Before/after of typical cross-section on Foster Road project.

Good news everyone: the Bureau of Transportation has found a new design for their Foster Transportation and Streetscape Project that allows them to continue the westbound bike lanes on Foster all the way to 52nd.

This is a big deal because the plan that passed City Council two summers ago dropped the bike lane at 54th and led westbound Foster bike riders on an annoying zig-zag to the north in order to reach 52nd and eastbound riders would have been led south of Foster to Center Street in order to reconnect to Foster a few blocks east of 52nd — all because PBOT didn’t want to remove a few blocks of on-street auto parking.

At the time, Foster-Powell area resident Brett Holycross told us the zig-zag was, “A shame for an otherwise great project.”

News of the new design leaked out at the City’s town hall event on the new gas tax in east Portland on Tuesday. Members of BikeLoudPDX attended the event and reported back about what they heard from PBOT’s Foster Streetscape Plan Project Manager Rich Newlands. “The bike lanes on Foster will extend to 52nd Ave! This made my day,” wrote Dan Gebhart.
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The issue on Clinton.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Here’s the latest on the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s effort to decrease the amount of people driving on SE Clinton…

A trial traffic diverter is now set to be installed at Southeast Clinton Street and 32nd Avenue, instead of Clinton and 29th as first proposed. In addition to the east-west diverter, it’ll use semi-diverters to prevent turns onto Clinton from 32nd while allowing traffic on Clinton to turn either north or south.

That’s in addition to the trial diverter planned at Clinton and 17th.

That revised proposal has raised objections from some neighbors, just as the initial one did. While some nearby residents are reportedly organizing to oppose the latest plan — possibly at a mostly unrelated town hall this evening attended by Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick and Mayor Charlie Hales — the city has delayed installation to allow a second open house early next month.

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The City of Portland wants to create a second, more comfortable crossing of Powell at 28th, but the state says it won’t allow one unless bike lanes and bike boxes at 26th (shown here) are removed.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Three weeks after being asked if it can cite any evidence supporting its claim that removing a bike lane can sometimes increase bike safety, the State of Oregon has come up empty.

Moreover, a state spokeswoman wrote in an email Tuesday that four studies cited by the City of Portland that document safety benefits of bike lanes are inadequate, though the state did not say in what way the studies fall short.

“More research needs to be done,” the Oregon Department of Transportation said in its statement.

Research notwithstanding, the Oregon Department of Transportation is continuing to deny the City of Portland’s request to install a new stoplight at 28th Avenue and Powell (which would let the city create a new north-south neighborhood greenway on 28th) unless the city agrees to first remove the narrow bike lanes from nearby 26th Avenue.

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The current temporary diverter would be “beefed up.”
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

After hearing from many people who are fans of the temporary diagonal diverter at NE Rodney and Ivy, the city has tentatively scrapped plans to remove it and is now planning to beef it up instead.

That’s significant news for the planned north-south Rodney Neighborhood Greenway through inner Northeast Portland, and also for Ivy Street; it’ll presumably reduce the use of Ivy as an east-west alternative to driving on Northeast Fremont.

We reported in June that the city was planning to replace the current diagonal diverter with a one-way street on Rodney just north of Ivy, similar to the one at NW Marshall Street and 10th Avenue. In July, we covered a city open house about the subject.

In an email last week to the Eliot Neighborhood Association, city manager project manager Rich Newlands said the diagonal diverter concept has won out.

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About 600 to 800 people a day currently bike on 26th to cross Powell. The city wants to create a second, more comfortable crossing at 28th, but the state says it won’t allow one unless the lanes and bike boxes at 26th are removed.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

The Portland Bureau of Transportation is facing pressure from its counterparts at the Oregon Department of Transportation to do something it’s almost never done before: remove bike lanes from a street.

An ODOT official said she could not cite evidence other than the site-specific judgment of her engineering colleagues that removing the bike lane on SE 26th Avenue would improve overall road safety. But she said that because 26th is not as safe to bike on as 28th would be, it stands to reason that the bike lane on 26th should be removed in order to encourage people to cross at 28th.

Therefore, ODOT has agreed to approve the city’s request to add a new traffic signal at 28th and Powell only on the condition that the city remove the bike lane and bike box from 26th.

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Because of a bad design coupled with dangerous and illegal behavior by some road users,
PBOT will move the bike lane over and add a median island at Williams and Stanton.
(Photo by J. Maus/BikePortland)

The “three-year journey” (to use the City of Portland’s phrase) to make North Williams Avenue work better for cycling isn’t quite over yet.
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