Sandy Boulevard is weird. It’s a former state highway that cuts diagonally across Northeast Portland’s otherwise (relatively) tidy street grid, creating dozens of horrible, six-way intersections that can seem impossible to traverse. It’s statistically one of Portland’s most dangerous streets; the site of a disproportionate number of traffic fatalities for people driving, walking, and biking. 

Some people were once driven to creative madness over their hatred of Sandy Blvd, creating a spoof horror movie trailer in which the street serves as an eternal purgatory of impossible crossings. (“Who the fuck approved that?” one city bureaucrat screams, gesturing to a map of the street layout in the Hollywood district surrounding Sandy.)

Still, Sandy Blvd has a certain appeal. I mean, it’s home to multiple karaoke bars that serve pretty good Chinese food (at least, good enough after a few gin and tonics), the Hollywood Theatre, and both the Sandy Hut and Jug. Plus, being diagonal, Sandy provides pretty much a straight shot route from the Parkrose neighborhood in outer Northeast to the Central Eastside, with a lot of other neighborhoods and attractions in between. 

In other words: Sandy’s a fixer-upper, but it has good bones. For traveling quickly, there’s no other street that can compare. And even though right now it’s a four-lane, car-dominated street with heavy freight traffic, making it very hostile to anyone traveling outside of a car, some Portland bike advocates and urban planners see its potential. On a bike ride down Sandy last week, they shared some of their schemes. 

But first, a trip in the wayback machine. Sandy Blvd developed out of a Native American trail from the Willamette River to the Sandy River delta. The diagonal route was the most efficient way to travel around the area, used by people from the many tribal communities in the region.  Southeast Foster Road, Portland’s other major diagonal throughway, has a similar origin story. 

When white settlers arrived in the area, they also frequented the diagonal path, and by the late 19th century, Sandy remained a fixture of the city’s emerging street grid. In the early 20th century, the street was paved and given a streetcar route—one of many electric trolley lines in Portland at that time. (Emotional urbanists: Seek out more information about the rise and fall of Portland’s old streetcar system at your own risk.) 

Obviously, automobiles came in and changed everything everywhere, but Sandy Blvd was hit especially hard by car culture. By the mid-20th century, the street was teeming with car dealerships and was the most popular cruising street in Oregon. At that time, Sandy was still owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation, and treated like a state highway. Most of Sandy, from NE 99th Ave to SE Grand Street, would be transferred to the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) in 2003. And while PBOT has made some safety changes to it over the years—lowering the speed limit to 30 miles per hour, for example, or adding the amazing traffic signals I wrote about a couple weeks ago—Sandy could be a lot better. 

At the start of last week’s Sandy Blvd ride, ride organizer Adam Zucker (an engineer and jack-of-all-trades) shared some of this history. Then, he urged participants to forget about the past and the present, if only for a few miles. 

“On this ride, it would be great to think about not what we see now, but what Sandy could be,” Zucker said. 

Envisioning what the street could be has been made easier by the recent “Future Sandy” report, a collaboration between Portland bike advocacy group BikeLoud PDX and Strategic Minds Consulting Group, a team of five Portland State University Masters of Urban Planning (MURP) students. The report points out that Sandy Blvd is identified as a future bikeway in several city and regional planning documents, and says there’s a “high latent demand for cycling” on the street “due to its diagonal nature.” 

The Future Sandy report recommends a lane allocation that reduces car traffic lanes on Sandy to one in either direction and adds parking-protected bike lanes to either side of the street. It also suggests changes to make the street more accessible for people walking and taking transit, which would make it easier and safer to travel up and down the street, enjoying the various bars, restaurants, and shops there. 

The reason bike advocates and planners are acting now to get their ideas in motion is because PBOT plans to repave NE Sandy Blvd between 14th and 28th Aves in the upcoming years. The report says this repaving project “presents an opportunity to better align the street with the city and region’s traffic safety and climate goals." Portland's transportation advocates want to make sure their voices are heard in this process. 

At the bike ride, BikeLoud’s vice chair Kiel Johnson said if PBOT adds bike lanes and other infrastructure improvements to this stretch of Sandy, the city will also be more likely to extend the benefits across the northern part of the street in the future. 

“Sandy’s a really important street,” Johnson said. “There’s a really big opportunity coming up for us to show up and make sure the city knows that we want Sandy to be rebuilt so people can feel safe riding a bike on it.” 

Of course, the proposed changes will be met with pushback. Some people weren't happy when Portland's other major diagonal street, SE Foster Road, got a redesign that included bike lanes. But advocates—and much more importantly, PBOT—can't be deterred by criticism. Especially not on a street as important as Sandy. 

Other than this recent group bike ride down Sandy, I’ve only ridden down a large stretch of the street once—on another Sandy Blvd ride two years ago. It’s very pleasant to ride on Sandy in a large group, but even though the street is such a convenient route, I am not at all comfortable riding it alone. And after experiencing how great it is to zip across Northeast Portland on a diagonal street once again, I’m becoming more resentful of Sandy Blvd’s current state. (I once again implore you to watch the "Sandy Blvd" spoof trailer I mentioned earlier, which will give you an idea of how high my emotions can run when thinking about this godforsaken street.)

But looking at how much this street has changed over the years gives me hope. Sandy Blvd has gone through multiple major overhauls and evolutions. It's time for the next one.