Metro staffer Anthony Buczek walks Barbur’s
current auto-oriented commercial strip in February.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Long-term plans are falling into place for a federally-subsidized biking and walking upgrade to one of Southwest Portland’s most important main streets.

And oh, it might come with a rapid bus or rail system, too.

Staff at the regional agency Metro announced last week that they weren’t going to recommend a $900 million light-rail tunnel beneath OHSU, instead sending the proposed Southwest Corridor high-capacity transit line on the surface of SW Naito and Barbur as it passes through Southwest Portland toward Tualatin and Tigard.

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SW Barbur near SW 78th – just west of the section that might be rebuilt by a new transit line.
(Photo by J Maus/ BikePortland)

This post is part of our SW Portland Week.

It would certainly be ironic if Southwest Barbur Boulevard became the first arterial in Portland to receive a Copenhagen-style protected bike lane retrofit through a high-destination commercial area.

But that’s exactly what might happen if a regional committee chooses Barbur as the best route for a major new transit line. And getting around outer Southwest Portland would certainly be transformed.

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Possible biking and walking projects that might accompany a transit line through Southwest Portland.
(Maps: Metro)

This post is part of our SW Portland Week.

Interstate Avenue owes its bike lanes to the Yellow Line MAX. The new Tilikum Crossing wouldn’t be standing without the Orange Line.

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Biking on Barbur Boulevard.
(Photos by J.Maus/BikePortland)

An anti-transit vote in Tigard Tuesday could bite bike plans, too.

When Tigard voters narrowly approved a ballot issue this week designed to make it harder to build a light rail or rapid bus line through their city, they also threw a wrench in a different process: improving biking in the suburbs southwest of Portland.

Metro’s Southwest Corridor Plan, a 20-year effort to expand high-capacity transit down the Barbur Boulevard corridor potentially as far as Sherwood, has also been seen as a way to get state and federal funding for a related project: a flat, comfortable bike route through the area such as a physically protected bike lane on Barbur Boulevard.

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