A very sad sharrow in a stressful riding environment. The least ODOT can do is lower the speed limit. (And just FYI, that sidewalk is very narrow and is not technically wide enough for bicycle users and walkers to share.)

I have good news to share regarding a little advocacy effort in St. Johns.

Remember how the Oregon Department of Transportation lowered the speed limit on the St. Johns Bridge to 25 mph during a recent construction project? They told me the rationale was to protect vulnerable work crews who were walking on the bridge sidewalk.

It struck me that everyone who uses the St. Johns Bridge outside of a car is just as vulnerable as a construction worker, so why not keep make that speed limit reduction permanent?

As I shared in October, I made a request to ODOT through their public input portal to do just that. ODOT told me the request would have to come from the City of Portland. So I made a similar request to the Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) via the 823-SAFE hotline.

Guess what? [Read more…]

Why not keep it that way?
(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)

The Oregon Department of Transportation just announced they’ve finished a maintenance project on the St. Johns Bridge that had closed one of its two sidewalks for the past 42 days.

That might not sound like a big deal, but if you’ve ever tried to ride or walk over the bridge you know that people not in cars or trucks need all the space they can get. While we’re happy people will have more sidewalk space to bike on, we’re not thrilled that the speed limit will go back up to 35 mph. It was nice of ODOT to lower the limit to 25 during the maintenance project. I think it should stay there.[Read more…]

The sidewalks on the St. Johns Bridge are already extremely narrow and stressful.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

The Oregon Department of Transportation announced yesterday that a maintenance project on the St. Johns Bridge will result in the closure of one sidewalk for two months. ODOT will close one sidewalk for two, 30-day periods in order to stage construction equipment.

The project, which will reinforce the framework of the bridge to handle more and heavier auto and truck traffic, means bicycle users who use the sidewalks will share the narrow sidewalk space with more people than ever. This is a big deal because the sidewalks are only five feet wide and traffic around the St. Johns Bridge is notoriously unsafe.
[Read more…]

Part of the haul. See more below.
(Photo: Imgur via Reddit)

A reader shared a Reddit post with us that underscores the poor conditions bicycle riders face on the St. Johns Bridge.

From leaves in fall and gravel in winter, to nails and illegally parked cars and delivery trucks — it sometimes feels like we face a constant barrage of hazards while biking around Portland.

That being said, it’s nice to know people care enough to take matters into their own hands and clean things up.[Read more…]

ODOT traffic cam view of the crash. Arrow points to Ford pick-up hit by speeding Kia driver.

A 71-year-old man died Saturday night while driving on the St. Johns Bridge. Keizer resident John Crook was the 41st person to die on Portland roads this year (we had 35 deaths at this time last year).

Crook’s death comes one year after hundreds of Portlanders biked onto the bridge and held a vigil for Mitch York, who was killed by a reckless driver at the same intersection.

In Saturday’s collision, police say Crook was driving a Kia Optima westbound on the bridge “at a high rate of speed” and failed to stop for the red light at Bridge Avenue. Crook ran into someone driving a Ford F-150. The impact from the collision was so powerful that the truck — at nearly twice the size of the small Kia — flipped over and landed off the roadway on its roof. The two people inside the truck sustained what police call “non life-threatening injuries” (a term that bothers me, because it glosses over what could be horrific, life-altering injuries).

This crash underscores that the design of the St. Johns Bridge, that advocates have been concerned about for many years, is unsafe for everyone. People drive dangerously on the bridge in part because the design lets them. The Oregon Department of Transportation, who ignored recommendations (from the City of Portland, advocates, Metro, and engineering consultants) for a safer cross-section in 2005, has kept the bridge as a four-lane thoroughfare. The wide-open design gives drivers a false sense of security and encourages dangerous behaviors that put human lives at risk.
[Read more…]

Images from the sentencing hearing for Joel Schrantz. Top: Jenni York and her daughter Carly York hug after the hearing; Judge Eric Bloch. Bottom: defendant Joel Schrantz.
(Photos by J. Maus/BikePortland)

Joel Schrantz was sentenced to 42 months in jail yesterday for his role in the death of Mitch York.

Schrantz, 43, is the man who failed to control his Toyota 4-Runner and hit York while driving onto the St. Johns Bridge on October 29th, 2016. York was waiting for a green light in the left-turn lane prior to the collision. The 55-year old resident of northeast Portland, who was on his way to one of his regular rides in the west hills, died at the scene.
[Read more…]

KATU reporter Reed Andrews shoveled gravel on sidewalk of St. Johns Bridge last night. (Watch video of the story below.)

With a shovel in his hand to drive the point home, Portland reporter Reed Andrews with KATU (our ABC affiliate) highlighted the problem of gravel in the bike lanes on their news broadcast last night.

Andrews focused his story on the layer of gravel on the St. Johns Bridge sidewalk we reported on Tuesday. He interviewed the owner of Block Bikes, a bike shop just steps away from the east end of the bridge who vouched for the problems it causes for his customers. The story also included an interview with a bicycle rider who said he often rides miles out of his way just to avoid riding the bridge sidewalk.
[Read more…]

It’s unacceptable to force road users to make a dangerous choice between being run down by fast-moving drivers or riding over small slippery rocks on a narrow sidewalk.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

The only refuge from fast-moving (and often irate) people driving cars across the St. Johns Bridge is still covered in a layer of gravel a month after the last snow storm.

As we first reported nearly three weeks ago, while driving is pretty much back to normal following major snow storms, biking is still hazardous. Massive potholes plague streets and many bike lane markings have all but vanished due to the constant scraping from tire chains, plows, studded tires, and gravel. And there are still many trees and limbs that block bicycle-only lanes — forcing people into adjacent lanes which increases the risk of collisions.

All our various road agencies need to place a much higher priority on the safety of all road users when it comes to their storm clean-up plans.

One of the most egregrious spots is on the sidewalk of the St. Johns Bridge. There’s so much gravel that in some parts you can’t see the surface of the sidewalk. This is a big deal because the St. Johns Bridge is a vital bicycling connection and the roadway lacks bike lanes. With large diesel trucks rumbling inches away, the narow St. Johns Bridge sidewalks are already sketchy enough. Add slippery gravel and you’ve got even more stressful situation.
[Read more…]

A big turnout in St. Johns.
(Photos: J. Maus/BikePortland)

About 75 people packed into the St. Johns Community Center on a rainy Monday night because they want the streets in front of their homes, schools and businesses to be safer and more humane.

The event, hosted by the St. Johns Neighborhood Association’s Safety and Livability Team, was scheduled before the death of a bicycle rider on the St. Johns Bridge late last month; but that tragedy has given even greater urgency to the concerns expressed last night.

Like many areas of Portland, St. Johns residents are fed-up with their streets being dominated by people who drive too fast and cut-through their neighborhoods to avoid congestion. Another issue on the minds of many last night was how their part of the city is hemmed in by large arterial streets managed by the Oregon Department of Transportation to prioritize freight traffic at the expense of everything else.

“Trucks drive fast past homes and crosswalks,” someone scrawled on a piece of paper that was turned in after the meeting. “And the road is too small for them… Residents don’t open their windows because of the fumes!”
[Read more…]

The St. Johns Bridge looking west.
(Photo: Joe Mabel/Wikipedia)

Despite multiple demands over the years to improve bike access on the St. Johns Bridge, the Oregon Department of Transportation has used many different excuses for why the current lane configuration simply cannot change. And it turns out their latest excuse — that state design guidelines for freight traffic require 19-foot wide lanes in both directions — is untrue.
[Read more…]