Three years from now, Division Street is going to look a lot different.
City council approved a $7 million plan this morning to rebuild Division Street from 10th Ave to 39th Ave as a more pedestrian-friendly, sustainable, generally less crappy thoroughfare. About 15,000 cars travel along the stretch every day and Division needs to be repaved anyway, so the city will take the chance next year while it’s being repaved to do what Portland does best: lay down the “green streets.”
The city has been working for the last year on the plan (download the pdf here) and came up with a final “Division Streetscape and Street Reconstruction Project” which will make cut most of Division’s busiest inner-SE stretch down from two lanes of traffic to one lane in each direction.
Right now, Division is four lanes wide, but the outer lanes are parking except during rush hour. The city traffic planners found that to be inefficient: people were not actually parking in the parking lanes very often because they weren’t sure about the no parking times or didn’t want to risk leaving their car there too long. So under the new plan, the outer lanes will be all-the-time parking lanes and the traffic will narrow to one lane, except at the street’s busiest intersections (at 11th, 12th and Seven Corners) where parking will be removed to make two free-flowing traffic lanes in each direction.
The plan also adds four crosswalks and green bike boxes to SE 21st and SE Ladd where they hit Division.
Neighbors testifying before council this morning had mostly positive things to say about the plan, though some worried that narrowing the lane would divert traffic onto neighborhood streets. The project doesn’t add bike lanes or much bike infrastructure to Division (except for the two bike boxes and some bike corrals) but that makes sense because bike boulevards Lincoln and Clinton Streets run parallel to Division… and the whole point of bike boulevards is to get bikes onto low-traffic streets so they don’t have to elbow for space with 15,000 cars.
I’m generally all for this sort of thing, but this seems like a horrible idea. One person turning left is gonna just fuck all traffic for 10 blocks in both directions.
You have to understand their goal is to ‘fuck all traffic’ in the city
As it is now, it seems that most of the extra lane is just used for parking spaces. I’d be glad to do away with that. I do agree with Graham as it is now it is a bitch to take a left, but if they’re spending money and re-doing it I would hope that new lights would be put in to help accommodate for turning left.
Due to the street parking, it already is basically two lanes for a lot of it. As Graham states, one car turning left does indeed play hell with all the traffic behind it. Try crossing the street at 37th and SE Division in the afternoon…you will be waiting for awhile.
I live on Division and even waiting for my bus in the morning is dangerous. Cars constantly jump into the outer ‘parking’ lane and fly by way too quickly. I am looking forward to the green bike boxes and cross walk at 21st. That crossing is ridiculous slow and bikes, cars, and pedestrians often disobey the slow lights.
Langlitz Leathers Lives!
Hear hear @humanclock. I lived there and it was a total bitch to cross 37th to get to Victory Bar.
I used to travel this stretch nearly every day, 80% by bus and 20% by car. I always avoided it entirely on bike by taking Clinton. I hate the “sometimes this is a lane of traffic, sometimes this is parking, sometimes there will just be one parked car everyone has to bottleneck because of, etc…” Whatever they do, I just want usage on roads tightly defined, e.g. “Here is one lane of traffic, here is one bike lane, here are bike boxes at intersections, and here is a strip for parking.” Clarity helps everyone stay safe, right?
This is going to be a mess. It’s already terrible. If they make it more difficult for cars to travel east on Division between 4-6pm M-F then there will be many more cars on Clinton, Woodward and Brooklyn at that time of day. It’s just like trying to dam a creek. You slow it down in one spot and it’s just going to spill out someplace else.
“Whatever they do, I just want usage on roads tightly defined, e.g. “Here is one lane of traffic, here is one bike lane, here are bike boxes at intersections, and here is a strip for parking.” Clarity helps everyone stay safe, right?”
This. Right now this city is a clusterfuck of mashed up ideas. Downtown is nothing like SW, SW is nothing like SE, etc. I personally feel that if the city is serious about biking, they need to dedicate bike-only thoroughfares throughout the city. And not “unofficial” thoroughfares like Clinton, either.
I bike or drive that way nearly every day now, and unless I need to get somewhere on Division itself, I try not to actually drive on it for more than a couple of blocks. People do all kinds of retarded things on that stretch of road, so I’m all for any alternative.
The only time that people are consistently parked in the sometimes-parking lane is when they’re not supposed to be, thus fouling up traffic as people try to actually make use of the two lanes. I’m surprised there aren’t tow trucks just patrolling the place from 4-6pm.
I like it, but the idea that it might increase car traffic on Clinton, one of the more successful bike blvds, is depressing.
39th was renamed Cesar E. Chavez Blvd. a year ago. How soon we forget.
Some people want to actually respect Cesar Chavez and not name a stupid street after him.
@w9gM, I don’t think Clinton is an “unofficial” thoroughfare – it’s defined by the city as a bike boulevard, and is designed to “calm” automobile traffic ie. with traffic circles and speed bumps. Of course there’s still plenty of overspill from Division anyway. I think it’s too bad this was approved before the the Portland-Milwaukie light rail project materializes. There’s going to be a station at 12th/Clinton which will no doubt add some new complications to the traffic on inner Division.
Clinton is a street where cars drive: fact. You can call the street fairyland for all you want, but when cars and bikes share space, accidents are more likely to occur. The only difference I’ve seen with Clinton is the bikers break the law regularly and it seems to be given a “pass” by drivers and police.
My point is that you can resolve the issue by pulling cars off the road entirely (ain’t gonna happen until gas is $6/gallon).