At a city council meeting on December 21st PBOT shared their current plan to tame traffic on outer SE Division Street after a spate of fatalities.

Emotions around street safety issues ran high at the end of 2016. Not only did we have the most road fatalities (45) since 2003, but we lost six Portlanders to traffic violence in the final month alone.

When two of those six happened within just a few hours of each other and on the same, notoriously dangerous section of Southeast Division Street where three other people died last year, the pressure to do something intensified. (Now former) Mayor Charlie Hales and his four commissioners took steps to address the situation at a meeting on December 21st.
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They heard you.
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

The City of Portland is on the verge of releasing $300,000 from the city’s general fund for “emergency Vision Zero improvements” on outer Southeast Division Street.

The move comes after a spate of deaths and injuries on Division east of 82nd Avenue — including two fatal collisions within hours of each other nine days ago.

Division is home to seven of the city’s top 30 high crash intersections. This year alone five people have died and three people have sustained serious injuries while using the street. Seven of those collisions happened on outer Division between 124th and 156th.

Pressure has been building on PBOT for the past week to do something.

Last week nine bereaved family members (including two women who lost their sons at the same intersections on Division where people were killed on December 7th) signed a letter demanding immediate action.
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Portlanders frustrated with the City of Portland’s lack of action on a street that has claimed too many lives, risked their own in an effort to fix it themselves. And it turned out to work better than most people thought it would.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

Division Street east of 82nd is one of the deadliest part of our entire transportation network. Designed exclusively around the use of private motorized vehicles, it’s a vast, nine-lane behemoth full of speeding, multi-ton vehicles driven by many people without regard to laws or the safety of others. It also happens to be directly adjacent to places where a growing number of Portlanders live, work and play.
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After the two deaths on Southeast Division Street Tuesday night, family members who have lost loved ones due to traffic violence want Portland City Council to take action.

As we reported earlier this week, Kim Stone and Krisy Finney-Dunney — two of the founding members of the local chapter of Families for Safe Streets — are feeling Wednesday’s deaths with a particularly heavy heart. That’s because the two fatalities happened in the same intersections on Division that claimed the lives of their sons.

Led by Stone and Finney-Dunn, seven other women who have lost a family member have stepped forward with a demand that the City of Portland, “expedite major changes in order to slow speeds and increase safety for all on outer SE Division St.”

Here’s the full text of the letter (emphases theirs):
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(Note: This post is a mix of news and opinion.)

Two people were killed while walking on Division Street last night in separate collisions. The first one happened just before 7:00 pm at 156th Avenue. The second one happened around 9:00 pm near 87th. These are the 13th and 14th people to be killed while walking (about three over our average since 1996) and the 39th and 40th traffic fatalities so far this year. That’s the most fatalities we’ve had since 2003.

Division is already known as one of the most dangerous streets in Portland for vulnerable road users. This year alone five people have died in traffic crashes while using Division (four people walking and one person driving). In addition to those fatalities there have been at least three serious injury crashes on Division in 2016, including one with life-threatening injuries and another with traumatic injuries. Seven of these collisions happened on a two-mile stretch between 124th and 156th.
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Purple line shows approximate location of proposed path. SE Division Street is at the bottom and Mt. Tabor is in the upper right.

Mt. Tabor Park is finally slated to get a rolling and walking path that would provide a much-needed entrance from Southeast Division street and the City of Portland needs to hear your support to make it happen.
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The intersection of Division at SE 124th near where Damon Burton was killed.

A man was arrested yesterday morning for recklessly driving his car into a person who was trying to cross the street in southeast Portland.

40-year-old Clifford Eugene Perry Jr. faces charges of Manslaughter in the Second Degree, Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants (DUII) and Reckless Driving. Perry will be arraigned in Multnomah County Court today.

On Sunday evening Perry was driving westbound on Division near 124th (map) “at a high rate of speed” (according to Portland Police investigators) prior to coming into contact with 61-year-old Damon Patrick Burton. Perry, who the police suspect was drunk, then continued driving on Division until crashing into a gas station at 122nd. Burton lived in the neighborhood and was trying to cross Division from south to north prior to being hit. [Read more…]

A new city study shows the big payoff the city has quietly seen from a few uses of one of the least-understood tricks in traffic engineering: the 4-3 road diet.

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Angel Villavir, left, said traffic seemed heavier but the street was easier to cross.
(Photos © M.Andersen/BikePortland)

As inner Southeast Division Street grows up — literally, thanks to its new hedge of multi-story apartment buildings — Portland’s transportation bureau decided in April to redesign a section of the thoroughfare a bit further out to feel more like the city street it now is: with better walking and biking plus a regular flow of slower-moving traffic.

Instead of four narrow travel lanes, Division between 60th and 82nd now have one bike lane and one auto lane in each direction, plus a shared center turn lane.

We wanted to know what local folks thought about the restriped street. So I pedaled down during the Monday evening rush hour, stashed my bike around a corner, and walked around introducing myself as “a reporter” and asking what people thought.

I learned two things: That everyone I met more or less likes it, and that low-car life is now very common in mid-Southeast Portland.

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New and smooth.
(Photos: Joe Hamilton)

Thanks to a newly built undercrossing of SE Division, people on bikes have one less stop to make while riding on the I-205 path. ODOT put the finishing touches on their $750,000 I-205 Shared-Use Path Division Undercrossing Project earlier this month and they’re hosting a “celebratory gathering” this morning to show it off.

As we shared back in October 2012, the new path takes riders and walkers down near the MAX light rail tracks under Division Street. South of division, the path begins at the MAX station and it re-joins the I-205 path at the intersection of SE Caruthers and 93rd. The project was originally planned for 2009 to coincide with the construction of TriMet’s Green Line MAX project. ODOT received a federal stimulus grant for path improvements but the funding ran out before the undercrossing was completed.

Reader Joe Hamilton sent us some photos of the new path…[Read more…]