By Allan Rudwick. This text first appeared within the Eliot Neighborhood Newsletter.
“I’m satisfied that town ought to slender North Vancouver by one lane by this stretch.”
– Allan Rudwick
The “Vancouver-Williams bicycle freeway” was one of many first routes recommended to me to get round north and northeast Portland again in 2007 after I was first starting my utilitarian biking profession. As an extended, straight route between downtown Portland and Vancouver with comparatively gradual hills, the Vancouver-Williams couplet is an apparent selection for a chosen bikeway.
Within the early 2010s, I used to be a member of the North Williams Safety Project Stakeholder Advisory Group, and I spent numerous time fascinated about methods to tame a street the place individuals lived, labored and performed alongside drivers who commonly topped 40 miles per hour. From my observations, the most important good thing about that project was not shifting bicycles to the left facet of the street or including the concrete islands, it was decreasing the automotive capability to such a trickle as to pressure dashing drivers to decelerate or think about alternate routes.
Quick ahead to the 2020s, and my daughters have began attending our native neighborhood elementary faculty, Boise-Eliot/Humboldt College (BEH). This faculty identify represents three colleges being consolidated into one on account of shrinking family sizes and intentional depopulation of the neighborhood by the Oregon Division of Transportation, Portland Improvement Fee, Emanuel Hospital and others. BEH is likely one of the higher colleges within the Portland Public Colleges system at pupil retention. Our household has been very pleased with the skilled lecturers and administration on the faculty. The largest problem for us is commuting alongside and throughout the busy streets of our neighborhood, most of all N Vancouver Ave.
In 2010, I took a category at Portland State College referred to as “Portland Traffic and Transportation.” Designed for citizen-advocates, the course guided every pupil to select a street design drawback of their neighborhood and empowered them to work with Portland Bureau of Transportation engineers to design an answer to their drawback. I selected to have a look at the N Vancouver and Prepare dinner Road intersection as a result of it was probably the most harmful I’d seen. I personally witnessed the aftermath of a number of crashes on the intersection of Vancouver and Prepare dinner together with one bicyclist/automotive collision.
The PBOT engineer who I ended up working with was not too stunned to listen to concerning the collisions, as he occurred to be doing an evaluation of the worst intersections within the metropolis. He was stunned that town hadn’t seen this drawback space beforehand. I now not share his sense of shock, nonetheless, as a result of I now know that our neighborhood had been neglected by town for a few years up till the newest wave of gentrification. I proposed including visitors indicators on the intersections on Prepare dinner Road with N Gantenbein Avenue, N Vancouver Avenue, and N Williams Avenue. Finally town determined so as to add visitors indicators at N Vancouver and N Williams Avenues, and this resolved quite a lot of points on the intersections.
To cycle from my home east of NE Rodney Avenue to BEH with my ladies, there is just one comfy path to the varsity. We bike to NE Prepare dinner Road, cross on the lights and experience the sidewalk across the ODOT onramps to get to N Gantenbein Avenue, after which we experience down the N Ivy Road alley to the varsity. Aside from dodging purchasing carts on ODOT’s poorly maintained sidewalk, it’s a comparatively peaceable journey from a automotive interplay perspective. On the best way residence, using on this sidewalk places us on the “mistaken” facet of the road, so I’ve opted to bike south on N Vancouver, which I discover extremely irritating. My ladies have discovered methods to maneuver by this configuration and observe me intently.
Nevertheless, three slender lanes of automotive journey with a slender bicycle lane within the center is uncomfortable for everybody, together with drivers. I’m satisfied that town ought to slender N Vancouver by one lane by this stretch. Hardly anybody is utilizing the southbound journey lane subsequent to New Seasons to show left on Prepare dinner road anyhow, so I feel there may be a simple win right here. With that change, all of the lanes may very well be expanded a bit to provide everybody slightly extra respiration room whereas touring. It could additionally scale back the variety of lanes pedestrians and cyclists need to cross to achieve the opposite facet of the road.
Vancouver Ave is a preeminent route in what the League of American Bicyclists calls a “Platinum Bicycle Pleasant Neighborhood,” and it’s unacceptable these blocks are designed for automotive throughput above all else. We deserve higher.
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