Making roads unpredictable and adding strange markings and changing traffic patterns is distracting for drivers. Not only do you have to watch the traffic around you, you have to watch out for pedestrians (some drugged up) walking out in front of you, bicyclists flying through stop signs, and now drivers have to watch out for the PBOTstacles (PBOT-obstacles).
I'm glad the business owners are fighting back! Community organizing works.
This will soon be 82nd Avenue unless we can convince Millicent Williams to actually talk to the business along it. David & I attended the EPAP meetings which were sparsely attended so I'm sure many of the businesses had no idea what they were about to endure. EPAP was focused on pedestrian and bicycles. The idea behind all of these road diets (in my opinion) is to get cars off the roads. However, it does not take into account the number of days of rain we get or the number of aging and disabled people in Portland. They also don't consider the number of sidewalks we do have that are occupied by the homeless that pedestrians can't actually use! ☺
As someone does roadway engineering for a living, I would like to correct a few things in this article.
Road Contracts - By law, projects over a certain size require full public bidding. So no, former Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty couldn't "decide" to give a friend this project. All the bid documents and the bid award documents are public records and can reviewed at any time. If you are alleging there was malfeasance of any kind in the bidding process, there are both state and federal rewards for uncovering said malfeasance.
Road Diets - Road diets aren't based on European road usage, they are based on two separate realities that converge onto the idea of road diets. 1) There is only a certain width of right-of-way available for roadway infrastructure. Therefore, if one type of use takes most or all of that width, other uses, including those that have other benefits, are squeezed out. 2) Research has shown that the standards first setup for highways are exceedingly dangerous when applied to urban streets - obviously to those not in cars, but also the drivers of those cares themselves. (I want to be clear in stating this is for urban streets with multiple uses happening. The wider roads and shoulders are safer for rural roads and highways.) A good starting point to understand this is the Grist article "Here’s why narrower streets are safer". It points to studies explaining the relationship between narrower (and fewer) lanes make roads safer for everyone. Between these two things, you end up with is a finite width of roadway and a growing number of studies and examples (including from Europe) that show a narrower area for vehicles and more area for other users (bikers/walkers) not only is safer for everyone, it encourages people to use modes of transport other than cars. (A great visual of this is Not Just Bikes' video "Even Small Towns are Great Here".) If you think its some mamby-pamby liberal thing, please spend some time learning about Strong Towns, a city design advocacy organization started by Charles Mahron, a died-in-the-wool libertarian, who wanted to make cities both self-sufficient and safer. As he found out, the way we used to make cities and roads actually was better financially and way safer. The results of returning cities to what works from a safety and fiscally conservative standpoint looks a lot like what you get with road diets.
Vision Zero - I have a lot of issues with American idea of Vision Zero. Its expensive, its intrusive and it doesn't work. I also don't care for the term "vehicular violence" either. However, the idea that accidents never are skewed to one set of users or another is just wrong. Ever since man has had laws, there has been an understanding that certain things are more dangerous, just by existing, and that out of control in someway, that thing would do violence. The idea that either being careless or not attentive enough about a thing means they are more responsible is written into some of the oldest laws on the planet, see Exodus 21:28-29 as and example. The point being that as a pilot of 2-3 ton vehicle, you should be way more careful of others who are not. That means, yeah, driving slower, and not using your car as rolling living room. That also means if you are mid-slurp in that shake or fiddling with your radio and plow a pedestrian because you were distracted, you should be held to higher standard, whether or not you intended to do "violence". Other countries have laws where operator of the larger vehicle has the burden of safety and responsibility if something happens. Its not some weird conspiracy to tie the greater ability to hurt to greater levels of responsibility.
Accident rates - Automobile accident rates are going up everyone and the reason isn't some version Vision Zero. The CNBC article "More people are dying on U.S. roads, even as cars get safer. Here’s why it’s a tough problem to solve" walks through basics. But again, there are ways to fix this problem. Enforcement is a huge part of it, especially for speeding and distracted driving. But its not happening because someone used a buzzword.
The medians on Division are mess, true. Its the sad result of trying not to do more European-style streets. Without being in the room, I can tell you there was a tug-of-war in the design team between those trying to get more stuff in the space and those trying to keep cars flying along. If have the former and the latter, you have to limit how people can move, which is what the medians do. (I know, I've been part of that tug-of-war before.) There could be a completely safe Division for everyone without medians, but its going to look a lot more European and drivers won't be able yack on the phone and suck down a large coke while going 40mph in a Suburban.
Joshua, can you please tell me your thoughts behind the road diet they are doing on SE Ellis Street from 92nd to Foster? They are taking a roadway that a bus travels down and installing sidewalks, curbs and bike lanes which will turn this into one lane. They are NOT making it a one-way street but instead are going to continue allowing cars from both directions to travel down it. If there is a bus coming from Foster and a car coming from 92nd there will be no room to pull over to the side. What sense does this make?
I'm not in on PBOT meetings (consulting firm, not with with a DOT) so I don't want to get too deep into the second guessing here. But I think your premise of the comment to me and the one above belays the difference between the history and the data and what people think is true. History first. So lane widths in city's were standardized around the width of two horses, side-by-side pulling a wagon. Nearly every culture (who had horses) that got to a certain level of development settled on that width - Persians, Romans, Indus, Han, Joseon, etc. That works out to be about 9ft-11ft wide. So streets tended to be setup for at least a little wider to allow said horses & wagons and people to get past each other. On main streets it was double or quadruple those widths. We kept those sizes till after WW2, even though cars now existed. We just made our cars to fit the existing streets. But after WW2 the USA started building highways and wider lanes on highways are safer and allow for large trucks that can haul more. The road standards were built around that extra width and then were applied to city streets. Many of our cars got bigger too because the roads were bigger. Park a 1983 F150 next to to 2023 F150 or a 1983 Camry next to a 2023 Camry and you will be shocked by the size difference. Now the data. I do wish Substack allowed links, because I could link to all this data. Here is the TLDR version: narrower lanes, closer to that original 10ft-ish width, are safer when combined with lower (20mph-25mph) speed limits, though not so much when the speed limits rise above that. But those "old school" lane widths have another bonus: the are safer for the non-drivers that have to interact with vehicles - pedestrians and bicyclists. There is more room for sidewalks, bike lanes, etc. The crossing distances are reduced, etc. The list goes on. And for most vehicles having 2 lanes at 10ft wide is fine. Yes, there might the need for a driver to pull over for special vehicles, but these just a few a day or week or month. If you have ever been to Boston or a lot of Midwestern medium-sized cities built before WW2, you have experienced this. Heck, the pavement in front of the house I grew up in Indiana is just 18ft to this day and that is a 2 lane road. The point being that its not less safe to go back the "old school" lane widths and its normal in many places in this country. The road width listed in the PBOT materials for SE Ellis is 22ft curb-to-curb. There is a full discussion here: https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/construction/advisory-shoulders-bike-lanes-2023-projects Yes, that means actually paying attention and slowing down as needed, but that isn't something a driver shouldn't be doing now. It isn't some the outworking of a communist ideology if a driver has the pull over for a bus to pass on street. Now to last part of this, the perception of many Americans who only drive for transport. I drive and enjoy driving. But I also do most of my short trips via bike. And because that is true, I notice the way being in moving metal box changes the way I perceive the infrastructure around me. There is great study, entitled "Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard" that describes this mental change when driving. I noticed in your comment above you mentioned that weather or the age of people make accommodating others (walkers/bikers) impossible. Kind of serious, kind of being goofy question (with a purpose), but do you think Portland is the only place with crappy weather or old people? Oslo, Norway has a larger bike/walk share than Portland and its dark half the year with near-artic temperatures. There are plenty of old people in Oslo too. So, are the people in Oslo better people with that sweat, sweat Viking blood? Or is the infrastructure such that walking and biking are easier, safer and faster than a car for short trips. Why spend time warming up the car in January in Oslo when you can throw a coat on an bike or walk down to store to get some eggs? Therein lies the crux here. Many Americans drive so much they don't actually know what is possible or what needs to be fixed to make transportation safer. Then when attempts are made to accommodate pedestrians or bicyclists, these same people will claim anything that might alter their driving even a tiny bit is somehow an evil visited upon them. Some even try to invoke conspiracy theories (often with enough dog-whistles to make you go deaf). Like its not wrong to go, "Gee, can we streets that are safer for everyone like Oslo?" and trying to apply those lessons locally.
I know I have gotten a bit verbose, but short of doing the famous quiz host speech from Billy Madison, there is no way to explain things briefly. The original reason I commented on this article is the level of non-data included. Its all innuendo and conspiracy theories. As someone that does this for living, this stuff is complicated, sometimes ridiculously so. But when people writing about it can't even get Google search or Wikipedia article level information right, it shows there was no attempt to understand the reality of a thing. Like there is a great article hidden underneath the drek here. PBOT can't design good streets because they can't decide if the want streets for everyone or automobile-only raceways. And that limping on two opinions, being pinballed from commissioner to commissioner, means PBOT creates crap that makes no one happy and less safe than it should be.
I appreciate the link. I'm guessing you saw the article where they are removing a portion of the median in front of the Russian Deli? Regardless of the faux pas in Jeff's article it did accomplish some results. I think getting people's attention about a bad situation was the point.
As I said, there is a story here and it would have been a better on without the insulations about contract fraud, misrepresentations of road diets or Vision Zero.
FYI, this morning the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes has a discussion of trail station in the Netherlands. Which sounds boring, but in that video they spend time talking about the adjacent roadway. That road is almost exactly the same as Division, but as you can see, is may more useful to everyone who uses that road. Its sort of visual proof you can have your cake and eat it too when comes to roads.
Of course accidents increased.
Making roads unpredictable and adding strange markings and changing traffic patterns is distracting for drivers. Not only do you have to watch the traffic around you, you have to watch out for pedestrians (some drugged up) walking out in front of you, bicyclists flying through stop signs, and now drivers have to watch out for the PBOTstacles (PBOT-obstacles).
I'm glad the business owners are fighting back! Community organizing works.
This will soon be 82nd Avenue unless we can convince Millicent Williams to actually talk to the business along it. David & I attended the EPAP meetings which were sparsely attended so I'm sure many of the businesses had no idea what they were about to endure. EPAP was focused on pedestrian and bicycles. The idea behind all of these road diets (in my opinion) is to get cars off the roads. However, it does not take into account the number of days of rain we get or the number of aging and disabled people in Portland. They also don't consider the number of sidewalks we do have that are occupied by the homeless that pedestrians can't actually use! ☺
As someone does roadway engineering for a living, I would like to correct a few things in this article.
Road Contracts - By law, projects over a certain size require full public bidding. So no, former Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty couldn't "decide" to give a friend this project. All the bid documents and the bid award documents are public records and can reviewed at any time. If you are alleging there was malfeasance of any kind in the bidding process, there are both state and federal rewards for uncovering said malfeasance.
Road Diets - Road diets aren't based on European road usage, they are based on two separate realities that converge onto the idea of road diets. 1) There is only a certain width of right-of-way available for roadway infrastructure. Therefore, if one type of use takes most or all of that width, other uses, including those that have other benefits, are squeezed out. 2) Research has shown that the standards first setup for highways are exceedingly dangerous when applied to urban streets - obviously to those not in cars, but also the drivers of those cares themselves. (I want to be clear in stating this is for urban streets with multiple uses happening. The wider roads and shoulders are safer for rural roads and highways.) A good starting point to understand this is the Grist article "Here’s why narrower streets are safer". It points to studies explaining the relationship between narrower (and fewer) lanes make roads safer for everyone. Between these two things, you end up with is a finite width of roadway and a growing number of studies and examples (including from Europe) that show a narrower area for vehicles and more area for other users (bikers/walkers) not only is safer for everyone, it encourages people to use modes of transport other than cars. (A great visual of this is Not Just Bikes' video "Even Small Towns are Great Here".) If you think its some mamby-pamby liberal thing, please spend some time learning about Strong Towns, a city design advocacy organization started by Charles Mahron, a died-in-the-wool libertarian, who wanted to make cities both self-sufficient and safer. As he found out, the way we used to make cities and roads actually was better financially and way safer. The results of returning cities to what works from a safety and fiscally conservative standpoint looks a lot like what you get with road diets.
Vision Zero - I have a lot of issues with American idea of Vision Zero. Its expensive, its intrusive and it doesn't work. I also don't care for the term "vehicular violence" either. However, the idea that accidents never are skewed to one set of users or another is just wrong. Ever since man has had laws, there has been an understanding that certain things are more dangerous, just by existing, and that out of control in someway, that thing would do violence. The idea that either being careless or not attentive enough about a thing means they are more responsible is written into some of the oldest laws on the planet, see Exodus 21:28-29 as and example. The point being that as a pilot of 2-3 ton vehicle, you should be way more careful of others who are not. That means, yeah, driving slower, and not using your car as rolling living room. That also means if you are mid-slurp in that shake or fiddling with your radio and plow a pedestrian because you were distracted, you should be held to higher standard, whether or not you intended to do "violence". Other countries have laws where operator of the larger vehicle has the burden of safety and responsibility if something happens. Its not some weird conspiracy to tie the greater ability to hurt to greater levels of responsibility.
Accident rates - Automobile accident rates are going up everyone and the reason isn't some version Vision Zero. The CNBC article "More people are dying on U.S. roads, even as cars get safer. Here’s why it’s a tough problem to solve" walks through basics. But again, there are ways to fix this problem. Enforcement is a huge part of it, especially for speeding and distracted driving. But its not happening because someone used a buzzword.
The medians on Division are mess, true. Its the sad result of trying not to do more European-style streets. Without being in the room, I can tell you there was a tug-of-war in the design team between those trying to get more stuff in the space and those trying to keep cars flying along. If have the former and the latter, you have to limit how people can move, which is what the medians do. (I know, I've been part of that tug-of-war before.) There could be a completely safe Division for everyone without medians, but its going to look a lot more European and drivers won't be able yack on the phone and suck down a large coke while going 40mph in a Suburban.
Joshua, can you please tell me your thoughts behind the road diet they are doing on SE Ellis Street from 92nd to Foster? They are taking a roadway that a bus travels down and installing sidewalks, curbs and bike lanes which will turn this into one lane. They are NOT making it a one-way street but instead are going to continue allowing cars from both directions to travel down it. If there is a bus coming from Foster and a car coming from 92nd there will be no room to pull over to the side. What sense does this make?
I'm not in on PBOT meetings (consulting firm, not with with a DOT) so I don't want to get too deep into the second guessing here. But I think your premise of the comment to me and the one above belays the difference between the history and the data and what people think is true. History first. So lane widths in city's were standardized around the width of two horses, side-by-side pulling a wagon. Nearly every culture (who had horses) that got to a certain level of development settled on that width - Persians, Romans, Indus, Han, Joseon, etc. That works out to be about 9ft-11ft wide. So streets tended to be setup for at least a little wider to allow said horses & wagons and people to get past each other. On main streets it was double or quadruple those widths. We kept those sizes till after WW2, even though cars now existed. We just made our cars to fit the existing streets. But after WW2 the USA started building highways and wider lanes on highways are safer and allow for large trucks that can haul more. The road standards were built around that extra width and then were applied to city streets. Many of our cars got bigger too because the roads were bigger. Park a 1983 F150 next to to 2023 F150 or a 1983 Camry next to a 2023 Camry and you will be shocked by the size difference. Now the data. I do wish Substack allowed links, because I could link to all this data. Here is the TLDR version: narrower lanes, closer to that original 10ft-ish width, are safer when combined with lower (20mph-25mph) speed limits, though not so much when the speed limits rise above that. But those "old school" lane widths have another bonus: the are safer for the non-drivers that have to interact with vehicles - pedestrians and bicyclists. There is more room for sidewalks, bike lanes, etc. The crossing distances are reduced, etc. The list goes on. And for most vehicles having 2 lanes at 10ft wide is fine. Yes, there might the need for a driver to pull over for special vehicles, but these just a few a day or week or month. If you have ever been to Boston or a lot of Midwestern medium-sized cities built before WW2, you have experienced this. Heck, the pavement in front of the house I grew up in Indiana is just 18ft to this day and that is a 2 lane road. The point being that its not less safe to go back the "old school" lane widths and its normal in many places in this country. The road width listed in the PBOT materials for SE Ellis is 22ft curb-to-curb. There is a full discussion here: https://www.portland.gov/transportation/pbot-projects/construction/advisory-shoulders-bike-lanes-2023-projects Yes, that means actually paying attention and slowing down as needed, but that isn't something a driver shouldn't be doing now. It isn't some the outworking of a communist ideology if a driver has the pull over for a bus to pass on street. Now to last part of this, the perception of many Americans who only drive for transport. I drive and enjoy driving. But I also do most of my short trips via bike. And because that is true, I notice the way being in moving metal box changes the way I perceive the infrastructure around me. There is great study, entitled "Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard" that describes this mental change when driving. I noticed in your comment above you mentioned that weather or the age of people make accommodating others (walkers/bikers) impossible. Kind of serious, kind of being goofy question (with a purpose), but do you think Portland is the only place with crappy weather or old people? Oslo, Norway has a larger bike/walk share than Portland and its dark half the year with near-artic temperatures. There are plenty of old people in Oslo too. So, are the people in Oslo better people with that sweat, sweat Viking blood? Or is the infrastructure such that walking and biking are easier, safer and faster than a car for short trips. Why spend time warming up the car in January in Oslo when you can throw a coat on an bike or walk down to store to get some eggs? Therein lies the crux here. Many Americans drive so much they don't actually know what is possible or what needs to be fixed to make transportation safer. Then when attempts are made to accommodate pedestrians or bicyclists, these same people will claim anything that might alter their driving even a tiny bit is somehow an evil visited upon them. Some even try to invoke conspiracy theories (often with enough dog-whistles to make you go deaf). Like its not wrong to go, "Gee, can we streets that are safer for everyone like Oslo?" and trying to apply those lessons locally.
I know I have gotten a bit verbose, but short of doing the famous quiz host speech from Billy Madison, there is no way to explain things briefly. The original reason I commented on this article is the level of non-data included. Its all innuendo and conspiracy theories. As someone that does this for living, this stuff is complicated, sometimes ridiculously so. But when people writing about it can't even get Google search or Wikipedia article level information right, it shows there was no attempt to understand the reality of a thing. Like there is a great article hidden underneath the drek here. PBOT can't design good streets because they can't decide if the want streets for everyone or automobile-only raceways. And that limping on two opinions, being pinballed from commissioner to commissioner, means PBOT creates crap that makes no one happy and less safe than it should be.
I appreciate the link. I'm guessing you saw the article where they are removing a portion of the median in front of the Russian Deli? Regardless of the faux pas in Jeff's article it did accomplish some results. I think getting people's attention about a bad situation was the point.
Thank you. Sorry for the length of the comments.
As I said, there is a story here and it would have been a better on without the insulations about contract fraud, misrepresentations of road diets or Vision Zero.
FYI, this morning the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes has a discussion of trail station in the Netherlands. Which sounds boring, but in that video they spend time talking about the adjacent roadway. That road is almost exactly the same as Division, but as you can see, is may more useful to everyone who uses that road. Its sort of visual proof you can have your cake and eat it too when comes to roads.
Fun fact: Raimore Construction - Jeff Moreland and Andre Raiford are the principals in this business. Andre Raiford's niece is Teressa Raiford. Here's a picture of them together: https://www.theskanner.com/news/northwest/21954-development-wraps-black-history-and-career-education-into-preservation-project
Everyone knows everyone in this town.