Coming this fall.
(Drawing by PBOT)

It’s not exactly a full “protected intersection” as first envisioned by a Portland planner over four years ago; but the Bureau of Transportation is set to add concrete buffers between the bike lane and other vehicle lanes at several corners to a notorious intersection of West Burnside this fall.

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Burnside at the Wildwood Trail Crossing. 58 percent of people driver over the posted speed of 40 mph here. The City thinks the speed limit should be 35.

The City of Portland wants to make a 1.5 mile section of Burnside that runs through a wooded area of the West Hills more human-friendly. But the State of Oregon has thrown a wrench in the works.

Between Skyline Boulevard and Tichner Road, the curvy and relatively narrow three-lane cross-section tears right across the Wildwood Trail, Portland’s marquee hiking destination. The trail crosses Burnside in a curve with poor sightlines and Oregon Department of Transportation data shows a majority of people go over the 40 mph speed limit. This section of road also has such a dubious crash history — 45 of them between 2013 and 2015, 35 of which resulted in people being injured — that the Portland Police Bureau has flagged it as a concern.
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The Portland Bureau of Transportation has identified a section of West Burnside they’d like to tame; and the result could make it easier to cross the high-speed road that dangerously bisects our city.

The City’s West Burnside Multimodal Study aims to “evaluate opportunities to improve safety and accessibility along and across West Burnside Street between 15th Avenue and 20th Avenue.” We first heard about this project from a reader who saw a presentation about it from a PBOT staffer that was given at a meeting of the Northwest District Association’s transportation committee last night.

Here are more details about the project via PBOT’s website:

West Burnside Street is a major east‐west travel route through downtown Portland and connecting to the West Hills and areas to the west of the City. On an average day, between 21,000 and 25,000 vehicles use the undivided four‐lane facility to travel east or west in the blocks between Interstate 405 (I‐405) and the West Hills.
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