Credit: Michael O'Leary

We discussed the pluses and frustrating minuses of the new eastside Burnside/Couch couplet on the blog a couple weeks ago. Now the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) and BikePortland.org are chiming in that the new bike lanes on Couch are unsafe to ride.

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  • Michael O’Leary

As BikePortland detailed last week, the sweeping curve of the bike lane leading from East Couch onto the Burnside Bridge let buses encroach dangerously into the bike lane and also make it hard for cyclists not to ride on the slippery line-striping. The BTA agreed, with a post on their blog this week detailing exactly how the newly-designed street feels downright unsafe. Included with the post is this scary photo of a cyclist being loaded into an ambulance last Friday after she slipped on either gravel or the bike lane striping.

In response to the fears, bike planners at the city have promised to come up with an “immediate, interim fix and a list of longer-term solutions” for the unsafe engineering. Interim fix #1: shutting down the bike lane and telling cyclists to ride in the car lane. Gaahhhhhh. It’s so disappointing that bikes are clearly a poorly planned afterthought for this $17.8 million project that’s been 20 years in the making. A worst case scenario in the weeks after East Couch’s unveiling is to see cyclists hauled off the bike lane in ambulances.

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

7 replies on “BTA: Couch Couplet is Not Ready to Ride.”

  3. Sarah, if you read the BikePortland.org post, it is clearly stated that “the striping crews made a mistake on the outside motor vehicle lane (closest to bike lane) — striping it two-and-a-half feet narrower that it should have been.” There are a lot of bike riders at PBOT (including the city’s traffic engineer). Saying bikes were a “poorly planned afterthought” is wrong.

  4. Paul,
    The striping crews may have made a mistake with the onramp, but the bike facilities feel like an afterthought to me for the other reasons pointed out here and on the BTA’s blog: the lack of a bike lane on Couch, the onstreet parking that makes Couch feel crowded for bikes, and the increased risk of right hooks all along Couch.

  5. I ride that area regularly during morning commute times. The curve aside, the rest of the improvements to Couch are much better than what existed before for bike commuters who use the Burnside bridge from the NE. With the newly paved surface, a bike lane above 6th is unnecessary because keeping up with traffic is no sweat with the elevation loss heading West on Couch. I barely have to pedal and more often than not am on the brakes until right around 5th or 6th Ave. Why should there be separate “bike facilities” on Couch when the facilities would be unnecessary given 1) topography; and 2) likely users (M-F adult commuters)?

    Agree on the increased right hook danger, however this is a function of the bike lane itself. It should be eliminated because it serves no purpose given that cyclists are entitled to the full lane and the majority of likely and foreseeable users are more than capable of taking the lane.

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