It’s not clear where exactly Jimenez was struck. Circled intersection of 82nd and Jonesmore is the location referred to by police.

Juana Jimenez GoFundMe page.

2019 is off to a harrowing start in Portland when it comes to the safety of people who are not driving cars on our streets.

As of this weekend we have had five fatal traffic crashes. Four of the victims were walking, one of them was someone on a bicycle. All of them were struck by someone driving a car. There are also two other victims struck by drivers who are still clinging to life at area hospitals.

One of them is 16-year-old Juana Jiménez Francisco, known to family and friends as Juanita. Francisco is a 10th grader at Madison High School who immigrated from Guatemala to Portland in March 2017. According to a GoFundMe page she was returning home from a weekend job at McDonalds when she was hit on February 24th.

Just like the person hit and seriously injured that same night on North Fessenden and the man killed back in January while trying to cross SW Salmon, this tragic incident occurred on a stretch of road — NE 82nd and Jonesmore — that is very well known for its unsafe conditions and where plans to make it safer have been in the works for many years.

We must expedite these projects in a way that matches the urgency of the safety crises they aim to address.
[Read more…]

Another person was seriously injured on N Fessenden last night.

At first I thought the Portland Police Bureau sent out a duplicate statement by mistake. Then upon closer inspection of the emails, I realized there really were two traffic collisions that caused serious injury to someone walking within just a few hours on Sunday night.
[Read more…]

Looking southbound on 82nd just before SE Henderson (on the right).

The Portland Police Bureau’s Major Crash Team responded to a serious collision involving a bicycle rider today just after 11:00 am.
[Read more…]

(Photo: J. Maus)

The politics around 82nd Avenue have changed. And ODOT hasn’t.

That fact has put the state transportation agency in hot water with local and regional elected officials.
[Read more…]

The ODOT Files is an occasional series that shares strange-but-true stories about how our state transportation agency is falling down on the job.

How bad have things gotten at the Oregon Department of Transportation? How about a letter admonishing the agency signed by every major elected office holder in the Portland region?
[Read more…]

Intersection of 82nd and Flavel.

UPDATE, 9:45 am on August 1st: Police have identified the woman as 25-year-old Lydia Anne Johnson. See end of post for details on how the crash happened.

A woman died this morning as the result of a traffic collision in southeast Portland.

According to the Portland Police Bureau, it happened around 8:00 am this morning at the intersection of SE 82nd and Flavel.

Here’s a snip from the official police statement:

Officers and medical personnel arrived and located the adult female bicycle rider who was critically injured. Life-saving efforts were not successful and she died at the scene.

The adult male driver in a box truck remained at the scene and has been cooperating with investigators. [Read more…]

APANO Board Member Anita Yap speaks while
community activist Steph Routh and Portland
Off-Road Cycling Master Plan Advisory Committee
member Carrie Leonard listen.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Our first Wonk Night of 2016 happened last night. Since the first one in 2012, we’ve held these events in the lobby of Lancaster Engineering (our sponsor) on Southwest 4th and Oak in downtown. It’s a great venue, but it was time to take the show on the road. We headed east and find a venue right on the corner of Southeast 82nd and Division — a community space managed by the nonprofit Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) that also happens to be inside the most diverse census tract in the state of Oregon.
[Read more…]

East Burnside’s extremely important bike lane vanishes right where an “interested but concerned” biker might want it most.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Part of Gap Week.

Every morning and afternoon on East Burnside at 82nd Avenue, 10 cars at a time queue up in what ought to be a great advertisement for finding some other way to get around the city.

People on bikes, meanwhile, squeeze past to their right. They’re riding one of the city’s very few continuous bikeways connecting inner and outer East Portland.

[Read more…]

Location of three intersections that will get “enhanced pedestrian crossings”.
(Base map is Metro’s Bike There map to show location of nearby bikeways.)

The Oregon Department of Transportation wants you to learn more about their plans to make several changes to SE 82nd Avenue. They’ll hold an open house for their 82nd Avenue Intersection Improvements project next Tuesday, January 26th.[Read more…]

A draft rendering of one possible design for 82nd Avenue with one block of “business access transit” lane approaching the right turn onto Division. Cars could legally use BAT lanes only to turn into a driveway.
(Images via TriMet)

Should a new high-capacity express bus line through Southeast Portland run on the most important street in Southeast Portland, or 30 blocks away?

The question seems odd. But as Metro and TriMet ask the region whether the new “bus rapid transit” line they’re planning should run on half a mile of 82nd Avenue, here’s part of the subtext: In order to get permission to run the bus line on 82nd Avenue, project planners have agreed not to aspire to do anything for biking, walking or transit on 82nd that might significantly reduce the number or capacity of cars there.

In fact, even if the highest-quality version of the project currently being considered were built, buses there are projected to travel slightly slower in 2035 than they do now. Rush-hour travel times would rise to about four to five minutes for the half-mile stretch, up from about three minutes during the afternoon peak today.
[Read more…]