As discussed at length in this week's paper, North Williams is going through some big changes. Today at a meeting, the city and planners laid out the top three options for revamping the street to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

The city backed off from even publicly mentioning specific design ideas after it put the public process for North Williams on hold last summer and spent the past eight months gathering more public input. I wasn't at today's meeting because I had to finish putting out the newspaper or something, but BikePortland went and has the nitty-gritty details.

All of the three options involve installing a traffic signal at the intersection of North Cook, curb extensions along the stretch, and placing flashing pedestrian beacons* at Going, Failing, Stanton, and Tillamook.

At the top of the list, there's the plan to create a cycletrack on the left side of North Williams—that would mean removing a car travel lane and using the left-side parking lane as a buffer between the bike lane and the rest of the street (like on SW Broadway and NE Cully).

The second option would reduce car travel to one lane and add an extra "buffer" to the current right-side bike lane (like the bike lanes on SW Stark and Oak). A variation of this option would keep both car travel lanes on the busiest stretch of North Williams, around North Graham to Skidmore.

The third option basically keeps things as-is, but adds the beacons, curb extensions, signal, and two bike lane "transition" spots. Here, I compiled these renderings to show you:

Read through a PDF with all the details online here. The project's skateholder committee is supposed to have a final recommendation by March for how to revamp the street to be safer and reduce traffic conflicts. Submit your two cents!

*Wouldn't it be great if this plan involved bacons instead of beacons? People are way more likely to stop for bacon than for other people. They could install signs flashing outside Tasty N Sons: SLOW FOR HAM!