McGilchrist Project Finally Wins a RAISE Grant - Updated

You may recall the previous rounds of application for TIGER (Obama), BUILD (Trump), and now RAISE (Biden) grants from the Federal government on the McGilchrist corridor project.

This time, finally, it won a grant of $13 million USDOT and the City announced today.

From the full list of awards

The shift from old-school legacy paint-only bike lanes to a more separated treatment in the most recent renderings this spring may have helped the project application be more competitive. (It will be interesting to hear if there is any further discussion of this.)

Separation proposed for bike lane and sidewalk!
(The design is symmetrical, but truncated here)

Still, in the award brief, the east bound bike lane appears to disappear east of 22nd. That will be something to monitor. Is there a little bit of bait-and-switch going on?

On the whole, this is terrific news, however. (Not so fast: See update below.)

Other Oregon projects winning grants are an urban upgrade to complete streets on a loop with Hall Boulevard in Beaverton and planning funding for a new Burnside Bridge in Portland.

(See many previous posts on the vicissitudes of the project here.)

Update, August 12th

This is a very great disappointment.

The 60 percent drawings published by the City actually show very little cycle track.

Here's a section just west of 22nd. The top one corresponds with PP-07 and PP-08 below.

5' sidewalk, 6' planting strip, 6' paint-only bike lanes
(click to enlarge)

The top section is in the 07/08 zone

This is very disappointing, and fails to meet current best practices, which call for greater separation on streets posted for 40mph with large truck traffic.

There may be more to say later.