A protected bike lane on SE 3rd Avenue in 2014.
(Photo: Greg Raisman)

Dozens of volunteers are now meeting weekly to plan temporary human-friendly makeovers of Northeast Broadway and the Burnside Bridge this spring and summer.

Better Block PDX’s next “work party” is tonight at Pizza Schmizza at NE 7th and Broadway, from 6-7:30 p.m. Next Wednesday it’s the same time at Black Water Bar, NE 9th and Broadway.

The Broadway demo will create a protected bike lane for one week, from May 9-15.

[Read more…]

This double signal (see upper left of image) at Broadway/Vancouver/Interstate 5 will finally go away.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

On Monday the Oregon Department of Transportation will begin construction on the most substantive changes to cycling conditions we’ve seen on N/NE Broadway in many years. And it’s sorely needed.
[Read more…]

(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

For today only you can feel what it’s like to ride on Southwest Broadway without the threat of someone opening a car door into you, or someone parking in the bike-only lane, or someone squeezing you into parked cars. (Sorry I can’t promise you won’t be right-hooked before you get there.) That’s because a trio of “tactical urbanists” have come together to create a temporary protected bike lane between Salmon and Taylor, just outside the doors of the Hilton Hotel where a smart growth conference is taking place.
[Read more…]

Mock-up of a bikeway that’s set to make a cameo on Broadway tomorrow.
(Image: Nick Falbo/Alta Planning + Design)

Tactical urbanism is about to make another imprint on Portland’s downtown streetscape. Tomorrow morning, a trio of planning and place-making groups are planning to create a temporary protected bike lane on one block of Southwest Broadway.
[Read more…]

One of the first people to wait at the new signal at Broadway and Couch.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

The Portland Bureau of Transportation just flipped the switch on new traffic signals at Northwest Couch and Broadway, 10th and 11th Avenues. The signals on Broadway are on a major bike route where they were first flagged as necessary four years ago. At the intersection of Couch and 11th, PBOT has installed Portland’s first ever “pedestrian scramble signal.”[Read more…]

This is the third in a three-part series about the biking potential of the Lloyd District. Read the first two here.

If 1,597 new homes were about to land in the space where, seven years ago, new homes in the Portland metro area would have been most likely to land, they would be the biggest news story in the area.

In the rural outskirts of east Vancouver (yes, that counts as Portland metro), beloved farms would be shutting down. Work crews would be widening intersections and stripping away street parking to make room for more turn lanes. For miles around, residents and businesses would be bracing themselves for traffic paralysis.

But in the next few years, 1,597 homes are lined up to land somewhere else instead: right in the middle of Portland.

[Read more…]

The scene this morning at N Broadway and Ross.
(Photo: Noel Mickelberry)

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Detail of plans to close an I-5 “slip ramp”
that dumps onto Broadway.

An open house event tomorrow night (11/19) will be your chance to see what the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has planned to improve safety on Broadway where it passes over Interstate 5.

Changes to the notorious section of Broadway near Wheeler and Flint were a focus of the city’s N/NE Quadrant planning process back in 2012 and they were included as “near-term solutions” within a larger, $400 million ODOT project to widen I-5 through the Rose Quarter.

With that large-scale proposal years away from fruition (if it ever happens at all), local neighborhood activists pressed ODOT to do something more immediate to remedy the many traffic safety issues in the area of the Broadway-Weidler couplet just west of I-5. We’ve been highlighting safety issues at this location for over seven years – ever since the Portland Water Bureau prohibited its fleet vehicles from making right turns onto Wheeler due to right-hook concerns.
[Read more…]

NW Broadway at Hoyt is a high-risk right-hook spot and it needs to be improved.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

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Wider is better. (Note the old bike lane stripe
that has been scraped off.)
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

PBOT is nearly finished with a project to improve bicycling conditions on the NW Broadway ramp south of the Broadway Bridge. The $30,000 project is expected to be finished by tonight but most of the new striping was completed early this morning before rush hour.

In order to create the additional five feet needed for the buffered bike lane, PBOT reduced the amount of vehicle lanes from five to four. Instead of a five-foot bike lane and four, 9.5-foot standard lanes, there is now a 10-foot bike lane and three, 11-foot standard vehicle lanes. The change was made because of the huge amount of people who ride bicycles down this ramp and the need to create safer and more pleasant conditions for them.

I rode it this morning and took a few photos.[Read more…]