Yes, this guy doesn’t seem to know he’s riding in the buffer rather than the lane. Bike stencils or cross hatches would help.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Here’s an example of the sort of incremental bike-lane improvement we can hopefully expect to see more of now that the city has $9 million more per year to repave roads.

This spring, the city refinished East Burnside Street with a smooth new coat of asphalt. And when they did, they converted the 1990s-style door-zone bike lane to a more comfortable buffered bike lane between Interstate 205 and approximately 90th Avenue.

It’s not a major improvement but it does extend what was already a buffered bike lane on Burnside’s bridge across I-205 by about a third of a mile. This is the most comfortable crossing of I-205 anywhere south of Marine Drive, so it’s nice to improve the comfort a bit further west.

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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.

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The new design on East Burnside requires westbound cars to enter the new turn lane while passing westbound bikes.
(Photos: J.Maus/BikePortland)

Saying that any removal of on-street parking during a redesign of East Burnside Street would have required more time and money than the city could afford, the Portland Bureau of Transportation is boosting on-street parking instead.

The East Burnside Transportation Safety Project between 14th and 32nd Avenues, part of the city’s high-crash corridor program, has converted one westbound lane west of 32nd into a center turn lane and converted the rush-hour-only lanes east of 32nd into permanent parking lanes.

For people who ride bicycles west on Burnside, one result is that space that often functioned as a de-facto bike lane — the curbside auto lane — has been eliminated.

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Renderings created with Streetmix by BikePortland (top) and Terry Dublinski (bottom).

A neighborhood transportation activist backed by the North Tabor Neighborhood Association is looking for volunteers to help him research the effects of adding buffered or parking-protected bike lanes on Burnside.

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The new bikeway on E. Burnside — while not the separated facility we should have — gives people dedicated space to ride along one of Portland’s vibrant commercial corridors.
(Photos © J. Maus)

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