Portland’s 82nd Ave Improvement Plan Moves Forward

On Thursday, the Portland City Council unanimously approved a plan to make structural improvements to East 82nd Avenue. The move is seen as a first step to an ambitious goal of transforming 82nd and the neighborhoods surrounding it into a safer and more neighborhood-oriented road—but it’s one that will require the cooperation of both regional and state authorities.

Opening the council meeting, Mayor Ted Wheeler noted that the area surrounding 82nd is “one of the most diverse in the entire state,” and called it “an important street in our city, and the region, and one we need to focus on improving.” According to city numbers, the area has more people of color and more low-income households than Portland averages.

But while many neighborhoods along 82nd are seen as culturally thriving—such as the Jade District or Lents—the same can’t be said for the road itself. Originally built as a state highway, 82nd was for a long time the only major north-south connector on Portland’s east side—that is, until Interstate 205 was built in the early 1980s. Because of its origins as a state highway, 82nd is still owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), rather than by the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), who oversees the vast majority of city streets.

That means that rather than being prioritized as a major city road and maintained accordingly, 82nd has languished as a low-priority, relatively small state highway.

As a result, 82nd is a particularly unsafe place to drive, bike, or walk. Since 2007, 16 people have died as the result of traffic accidents on 82nd. Most of them were pedestrians.

The new 82nd Avenue Plan seeks to address that by widening sidewalks, adding new crosswalks and improving existing ones, filling in bike lane gaps, and calling for a lower speed limit on portions of the street.

April Bertelsen, a PBOT transit coordinator, called the plan a “first step” to improving 82nd when presenting it to City Council.

“We know there are needs for 82nd Ave. beyond this plan,” she said. “But we need to get started, and get started now.”

There are two big reasons for the urgency in Bertelsen’s message. First, the regional Metro council is planning a major transportation bond measure for the 2020 ballot, and it is considering making 82nd Ave one of the bond’s priorities. By approving the plan, City Council indicated it is willing to work with Metro to fix up 82nd. During invited testimony, Metro District 6 Commissioner Bob Stacey called 82nd a “barometer for the future of our county.”

But Metro isn’t the only additional government agency with skin in the game. ODOT still owns 82nd, and while it has indicated that it’s willing to work with PBOT on a transfer of ownership, a big question remains: How much of the improvement work is ODOT willing to do before the road becomes Portland’s responsibility?

A bill currently in the Oregon House would establish a fund to help ease ownership transfers like this one, but the bill isn’t on track to be voted on this session.

ODOT and PBOT recently entered into a Memorandum of Understanding—a very early step to kick off the negotiating process for a jurisdictional transfer—and the negotiations should begin this summer. But how much funding ODOT will contribute to fix up 82nd is still up in the air.

Before voting for the plan, Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty expressed her “skepticism” that ODOT would give Portland a fair deal.

“I don’t us want to leave here under any false illusions that all of a sudden [ODOT and PBOT are] going to have this wonderful relationship on 82nd,” she said. “I want to caution PBOT that as they negotiate with ODOT that nothing except repairing that street totally, with a maintenance plan attached to it, will be acceptable.”

Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who is the PBOT commissioner, answered Hardesty’s concern.

“I want to assure you,” she said, “that we are not going to accept a lemon.”