(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

About a year after taking temporary measures, the City of Portland has finished installing a permanent traffic diverter on SE Clinton at 32nd. With the diverter complete, the final piece of the puzzle in reclaiming Clinton as a bike-priority street (a.k.a. neighborhood greenway) will be to install five new speed bumps between SE 17th and 26th.

Here’s a look at the new diverter, followed by some new information about the speed bumps…

BikePortland subscriber Adam Herstein gave us an early look at the new design just before Christmas. Since then PBOT has added several finishing touches including bright yellow paint and more signs. I rolled out yesterday for a closer look.

Compared to what PBOT first installed last year, the new design is a massive improvement. The old design, with its large concrete drums and orange cones, not only looked bad it also didn’t work well. People in cars would routinely drive right through it (into oncoming traffic!) and people would park too close to the gap where bicycle riders were supposed to cut through.

Here are a few more photos:[Read more…]

Permanent Clinton diverter by PBOT, December 2016

This post was submitted by BikePortland subscriber Adam Herstein. These posts usually appear on our Subscriber Posts page but we like to share them here on the Front Page when appropriate. — Ted

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It worked.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

On the eve of the Bureau of Transportation’s Vision Zero Action Plan going before City Council, the City of Portland just released some positive safety news: The traffic diverters installed on Southeast Clinton Street are working very well and the one at 32nd will be redesigned and made permanent in the next few weeks.

The diverters at SE 17th and 32nd were part of a comprehensive effort to tame auto traffic on Clinton that included educational outreach, public meetings, speed bumps, lower speed limits, “Bicycles May Use Full Lane” signs, and targeted enforcement. As one of the oldest and most used neighborhood greenways in the city, Clinton (which has about 3,000 bicycle users a day) was originally designed to prioritize bicycling; but driving skyrocketed in recent years as the surrounding neighborhoods added new residents, shops, restaurants and offices. In July 2014 we reported on growing rancor among bicycle users who called Clinton a “bikeway in name only.” Those concerns led community activism and became a rallying cry for the fledgling, all-volunteer bike advocacy group Bike Loud PDX.

Just four months after BikeLoud’s activism began, the City’s Bureau of Transportation launched a comprehensive assessment of the neighborhood greenway system (that would later be adopted by City Council) and agreed to meet with representatives from the group to learn more about the issues.
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The center turn lane on Hawthorne at 43rd is now available for driving on after PBOT removed a makeshift memorial last night.
(Photo: Paul Jeffery)

Last night under the cover of darkness City of Portland transportation bureau crews cleared out the cones, signs, candles, photos and flowers that had created a traffic calming memorial to Fallon Smart on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.

The makeshift memorial in the center turn lane at the intersection of 43rd Avenue had grown from a few flowers on August 19th to a memorial so large that it closed Hawthorne’s center turn lane. In fact, closing the lane was a secondary and symbolic goal of the memorial — since it was that center lane that allowed Abdulrahman Noorah* to speed recklessly past another driver (who had stopped) just before he hit and killed the 15-year-old Smart.[Read more…]

Looking south across Clinton at 19th. Photo on left taken September 20th by @howrad via Twitter. Photo on the right is from this morning (taken by J. Maus/BikePortland).

An inner southeast Portland intersection is the latest front of a battle between transportation reform activists and the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

This time it’s about a crosswalk. The activists (and many nearby residents) think one’s needed, and PBOT thinks it isn’t.[Read more…]

Auto and bike counts on Clinton

As of the latest traffic counts from May of this year, westbound morning peak-hour and eastbound afternoon peak-hour bike traffic is now greater than motorized traffic. That means, traditional downtown traffic (i.e. traffic heading into downtown in the mornings and leaving downtown in the afternoons) has more bikes than cars on Clinton Street, one of our most popular bikeways.

• Morning peak hour was 140 motorized traffic, and 206 bikes (346 total)
• Afternoon peak was 122 motorized traffic, and 210 bikes (332 total)

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What do you think? Make sure to let the city know.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation wants your input on two very important issues: the Clinton Street traffic diverters and Vision Zero. They’ve released an online survey for each of them and we’d like to officially encourage you to take a few minutes and fill them out.
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A new diverter at SE 17th and Clinton, designed to reduce automotive through traffic on the major bike route. The other new diverter is at 32nd.
(Photos: M. Andersen/BikePortland)

It’s been almost two years since we started reporting on the call by some Portlanders for traffic diverters on Clinton Street, one year since Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick approved them, and five months since two were installed.

So as the city prepares for similar diverters on Ankeny and considers them someday on Northeast 7th, we wondered: How are things going? I spent 90 minutes on Clinton Wednesday during the evening rush hour to ask passers-by what they thought.

Here’s what people said…
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Looking north on 34th toward Division.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland (top); Mark Zahner (bottom))

The Portland Bureau of Transportation has made an important update to a recent project on Southeast 34th Avenue.
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