or can we say, ‘You know what, building out the entire bike network is important, even if some of that build-out occurs in places that aren’t particularly concentrated with people of color and low-income people, and that fighting climate change as a whole is important to low-income people and people of color, because they are going to bear the brunt of it. So making investments that reduced carbon emissions wherever they are, is still an environmental justice issue.’
Will people be willing to step up and say, ‘Yes, we think that that’s true’?
Given that Novick speaks from experiences as a commissioner who’s been in the trenches and stands a very good chance of winning a seat on council, it would behoove all of us to think about these questions and have good answers ready as the lobbying of council begins anew in January 2025.
“If I lose my election, answering those questions to me will be utterly irrelevant,” Novick said last night. “But if I win, I’d love to have you come and talk to me.”
A few scenes from last week’s gathering. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Bring your voters guide and a notepad to Bike Happy Hour tonight (Weds, 10/16 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm at SE Ankeny & 27th) as we help each other get educated and excited for the upcoming election. We’ve spent over a year getting to know candidates, and now it’s time to make some decisions!
In addition to the usual wonderful community connections and vibes we’ve had at our previous 79 happy hours, here’s what to expect on the Gorges Beer Co patio* tonight:
District 2 council candidate Chris Olson will join us. Chris is an unabashed progressive who’s been endorsed by the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), Moms Demand Action, and Bernie PDX just to name a few. Come around 5:00 to hear his latest stump speech and chat him up.
I’ll get things started with our traditional Free Fries at 4:00, so come early if you want a fresh hot snack of tasty fried potatoes. And remember, the mic is open to anyone beginning at 5:00 pm, so come and promote your project, ride, idea, song, poem — or whatever you want to share. Can’t wait to see you all there.
Oh wait, one more thing… Did you know Bike Happy Hour is so great we’ve now spawned two similar events? I shared a report from my visit to the Westside Bike Happy Hour back in July and I’ve just been told about another one… in Milwaukie (just south of Portland). Maitri Dermeyer of Bike Milwaukie and her co-conspirator Jay Panagos says they’ll host a happy hour for bike lovers on the last Monday of every month at Beer Store Milwaukie. The next one is on October 28th.
*Looks like we’ll have a gorgeous dry night (fingers crossed!). But if it’s wet and nasty we’ll move the party across the street inside Ankeny Tap & Table.
UPDATE, 10/18: The original post and photos on Nextdoor have been removed by Mel L.
People who live near Rose City Golf Course in northeast Portland awoke Monday morning to large scars of damage criss-crossing the grassy turf. The deep skidmarks and tread patterns make it clear the damage was done by people riding some sort of two-wheeled vehicle. Witnesses claimed the vehicles were electric and one Rose City Park resident, “Mel L.,” posted photos to Nextdoor and falsely blamed the damage on “e-bikes.”
“Just wait until bikes are allowed on the golf course,” Mel L. wrote. “Sorry, PP&R, but signage won’t stop this.”
The damage to the golf course has ramped up emotions surrounding a current proposal from Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R) to build new bike trails in and around the golf course and adjacent Rose City Park.
Source: Oregon DMV
It’s clear Mel L. is using this terrible behavior and vandalism to further a position shared by other nearby residents who’ve made it clear they do not support any new bike access as part of the PP&R trail project. Another person on Nextdoor, Janet Loughery, who’s been a loud voice against the bike trails in the past, piled onto the anti-bike sentiment in the thread: “These are the people the city wants to legally allow on the golf course by building trails they can have easier access to. This behavior will be come commonplace. Just say NO to trails on the golf course.”
Both Mel L. and Loughery are spreading misinformation and/or willfully misleading other residents because they don’t want more and/or certain type of people using the park.
The products used in the park were not “e-bikes.” As I recently explained in reporting on a tragic electric motorcycle crash in Tualatin, it’s common for people to use the term “e-bike” for vehicles that are not technically or legally bicycles in an way, shape or form other than having two wheels and a handlebar. For some folks, like law enforcement officials who write crash statements, it’s simply a matter of being ignorant of Oregon laws and/or not thinking the words we used to describe things matters. For others, like with these Nextdoor posters, it’s a matter of willfully painting a group with the wrong brush to further an agenda.
The discovery of this damage just as new access for bicycling is being considered, reminds me of the debate around bicycling in Forest Park. Back in 2010, as the conversation was shifting to support new and improved bike trails in Forest Park, someone tipped off PP&R staff about an illegal, handbuilt bike trail in a remote section of the park. The trail damaged a creek and was sloppily cut into the hillside. Bike advocates condemned the unsanctioned trail, but more importantly, PP&R staff and people who opposed cycling in Forest Park used it as a way to thwart forward progress on the biking plans. To this day, almost nothing has come from years of earnest advocacy to improve cycling in Forest Park thanks in large part to how some people leverage irresponsible actions of a few into an agenda that excludes all.
When it comes to the damage to Rose City Golf Course, a PP&R spokesperson told BikePortland this morning the greens have been repaired and the damage had no impact on golfers. As for what they were riding? “Some sort of vehicle,” the PP&R staffer shared. “We cannot confirm that e-bikes were used as someone claimed.”
We’ll get our first sense of how this damage might influence the city’s trail project tonight when PP&R hosts its second community meeting for the Rose City Recreational Trail Project. On the agenda is a discussion of trail designs, proposed trail locations, and more. The meeting will be held online from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Find the meeting Zoom link and learn more here.
Game creator Sean Sweat in the Shed on Friday, October 11th. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Portlander Sean Sweat has gamified our bewildering city council election. His new Rose City Hall card game lands just in time to help voters make sense out of dozens of viable candidates for local office. Sean is an MIT grad, supply chain expert at Intel, an urbanist, former vice chair of the Portland Bureau of Transportation Bureau Budget Advisory Committee, and an active member of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association.
I’ve bumped into Sean at several events in recent years (we first met at the first fundraising party for Just Crossing Alliance in 2022) as he’s settled into our community from his former hometown of Phoenix. When he said he created a card game based on the council election, I invited him over to the Shed for a closer look.
Here’s the short description of game play Sean posted on the Rose City Hall website:
Each player represents an influential figurehead in one of Portland’s four council districts. The districts will elect three councilors and the mayor, and then you will try to pass policies that your district’s voters favor. In the process, you can help your councilors gain and wield political capital to influence the outcome and shape the Portland you want to see!
The feature of the game that excites me most are the candidate cards. There are 68 council and 7 mayoral candidate cards. Sean included cards of all candidates who have a campaign website, have earned at least 100 donations, and who answered and returned his questionnaire. He used the questionnaire and his own survey of available information to give every candidate a score between one and four on four key issues: enforcement of homeless camping, housing, transportation, and taxes. The score is presented on a spectrum between two poles of thought. For example, on the transportation line, “Car” is on the left of the spectrum and “Bike/Transit” is on the right (he flipped this purposely to move away from the traditional left/right political thinking). For housing, the left is “Preservation” and the right is “YIMBY” and so on. Candidate cards also include the district the person is running in, their job or background, and the neighborhood they live in.
The cards are really fun to flip through and make good conversation starters over coffee or tea with a friend.
There are also 38 “Policy” cards that have values on them the correspond to how much political capital it takes to pass them, what minimum value on the issue spectrum a candidate needs to pass them, and which districts tend to favor the policy. Examples of these cards include “Expand Portland Street Response,” “Remove the Rose Lanes,” “Eliminate the Arts Tax,” etc…
The stack of 19 “News” are another fun element that can shake up the game. They read like headlines and come with various consequences that impact the game. For example, the card titled, “Councilor caught pushing PBOT to secretly remove popular bike lane,” results in the candidate in your stable with the highest “Car” position losing all of their political capital points.
From the game instructions.
Each player represents a different council district whose three members are determined after a vote that combines “preference tokens” and a roll of the dice. The game play consists of reading News cards and trying to pass policy — which players can choose to support or influence. You can choose to play a competitive or collaborative game. In the competitive version, you win when three or more policies that favor your district have been passed and are effective. In the collaborative game, the council wins together once three effective policies are in place for each district.
This is peak Portland civic nerdery and I’m here for it! I’ll try to bring decks — or maybe Sean himself — to Bike Happy Hour soon. And if/when he or I make a video of the game play instructions, I’ll embed it here in this post and on our various platforms. I highly recommend taking time to get a set of these cards, and I hope Sean will offer booster packs for future elections.
The game is $35 for a high-quality, professionally printed version. You can also print the entire deck via a PDF on the game’s website for an estimated cost of $25 at a local print/copy shop. Read full instructions and find out more at RoseCityHall.com.
Liv Osthus in the Shed earlier today. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
Liv Osthus has taken a very unconventional path to being a viable candidate for Portland’s highest political office. The 50 year-old from Sioux Falls, South Dakota is the daughter of a Lutheran preacher who moved to Portland in 1996 and fell in love with our city’s infamously bohemian lifestyle. She’s been a professional stripper ever since and still works at Mary’s Club, where, with each dollar she takes from an adoring customer, she hones the catchphrase that has since become the title of a full-length documentary about her life, “Thank your for supporting the arts.”
Now this author, singer, speaker, single mom of a 9-year-old daughter and noted advocate for sex workers, is garnering attention on a different stage: politics. Osthus’ campaign for Portland mayor has caught fire in recent days and weeks as Portlanders seek an alternative to the status quo. She’s breaking through with memorable performances in debates and forums where she shares a vision of Portland that’s “full of hopefulness, not homelessness.”
Osthus jumped into the race relatively late with no money or volunteers, but has since garnered considerable amounts of both. What was once an innocent attempt to inject a new, optimistic and artistic spirit into the race, has become something more substantial. This week Osthus unveiled large campaign billboards (one of them is a spoof on the famous “Expose yourself to art” poster made famous by former Mayor Bud Clark that reads, “Expose yourself to politics”) and she’s a regular at high-profile events alongside the front-runners. With Portland about to rank votes for the first time ever, a sense of “What if?” still floats around her campaign.
In this interview Osthus ranks her choices for mayor with honest assessments of her competitors, explains why her top priorities differ from other candidates, shares her personal mobility story, tells me why the time is right for the Liv Osthus Era in Portland, and more.
Listen in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
This rider rolled right past the push button on the right and crossed against the signal. (Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
A new traffic signal on North Going Street at its crossing of Martin Luther Junior Boulevard finally went live last week. Portlanders first identified a need for the signal in 2017 as part of a batch of crossings to make getting to nearby schools safer and funding for it was adopted by Portland City Council in 2020.
NE Going is one of Portland’s most heavily used neighborhood greenways — which are streets that prioritize biking and aim to be low-stress and family friendly. This signal was highly anticipated because Going is such a key east-west bikeway and the state-owned MLK Jr. Blvd is four lanes of relatively high speed traffic. PBOT installed median islands in 2010 to make the crossing safer, but it remained stressful. In 2012 we shared an article by noted local lawyer Ray Thomas who called this crossing an excellent example of an “ambiguous intersection” where crossing behaviors can be unpredictable by both drivers and bikers.
Unfortunately, based on my observations yesterday, it doesn’t appear like the new signal will be as effective as many folks hoped. The problem is that the Portland Bureau of Transportation opted for a “beg button” instead of automatic sensor detection of bicycle riders. A person who wants to cross must push a button to make the signal function.
Walkers use the button because it’s located directly where they stand and wait.
There are two buttons on each corner — one for people using the sidewalk, and the other for people biking in the street. The sidewalk button works well because it’s placed right where walkers typically wait to cross. But the bike button is placed about 10-15 feet behind where most bicycle riders wait at the intersection. This means the vast majority of them don’t see it and don’t use it. Once the button is pressed, it takes about 30 seconds for the light to turn green for NE Going traffic. So not only do you have to push it, the wait felt longer than other new bike signals in town (like the northern landing of the Blumenauer Bridge) that use automatic sensor detection.
The result? Most people biking across this intersection do so while drivers on MLK Jr. Blvd have a green light. I find that inherently problematic. This means So in some ways, the intersection is more dangerous because drivers now have the legal right-of-way when a bicycle rider is in front of them on a green signal, whereas before — when there was no signal — they were legally required to stop if a bicycle rider was already crossing. There are still too many unpredictable behaviors and close calls at this location. Keep in mind this is what PBOT calls a “half signal” where the major road (MLK) has a full red/yellow/green signal, but the minor road (Going) has no signal. That means bike riders don’t have to push the button and can legally cross after yielding when there’s a break in traffic. In a perfect world, this would all work out. But what we see in practice are some bike riders not making safe decisions and MLK users who see a green light and assume they have the right-of-way regardless of whether or not a bike rider has already established themselves in the intersection.
Note the people crossing against the signal in the four photos below. I’ve got more interactions recorded on video that I’ll share later today.
To see this after we waited four years for the signal was a bit disappointing.
PBOT Communications Director Hannah Schafer told BikePortland that the decision to use a beg button for this signal was a matter of dollars and cents. “The NE Going/MLK signal is part of a bundle of seven different signals that started off very low on funding and then was sent to bid twice before construction to meet our budget,” Schafer wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, this meant keeping the project as bare bones as possible, which meant not adding detection/bike signal heads into this design which would have added to the cost.”
That’s the bad news. But the good news, Schafer says, is that now that the signal is up and running and all the electrical bits are in place, it “would not be a major lift” to retrofit this intersection with detection down the road if/when funding is identified. Asked if the project is 100% complete and whether new pavement markings to encourage riders to push the button might still be coming, Schafer couldn’t say for sure at this time.
The full project (including six other signals) isn’t complete, so there might be room to add pavement markings in the future when the city goes through their final list of tasks. In the meantime, hopefully more folks push the button and no one gets hit.
Have you used this signal yet? What do you think about the change so far?
UPDATE, 10/16 at 10:02 am: I learned in a comment below from Ted Buehler (someone I know in real life and who’s knowledge I respect) that since this is a “half signal” — where only the traffic on MLK has a signal and Going just has the “Walk/Don’t Walk” sign — bike riders on Going can treat this like a de facto stop sign. That means if you don’t want to push the button and wait for MLK traffic to get a red signal, you can just roll up, yield, and then go if there’s a safe break in traffic. Learn more on why and where PBOT uses half signals here.
View looking north from Marine Drive. Screenshot from IBR video flyover.
Flyover visualizations produced by the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program give us our best view yet on what the future of the I-5 freeway between Portland and Vancouver might look like after an estimated $7.5 billion investment. The project team has released these about half-way through a federally-mandated public comment period and only after they’ve raised over $4 billion and built considerable political inertia to begin the project.
The IBR team revealed a series of flyover videos at a Monday meeting of the Joint Interim Committee on the Interstate 5 Bridge, a group made up of legislators from Oregon and Washington. The “visual fly-throughs” were introduced at the meeting by Chris Regan, the IBR environmental manager.
Regan told lawmakers the videos were created to “help our community members better visualize and understand the potential investments that we’re studying.”
Scroll down for some before/after images of the interchanges and views of the future bikeway…
Marine Drive interchange looking north
Hayden Island/Jantzen Beach Interchange
Vancouver Riverfront
As you view these, keep in mind that the design is not yet final. The project has adopted a “locally preferred alternative” (LPA), in order to compare something to a “no-build” scenario, but within that LPA there are still several key design options under consideration.
The IBR is about half-way through a crucial public comment period on its Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS). This week the project hosts its first two, in-person public hearings and these flyover videos will be shown at each of them.
The lack of high-quality visuals is something project-watchers have been clamoring for for a long time. How can the public and lawmakers weigh the need to invest billions in something that hasn’t even been revealed to them yet? Note that even without these visuals, the project has already secured over $1 billion from each state and $2.1 billion from the federal government for a total of $4.2 billion.
Bikeway integration (read captions for details)
Looking south over river with single-deck bridge design. Arrow points to a bike rider.Looking south from Delta Park in Portland. Arrow points to bikeway on N Expo Rd.Looking south at Hayden Island in double-deck bridge design. Arrow shows where bike path would go under bridge.Looking south toward Delta Park in Portland. Arrow points to bikeway on new bridge to Hayden Island.Looking north from Hayden Island at double-deck bridge design. Arrow is where new bikeway ramp would go under the bridge.Looking north at Vancouver waterfront. Arrow points to spiral bikeway.Looking south at Hayden Island with single-deck bridge. Arrow points to bikeway ramp onto upper level of bridge. Looking south at single-deck bridge design. Arrow points to bikeway spiral ramp.
As bicycle riders, the videos reveal the best look yet at how we’ll approach the river and cross onto the bridge structure, then return back to surface streets. Look through gallery of screenshots above for a closer look at how the bikeway interacts with the various designs.
Coming from the south, it appears like whether you come from east or west of I-5, the route onto the bridge will be much more intuitive and direct. West of I-5, the project will build a bikeway along N Expo Road that begins at Delta Park dog park. This bikeway will head north to Marine Drive and then go west under the new bridge structure, onto a ramp, and then up onto a new bridge that will connect to Hayden Island and/or continue northbound onto the main bridge structure before coming to a spiral ramp that leads from the bridge on the Washington side and connects to surface streets in Vancouver.
In the single-level design, the flyover shows tiny little specks that are bike riders and walkers, at the same grade as six other travel lanes. If the final design of the project calls for a double-deck bridge, the bikeway will go under the bridge deck. Unfortunately, none of these visuals show the view of the bikeway over the river in the double-deck bridge design. (For more on the bikeway elements, refer to this PDF map.)
These visuals mark an important milestone and should give more people the ability to form opinions and comments on the project. Watch them and consider attending an upcoming open house and don’t forget to share an official comment so your feedback is included in the official public record. The design can still be altered and refined if enough people share a similar concern about a particular element of the project.
To help inform your comment(s), imagine yourself living, walking, biking, or taking transit on and around these proposed facilities. How would you feel? What would make it easier and/or more attractive to you?
The Portland in-person public hearing and open house is this Thursday, October 17th from 5:30 to 8:30 pm at the Expo Center. Learn more about the event here.
Kenton Cycle Repair on N Kilpatrick in 2018. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)
When Kenton Cycle Repair closes its doors for good on October 26th there will be no bike shops in north Portland west of Interstate Avenue. The closure, announced by the shop’s owner Rich Walker in an email to customers on Saturday, leaves an 18 square mile swath of our city without a bike shop.
Kenton Cycle Repair opened on N McClellan Street right off the Kenton neighborhood’s main drag, Denver Avenue, in 2012. It was started by Walker and a co-owner Starmichael Bowman, two friends who shared experience working at local nonprofit bike organizations (Community Cycling Center and Bike Farm, respectively). The shop outgrew that space and moved into a much larger one on N Kilpatrick in 2017.
The shop’s official email didn’t share any reason for the closure. There was no farewell message, just the words “We are closing forever” in large red font. I emailed Walker to confirm rumors I started hearing last week and he confirmed the news. “I still love working on bikes but the business has become personally and financially unsustainable in the last few years,” he shared.
For folks who live, work and play on the north Portland peninsula, it’s just the latest in a string of bad bike shop news. Five bike shops along the Interstate corridor and west to St. Johns, have closed since 2020.
Walker’s former co-owner Starmichael Bowman left Kenton Cycle Repair to open Norther Cycles in 2015, only to throw in the towel in 2020. Revolver Bikes on N Rosa Parks Way and Interstate closed just one month later. Block Bikes, the only bike shop in St. Johns for a few years, closed in 2022. And back in February of this year, Golden Pliers bike shop on N Interstate and Skidmore moved to NE Alberta Street into the space formerly occupied by Gladys Bikes — a shop that closed in 2024 after 10 years in business.
Besides the big box retail offerings of Fred Meyer or Dick’s Sporting Goods in Janzten Beach, the closure of Kenton Cycle Repair leads to a vast bike shop desert. Of the three bike shops that remain in the area, only one of them services and sells a wide range of bikes. PxCycle on N Interstate in Kenton is a single brand, e-bike-only store and The E-Bike Store also only sells electric bikes. That leaves North Portland Bike Works on N Killingsworth and Albina as the only traditional neighborhood bike shop in the area.
The bike business has always been a tough one, but these past few years have been absolutely brutal. After riding a wave of cycling interest during the pandemic, shops bet big on inventory to meet demand. If they could even get the products they wanted due to supply chain issues, some shops soon felt softening enthusiasm once things opened back up. Add to that a loss of business from people who opt for “direct-to-consumer” purchases where brands cut shops out of the equation and ship directly to customers. Another factor is the reduction in cycling overall thanks to a number of factors including the shift toward working from home. Daily commuters were in constant need of gear and service when they biked into the office, but that chunk of sales has dropped precipitously in recent years.
At our peak in 2014 or so, Portland had well over 70 bike shops. A list maintained by the City of Portland shows just 49 currently open bike shops citywide.
Kenton Cycle Repair’s last day is October 26th. Roll over to 1926 N Kilpatrick to thank Rich for his years of solid service and to help him liquidate remaining inventory.
Tell me about the forest, not the individual trees. Which is to say that I am always drawn to comments which give me a big picture understanding of why things are the way they are. Take the Interstate Bridge replacement and freeway widening projects. My eyes go over all the text BikePortland has published. I look at the diagrams. But, frustratingly, I don’t retain the information. I’m not proud of that.
But what helps me are comments like what ITOTS wrote this week, into Jonathan’s interview with Je Amaichi on the Interstate Bridge freeway project. ITOTS brings up Metro, and its Regional Travel Demand Model, and goes on to say that it is this model which says we need a $10B freeway expansion, and which gives “cover” to the DOTs. S/he ends with a link to a Jarret Walker blog post.
Metro’s Regional Travel Demand model wasn’t on my radar, but it sure gives me an understanding of the larger problem. And it’s those nuggets of insight which keep folks reading the BP comments sections.
When it comes to the DEIS, Amaechi said the over-arching concern is its “defeatist way of thinking.” In other words, she thinks it assumes the status quo of car and truck-centric transportation will exist well into the future (projects and models in the DEIS are based on 2045)…“This idea that we’re alleviating congestion by adding lanes is something that has been disproven many, many times,” she added. “And in fact, the opposite has been proven to be true. Induced demand is slightly mentioned [in the DEIS], but it’s not addressed in a realistic way.”
Two things: First, even without any projected growth in traffic, the DOTs/IBR can and would determine that for safety and operational reasons they require the new auxiliary lanes. They can make a case for auxiliary/merge lanes based on close spacing of interchanges, short merge distances, and grades alone. Given the ultimate judge is Federal Highways they would easily win any dispute there. The DOTs don’t even need to have a fight about whether or not induced demand exists or is accounted for because they don’t have to rely on increased traffic volumes to justify their wider design.
Second, it’s actually Metro that allows/requires them to build a wider highway. Metro maintains the regional travel demand model and the list of projects and programs that go into it. When the impact of all of the region’s planned projects and programs are tallied up, Metro’s travel demand model is still saying that auto traffic is going to increase across the Columbia river by year 2045 (or pretty much any other year in the future) such that doing nothing leads to carmaggedon. IBR is required to plan to accommodate that predicted future, to study the impacts of not doing so (which is part of what is in the SDEIS), and to design a facility that meets DOT mobility standards—hours of congestion on the main line, level of service at intersections.
So go tell Metro to fix its modeling, principally by adding projects and programs that get the region to the mobility, safety, and sustainability outcomes we want without these kinds of mega projects—at least inside the reductive reality of the model. And then fund the projects that are going to get people to move around the region differently. It’s Metro’s model that tells us we need this $10B project. That’s all the cover the DOTs need. Making plans to bring about a future that you say you don’t actually want to come to pass is absurd. But thems the rules (currently).
