City Council, December 11th - Safety for Whom? And Crosswalks, Capitol Street, Green Paint

You might remember a couple of years ago a new project concept for the junction of the 12th Street cutoff and south Commercial. It was not funded, as I recall, but something of a revised element of it appears in a set of three suites of applications for ODOT All Roads Transportation Safety funding at Council on Monday.

Who are we protecting here with the rail placement?

The new project seems, however, to slight non-auto travel. It identifies this site as one of three to "provide guard rails to address risks of roadway departures at three locations that have a history of roadway departure crashes or that have conditions that indicate a high risk for roadway departure."

But any "roadway departure," whether from jaydriving and high speed or from the impact of another vehicle in a crash, will endanger anyone walking or rolling here. This is a real problem with "forgiving" design and its emphasis on safety primarily for those inside of cars. 

This is an opportunity for a segment of protected bike lane! (See BikePortland for a recent note on a location there where the railing is in the traditional, and wrong, place.)

An unsuccessful project application (2021)

The current application doesn't mention the crosswalk or any of the other elements in that 2021 project scope. But turning around 180 degrees shows the messed up crosswalk, dead-ending in landscaping and the light standard, and without any connecting sidewalk.

The crosswalk dead-ends into landscaping

Isn't it embarrassing to scope a project only for drivers and passengers here? At the very least this deserves more discussion as an explicit "phase" in a solution for this whole area.

Three sites proposed for railing

Other sites for railing include segments on Boone and Turner Roads. Presumably these will pose the same questions about whether the railing will go between the bike lane and cars, or whether the railing will leave vulnerable road users still vulnerable.

Much less ambiguous are some other elements in a second bundle of projects.

Planning for Parrish: September 11th, 1923

The 3/2 safety conversion on Capitol Street between Center and Market Streets!

Reduce vehicular travel lanes on Capitol Street NE from Center Street NE to Market Street NE from three existing lanes to two, add a buffered bike lane, and add two transit platforms. Remove double left-turn lanes at the intersection of Capitol Street NE and Marion Street NE and the double right-turn lanes at the intersection of Union Street NE and Capitol Street NE.

As it happens, planning for Parrish Junior High started 100 years ago. So that is nice to note and I am sure than next year there will be more celebration on the anniversary of its completion.

• See previous note from July when Council first discussed the concept

To add a beacon at the existing crosswalk
on Market Street at 15th (streetview)

An upgraded crosswalk with a flashing beacon on Market Street at 15th for access to Barrick Field. (But Market Street here also deserves a 4/3 safety conversion!)

An example of green skip striping
(Glen Creek towards Wallace Park, 2015)

And green skip striping for the tricky bike lane weave left across a right-turn only lane, with eight unspecified sites.

And a third bundle is for traffic light upgrades to a flashing yellow arrow for unprotected left turns when drivers must yield to oncoming traffic. Some 30 unspecified intersections are included in this.

• See previous rounds of ARTS applications and funding here.
  

Separately, one of the Safe Routes projects, an enhanced crosswalk with flashing beacon on Sunnyview at Hollywood Drive, with connections to Blanchet School, and also serving McKay and Swegle, is at Council for the City to acquire some temporary and permanent easements in small slices along the street.

Crosswalk on the east (right) side

Interestingly there was a design change.

This project was originally scoped to construct a median island at the intersection instead of a RRFB [beacon]. During the public outreach process, a significant preference was expressed for installing a RRFB instead of a median island. Staff requested the design change to ODOT and they recently approved the amendment for the RRFB modification.

That's nice local preference could influence the design, though the traffic calming effect of the median likely would have been greater.

• See previously on winning the grant.

There are some other items of interest on Council agenda, and they will be in a separate note later.

Addendum

Here's some bad news. It's not on Council agenda, but it's a City matter, and this is a convenient place for it just now.

A note posted to reddit suggests the City is discontinuing the bike locker rental program.

The "rent a bike locker" web page appears to have been deleted in the last few days, consistent with the note on reddit.

Poof! Gone without an explanation

This will be something to monitor, and there will be more to say later.